Install

The game ships as a portable build. No installer, no registry entries, no admin rights. Extract it, drop packs into it, run.

Two content formats

Crossgate loads character content from two places, and both are live at the same time:

• Resources/Characters/ — the legacy layout. Loose .girlsx / .rgirlsx files at the top level, plus a girl-name folder per unique. This is the WM7-era layout that pre-1.10 packs and most current Collection drops still use.
• Resources/Packages/ — the structured package layout introduced in 1.10. One subfolder per pack, each marked by a package.xml at its root.

The structured format is what new authoring should target. The package wrapper costs one extra file (package.xml) and in return enables:

• Custom traits, items, jobs, buildings, and Lua scripts shipped alongside the girls in the same drop. Legacy Resources/Characters/ only carries girls and images.
• Dependencies and addons — packs can require another pack, or extend one, so authors can build on top of each other’s work instead of forking.
• Pack-validator coverage so structural mistakes get caught before the game does.
• Per-pack enable / disable through the Content Manager and future tooling.

Legacy isn’t deprecated and won’t be removed — loose .girlsx files keep loading forever. It’s just the wrong default for anything new.

For the full breakdown, see Where packs go.

1. Install the game

1. Download the latest release from the downloads page.
2. Extract the archive into its own directory anywhere on disk. The folder is self-contained — keep it that way so you can move or wipe it without leaving anything behind.

That’s the install. Launching the executable from the extracted folder is enough to confirm it runs.

2. Clean out the sample content (optional)

The build ships with sample packs and a Resources/Characters/ tree that exist to prove the loaders work, not to be played. Most of the entries point at images that aren’t included, so leaving them in place gives you a Content Manager full of broken girls. Clear them before adding your own.

1. Delete everything inside Resources/Characters/.
2. Delete the Sample_* folders under Resources/Packages/ (Sample_Full, Sample_GirlsOnly, Sample_ItemsOnly, Sample_TraitsOnly, Sample_WithDeps, Sample_Addon, Sample_Building).

Keep the samples around if you’re authoring — they’re the canonical worked examples for every pattern. Otherwise nuke them.

If you’d rather trim instead of delete, open a sample’s .girlsx / .rgirlsx files and remove the <Girl> blocks that have no matching image folder. That’s more work than it’s worth for stock content, but it’s an option.

3. Add character packs

Open the Collection link and grab one or more packs. How you install them depends on the format the pack ships in.

Legacy packs (loose .girlsx / .rgirlsx)

Most Collection packs today are still legacy. They come as a zip containing one or more .girlsx / .rgirlsx files and a girl-name folder per unique.

Extract so the files land directly in Resources/Characters/ — not inside a subfolder. The loader only looks at the top level of Resources/Characters/; an .rgirlsx one folder deep is silently ignored.

After dropping the “Random Jobs” and “Random Fantasy Girls” packs:

Resources/Characters/
    RandomJobs.rgirlsx
    RandomFantasyGirls.rgirlsx
    <girl-name folder for each unique the packs ship>

The engine collects everything at this top level into one virtual pack named _Legacy. There’s no per-pack boundary at runtime: two legacy packs that define the same girl name will collide, and you’ll have to pick one.

Structured packs (folder with package.xml)

A structured pack ships as a folder. At its root you’ll see package.xml — that’s the marker the loader looks for. The folder usually also contains some mix of Girls.girlsx, RandomGirls.rgirlsx, Traits.traitsx, Items.itemsx, a Characters/ subfolder for per-girl content, and optionally Lua/ and Jobs/.

Drop the whole folder into Resources/Packages/. Don’t unpack it further, don’t merge it with another pack.

Resources/Packages/
    MyPack/
        package.xml
        Girls.girlsx
        Characters/
            Jane/
                Profile/
                ...

If a pack ships with a dependency on another pack (declared in its package.xml), install that other pack the same way. The loader will report missing dependencies in the Content Manager rather than silently dropping girls.

Mixing the two

Running both at once is fine and expected — install legacy packs in Resources/Characters/ and structured packs in Resources/Packages/ and they coexist. The Content Manager lists everything from both sources in one view.

4. Verify

1. Launch the game.
2. Load a save or start a new game.
3. Settings (top-right) → Content Manager.

The Content Manager lists every loaded girl with a status. Every row should be OK. If a row isn’t, the right-hand panel explains why — usually a missing image folder, a Name attribute that doesn’t match the folder name, a malformed XML block, or (for structured packs) an unmet dependency. Fix the pack contents on disk and reload; the Content Manager re-reads on each game load.