Desktop App

Desktop App

ZeusMod.exe is the Electron desktop companion. It detects the Icarus install, injects IcarusInternal.dll, forwards cheat toggles to the pipe, and delivers auto-updates. This page is the internal tour — file-by-file.

---

Stack

Layer	Choice	Why
Runtime	Electron 33	Stable Chromium + Node combo, NSIS support
Packager	electron-builder 26	Silent NSIS + latest.yml for electron-updater
Auto-updater	electron-updater 6	GitHub Releases provider, differential downloads
FFI	koffi 2	Pure-JS native syscalls, no node-gyp

No React, no bundler, no TypeScript. The renderer is a single index.html, a single app.js, and a single main.css. Same thing on the main side: main.js, preload.js, injector.js. Deliberate — keeps the attack surface small and the cold start fast.

---

Main process

src/main/main.js

Responsibilities:

• Create the BrowserWindow, wire up the frameless titlebar.
• Register ipcMain handlers:
  • game:status — returns {installed, installDir, running}.
  • game:inject — calls injectDll (see below).
  • cheat:toggle — writes <cmd>:<value>\n to the cheats pipe.
  • update:check / update:install / update:open-page — proxy to electron-updater.
• Register the autoUpdater provider + event listeners. Every status transition (checking, available, downloading, downloaded, error) broadcasts to the renderer via mainWindow.webContents.send('update:state', state).

src/main/injector.js

Pure koffi FFI binding to kernel32.dll. The public API:

const { injectDll, InjectError } = require('./injector');
const res = injectDll(pid, dllPath);     // { moduleBase: BigInt }

Internally:

OpenProcess(PROCESS_ALL_ACCESS, false, pid)
VirtualAllocEx(hProc, NULL, len, MEM_COMMIT|MEM_RESERVE, PAGE_READWRITE)
WriteProcessMemory(hProc, alloc, utf16(dllPath+"\0"))
CreateRemoteThread(hProc, NULL, 0,
                   GetProcAddress(GetModuleHandleW("kernel32"), "LoadLibraryW"),
                   alloc, 0, NULL)
WaitForSingleObject(hThread, INFINITE)
GetExitCodeThread  → moduleBase (HMODULE)
VirtualFreeEx(hProc, alloc, 0, MEM_RELEASE)
CloseHandle(hThread)
CloseHandle(hProc)

InjectError wraps every failure with a code (WIN32, BAD_PID, LOAD_FAILED, TIMEOUT, TRUNCATED) so the renderer can display a useful error instead of a raw errno. A try/finally block guarantees VirtualFreeEx + CloseHandle run even on exceptions.

Why not PowerShell. The pre-1.5 path spawned PowerShell + Add-Type which JIT-compiled a C# remote-thread-injection helper. That added ~1 second of latency, spawned a visible child process, and tripped AV heuristics on some machines. koffi is pure JS, ships as a prebuilt binary, and the end-to-end inject is 50–150 ms.

src/main/preload.js

contextBridge that exposes window.zeusmod.* to the renderer. Kept intentionally small — every method is a thin invoke() over one ipcMain handler. The renderer never touches fs, net, or child_process directly.

---

Renderer

src/renderer/index.html

Structure:

┌ titlebar ───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  ZeusMod  vX.Y.Z | Icarus trainer        [ _ ] [ □ ] [ × ]  │
├ sidebar ──────────┬──────────── content ─────────────────────┤
│ [ Icarus tile   ] │  status strip (dot + ATTACH TO ICARUS)   │
│ ▶ Survival        │  ───────────────────────────────────────  │
│   Inventory       │  <category panel>.card-grid              │
│   Character       │    [ cheat card ] [ cheat card ] ...     │
│   World           │                                          │
│   Progression     │                                          │
│   Give Items      │                                          │
├───────────────────┤                                          │
│ Status | Injected │                                          │
│ Updates | v1.5.0  │                                          │
│ [ Check Updates ] │                                          │
│ Made by CyberSnake│                                          │
└───────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────┘

Six nav items, each swapping a .cat-panel in the main area. Cheat cards are plain <article> blocks with a single <input type="checkbox" data-cheat-toggle="<cmd>"> — the renderer wires them to the pipe via one event handler.

src/renderer/js/app.js

• wireTitlebar() — min / max / close.
• wireSidebarNav() — swap active panel; mirror the Character category into Progression at first visit.
• wireCheatToggles() — every [data-cheat-toggle] checkbox fires window.zeusmod.toggleCheat.
• wireSpeedStepper(), wireTimeStepper() — value steppers.
• refreshGameStatus() — polls game:status every 3 s when not injected.
• renderUpdate() / showUpdateModal() — render auto-updater state into the footer chip + modal.

No framework. The renderer fits in a few hundred lines.

src/renderer/styles/main.css

• Palette: --bg-0: #0a0d14, accent --acc-cyan: #00d2ff, --acc-purple: #8b5bff.
• Inter / Segoe for body, JetBrains Mono for code.
• Radial gradient background, card grid, pulse animation on the status dot.
• Credit line under the sidebar footer uses a cyan → purple gradient -webkit-background-clip: text.

---

Packaging

npm run dist produces three artefacts under app/dist/:

Artefact	Who reads it
ZeusMod-Setup-X.Y.Z.exe	Users. Silent NSIS installer.
latest.yml	electron-updater. Release manifest.
ZeusMod-Setup-X.Y.Z.exe.blockmap	electron-updater. Differential download manifest.

The install target is %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\ZeusMod (per-user, no UAC). oneClick: true makes the install silent. runAfterFinish: true relaunches ZeusMod after the installer closes.

---

Auto-update flow

On launch:

1. autoUpdater.checkForUpdatesAndNotify() fires at boot and every 30 minutes.
2. If a newer version is published on the GitHub Releases feed, the main process broadcasts update:state = available with the release tag + notes parsed out of the release body.
3. The renderer opens the update modal. User clicks Download & Install → autoUpdater.downloadUpdate() begins.
4. Progress events stream via update:state = downloading (with a progress percentage field).
5. On update-downloaded, the main process calls autoUpdater.quitAndInstall(isSilent=true, isForceRunAfter=true) and the installer runs silently and re-launches ZeusMod.

The Check for Updates button in the sidebar footer forces step 1 on demand.

---

IPC surface (complete)

window.zeusmod.*	Corresponding ipcMain handler	Returns
getVersion()	direct, not IPC	app.getVersion()
minimize() / maximize() / close()	window ops	void
getGameStatus()	game:status	{installed, installDir, running}
injectGame()	game:inject	{success, output?, error?, pid?, moduleBase?}
toggleCheat(name, value)	cheat:toggle	{success, error?}
getUpdateState()	update:state-sync	current {status, ...} snapshot
onUpdateState(cb)	subscribes to broadcasts	unsubscribe fn
checkForUpdates()	update:check	void
installUpdate()	update:install	{success, error?}
openReleasePage()	update:open-page	void

---

See also

• Architecture — where the Electron app fits.
• Getting Started — user-facing install flow.
• Release Process — how releases get cut and picked up by the updater.