Building

Building

./build.sh fx compiles the plugin and its library and installs both. The library (Native/vfxgrid.c) is built with the system's C compiler (on a Mac, the Xcode command line tools; on Windows, in Git Bash, Microsoft's own compiler from Visual Studio or its Build Tools, found by itself); without one the mod is built without it and says so. The C follows the C# in Site.cs function for function, and the C# is still what runs wherever the library is not: whatever is changed in one has to be changed in the other, and dev_fx_call {method: NativeCheck} in the development build shows whether they still agree. The textures, and the cube of noise the billows are cut with, are made by tools/fxbake (dotnet run -c Release --project tools/fxbake -- src/VolumetricExplosions/Textures). The six shader bundles are made by python3 tools/shaderpack/make_bundle.py <KSP folder> src/VolumetricExplosions/Shaders/<name>.bundle <name> for volume, enlarge, layers, mark, shock and shadow, which needs a copy of the game because it uses one of the game's own shaders as its pattern. The same six for Direct3D (Windows), all in one bundle (Shaders/shaders-windows.bundle), are made on Windows by python3 tools/unityshaders/windows.py <KSP folder>: the GLSL turned into HLSL by tools/unityshaders/port.py, compiled by Windows' own compiler (d3dcompiler_47.dll, part of Windows), and packed the way the game's own Direct3D programs are. It is run again whenever a shader changes.

The bundles hold this mod's own shader text and Unity's description of how a shader is laid out in a file (which every bundle made by Unity carries); nothing of the game's own shader is left in them.

This repository is made from a workspace that holds this mod beside others; changes arrive here from there. The development build spoken of above, and the commands whose names begin dev_, belong to that workspace and are not in this repository. Here ./build.sh builds and installs the mod (./build.sh fx is the same thing), ./build.sh check only compiles, ./build.sh shaders packs the four shaders again and ./build.sh package makes the download. OTHERS=1 in front of any of them also builds the library for Windows and Linux; the Windows one has been run on Windows (2026-10-10), the Linux one by nobody yet.