Writing a basic plugin
The primary purpose of BepInEx is to load user-made code into various games.
There are a few ways of doing it, but writing plugins is the most commonly used approach.
Plugins are classes that are annotated with BepInPlugin annotation.
BepInEx provides a variety of helpers to facilitate logging, configuration, path management and dependency management.
Plugins are compiled into .NET DLL files and put into BepInEx/plugins folder for BepInEx to load.
BepInEx provides some starter templates to make plugin development easier.
In this guide, we will
- install tools necessary for plugin development,
- set up a basic C# plugin project,
- use plugin logger to write messages to the console, and
- read and write configuration files.
Note
Although this is an introductory guide, an elementary understanding of C# is required.
If you are not familiar with C#, .NET Academy provides a simple step-by-step tutorial.
On the contrary, basic knowledge of using command line prompt on your OS is strongly encouraged.
The following topics will be covered: