Additions

An addition ships a brand-new asset in your mod and lets a template clone reference it by name. Use additions when a cloned item, weapon, or skill needs its own visual or audio identity that doesn't exist in the vanilla game.

The modder workflow is:

1. Drop the asset file under assets/additions/<category>/<name>.<ext>.
2. Reference it from a template clone with set "FieldName" asset="<name>".
3. Compile and ship.

File layout

assets/additions/
  sprites/
  textures/
  audio/

Each category folder is walked recursively. The asset's runtime name is its path under the category folder, with the extension stripped. So assets/additions/sprites/lrm5/icon.png becomes a Sprite referenced as asset="lrm5/icon".

Forward slashes (/) in the reference mirror the folder layout. Use them whenever you want to organise files by feature, weapon family, or any other grouping.

Prefab additions work differently. You author them in the mod's Unity project under unity/Assets/Prefabs, and the compiler builds them into bundles. See Prefabs.

KDL syntax

clone "ItemDefinition" from="pen" id="fancy-pen" {
    set "Name" "Fancy Pen"
    set "Icon" asset="lrm5/icon"
}

The category is inferred from the destination field's declared Unity type. Icon on ItemDefinition is a Sprite, so the compiler looks for the file under assets/additions/sprites/. You don't have to repeat the category in the KDL.

Supported categories

Category	Field types	Page
Sprite	UnityEngine.Sprite	Sprites
Texture	UnityEngine.Texture2D	Textures
Audio	UnityEngine.AudioClip	Audio
Material	UnityEngine.Material	(no dedicated page)
Prefab	UnityEngine.GameObject, List<UnityEngine.GameObject>	Prefabs

Compile-time checks

The compiler walks assets/additions/ once at build time and verifies:

• Every asset="..." reference resolves to a real file under the inferred category folder. Missing files fail the build with the expected path:

  Template patch '...': asset="lrm5/icon" was not found at
  assets/additions/sprites/lrm5/icon.<ext>. Add the asset file or correct
  the reference name.

• Two files in the same category folder don't share the same logical name with different extensions. assets/additions/sprites/icon.png and assets/additions/sprites/icon.jpg are a hard error: the runtime can't disambiguate by name.

• The destination field's declared Unity type is a supported asset class. asset="..." on a string or numeric field is rejected with a clear message.

Runtime resolution

At apply time the loader walks the mod's bundle catalog first, then falls back to the live game-asset registry filtered by name. Bundle hits win on collision: a modder shipping assets/additions/sprites/cocaine.png overrides the vanilla cocaine sprite for any clone that references asset="cocaine", while leaving the vanilla item using its original sprite.

Backslashes are not allowed

KDL asset="..." must use forward slashes only:

set "Icon" asset="lrm5/icon"      // good
set "Icon" asset="lrm5\\icon"     // rejected at parse time

The compiler walks the filesystem with native separators (so Windows authors don't need to do anything special on disk) but the authored KDL stays portable.