Replacing hand sprites

Custom hand sprites tutorial
by balabanobo

(This tutorial references content contained in the White Knuckle server)
(Additionally, some information has been tweaked for formatting making it slightly different from the google docs version)

You’re going to want to start by gathering the reference sprite sheets in the modding-resources thread “Hand Sprites”.

Here is the basic template for the hands that exist in the game (not all are currently in use, and there are two others that are not included in this picture, one being a light spoiler).

I have also made some extra tools that should help people produce their own hands more easily. This Troubleshoot Textures pack contains all the sprites currently used for hands and items in the game gathered into one place and named properly. You can run this mod and check to see which sprites are used where, and compare them in the sheet via the letter and number markings for most sprites.

https://thunderstore.io/c/white-knuckle/p/Balabanobo/Troubleshoot_Textures/

When drawing your own hand sprites make sure that you are keeping your art within the dimensions of each section, as having it spill over will cause unwanted pixels to show up around the edges of other sprites in game. Make sure while you are working on your hands to periodically test your sprites using either a test mod pack, or replacing the sprite sheets in another working mods plugins folder.

On that note, let’s talk about compatibility with RH. First we need to get everything running on our machine. I would recommend using r2modman for downloading BepinEx and RH mod to make things as simple as possible. The rest of my guide will be based on that process. Link to r2modman

Make your profile for White Knuckle and find the Mods in the Online tab. You can grab BepinEx and RH here directly, or just download a mod that uses them as dependencies like my DDMA Hands mod (it will prompt you to download everything that it needs automatically).

Here is the basic structure of an updated Mod Pack using RHmod. Going into the structure: plugins > [Modpack Folder] > [Specific Mod Folder]

Modpacks can contain multiple Mod folders inside them, so packaging things like palette swaps or just multiple mods together is possible. This is used when making it a thunderstore mod.

Here we have what RH looks for in each mod:

• Folder containing your replacement assets. “Textures” for replacing sprites, and “Sounds” for audio.
• An info.json specific to your mod
• A pack.png used as an icon for your pack in menus.

All 3 of these are required for your Pack to work properly so double check everything is correct when troubleshooting your mod.

Here is what info.json would contain:

{
  "name": "DDMA Hands",
  "desc": "Play as a Decommissioned Deep Maintenance Android. Continued service was deemed too expensive in comparison to class-D personal.",
  "author": "Balabanobo",
  "steamid": 0,
  "guid": "Bala.DDMA_Hands",
  "hidden-from-list": false,
  "only-in-full-game": false,
  "format-version": 1
}

It is VERY important that your “guid” is unique to your pack.

The rest is used for display in the in game settings when picking your pack.
The code provided is usually enough for a pack however for more information about info.json see this article.
Last thing to note, the names of your replacement files (i.e the files in the Textures and Sounds folders) need to be exactly the same as the files in game, best practice is to simply reference an already working pack and copy their names.

With all this done, you are ready to play with your new hands! You can drop your pack folder into “Plugins” and select it in game. Now, if you wanted to make your own Thunderstore mod, there are a few extra steps.

Making it a thunderstore mod

First, make sure you have your own team on thunderstore. Afterwards, when setting up the thunderstore mod's structure follow the format guide on their page here.

Using the Troubleshoot_Textures pack as reference:

Your .zip will look like this, and your file path to the sprites will be through: plugins > Troubleshoot Pack > Textures Make sure your icon.png is the exact correct dimensions, as the Thunderstore wont accept your mod if it is incorrect. Opening the manifest.json here, you can see the name and version number, The description is what shows next to your thumbnail in the store, and the dependencies should just be Resourceful hands as shown here.

{
  "name": "Troubleshoot_Textures",
  "version_number": "0.1.4",
  "website_url": "",
  "description": "Replacement Sprite Sheets for use with Resourceful Hands",
  "dependencies": [
    "triggered_studio-ResourcefulHands-0.9.51"
  ]
}

Small note, the 0.9.51 at the end of triggered_studio-ResourcefulHands should ideally be the same version as the ResourcefulHands version you used to make the pack

You can test you mod pack works properly before uploading to the store via import local mod here:

And once you have made sure everything is working as intended, you can upload your mod to the Thunderstore for easy sharing with the community!