Tiny Life Example Mod

An example mod for my game Tiny Life. Use this template repository to create your own mod!

Getting custom content

You can get custom lots, households and mods from the community.

Installing a mod or other custom content is pretty simple:

• Find the Tiny Life folder (you can open it from the game's options menu)
• Find the Mods (or Custom Lots or Custom Households) folder in there
  • For mods, if you received it as a zip (or any other kind of archive), extract it first, and then put the mod's dll as well as its Content folder into the Mods folder.
  • For custom lots and households, simply put the json file(s) you received into the respective folder.

Done! Now just start the game and the added content should automatically load. If there are any errors, they'll be logged in the most recent file in the Tiny Life/Logs folder.

Creating mods

To create a mod, all you have to do is create a repository from this template and open the project contained in it using Visual Studio, Rider or any other kind of C# IDE. The code that is already there contains some examples. Once you're done checking them out, you can just delete them and start fresh.

This repository also contains a little Run script for windows and linux and mac that automatically builds your mod, copies it into the Mods directory of your Tiny Life instance and runs the game. Note that the script will only work correctly if you've previously launched Tiny Life manually.

The game's API is fully documented. The documentation is easily accessible by opening any of the API's files in your IDE. The most updated version can be found on the wiki as well.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask on the Discord or start a discussion about it.

Distributing mods

To distribute your mod to other people, all you have to do is go into the bin/Debug/net5.0 folder after building and copy your mod's dll and the Content directory. You can either send them to your friends directly or pack them into an archive first. If you want other players to try out your mod, you can also post it to the community.

Updating mods

To change the version of Tiny Life that your mod is compiled against, simply go into the project file and change the TinyLifeApi version. Note that some other dependencies might also have been updated, which needs to be taken into account.

Where's the source code?

The NuGet package for the Tiny Life API just contains a reference assembly so that people can't just download the game from NuGet and play it. Since most of the public API is documented, you won't have to look at the source code in most cases, anyway.

Technically, you can download the game and then decompile it to see the implementation's code, but due to its license, copying it is not allowed.

Dependency version history

Since the mod is compiled against the same dependencies as Tiny Life, it also needs to have the same versions of those dependencies for mods to work correctly with the game. Each update to this repository is tagged with the game's version number. If you want to develop for a certain version, just check that tag's project file to see the required dependency versions.

Testing cheats

You can open up the game's cheat menu by pressing the F1 key. Here is a list of some of the more useful cheats for mod development and testing. Keep in mind that [arguments] need to be replaced with your custom value.

• ShowNonBuyable allows you to buy plates, pots and the like
• Need [name] [percentage <= 1] changes the current person's needs
  • NoNeed stops need reduction for everyone
  • Needless fills all needs back up
  • Needy reduces all needs to zero
• EditWorld allows you to place things outside of lots
• IgnorePlacementRules allows you to place colliding furniture
• EditPerson opens a character editor with all functionality enabled
• Gib gives you 10,000 tiny bucks
• ExtremelyFast allows you to select the 15x speed option all the time
• Skill [name] [level] sets the current person's skill level
• Held [object name or null] sets the current person's held object
• Job [name] [level] stes the current person's job and job level
• Die kills the current person
• Emotion [modifier name] [level] [seconds] adds an emotion modifier to the current person
• Friendship [name without spaces] [percentage <= 1] sets the friendship level between the named partner and the current person
• Romance [name without spaces] [percentage <= 1] sets the romance level between the named partner and the current person
• EditCurrentActionSpot turns on action spot edit mode, which allows you to easily edit the properties of the selected person's current action spot
  • The person's animation stops, but they are drawn on all surrounding objects of the same type instead, which makes it easier to ensure that the offset looks correct in multiple rotations and positions
  • Pressing the up, down, left and right keys moves the current action spot's position and holding shift moves the spot's visual position instead
  • Pressing the page up and page down keys moves the spot's y offset
  • The resulting values are printed to the console every time a modification is made, so you can copy them and paste them into your action spot code