Pack authoring

A pack is a folder the game loads at startup: characters and their images, and optionally items, traits, jobs, default art and scripts. You can ship any subset. This section documents every format the game reads, and the two ways of producing them. If you are looking for how to play rather than how to author, go to the player guide.

Two ways to build a pack

With the Content Editor. A desktop app that creates packs, characters, items, traits and jobs and tags artwork, writing all the files for you. You do not need to read any format page to use it. Start at Content Editor; the same page says exactly what it can and cannot edit yet.

By hand. A text editor plus the pack validator. Everything the editor writes is plain XML and documented here, and the editor and hand-written files mix freely: the editor only rewrites the field you change and leaves the rest of the file as it found it.

Your first pack

Where packs goThe two folders the game loads from, the structured pack layout, and default-image packs.

A complete pack, end to endThe smallest useful pack, file by file: package.xml, one character, a handful of images.

Authoring guideEditor setup, folder and manifest, content files, images, validation, loading, sharing.

Tagging walkthroughI have a folder of images and do not know what to name them.

Reference

Formats, one page each. The sidebar lists them all; these are the ones you will keep open:

• package.xml: the manifest, the folder-and-Id rule, what the installer checks.
• Package roles: Type=, and which characters your fallback art can reach.
• Girls.girlsx schema: named characters and random templates.
• Image types and the filename cheatsheet: folders, filename tokens, images.xml, what the game actually requests.
• Items, traits, jobs, effects, gains.
• When conditions: the condition language used by jobs, messages and item effects.
• Lua scripting: per-character encounters and conversations.
• Feature compatibility: which game version each feature needs, and what the Content Editor can edit.

Cookbooks

• Items cookbook: “I want a potion that does X.”
• Jobs cookbook: four worked jobs from shipped data.
• Unique scenes cookbook: scenes that react to who she is.

When something is wrong

• Common mistakes: symptom, cause, fix, for every trap a first pack falls into.
• Tools: the pack validator, which catches most of them before the game does.
• gamelog.txt, next to the game executable: the loader writes a line for every pack it finds, loads or skips, and every <When> or script error with a file and line.

Sample packs

The game ships worked examples in examples/packs/, next to resources/. The game does not load them. To try one, copy it into resources/packages/ and give the folder and its Id a name of your own. (Before 1.21 they sat in resources/packages/ and loaded like any pack.) Every field in this reference is used for real in one of them:

Folder	Shows
Sample_Full	Everything in one pack: characters, traits, items, random templates, a meet script
Sample_GirlsOnly	Characters and images only
Sample_ItemsOnly	Items with no characters
Sample_TraitsOnly	Traits with no characters
Sample_WithDeps	A pack that requires another pack
Sample_Addon	An addon extending another pack, with fallback art for its target
Tifa_MeetExample	A meet scene whose choices change the character’s stats
resources/packages/defaults/sfw_defaults	A Type="Defaults" pack with named image pools (this one is live: it supplies the default images)
Sample_Building	A bathhouse the player can buy, with its own attendant job (needs game 1.21, not released yet)

Feedback

If something here is wrong, confusing or missing, say so on the community channels linked from the download page. The reference improves when modders push back.