tModLoader guide for developers - tModLoaders/tModLoader GitHub Wiki

I don't want to create mods, I just want to play with them

I don't want to create mods, I want to contribute to tModLoader

Installation

If you still need to install tModLoader refer to the tModLoader guide for players.

Developing with tModLoader

Before you begin, you will need two things, the ".NET 6 SDK" and a suitable IDE. Once you have these installed, you should start with the Basic tModLoader Modding Guide.

IDE

Choose your favorite IDE to mod with tModLoader. Refer to the development section on the homepage. For the best mod making experience, using Visual Studio is highly recommended.

.NET 6 SDK

If you installed any IDE other than Visual Studio, you will have to manually install the .NET 6 SDK. If you installed Visual Studio and still don't have the .NET 6 SDK, you likely skipped the required workload, see Developing with Visual Studio - Prerequisites to fix this.

To verify that you have the ".NET 6 SDK" properly installed, you can open a command prompt and type dotnet --list-sdks and press enter. If you see a result with a version starting with the number 6, it is installed.

I am new to modding

If you are new to modding, it is recommended to start with the starter guide. You can then move on to the easy guides.

The following links might be useful for you:

  1. Our website
  2. tModLoader documentation
  3. tModLoader wiki (useful information and guides) -- you are here right now.
  4. Join our Discord server (requires a Discord account)
  5. Basic tModLoader Modding Guide
  6. Example Mod - A mod showcasing and teaching various tModLoader mod capabilities
  7. tModLoader's official release thread on TCF