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PRELOADER.md

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Preloader and Injectors

Note TODO finalize

  • Preloader uses UnityDoorstop to run itself, UnityDoorstop uses native libraries to load so early that the game didn't even load any .NET assemblies. That way injectors now can modify the games .NET assemblies as part of the loading process, instead of the user having to do it.
  • Runs injectors, e.g. ModTekInjector injects ModTek.
  • UnityDoorstop also makes it easy to override or add assemblies. Just put them into Mods/ModTek/AssembliesOverride.
  • UnityDoorstop also sets env variables to find the managed directory.
  • Load order of assemblies
    • BATTLETECH/Mods/.modtek/AssembliesInjected/ (directory updated during Preloader run, each assembly in here was already force loaded during the run)
    • BATTLETECH/Mods/ModTek/AssembliesOverride/ (doorstop settings to allow updating libs from the managed folder)
    • BATTLETECH/Mods/ModTek/ (doorstop adds this since it loads Preloader from here)
    • BATTLETECH/BattleTech_Data/Managed (or the equivalent directory based on platform, should never be modified)

Injectors

Note TODO finalize

  • See ModTekInjector or RogueTechPerfFixesInjector on how an injector works.
  • Only assemblies resolved and modified as a AssemblyDefinition will be loaded into the game, make sure to only use the resolver interface in the Inject method.
  • Injectors are loaded and run in the order of their names from Mods/ModTek/Injectors/.
  • The preloader searches for a class named Injector with a public static void Inject method, that then will be called with a parameter of type Mono.Cecil.IAssemblyResolver. 
    internal static class Injector
{
  public static void Inject(Mono.Cecil.IAssemblyResolver resolver)
  {
    var game = resolver.Resolve(new AssemblyNameReference("Assembly-CSharp", null));
  }
}
  • Injectors run in their own AppDomain. All directly loaded dlls (via Assembly.Load or due to reference in Assembly) during the injection phase will be lost.
  • Console output is redirected into Mods/.modtek/ModTekPreloader.log, use Console.WriteLine or Console.Error.WriteLine instead of writing a logger.
  • Modified assemblies (that were resolved earlier via the resolver) are then written to and loaded from Mods/.modtek/AssembliesInjected/.
  • Injections are cached unless the inputs changed, that includes injector assemblies themselves and any files in Mods/ModTek/Injectors/. Add configuration files for injectors in that folder, so any time a user changes an injector setting, the cache gets invalidated.