Introduction

Welcome!

1. If you are reading this guide with the intent of developing plugins for The Known Galaxy, continue reading.
2. If you are reading this guide with the goal of understanding how to use a specific plugin, refer to the Guides > For Plugin Users section and all its docs within.

Running the Project

Basically everything you could need to do is achieved through a Lune Module. There are 2 ways to run it:

1. Run source .commands.sh to get a terminal function setup that runs the module with the alias plugins. E.g.:

> source .commands.sh
> plugins

2. Just run lune run main every time you want to use. The above is faster for repeat usages. This one is faster for one off usages. E.g.:

> lune run main

Inside there are self-explanatory interactive options for:

1. Running unit tests
2. Running static analysis
3. Building the Studio testing place and the plugin itself (optionally to your local Studio plugin folder on your computer).
4. Automatically uploading any images the plugin uses to ROBLOX.
5. Deploying the plugin to the Roblox Marketplace.

Development Workflow

Once you have started the studio (achieved by running start build/place.rbxl) and you are ready to work, go through the following steps:

1. Start the doc-site (if you haven't already) with docsite from source .commands.sh.
2. Ensure Config.DevelopmentMode is turned on inside src/Config.luau so that you get hot reloading, which ensures you don't have to constantly rebuild the Studio or manually save the files as a local plugin to see changes.
3. Start the rojo service with rojo serve place.project.json and connect to it from Studio.

Creating New Modules

Now that you have your development environment setup and the plugin hot-reloading, you're ready to create a new module! New modules are stored inside src/PluginModules as files with the name YourSubModule.module.luau. That .module suffix is especially important since that's how the system detects that file as a possible submodule that it should try to load. Once inside, use this snippet to create all the boilerplate for the new submodule:

"Plugin SubModule": {
    "prefix": [
        "pluginsubmodule",
        "plugin",
        "submodule"
    ],
    "body": [
        "--!strict",
        "local PluginSubModule = require(script.Parent.Parent.Modules.PluginSubModule)",
        "local PluginFacade = require(script.Parent.Parent.PluginFacade)",
        "",
        "local ${TM_FILENAME_BASE/.module//g} = PluginSubModule.new({",
        "\tButtonIcon = nil,",
        "\tDisplayName = \"Name\",",
        "\tTooltip = \"Tooltip\",",
        "\tActiveByDefault = false,",
        "\tOneClickExecution = false,",
        "\tDevelopmentModule = false,",
        "})",
        "",
        "${TM_FILENAME_BASE/.module//g}:OnPreLoad(function(_pluginFacade: PluginFacade.PluginFacade)",
        "\treturn true",
        "end)",
        "",
        "${TM_FILENAME_BASE/.module//g}:OnPostLoad(function(_pluginFacade: PluginFacade.PluginFacade)",
        "\treturn true",
        "end)",
        "",
        "${TM_FILENAME_BASE/.module//g}:OnActivate(function(_pluginFacade: PluginFacade.PluginFacade)",
        "\treturn true",
        "end)",
        "",
        "${TM_FILENAME_BASE/.module//g}:OnDeactivate(function(_pluginFacade: PluginFacade.PluginFacade)",
        "\treturn true",
        "end)",
        "",
        "${TM_FILENAME_BASE/.module//g}:OnPreUnload(function(_pluginFacade: PluginFacade.PluginFacade)",
        "\treturn true",
        "end)",
        "",
        "return ${TM_FILENAME_BASE/.module//g}",
    ],
},

When working, make sure you pay attention to Development Rules.

Thanks for working towards making the lives of TKG developers just that little bit better...

plugins Creator and Architect, ShadowEngineer