Context
So, just to give some initial context, i’ve been cooking up a project for the past month-ish, and so far it’s come together quite well.
This project is a suite, a toolkit of utilities that help developers pen-test, manipulate and understand the variables at play in their games. I was motivated by the lack of tooling that Roblox provides to help figure out what exploiters are doing.
But, thats lead me down another path - what else can I add, to make this tool more useful for developers? And so far i’ve found a few exciting features…
I’ll briefly show each section that is currently implemented, what it does - and how it would help you
Home Page
It’s a little obvious what this page is, it’s the first page you encounter when using this tool.
Sandbox
This is where this tool could be labelled as devious, this is an implementation of an Roblox executor, where you’re able to call a variety of functions that would only be available on the platforms that are used to manipulate Roblox!
My vision for this sandbox is to eventually allow developers to execute the same code as the malicious users - enabling them to debug what they’re doing through the Studio/Player environment.
Logging
Just a logging panel, though it’d be easier to have all the tools under one hood, than the alternative where you’re managing the f9 console along side this tool.
It does enable you to do some nifty tricks though, like add breakpoints, clear the console & export things to a platform such as pastebin.
Explorer & Properties
Right, this is where things get interesting, I’ve seen Dex and i’ve always wondered - why isn’t there a simple way to do this, for developers?! So I decided to implement it into this tool as well
You have toggles on the side to enable specific features, such as “highlight the currently selected object”, and “click to select”
(ignore the maid outfit, it’s my Halloween costume! XD)
Inspector
I couldn’t think of a better name, sorry for the cliches! This tool allows you to inspect the contents of a module script… which has always been something cool i’ve been wanting to do… anyway
You first need to select a module script, under the Explorer tab, then go to inspector in order to inspect the contents of that module script.
Interceptor
XD once again, bad name - but we’re rolling with it! This tool enables developers to capture remote events sent from the server, as well as sent from the player!
I’ve not added remote functions because i’m unable to intercept them, but for remote events - we can see the content & information about each event sent!
(These are older photos)
Live Events
This panel will specifically tell you about any change made in the game, i’ve actually hidden a few changes otherwise this panel would be flooded (changes to the camera… character… etc)
But overall it’s goal is to show you changes made to objects at runtime!
(This is what changes when I chat)
Actions
Actions provide a way for developers to integrate with this suite of tools! I do not take credit for this idea, but it allows developers to specify specific actions, then call those actions from a user interface somewhere.
This enables developers to skip out on the chat commands, or custom admin commands, and just integrate it into an already existing system;
Commands are supported on both the client, and server.
Planned features
There are still four separate panels that provide additional functionality, i’ve just not got around to programming it in yet lol:
Quick fire points:
- Statistics
- show a bunch of stats, for example memory groups, cpu stress & so on.
- Performance
- i’ve no idea as of writing this but it’s going to be ways developers can interact, and fine tune the performance of their Experience.
- Datastores
- if you want to edit datastore on the fly, well - thats what this aims to be, a fancy use case could be modifying leaderboard datas to remove cheated developer scores XD
- Embedded
- bunch of actions i think would just help being available, for example - high walkspeed, enable spectator mode, disable client code - so on.
And getting back on-topic…
I wanted to pose the question - what else would people want to see in a suite of tools like this? I am very enthusiastic about creating an awesome set of tools that enable developers to get from point A to point B quicker!
Just… me being cautious:
- This is not a showcase of a tool.
- this tool is open sourced here: GitHub - 4x8Matrix/dev-suite: A collection of tools that can help developers QA/pen-test their experiences.
- this tool is not yet ready to be used in production environments.
- This is strictly a side project, I work on this every thursday, or when I want too, i’m not guaranteeing the development of this tool
- If you want to learn more, join the OSS discord & ask questions in the #DevSuite channel under
projects.