Devil Daggers mod builder

What it is

A free tool for making Devil Daggers texture and sound mods. It opens your own copy of the game, lets you recolour, paint and re-sound it, and writes a mod file into the game’s mods folder.

Windows 10 or 11, and Devil Daggers installed. Nothing else has to be set up. There is no account and no server.

Download

The download links are read from the release file with JavaScript, which is turned off, so the list below will stay empty. Turn scripts on for this page, or write to the address on the About page and the current file names and their fingerprints will be sent back.

Loading the current release…

Reading the release list…

Both files are the same application. The installer puts it in your Start menu and fetches the Microsoft runtime if your machine does not have it; the standalone .exe installs nothing and can be deleted again by deleting the file.

What Windows will say, and why

“Windows protected your PC”

You will probably get a blue dialog saying Windows Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognised app from starting. Click More info, then Run anyway.

This happens because the file is not code signed. A signing certificate is a yearly cost and this is a free tool made by one person, so it is unsigned and says so here rather than letting you meet the dialog cold. Some antivirus products are separately suspicious of unsigned installers for the same reason.

An unsigned installer that writes into your Steam folder is exactly the kind of thing to be careful about. The checks actually available to you are the SHA-256 above, which you can compare against the file you downloaded, and the source, which is public.

In PowerShell: Get-FileHash .\<file> -Algorithm SHA256

A blank window instead

If you used the standalone .exe and the window opens but stays empty, the machine is missing the Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime, which the app uses to draw its interface. Windows 11 has it already and most Windows 10 machines do too.

Either run the installer, which sorts it out for you, or get the Evergreen Standalone Installer for WebView2 from Microsoft.

There is no error message in this case. That is a Windows behaviour rather than something the app can catch, and it is the first thing to check if the window is blank.

What it does with your files

Nothing leaves your machine

There is no account, no server and no upload. The app reads the game files on your machine, and the mods it writes go to your machine.

The game install is otherwise read only. Writes only ever land in <install>/mods, the file name is checked against the game’s own rules, and the entry is proved to be a real file rather than a link to one before anything is opened. A link aimed at res/dd would turn installing a mod into destroying the game’s own archive.

It contains none of the game’s art

Every texture and every sound you see and hear in the tool is read from your own installed copy of Devil Daggers as you use it. None of Sorath’s work is inside the download.

That is deliberate, so the tool can be passed around without passing their work around with it. It is also why a project file you share carries no art: it names the assets and carries only your own strokes and settings, and whoever opens it supplies the rest from their own copy of the game.

What changed

Reading the release list…

If something is wrong

The app has a Diagnostics button in the bar along the bottom. It shows exactly what it is about to put on your clipboard: the version, what loaded, what the machine is missing, and any errors with their stacks. There are no file paths in it. Pasting that into a report saves a round of questions.

The version is shown on its own in that same bar. If you report nothing else, report that number.