Modder Documentation

What Really is Anchor Chain?

Anchor Chain is the Sea Power community's oldest (and only) chainloader. While BepInEx can load plugins from its Sea Power/BepInEx/plugins folder, it is very inflexible about extending this capability to other folders. Since Sea Power mods are saved within the Sea Power/Sea Power_Data/StreamingAssets folder or various steam workshop directories, this poses a problem for distributing mods to users. Namely, most users won't feel comfortable or want to bother digging within the game's folder. This is where Anchor Chain comes in.

Anchor Chain consists of two parts, the preloader and mod loader. The preloader is a BepInEx plugin that loads any plugins (Steam Workshop or local) implementing the IPluginLoader interface. The mod loader implements this interface, which then scans for and loads all plugins implementing the IAnchorChainMod interface. This division of labor allows for Steam Workshop distribution and updates to the main body of AnchorChain while still maintaining its functionality.