Getting Started

Introduction

This section will cover how to get a basic plugin up and running, and give a brief overview of the API. If you want to learn more about the API, check out the API Reference page. You can also check some more advanced examples in the Examples page.

Creating a new project

To get started, open Visual Studio and create a new project. Select the Class Library (.NET) template. Make sure the target framework is set to .NET 8.0. Once created, right click your project in the Solution Explorer and select Manage NuGet Packages.... In the Browse tab, search for SharpPluginLoader.Core. Install the latest version of the package.

Alternatively you can install the package from the command line using the dotnet tool.

dotnet add package SharpPluginLoader.Core

Tip

It is also recommended to enable unsafe code in the project properties, as it is required for some features such as native function wrappers.

Entry point

Each plugin has an entry point class, which must implement the IPlugin interface inside the SharpPluginLoader.Core namespace.

using SharpPluginLoader.Core;

namespace Example;

public class ExamplePlugin : IPlugin
{
    public string Name => "Example Plugin";
    public string Author => "Fexty";
}

The above is technically already a valid plugin, but it doesn't do anything yet. The IPlugin interface has a few methods that you can override to add functionality to your plugin.

• The Name property is used to identify the plugin.
• The Author property is used to identify the author of the plugin.

Default methods

There are 2 methods that will always be called when the plugin is loaded/reloaded. Both of them are optional to implement.

public PluginData Initialize()
{
    return new PluginData();
}

public void OnLoad()
{
}

In the Initialize method you need to return a PluginData object, which contains some optional details about the plugin.

Note

You should not do any game-related initialization in the Initialize method, as it is called before the game is fully loaded. Use the OnLoad method for that.

The OnLoad method is where you will normally do any setup that you need to do when the plugin is loaded. This method is called every time the plugin is loaded, so it's a good place to initialize any resources that you need.

Events

There is a set of events exposed by the IPlugin interface that you can subscribe to. You "subscribe" to an event by implementing the corresponding interface method in your plugin class.

public void OnUpdate(float deltaTime)
{
    Log.Info("Hello!");
}

The above code subscribes to the OnUpdate event, which is called every frame.

For a full list of events, check the API Reference.

Loading the plugin

Now you can compile your plugin (either in Debug or Release mode) and place the resulting DLL inside the nativePC\plugins\CSharp folder (or any subdirectory inside it). The plugin will be loaded automatically when the game starts.

Debugging

Game update 15.20 removed all anti-debug measures that the game has in place. Now you can attach the Visual Studio debugger directly to the game process.

To debug your plugin compile it in Debug mode, put the DLL inside the nativePC\plugins\CSharp folder and start the game. Then, in Visual Studio, go to Debug > Attach to Process... and select MonsterHunterWorld.exe from the list. You should now be able to place breakpoints and debug your plugin as you would with any other project.

Additionally, for some light-weight "debugging" you can use the Log class to print messages to the console.

Log.Info("Hello!");
Log.Error("Something went wrong!");