I have made about 30+ mods for Timberborn and all source code are available here. This guide is a collection of my experience and knowledge about modding Timberborn. I hope it will help you to make your own mods for Timberborn. Throughout this guide, I will introduce a few mods in that repository to illustrate the concepts and techniques I am talking about.

Note:
Feel free to use my code in your mods. I would appreciate it if you credit me but it is not required. Unless you make a carbon copy, feel free to make and upload similar mods to mine. I don’t mind competition and I am happy to see more mods for Timberborn.

• None of my mods uses Unity and so this guide will not cover Unity modding. You can still do powerful things without Unity except maybe making new graphical assets.

• You will need some basic knowledge of C# and general programming concepts but making mods is also a good way to improve your programming skills. The game code itself is extremely well-organized and easy to read so you will have a good time exploring it and even learning from it.

Useful external links:

• Official Timberborn Discord: you can ask modding question there at #mod-creators channel.
• Official Timberborn Modding.
• My mods’ source code.

Warning:
This guide will use Update 7 as the base version (which at this time is still in experimental branch). I will probably mention how to make it compatible to U6 but U7 will be the way forward.

Table of Contents

1. Getting Started: Setting up your modding environment and making a simple code-less mod.
2. Modding Basics: Make a simple C# mod for Timberborn.
3. Modding with Harmony and Mod Settings: How to use Harmony to patch Timberborn’s code and use Mod Settings to configure your mods.
4. (Optional) Useful knowledge of Timberborn architecture: My experience and knowledge about Timberborn’s codebase that may come in handy when making mods.
5. (Optional) Advanced Modding Techniques: Some techniques I use in my mods to make modding easier and less repetitive.

Extra useful stuff:

• Attach a debugger to Timberborn: How to attach a debugger to Timberborn and debug the game code or your mods using DnSpy and Visual Studio.

The following sections are more specific to certain types of mods that I made:

1. UI modding with TimberUi: How to make UI mods for Timberborn using TimberUi.
2. Make a mod with Buff & Debuff mod: Adding customizable buffs and debuffs to various in-game entities.
3. Make a mod with Scientific Projects mod: Adding new research projects to the game.
4. Make a code-less mod (using JSON) with Moddable prefab: Adding components to a prefab or changing their values using JSON (Blueprints) files.