With the Steam Workshop, finding and installing X Rebirth extensions is now easier than ever before. Just browse the extensions in the Workshop, subscribe to an extension that you are interested in, and it will be installed automatically the next time your start X Rebirth. Just make sure you read the description and check for incompatibilities with other subscribed extensions.
Extensions from the Workshop will also be updated automatically when the author submits updated content. To disable an extension on the next game start, just unsubscribe from it, either in-game or on the Steam website.
General publishing rules
General rules and guidelines:
Do not publish extensions that you haven't made yourself, unless you have the author's consent.
Similarly, do not publish modifications of other people's extensions (e.g. fixed versions) without the author's consent.
Do not publish the same extension multiple times. If you are not sure if an upload worked, check your Workshop items online.
If your extension depends on other extensions or if it is potentially incompatible with other extensions, use the description text to warn players.
X Rebirth extensions support localisation of name and description, but unfortunately the Steam Workshop does not. The title and description texts of Workshop items should be in English, unless you provide content specifically for a non-English audience. But even then, please make sure that English-speaking players can see from the title and description what the item is about.
Preparation
To publish an extension in the Workshop, you will need:
- The X Rebirth Tools
- The folder containing your extension files, including content.xml
- A preview image file, for example a screenshot (must be either JPG or PNG). We recommend a widescreen format, size 640x360 or larger.
Further requirements:
- You must have chosen a folder name. When the extension is downloaded or updated from the Workshop, it will be placed in this folder under "X Rebirth\extensions".
- Most likely you will be uploading directly from X Rebirth\extensions anyway. In that case you already have a folder name.
- There are several naming restrictions:
- Only the following characters are allowed in the folder name: a-z 0-9 . _ - and space.
- The name is lower-case; any upper-case letters will be converted to lower-case automatically.
- The name cannot be longer than 32 characters.
- The game can handle multiple Workshop extensions using the same folder name, but there will be errors if a player subscribes to multiple of them simultaneously.
- If there is a non-Workshop extension with the same folder name, the game will not touch that one, the player will have to resolve the conflict manually.
- If your folder name is very generic and likely to be used by other extensions as well, consider changing it.
- If you choose to rename your folder in an update, be aware of all consequences, e.g. don't forget to update your index files.
- All game-relevant files must be stored in X Rebirth catalogs, but the Workshop tool can help you with that.
- If there are no catalogs in your extension folder, you can use the switch -buildcat to build a catalog automatically.
- To create catalogs manually you can use the catalog tool, included in X Rebirth Tools.
- Only these file types will be uploaded: *.cat, *.dat, *.cur, *.txt, *.pdf
- If your extension has mouse cursor files (*.cur), they must be in the root folder, not in a sub-folder. Sub-folders are not uploaded.
- Notes on content.xml:
- The value of the [i]id[/i] attribute has no relevance before publishing - it will be replaced with a Workshop-specific ID.
- You need the attributes name and description in the <content> element. These will be used for the title and description of the published Workshop item.
- To add line breaks in the description attribute, use ( is also possible). \n does not work.
- Title and description can be changed in the Steam Workshop after publishing.
- The game displays the current title and description as set in the Steam Workshop, unless content.xml provides localised text for the game language.
- We recommend not to include the version number in the name.
- You need a version attribute. The value is the version multiplied by 100, so e.g. to display v2.50 you have to specify version="250".
- By default, the "author" will be set to your public Steam community name. If you want to override this, set an author attribute in <content>.
- You can have dependencies on other extensions, but these must already exist in the Workshop. Use the IDs from their content.xml files.
- You can also have a dependency on the version of X Rebirth (i.e. the minimum required version). This is a dependency without an extension ID.
- The value of the [i]id[/i] attribute has no relevance before publishing - it will be replaced with a Workshop-specific ID.
Example for a content.xml to publish a new extension:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><!-- My Test Extension v0.10 --><content id="totally_unimportant" name="My Test Extension" description="This is just an example." version="10"><!-- Requires Workshop item 12345, minimum version 1.00 --><dependency id="ws_12345" version="100" /><!-- Requires minimum game version 1.50 --><dependency version="150" /><!-- Optional localisation (NOTE: not visible in Steam Workshop, cannot be updated from Workshop website) --><!-- German: --><text language="49" name="Meine Test-Erweiterung" description="Dies ist nur ein Beispiel." /></content>]
Minimalistic example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><content id="" name="Foo" description="Test" version="100"></content>