Content Editor

The Content Editor is the visual way to build packs for Crossgate. It writes the pack files for you, so for everything it covers you never open a text editor or learn a format. For everything it does not cover yet, the files are plain XML and the rest of this section documents them; the two mix freely.

Three things called “Content”

• Content Manager is a screen inside the game (Settings, then Content Manager). It lists what loaded, reports problems, and accepts packs dropped onto the window.
• Content Editor is this separate desktop app, the 2.x line of Crossgate. It authors packs.
• Older pages and forum posts sometimes call the editor “the Rust tool” or “Content Manager 2.x”. They mean this app.

What it edits today

Surface	Read	Create and edit	Not yet
Packs	every installed pack, its manifest and dependencies	new pack; Name, Author, Version, Description, ArtStyle; export to zip; migrate a legacy folder; delete (quarantined, recoverable)	editing <Requires> (shown, read-only); Type and Extends
Characters	unique and random characters, in packs and in the base game, plus image folders that have no definition yet	new character; register a folder you already have; stats, skills, traits, species, description, gold; random ranges and trait chances; move between packs; copy; delete (quarantined, recoverable)	converting unique to random or back; acquisition status
Images	every image of a character with its inferred tags	drag-in import; place a loose image into a context; add or remove types, participants, pregnant, tied-up and style tags; optimize; delete (quarantined)	bulk retagging across characters
Items	every item in packs and the base game	new item; the opening-tag attributes (Name, Desc, Type, Cost, Rarity, Badness, Special, Infinite, Once, GirlBuyChance); Infinite and Once are checkboxes, and turning one off removes the attribute rather than writing false; move between packs; delete	<Effect> rows, consumable <use> blocks and <Tag> children (preserved verbatim, edited by hand)
Traits	every definition, with re-declarations marked	new trait in a pack; Type, chances, description, effects, excludes, implies; move between packs	delete; rename
Jobs	every job, with overlays and load warnings	new pack job; the seven metadata fields (Title, Description, DefaultImage, Phase, Filter, difficulty, fear); pay settings; delete (quarantined)	effects.xml, performance.xml, gains.xml, message banks and text (read-only in the app, so <BrothelStat key="filthiness">, <RandomChance bind>, <Resource message>, <Resource scale>, and state(...) or picked(...) in a bind are preserved untouched and not checked)
Buildings (editor unreleased, for game 1.21)	every building.xml, with load warnings	settings: a switch or a number (type, min, max, default), label and description, with the game’s own refusals shown before writing; jobs and flows as the buildings reference describes	effects.xml of the building’s jobs (never rewritten, so setting(...), counter(...), <Counter>, reason, observe and outcome survive any save but are not shown); renaming a setting id does not find the jobs that read it through setting(<id>), so check those by hand

Two rules hold across the table. The editor changes only the field you edited and leaves the rest of the file byte for byte as it was, so content you downloaded keeps whatever its author put in it. And nothing is erased outright: before an existing file changes a pristine copy is kept, and a deleted pack, character, item, job or image goes to the editor’s recycle bin instead of away.

Trait names come from the game’s own catalog with suggestions as you type, so you cannot invent one the game will not understand.

Turning a folder you already have into a character

Most people do not start with an empty editor. They start with a folder of images. The editor treats that as content in waiting rather than as clutter: a character folder with images but no definition is listed as Not Registered, and its details carry a Register button.

Registering asks which kind to create, the same question New character asks:

• a unique character, one specific authored person;
• a random character, a reusable definition the game generates people from. Registering as a random reuses the images already in the folder.

The file format calls it a template

The editor says random character; the format references on this site say random template, and both are right. The word is not only prose in the format: an .rgirlsx lives in RandomGirls.rgirlsx, and RandomGirlNaming accepts exactly engine, template or pool, where template means the names come from the template itself. The game’s own validator reports these entries as Template 'Name' too. So the editor’s screens and the file format use different words for the same thing on purpose, and the format’s word is the one you type.

Then the editor writes a minimal definition for you, and the character becomes an ordinary one you can edit like any other. You never have to open a text editor to get started, and you never have to create the character first and move your images in afterwards.

Where the definition lands, and why it looks odd. It is written beside the folder, at the top level of the location, not inside the character’s own folder. The game only loads definitions from there. Your images stay where they are; the folder is not renamed, moved, or touched.

Registering into a pack instead. Drag the unregistered folder onto a pack, or onto Base game, and after a confirmation the editor moves the image folder into that location and writes the definition there. That is the one case where the folder does move, and you are asked first.

The editor has to be able to see the folder

An unregistered folder only appears if it sits somewhere the editor scans: the base game’s characters folder, or inside an installed pack. A folder somewhere else on your disk is not an orphan the editor can offer to register, because it never appears at all. Where packs go covers the locations.

Needs editor 2.0.1 or later; the choice between a unique and a random character arrived in 2.0.2.

Working inside one pack

The packs list sits on the left of the editor and is shared by every tab. Picking a pack there works like opening a folder: Characters, Items, Traits and Jobs all show only what lives in that pack, the count next to each pack tells you how many of the current tab’s things it holds, and anything you create while it is picked is created inside it. “All locations” and “Base game” are the two other choices. The list can be hidden with the button in the top-left corner, and your pick is remembered between sessions.

Each pack’s row has a menu (the three dots, also on right-click) with the pack’s own actions: new character, edit the manifest, show the folder, export as a zip, and delete. Delete shows what the pack holds and which installed packs declare it as a dependency before it moves the whole folder to the recycle bin.

The pack you are working in never limits what you can refer to. A character in a pack can take any trait the editor knows, base-game traits first of all; the pick only decides where new things are written.

The recycle bin

Nothing you delete in the editor is destroyed. Packs, characters, items, jobs and images all go to the Recycle bin tab, where each entry shows what it was, which pack it came from, when it was deleted and where it would go back. Restore puts it back exactly where it was: a pack or job folder moves back whole, an item’s definition returns to the file it was cut from, a character gets both its image folder and its definition back. Restore refuses, without touching anything, if something with the same name has appeared there since; rename or remove that first. Delete permanently is the only action in the editor that cannot be undone, and it asks before it does anything.

On disk the bin is the hidden .wmr-trash folder inside your resources folder; Show folder opens it if you ever want to look yourself. Things that landed there before this version of the editor, or that you moved in by hand, are listed too but without a Restore: move those back yourself.

Where to put the editor

The editor needs to find your installed game so it can read and write your content. There are two ways to set that up, and you only do it once.

The easy way: drop it in your game folder. Put the editor inside the same folder as your game, next to the resources folder (the one that holds characters, data, and so on). When it starts it looks around its own location for that resources folder and uses it automatically. On macOS the editor is Crossgate.app; on Windows it is the extracted Crossgate folder. Either can sit anywhere inside the game folder.

The manual way: point it at the folder. If you keep the editor somewhere else (for example your Applications folder), it will not find the game on its own. The first time you open it, it asks you to choose your game’s resources folder. Pick that folder once and it remembers your choice from then on.

If you ever move your game, or picked the wrong folder, there is an option to choose the resources folder again.

Platforms

• macOS and Windows: supported.
• Linux: experimental in this release.

The app is unsigned for now, so the first launch shows an “unidentified developer” prompt. On macOS, right-click the app and choose Open, then Open again. On Windows, choose More info on the SmartScreen prompt, then Run anyway.

The editor ships with this documentation built in: its Documentation button opens this section offline, and the pages are the same ones you are reading now.

Prefer to author by hand?

Every format the editor writes is documented in this section. Start with Where packs go, then the Authoring guide and the reference pages in the sidebar. The feature compatibility page lists, for every feature, whether the editor can edit it.