HumankindAssetFramework

HAF documentation

HAF adds custom models and presentation to Humankind units, districts, wonders, props, and projectiles. It also covers textures, sounds, formations, and unit scale. You supply the source model; the authoring tools bake it, and the runtime loads it from a pack alongside other mods.

The project overview and feature list live on the repo home. This page is a map, not a reading list. If this is your first visit, open Getting started and follow that page in order.

Start from what you’re trying to do

I want to…	Go to
Put my first model on a unit	Getting-Started.md — the ordered path, bake → build → launch
Diagnose something that is broken	Troubleshooting.md — start from the symptom and follow the evidence to its owning guide
Know whether to Save, Bake, Build, or Relaunch	Authoring-State-and-Deployment.md — the change-to-action matrix and source/artifact map
Look up a Factory field, or fix a bad bake	Factory-Manual.md — the main guide, every field + troubleshooting
Find the right authoring window	Editor-Tools.md — every window under `Tools ▸ HAF`, and what each one writes
Animate a static vehicle or helicopter	Vehicle-Lab-Quickstart.md — raw model → generated rig → animated bake → game
Make my model move	Animated-Models.md — can HAF import your rig?
Understand why my animation looks wrong	Animation-Pitfalls.md — the failure catalogue
Ship my own pack, without touching ENC	Multi-Mod.md — the pack format + the `haf_packs/` drop folder
Know if HAF can do X at all	Capabilities.md — the full list, with known limitations
Build or extend the plugin	Building.md → Code-Map.md
Automate HAF from a script or CI	Headless-CLI.md

The pages

Get started

Installation.md — install BepInEx, the runtime plugin, and the Unity authoring package; verify each layer.
Getting-Started.md — new here? start here. Nothing → a custom unit on the map, each step linked to its deep doc.
Troubleshooting.md — something failed? start with the symptom. Evidence order and direct routes to each maintained failure catalog.
Authoring-State-and-Deployment.md — what each stage writes, which changes need Save/Bake/Build/Relaunch, and which copy is authoritative.
Mod-Editor-Version-XML-Recovery.md — repair the Mod Editor’s XML document (2, 10) Application Version failure without changing Unity versions.
Building.md — build the plugin; the Blender dependency.
Backup.md — five complementary protections for uncommitted, irreplaceable, generated, and deployed working data.

Author content

Editor-Tools.md — the editor reference: every window under Tools ▸ HAF, its menu path, and which registry it writes. Start here to find the right tool.
Factory-Manual.md — the main guide: every field, the static + animated workflows, the troubleshooting table. Start here to add a model.
Vehicle-Lab-Quickstart.md — the short end-to-end workflow for adding wheels, tracks, guns, trails, or rotors to a static vehicle model.
Ship-Status.md — baked ≠ built. Which bakes the game hasn’t seen yet, plus guarded delete of stale/orphaned output.
Textures.md — the atlas pipeline: every knob, the complete failure catalogue, runtime re-skins.
Game-Sound-Lab.md — game-wide audio overrides: silence or replace any vanilla Wwise event, with in-game F8 audition.
Unit & creature audio (engine sounds, custom WAVs, creature voices) lives in Factory-Manual.md §13–14.

Animation — four pages, in reading order

Animated-Models.md — can HAF import my model? The plain-language answer in three levels (clean rigs → rigid-part machines → full character rigs). Start here.
Animation-Pitfalls.md — it baked but looks wrong: the field guide to every trap, each hit for real.
Donor-Clip-Flight.md — play the donor’s own animation on your rig (useDonorClip): the measured engine contract and the failure catalogue. Proven on the helicopter.
Turn-Ease.md — turn first, aim true, fire second: eased facing per unit or category, the attack hold, true-bearing aim, gun elevation.

(Extending the plugin rather than authoring? The engine-side companion is Animated-Runtime.md, under Internals.)

The injection axes

Each axis adds custom content in a different place. Unit models and their cross-cutting settings live in the pack pack.json; some specialized authoring tools keep their own registry and ship the resulting assets with the mod. Follow the linked page rather than assuming every axis is a models[] field.

Axis	Page	Bake?
Units	the Factory pages above	yes
Districts	District-Visuals.md — a custom building on a district tile, auto-leveled. Start here.	yes
Districts, strategic zoom	District-Dedicated-Visual.md — …plus its own strategic-map footprint, the scoped render path, multi-district coexistence.	yes
Wonders	Wonder-Spike.md — a custom model on a player-authored Artificial Wonder, through the game’s native wonder pipeline.	yes
Pawn props	Pawn-Props.md — weapons and gear on a pawn’s attachment slots.	yes
Projectiles	Projectiles.md — a custom model as a unit’s fired munition.	yes
Formations	Formations.md — how many models a unit fields, and their layout.	data only
Unit size	Unit-Size.md — how big any unit renders, vanilla included, incl. era scaling.	data only

Ship a pack

Multi-Mod.md — the pack format, the haf_packs/ drop folder, how packs merge and conflict, and the load report. Read this to add assets without touching ENC. Template: haf-pack.example.json.

Internals — for anyone extending the plugin

Performance.md — what HAF costs per frame (the F8 meter, today’s baseline by bucket, the rules that keep it there, what to do when a number grows). Measured, not estimated.
Architecture.md — read this before changing the runtime. The invariants no compiler enforces — threads, session re-arm order, the reflection contract, the two district ledgers — each with the failure it was learned from.
Code-Map.md — where everything lives in the plugin source.
Shared-Schema.md — the Haf.Schema library both halves inherit: what’s shared, what’s divergent, how to add a field. (Owns the field count.)
Animated-Runtime.md — the decompiled animation runtime: clip registration, the per-session re-arm, the per-frame pose hook, the GPU pose math, the engine contracts.
Unit-Combat-Behavior.md — how the game drives combat animation, and what’s data-driven vs hardcoded.
Firing-On-Attack.md — the one-shot fire trigger, off Humankind’s SimulationEvent bus.
Facing-Persistence.md — how unit facing survives save/load, given the save has no facing field.
Vertex-Budget.md — the shared GPU mesh-buffer ceiling, and how to budget by model type.
Capabilities.md — the full capability list + known limitations, in reference form.
Headless-CLI.md — run re-bake and the full mod build + deploy from the command line, so a script, CI, or an agent can drive HAF without the GUI.

Project & process — maintainer-facing

Decisions.md — the ADR log: settled decisions and the why. Check here before proposing a change to any of them.
Testing.md — the testing strategy: what’s unit-tested, what’s covered by in-editor instruments, and what deliberately isn’t.
Framework-Review.md — the living hardening roadmap: verified review findings, prioritized, with what was done when.
Review-Backlog.md — findings verified real and deliberately deferred, ranked by when they’ll bite.

HAF in the wild

What HAF brings to ENCReload — the first mod built on HAF, and the most useful thing to read after this index if you want to know what the framework actually looks like in a shipped game rather than in a feature list. It inventories 22 configured units and the type-wide dials behind them: custom models, state-driven animation, traversing turrets and distance-proportional gun elevation, recoil, gradual turning and pivot-in-place, terrain hugging, formations, sound. Most of HAF’s harder capabilities exist because something in that list needed them.

📁 Archived notes

Older design notes and investigations live in docs/notes/ — frozen, not maintained, not instructions; each opens by naming the page that replaced it. They are kept for the reasoning, not for reading first.

For AI agents — the machine-readable map is llms.txt (public raw Markdown, no auth, fully crawlable), or the browsable site at https://sswelm.github.io/HumankindAssetFramework/.

Project history — the dated milestone log (what was proven when, and the war stories behind it) is the CHANGELOG.

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