绛雨 Jiangyu

Getting started ​

This walkthrough takes you from zero to a working mod that replaces the MENACE main-menu logo. Once you've shipped one replacement end to end, the Reference pages cover the other asset types and template patches.

Prerequisites ​

You need:

  • MENACE installed (Steam or a game build with MENACE.exe).
  • MelonLoader (latest) installed into your MENACE folder. Follow MelonLoader's own install instructions for your platform.
  • Jiangyu. From the latest release, download:
  • Unity Editor (optional). Required for bundled assets (textures, sprites, models, audio). Template-only mods don't need it. Install via Unity Hub, download 6000.0.72f1 from the Unity archive, and add it to Hub.
  • An image editor (anything that exports PNG: GIMP, Photoshop, Krita).

Do you need Unity?

Replacements, template patches, and other simple tasks typically don't need Unity. But anything genuinely new generally does, and most mods past the skin-and-stat-tweak stage end up there. If there's any chance you'll cross that line, install Unity up front so you don't have to break flow halfway through.

Studio shows the exact Unity Editor version Jiangyu expects, and you should trust Studio over these docs if they differ. The expected version tracks MENACE's Unity build, so an editor update may be needed when MENACE updates.

Install the Jiangyu Loader ​

The Loader is the in-game framework that discovers your mods and applies them at runtime (replacements, template patches, dependency checks). It's a single DLL.

  1. Find your MENACE install folder (the one with MENACE.exe).
  2. Open the Mods/ directory inside it. MelonLoader created this on its first run.
  3. Drop Jiangyu.Loader.dll into Mods/.

You only do this once per MENACE install. Updating Jiangyu means replacing this one file.

Configure Studio ​

Launch Jiangyu Studio. The Welcome screen appears. Expand the Configuration panel. That's where Studio surfaces missing prerequisites and lets you set the relevant paths.

  • MENACE not found: click Set path… and pick the directory containing MENACE.exe. The Open Project and New Project buttons only appear once this is set.
  • Unity Editor not found: click Set path… and pick your Unity Editor binary. The tooltip shows the expected version. Skip this if you only plan to ship template-only mods. This tutorial replaces a texture, so set it now.
  • MelonLoader not installed: indicates MelonLoader isn't present in your MENACE folder. Mods don't run without it. Install MelonLoader before continuing.

The Welcome screen writes these into a global config file shared with the jiangyu CLI. After a project is loaded, the same fields appear in the Settings dialog (palette → Settings).

Create a project ​

From the Welcome screen, click New project. Pick a directory and a name (for this tutorial, call it RedLogo). Studio scaffolds:

text
RedLogo/
  jiangyu.json
  .gitignore

jiangyu.json is the manifest. See Manifest for the full reference. For now the defaults are fine.

Find a target asset ​

You're going to replace menace_logo_main_menue, the logo MENACE shows on the main menu. (The spelling menue is the actual name of the asset, so use it as-is.)

  1. Open the Asset Browser from the palette: press Ctrl+Shift+P and run Open Asset Browser.
  2. The first time, the browser shows a gate with an Index assets button. Click it. The first build takes a few minutes. Later searches read the cached index instantly.
  3. Once the index finishes building, type menace_logo_main_menue in the search box.
  4. Filter the type to Texture if you want to narrow the results.
  5. Click the matching row.

The detail panel on the right shows:

  • Class: Texture2D
  • Replace: textures/menace_logo_main_menue.png

That Replace row tells you exactly where to drop your replacement, under your project's assets/replacements/ directory.

Export the vanilla pixels ​

Click Export in the detail panel and choose Project as the destination. Studio pulls the vanilla menace_logo_main_menue out of the game and writes it as a PNG. A success toast shows up with a Reveal action that opens the file location.

Edit it ​

Open the exported PNG in your image editor. For this tutorial, fill the entire image with a solid red colour and save the file.

Save the modified PNG at:

text
<project>/assets/replacements/textures/menace_logo_main_menue.png

That's the full path the Studio detail panel showed you, prefixed with assets/replacements/ to land inside your project.

Compile ​

Press Ctrl+Shift+B in Studio. The compile runs in the background. The status bar shows progress.

When compile finishes, Studio pushes a toast with a Reveal action. Click it to open compiled/ in your file manager. That folder is your shippable mod.

Install your mod ​

Copy your project's compiled/ folder into MENACE's Mods/ directory, renaming it to RedLogo so the mod has a recognisable name on disk. Your Mods/ folder should now look like:

text
<MENACE>/Mods/
  Jiangyu.Loader.dll
  RedLogo/
    jiangyu.json
    *.bundle

Verify ​

Launch MENACE and watch the main menu. The logo should now be a solid red square. If you see it, the round-trip works: your replacement reached the game, the loader matched it by name, and the texture mutation applied.

If something looks wrong, check <MENACE>/MelonLoader/Latest.log. Jiangyu logs everything it does on scene load. Failures, warnings, and skipped targets all appear there.

Next steps ​

You've shipped one texture replacement. The same Studio workflow handles every other replacement type:

The Studio reference covers every Studio surface in detail. The CLI reference covers the equivalent command-line surface for build pipelines and scripting.