Paths++

A helper mod allowing additional upgrade paths to be made for towers.

Toggle "Balanced Mode" to switch from being still only able get up to 5 upgrades in any one path and 2 in another, vs getting all vanilla upgrades you normally can as well as any/all available Paths++ upgrades.

Toggling off Balanced Mode can also function well with Ultimate Crosspathing, allowing you to get 5/5/5/5/... towers (assuming the Mod Creators were keeping it in mind while coding).

Mods

Jonyboylovespie's 4th Paths (Mod Jam First Place)

Hoo-Know's Tesla Coil Tack Shooter (Mod Jam Second Place)

Fishythecrafter's Bomb Shooter Path (Mod Jam Third Place)

doombubbles' Tornado Wizards (Primary Example)

For Modders: Creating your own Path++ mod

Reference Paths++ in your mod

The easiest way to reference the PathsPlusPlus dll is to put the following within your .csproj file (BELOW where you import btd6.targets)

<ItemGroup>
    <Reference Include="PathsPlusPlus">
        <HintPath>$(BloonsTD6)\Mods\PathsPlusPlus.dll</HintPath>
    </Reference>
</ItemGroup>

Full .csproj example

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
    <PropertyGroup>
        <TargetFramework>net6.0</TargetFramework>
        <RootNamespace>FourthPath</RootNamespace>
        <Configurations>Debug;Release</Configurations>
        <Nullable>enable</Nullable>
        <AssemblyName>FourthPath</AssemblyName>
        <LangVersion>latest</LangVersion>
        <Optimize>false</Optimize>
        <DebugType>embedded</DebugType>
    </PropertyGroup>
    
    <Import Project="..\btd6.targets" />
    
    <ItemGroup>
        <Reference Include="PathsPlusPlus">
            <HintPath>$(BloonsTD6)\Mods\PathsPlusPlus.dll</HintPath>
        </Reference>
    </ItemGroup>
    
</Project>

GitHub Actions

To download PathsPlusPlus within GitHub actions, add the following step:

- name: Download PathsPlusPlus
  uses: dawidd6/action-download-artifact@v2
  with:
    github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    workflow: build.yml
    branch: main
    name: PathsPlusPlus.dll
    repo: doombubbles/paths-plus-plus
    path: ${{ env.BLOONSTD6 }}/Mods/

You should also list Paths++ as a dependency in your ModHelperData, that will look something like this

public static class ModHelperData
{
    /* ... */
        
    public const string Dependencies = "doombubbles/paths-plus-plus";
}

Create your PathPlusPlus

Each Path++ path begins with creating a very simple class just to register your path. All it needs to specify is which tower the path is for, and how many upgrades your adding.

public class DartMonkeyFourthPath : PathPlusPlus
{
    public override string Tower => TowerType.DartMonkey;

    public override int UpgradeCount => 0; // Increase this up to 5 as you create your Upgrades
}

Similarly to ModTowers from Mod Helper, your UpgradeCount should reflect how many upgrades you've actually made so far.

Extending a Vanilla Path

If you are instead want to add additional upgrades to a vanilla path, create your PathPlusPlus with an override for the ExtendsVanillaPath property like so.

public class DartMonkeyTopPath : PathPlusPlus
{
    public override string Tower => TowerType.DartMonkey;
    
    public override int ExtendVanillaPath => Tops;

    public override int UpgradeCount => 6; // Adding one new upgrade to bring the total upgrades up to 6
}

In this case, you will be setting UpgradeCount to be the new maximum amount of upgrades that you want the path to go to. For example, setting it to 6 means that you are adding 1 additional upgrade sixth tier upgrade after the tower's 5 included tiers.

Create your UpgradePlusPlus(s)

For each upgrade you want in your path, you will define an UpgradePlusPlus<T> where the generic parameter <T> will be your PathPlusPlus class above.

public class BetterDarts : UpgradePlusPlus<DartMonkeyFourthPath>
{
    public override int Cost => 50;
    public override int Tier => 1;
    public override string Icon => VanillaSprites.ArmorPiercingDartsUpgradeIcon;

    public override string Description => "Darts can pop Frozen bloons";

    public override void ApplyUpgrade(TowerModel towerModel)
    {
        foreach (var damageModel in towerModel.GetDescendants<DamageModel>().ToArray())
        {
            damageModel.immuneBloonProperties &= ~BloonProperties.Frozen;
        }
        
        if (IsHighestUpgrade(towerModel))
        {
            // apply a custom display, if you want
        }
    }
}

There are many familiar properties shared from ModUpgrade that all function basically the same, i.e. Cost, Tier, Icon, Description, DisplayName and ApplyUpgrade.

If you do not specify a Portrait, the 000 tower portrait will be used.

If your upgrade adds an ability to the tower, override the Ability property to be true.

If you want to change the container background for your upgrade in the upgrade screen, you can override the Container property with a string GUID. Some standard options you may want are the default VanillaSprites.UpgradeContainerBlue, VanillaSprites.UpgradeContainerTier5, or VanillaSprites.UpgradeContainerParagon. Additionally, the UpgradePlusPlus class contains some some extra sprites that would be good options for Tier 6+ Upgrades including UpgradeContainerPlatinum, UpgradeContainerDiamond and UpgradeContainerRainbow.

Upgrade effects

When implementing ApplyUpgrade code, it's important for you to try to make as few assumptions as possible in order to increase compatability and prevent bugs with other paths.

Whenever you can, use GetDescendants to easily affect all instances of a given Model type within the TowerModel.

For modifying something specific, retrieve it by name if possible rather than just relying on the order. (e.g. weapons.FirstOrDefault(model => model.name == ...) instead of weapons[2])