Modding Guide

Modding Guide

X-Change Life is now moddable! You will need the downloadable version of the game in order to add mods.

Download the latest mod loader here: https://gitgud.io/xchange-life/mod-loader/-/releases (if you have issues running it, please see this guide)

And here is a list of available mods on LoversLab: https://www.loverslab.com/files/category/319-x-change-life/

More technical information is available in the official Usage page. The below guide is meant to be as beginner-friendly and foolproof as possible.

Step-by-step Modding Guide

Okay, so you have the mod loader, and the offline version of X-Change Life. You’ve got some mods downloaded. Here’s how to apply them:

1. Open the mod-loader.jar – it should be in the same folder as X-Change Life.html. (if it doesn’t work, make sure Java 8 is installed on your computer)

mod-loader.jar

2. Download the mods you want from this list. Put them in your game directory for ease of finding them. They can be either .zip files or .twee files, both are supported mod types. Mods that include images / videos will be .zip files. Don’t extract them – the mod loader will do it.

3. For each mod you want to add, click the Add mods button.

Add mods button – this will only prepare the mod – you will still need to Load mods later

4. Select the mod file you want to install. Once again, it can be either .zip or .twee format, the mod loader can handle both. But mods with images need to be kept as a .zip. (In this screenshot, both catmod.zip and PharmacistDeals v0.6.2.twee are legitimate mod files that can be loaded)

Here I’m loading the mod PharmacistDeals v0.6.2, which adds some fun features to the “work something out” option at the X-Change Pharmacy.

5. Once you press “Open”, you’ll see the following message:

The mod has now been added – you will still need to load it later.

6. (If you’re loading more than one mod) Repeat steps 3-5 for any other mods you want, and continue on once you have everything added. The mod loader will load everything together.

7. Click “Load mods”.

Click Load mods

8. The mod loader will apply code changes, as well as move in any new media files to the game. You’ll see the following log of applied changes:

Log showing the code areas modified, and any new images as well.

9. Success! Now, the modded version of the game has been created, called “X-Change Life Mod.html”.

Modded version of the game.

Click on this version when you want to play the modded game. The non-modded game file X-Change Life.html is just there to allow you to revert to the original code, so please leave it there.

10. When you run X-Change Life Mod.html, and mods have loaded successfully, you’ll see something similar in the bottom-right corner of the game screen:

This will contain a list of all mods added.

Disabling mods

Disabling mods is easy. Just right-click the mod in the mod-loader, and select “Disable”. This will put it in the disabled folder. Then just click “Load mods” to regenerate the html file, without the disabled mod.

In the same way, you can re-enable mods in the disabled folder by right-clicking them, pressing “Enable”, and then pressing “Load mods” again:

Re-enable a mod

Updating the game

X-Change Life is still in development, and will have new updates with more features regularly. If you’d like to use mods with an updated version of the game, all you need to do is update your game as normal and then follow the steps under the Step-by-step Modding Guide section again to generate a new X-Change Life Mod.html file.

WARNING: New updates to X-Change Life can bring incompatibilities with older mods. Make sure to check which version of the original X-Change Life game each mod was previously tested with before installing. If your favorite mod has not been updated for the latest release, you can reach out to the developer on the Discord.

Troubleshooting

If you get weird errors running a modded version of the game, it’s most likely a conflict between an older mod and a newer version of the game, or between two incompatible mods. This is unavoidable, as mods might edit a code area in the game that has changed, or two mods might try to edit the same code. Try disabling certain mods to figure out which one is causing the problem – we have a channel on the Discord to discuss mod bugs, so feel free to join and report them there.

Creating your own mods

Modding X-Change Life is very easy, and it can be a great way to dip your toe into game development, since the game’s codebase is fairly simple. I’d advise you hop on the Discord, we have channels to help get modders up and running.

Also take a look at: “Authoring mod files“.

You can check out the #feature-suggestions channel on Discord, there might be an interesting idea for the game that you’d want to implement yourself.

Mods can be posted and found here on LoversLab: https://www.loverslab.com/files/category/319-x-change-life/