Hello! I'm a modder who's trying to clean up the modding tutorials pages, which are quite out-of-date. So far, I've rewritten the classic Plague Gun tutorial.

If you've been helped by my contributions on this site please check out my mods on Github and Steam.

Sandbox

Introduction to reading Def classes

This article is intended for XML modders who don't want to work with C# (even though it's much less imposing than you think) but want to know what exactly they can write in their defs.

Definitions

Fields are variables in C# class defintions defined at the top of classes (when decompiled). For example,

    public class ExampleDef : Def {
    public bool exampleBool = true;
    public int exampleInteger = 1;
    public float exampleFloat = 1.2f;
    public bool exampleNonInitializedField;
    public RaceProperties exampleClass;
}

Nodes are XML entries, for example

<ExampleDef ExampleAnnotation="ExampleValue">
    <exampleBool>true</exampleBool?
    <exampleInteger>1</exampleInteger>
    <exampleFloat>1.2</exampleFloat>
    <exampleNonInitializedField>false</exampleNonInitializedField>
    <exampleClass>
        <intelligence>Animal</intelligence>
        <fleshType>Mechanoid</fleshType>
        <hasGenders>false</hasGenders>
    </exampleClass>
</ExampleDef>

Royalty compatibility

After the release of Royalty, mods are governed by rules 13b and c of the Ludeon community rules. Unfortunately, these are inconsistently applied and end up being vaguer than intended, but a good TL;DR to follow would be:

Don't use any code flagged as Royalty only. They will throw errors when loaded for people without Royalty, so these are easy to tell.
- The page lists explicit exceptions; at the time of writing, only gendered apparel and Sketches are exempt.
Avoid using features added in 1.1 or later. Unfortunately, not all Royalty-specific code is flagged and it's ambiguous whether some features are permitted.
Avoid making anything included in Royalty, broadly defined. Another unfortunate ambiguity is the nuance in this rule - it's currently unclear whether some Royalty features, like shield projectors, count as "royalty features" for this purpose as old mods which included them have not been banned but no new ones have yet been made.
If in doubt, set your mod to require Royalty to install on Steam, and you'll be fine.

MayRequire

You can use the MayRequire annotation on XML nodes to disable Royalty-specific features when Royalty is not installed.

ModLister.RoyaltyInstalled

In C#, the canonical check for whether Royalty is installed is ModLister.RoyaltyInstalled. Notably, this check whether the Steam user owns Royalty, rather than whether it's enabled in the load order.

IfModActive

You can use the IfModActive and IfModNotActive attributes in LoadFolders.xml to conditionally load defs, treating Royalty as a mod.

<loadFolders>
  <default>
    <li>/</li>
    <li IfModActive="Royalty">RoyaltyDefs</li>
  </default>
</loadFolders>

Other Options

If you set your mod to require D9 Framework, you can use PatchOperationFindPackage (with the packageId Ludeon.RimWorld.Royalty) or PatchOperationRoyaltyInstalled to check whether Royalty is installed, with the former checking whether it's enabled and the latter checking if the user owns it. Using the vanilla PatchOperationFindMod would not be sufficient because it would be enabled if any local mod was called Royalty.

Framework Mods

intended to be a comprehensive list of mods which add features for XML users

[O21] Toolbox
Advanced Animal Frameworks
BiomesKit
D9 Framework
HugsLib (I think)
JecsTools
OgsTools
Universal Fermenter

Version Control Intro

An introduction to using Github for version control, with an eye toward Rimworld modding. Will go through my particular setup, and various tips and tricks, like:

Having a separate dev folder from the Rimworld mods folder
Build events copying from the dev folder into the build folder
.gitignore settings

&c

Example Comp Project

This project will teach players how to use ThingComps, load textures in C#, and make gizmos.

Introduction to core mods

This project will teach players how to use basic Harmony patches and demonstrate the use of MapComponents (or maybe game/world ones, idk)

User:Dninemfive

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