I remember Dungeon Keeper was the first time I ever “hacked” something, I had a demo of Dungeon Keeper that I’d downloaded over 56K, and couldn’t afford the game at 14 or so, but by looking at the config files realized all the characters and their stats were in there, so I was able to unlock all of the units, only without their art assets! Invisible giants were walking around my dungeon doing my bidding. I was very proud of myself and spent many dozens of hours playing this demo because of this, and it probably helped lead me to becoming a software engineer eventually.

Ha, I did the same kind of thing with the dodgy corrupted copy of Ultima III that was circulating at the time when I was too young to afford anything - the main map had a string of garbage items ruining the feel and also navigation (it made the game almost uncompletable. I don't know if this was an intentional move to reduce copyright infringement or not...?

If I remember correctly, there was a town called Yew, which had some druids which gave you hints towards the final answer you need to solve the game, but otherwise was not important. I worked out the % symbol represented a chest for the game and replaced the Yew town data file (the files were all separate) by hex-editing it to be full of chests. So I had effectively unlimited gold and a chance to spawn better weapons/armour for my characters.

I also ended up becoming a software engineer. Once I could afford it, I bought it as part of the Ultima I-IX compilation which came out on CD decades later.

hey! I did the same thing. was funny playing with the invisible Dragon.