Note
This is the .github/README.md file. We choose to leave it outside of the root directory. You can move it to the root directory or edit it in .github/.
This is the Team Catalyst Template Mod, a template repository for quick-starting development with terraria-catalyst/catalyst.
Catalyst is a build toolchain and extension to the tModLoader ecosystem that facilitates monolithic/multi-project repositories that may contain multiple projects, including multiple mods.
Catalyst is a set of projects and MSBuild targets/props that make mod development quicker and easier. It provides features like access transformers, allows for non-standard project organization, features source generators, and more.
This template is specifically designed to integrate with it, so it isn't optional.
The repository should be cloned into the tModLoader/ModSources/ directory, such that the path looks like: tModLoader/ModSources/template-mod. This requirement may change in the future as Catalyst develops.
Once cloned, one should run the scripts/setup.sh script. This script generates symlinks, initializes and updates submodules, and builds Catalyst.
After running the setup script, you can build any mod project with dotnet build and it will produce binaries in the bin/ directory and a built .tmod archive in tModLoader/Mods, just like regular tModLoader.
As mentioned in Building, symbolic links are used. These are used to mimic the expected tModLoader mod directory setup. Your cloned repository is included in ModSources/ but isn't actually a mod. Normally, any mods within src/ would go unrecognized. To fix this, symbolic links are generated that lie within ModSources/ and point to the projects in src/. The allows for tML to detect your mods, reference assets like icons for publishing, and properly update and hot reload localization files.
Generating symbolic links may require administrator/root permissions.
You can generate projects with the gen-mod.js and gen-library.js scripts, which will create a new mod or library project respectively.
When generating a mod, you should pass in both the namespace and internal mod name (assembly name) as arguments. When generating a library, you should just pass in the namespace (assembly name).
To generate the solution file, run gen-sln.js with the name as input. Generating mods and libraries will not automatically add them to the solution.
