Creating a Project

Creating a mod for YAPYAP is simple using the official BepInEx template. This guide covers installing the template, generating a project, and configuring it for development.

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 you will get the ability to do that.

Once you have the template installed, you don’t need to install it again, through it’s a good idea to update it if there are updates.

See the BepInEx Template repository

Caution

You must use .NET SDK 8 or newer. Older versions are unsupported.

From NuGet (Recommended)

Install the template by running:

dotnet new install YAPYAP.BepInExTemplate

Manual Install

If you’re contributing to the template or prefer manual installation:

1. Clone or download this repository
2. Open a terminal in the root of the project
3. Run:

dotnet new install .

To update:

dotnet new install . --force

To uninstall:

dotnet new uninstall .

Once installed, the template will be available as YAPYAP BepInEx Plugin with an alias yapyapmod.

Creating a New Mod

Run the following command in your YAPYAP modding directory:

Note

You should set up a Thunderstore team first so you can use its name in the --ts-team argument so the template can give you a mostly correctly configured packaging setup.

Create your Thunderstore team here: https://thunderstore.io/settings/teams/create/

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

This will create a new folder called ModName with your mod’s project.

Tip

If you are developing a public API, add the --library option for included NuGet metadata!

Tip

Use --no-tutorial to get rid of tutorial comments in the template. Note that this doesn’t get rid of all comments.

Project Structure

This example demonstrates the structure of the project after using the template:

~/Workspace/YAPYAP$ dotnet new yapyapmod --name YAPYAPMod --guid com.github.YAPYAPModding --ts-team YAPYAPModding
The template "YAPYAP BepInEx Plugin" was created successfully.

~/Workspace/YAPYAP$ cd YAPYAPMod/

The file structure in YAPYAP/ should look like this:

• CHANGELOG.md
• Config.Build.user.props.template
• Directory.Build.props
• Directory.Build.targets
• icon.png
• LICENSE
• YAPYAPMod.sln
• README.md
• Directorysrc

  • DirectoryYAPYAPMod

    • YAPYAPMod.csproj
    • Plugin.cs
    • thunderstore.toml

Key points:

• Your mod code is in ./src/<project-name>/
• Directory.Build.* files define shared build configuration
• <project-name>.sln is your project solution

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 a file named 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 Thunderstore CLI, aka 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.

Writing Code Write your first lines of code in your new mod project

Publishing Your Mod Upload your mod for everyone to download!