Hey there, fellow Modders,

Just gonna explain a bit of my mindset on and expectation of this mod.

I foresee and am confident that this mod will eventually become very popular, as evidenced by the (yet-to-come) very high visitor count and very high subscriber-visitor ratio.

Chill there, buddy. I am not boasting my mod. Hear me out.

In vanilla RimWorld, the max HP of a body part is defined in the Def, and is read directly from the Def XML into the executable. Theoretically, I could just end here, intercept the read request, and modify the value of the max HP as I wish.

But I couldn't.

After an update (0.18 or 0.19, can't be too wrong here), Tynan changed how the body of a pawn is defined. The most notable change is the consolidation of multiple "redundant" BodyPartDef into a single BodyPartDef, and also creating a new, "intermediate" class called BodyPartRecord. An example would be the consolidation of "left arm" and "right arm" pre-update BodyPartDef into a single post-update BodyPartDef "arm", and then adding two new BodyPartRecords, one labelled as "left arm", another "right arm". Both BodyPartRecords would point to the same (post-update) BodyPartDef "arm".

Here's the problem.

If I were to intercept requests at the BodyPartDef level and adjust the body part max HP, I will run into illogical situations. For example, suppose I were to apply a HediffComp of "+30 Max HP" onto the left arm of a colonist. If I simply intercept the read request at the BodyPartDef level then I would see that the right arm of the same colonist will also get the "+30 Max HP" effect, but not the Hediff. An implication would be that if both arms get the same HediffComp then the effect would be double-counted.

"Just check for which BodyPartRecord the game is calling!" You say. But it is impossible! If you can get your hands on a copy of RimWorld's underlying code, you will see that the C# function requesting body part max HP contains no parameters at all. That means, it is impossible for me to distinguish which BodyPartRecord the game is referring to when I am intercepting the request.

"Well, just add in one more parameter to that method!" My friend, that is not how programming works.

So what do I do?

I adopted an aggressive stance, added a new function under BodyPartDef that takes a BodyPartRecord as its only parameter, and patched all 14 occurences of the original function in RimWorld's code, verifying that everything still works.

But then again, I am not Tynan. I can't just overwrite everyone's copy of RimWorld to make sure my mod does not produce any errors. What I can do is to grab modders' attention by dumping an error message everytime the original function is called: yes, 1 call for 1 pawn in 1 tick. Do the math.

Eventually, users will ask modders to provide support for this mod because this mod is modifying something so fundamental that no one would have foreseen.

So dread it. Run from it. Destiny still arrives.

If you plan to make your mod's error-handing capability inclusive, then I suggest you incorporate this Framework to your mod in one way or another as soon as possible. This is simply practical matters; nothing personal.

That's all! Wish y'all a nice run on the Rim!