BepInEx Template for GameName

• BepInEx Template for GameName
  • Installing
    • From Nuget
    • Manually
  • Creating a Project
    • Project Structure
    • Setting Up The Config File
    • Thunderstore Packaging
    • GitHub Actions Publishing

Template creator: After forking, replace the following, e.g.:

• _GameName_ → Lethal Company (name from Steam directory)
• _GameNameNoSpaces_ → LethalCompany (name with spaces removed)
• _GameNameShortNoSpacesLowercase_ → lc (used for template shortName)
• _TemplateAuthorNoSpaces_ → LethalCompanyModding (GitHub repo & NuGet package prefix)
• _ThunderstoreGameIdentifier_ → lethal-company (see: https://thunderstore.io/api/experimental/community/)

You can then remove this section from the README.

Installing

.NET templates must be installed before they can be used. This means that when you install the template, it doesn't create a new project for you, but now you have the ability to do that.

Note

You must use .NET SDK 8 or newer to use this template. Older SDK versions are out of support.

From Nuget

Run the following command:

dotnet new install _TemplateAuthorNoSpaces_.BepInExTemplate

Manually

If you don't want to install via NuGet or are contributing to this template, you can follow these steps:

• Download this repo's source or clone it to your local computer
• Navigate inside the repository root directory
• Open a Terminal/Powershell/Bash window inside this folder and use the following command to install it: dotnet new install .
  • Note: If you are updating the template from an older version use dotnet new install . --force instead
  • Note: To uninstall it, run dotnet new uninstall .

Great! The template is now installed locally as GameName BepInEx Plugin.

Creating a Project

Tip

If you've done this before, you can use the --no-tutorial option to get rid of tutorial comments. Note that this doesn't get rid of all comments.

Open a terminal in your GameName modding directory, and run:

 dotnet new _GameNameShortNoSpacesLowercase_mod --name ModName --guid com.github.YourAccount.ModName --ts-team YourThunderstoreTeam

This will create a new directory with the mod name which contains the project.

You now have a (mostly) working setup. See Setting Up The Config File and Thunderstore Packaging for more.

Project Structure

This example demonstrates what files should appear and where:

~/Workspace/_GameNameNoSpaces_$ dotnet new _GameNameShortNoSpacesLowercase_mod --name MyCoolMod --guid com.github._TemplateAuthorNoSpaces_.MyCoolMod --ts-team _TemplateAuthorNoSpaces_
The template "_GameNameNoSpaces_ BepInEx Plugin" was created successfully.

~/Workspace/_GameNameNoSpaces_$ cd MyCoolMod/
~/Workspace/_GameNameNoSpaces_/MyCoolMod$ tree
.
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── Config.Build.user.props.template
├── Directory.Build.props
├── Directory.Build.targets
├── icon.png
├── LICENSE
├── MyCoolMod.sln
├── README.md
└── src
    └── MyCoolMod
        ├── MyCoolMod.csproj
        ├── Plugin.cs
        └── thunderstore.toml

3 directories, 12 files

The C# source files for your mod are located in ./src/<project-name>/. All files above that are more generic project configuration files.

The Directory.Build.* files contain shared configuration for all projects in subdirectories. The project is configured so that it's easy to add new projects into your project solution. Even if you don't need that, it's good to follow this standard project structure.

Setting Up The Config File

At the root of your new project you should see Config.Build.user.props.template this is a special file that is the template for the project's user-specific config. Make a copy of this file and rename it Config.Build.user.props without the template part.

This file will copy your assembly files to a plugins directory and it can be used to configure your paths to the game files and BepInEx plugins directory if the defaults don't work for you.

Thunderstore Packaging

This template comes with Thunderstore packaging built-in, using TCLI. You should configure the src/<project-name>/thunderstore.toml file for your mod, such as setting the description for your mod.

You can build Thunderstore packages by running:

dotnet build -c Release -target:PackTS -v d

Note

You can learn about different build options with dotnet build --help.
-c is short for --configuration and -v d is --verbosity detailed.

The built package will be found at artifacts/thunderstore/.

You can also directly publish to Thunderstore by including -property:PublishTS=true in the command.

Note

For publishing to Thunderstore, you need a Thunderstore API token. The publishing to Thunderstore option is intended to be used via automated GitHub actions workflows, so you don't need to worry about it.

GitHub Actions Publishing

Coming soon.