Does anyone know how a DLL is loaded by the game? I know that xliveless and dsound replace DLLs that were already loaded, and SHDN is an asi, but how are ScriptHook.dll and AdvancedHook.dll loaded/used by coders?

What do you mean actually?

Do you want to know the technical process behind the loading of xliveless/dsound (so WHY the game does load those dlls)?

Or do you want to know how you can use a DLL like AdvancedScripthook.dll for your own projects?

Mainly, the technical process of loading Scripthook (I think it loads dsound/xliveless because they replace directx/GfWL dlls it would already load)

But I was also wondering how modders used them in actual projects.

For your first question I can just guess. Games actually need some different DLLs (what a surprise :P). Many of them are not installed with the actual program but already on the PC or delivered by other component drivers or anything. I heard before that many games first of all search the DLLs in their home directory and when there's nothing found they go to C:\Windows\System32 or wherever that DLL is saved on the PC. So basically the modded DLLs seem to "fake" the needed/searched DLL and so be able to execute own code.

But as already stated that's just a guess. LMS should be more into this I think. He could also better explain the answer to your second question as I am maybe able to use it but I am not that good at explaining how this whole thing works (yep, I am more practical than theoretical :P )

I hope I could help you anyway :)