1.0 technical update brings multi-version mod support

Posted January 20th, 2019 by Tynan Sylvester

I’ve just released a technical update to version 1.0 of RimWorld. It should be 100% compatible with all existing savegames and mods. The new version is 1.0.2150.

Steam will auto-update. If you’re playing the DRM-free version of the game you can go download it now from your permanent personal download link which was emailed to you.

Aside from updating translations and player content, and fixing a handful critical bugs, the new version’s main purpose is to add support for multi-version mods. Previously one entry in Steam workshop could only work with one version of RimWorld. This causes problems when we release a new version: Players can’t continue on the old version since some mods are updated, but can’t continue on the new version since not all mods are updated.

Now, mods will be able to support multiple versions simply by putting version-specific files in directories named for the target game version. Other files from the mod’s base directory are used in all versions, as before.

For modders, here is how to set your mod up for multi-version support:

In the mod’s About.xml file, don’t use <targetVersion> any more. Instead, write a list of supported versions like this:

<supportedVersions>

        <li>1.0</li>

        <li>1.1</li>

</supportedVersions>

When you upload to the Steam Workshop, your mod will be properly tagged with all supported versions.

Version-specific content should go in a folder named after the version being targeted. For example, if you make a folder called “1.0/Defs”, version 1.0 of the game will load Defs only from that folder, while other versions of the game will load from “/Defs”. (Note that if you add a version-specific folder like “1.0/Defs”, the default “/Defs” folder will be ignored when playing on 1.0.)

You can do this with the “Defs”, “Assemblies”, and “Patches” folders. Other data types, like textures, are always shared between versions (for now).

If you do not need the multi-version content loading, you place the  “Defs”, “Assemblies” and “Patches” folders in the mod’s root folder, just like before.

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