Chapter Text
Welcome to the SBURB Modding and Glitch Hunting Wiki: your source for SBURB documentation on the web.
Visit the Table of Contents for a listing of articles.
How do I mod the Replay Button?
DO NOT TOUCH THE REPLAY BUTTON.
Seriously. The reason we put this warning first, the reason that warning is bolded and capitalized, and the reason we haven't included Replay-related scripts in the base installer, is this: the Replay button is your lifeline. No matter how bad you f*ck up your narrative arc, your universe, or yourself, as long as you have the Replay button you have an escape route. Pushing the Replay button dumps you into a clean universe, free from all the mod scripts and glitches you may have encountered. (This has some caveats; see below.)
If you break the Replay button, you're trapped in a dying universe with no lifeline. There are no save files to load, there are no backups to restore. Even the Replay button doesn't undo what you've done; it just lets you escape it.
Don't touch the replay button unless you know what you're doing -- and if you're reading this introductory text, you probably don't know what you're doing.
Yes, we all want to escape the Replay loop. Yes, we already have people investigating the Replay code. Yes, we'll take any help we can get. But please please please make sure you know what you're doing beforehand.
(...and yes, there is some irony in the fact that our eternal tormentor is also our lifeline. So it goes.)
How do I install mods?
- Upgrade (or downgrade) to the right version of SBURB (currently works with versions 0.4.13.x, 0.6.12.x, and 0.11.x)
- Instructions on how to do this can be found here: [Changing SBURB versions]
- Run the mod framework injector.
- This modifies your game session to allow sideloading content, as well as providing access to an ingame modloader UI.
- The mod injector must be run under specific conditions; see below.
- Download mods.
- "Player Pendant Text Console Mod" and "Debugging Utils" are included in the modloader by defualt. They're not viruses, please stop sending us messages about it.
- Enjoy! (Or, "enjoy", I suppose.)
When should I run the mod injector?
The default script checks your session for the following conditions:
- Two or more Lands (corresponding players can be dead; only the session creation conditions matter)
- No major game corruption (Angelic, Otherish)
- Terraforming is either complete or in progressYou can bypass these safety checks with the
--force-installflag if necessary.
Explanations for these conditions are below:
Two or more Lands. Single-player sessions are known to have major bugs and missing content, and are borderline unplayable. That being said, please get your co-players consent before running the mod injector. (The installation script asks every living player for consent by default. We won't change this; stop asking.)
No major game corruption. SBURB mods don't play well with corruption of either kind; mod code and corrupted code can overwrite each other. Corrupted code also governs player behavior, so ... yeah.
Terraforming. Ideally you should run the mod injector after completing Terraforming and halting the Reckoning, since that's the quickest way to access the Replay button. By changing event flags it's technically possible to spawn the Replay button at any time, but this could result in bugged scripts and broken narratives.
Completing Terraforming and the Reckoning may not always be possible depending on your session's narrative arcs (or this game just bugged out again, as it tends to do). As long as you can predict when you'll have a good amount of downtime, it should be safe to run the injector. (Predicting periods of downtime can be done by checking your session's narrative arcs and Roleplay Coefficients, having a Seer perform scrying, etc.)
Running the mod injector pre-entry is technically possible, though not recommended. As long as you don't activate any mods pre-entry, you should be safe. Do not activate mods before entering The Medium. Any damage done to your homeworld is your responsibility.
Where do I get mods?
There are several modding hubs out there. Of these, we officially recognize Suburbia, Urbanism and Modrinth. Other modding hubs lack good moderation; be careful when downloading mods from these sites.
If things break, will it brick my session?
Potentially.
Can I uninstall mods?
Yes.
Can I uninstall the mod framework?
No. When the mod injector runs, it retrocausally modifies your game session so that the modding framework was "Always There", or "there from the beginning", or "already here", depending on your perspective. In simpler terms, it rewrites your universe.
If you wish to un-mod your game, you can deactivate and remove all your mods instead.
Does modding have long-term consequences?
Yes and no.
No: The Replay button will put you in another game session. This will unload all mod scripts and resource packs, even those that are client-side only or those that only affect the player. Jumping into another game session reloads the client(s) and server(s) in such a way that all non-native scripts are purged.
Yes: In an ethical sense. The Replay button doesn't undo what you've done; it just lets you escape it.
Earlier we said that the Replay button dumps you into a "clean" universe; clever readers and veteran SBURB players will have already caught the lie here. For everyone else: the Replay button doesn't technically reset your game; it dumps you into another failed game session and starts you at the beginning. The exact mechanics of this reset aren't 100% known, but the important part is this:
The reason not to mess with the Replay button, besides safety, is courtesy. If you break the Replay button and someone else ends up in your session, now they're stuck with your broken Replay button. And leaving some hapless, unfortunate stranger stuck with your mess is rude at best, cosmic horror at worst. Yes, players technically aren't "stuck" there since there's alternative means of leaving a game session, but a novice player either won't know about them or will lack the expertise to pull them off.
Clean up after yourself. Pay it forward. We're all stuck in this hellscape together; we don't need to make each other's lives harder. (The default installation already disconnects your universe from the Replay loop, so new players don't have to worry about doing this. This notice is mostly aimed at veteran glitch hunters, who may or may not be reading this. You know who you are. Please, just ... remember your actions have consequences, and nothing happens in a vacuum. I still believe there's a way to break this game without breaking each other.)
Is modding ... ethical?
Considering the pile of dead universes, I'm not sure playing SBURB at all is ethical.
I'm not a philosopher, so I can't give a definitive answer, but my subjective opinion is this: in the Replay loop, we only have bad choices. All we can do is choose the least-worst option. Maybe that's enough for you. If it's not ... in time, you'll convince yourself it's enough. You have to, to survive. Because the alternative is a multiverse of guilt: an albatross that hangs around your neck, choking you tighter and tighter until you die.
Well, maybe that's just me. I certainly don't speak for the entire community.
There's a thousand ways to enjoy the corpse party; try to find one that works for you.
Has anyone successfully escaped the loop?
We don't know. We have people working on it. We had more people working on it; their names are in the in memoriam section. If you see any of them, I guess whatever they did didn't work. (Either that, or you're viewing a past version of them. Please be sure to cross-check against Coordinated Multiversal timestamps.)
And if any of them have succeeded in escaping the loop ... well, they haven't come back to tell us. "It appears that those who know their fate meet it."
I have an idea for breaking the Replay loop. How do I mod the Replay button?
If and only if you have a serious, legitimate proposal for escaping the loop, send us a message and we'll send you tools for messing with the ending screen. Please check [List of Attempts at Breaking the Loop] before submitting your proposal, as there's a good chance someone's tried something similar already.
