Vampire Rounds (Vampire Survivors x ROUNDS)
A new adventure in Vampire Survivors where you play ROUNDS's Orange Guy or Blue Guy.
On Melty: melty.gg/m/vampire-rounds (not published yet; once it is, one click with
your own Steam copies of Vampire Survivors and ROUNDS).
What you get
- ROUNDS's real players. Your own ROUNDS runs hidden in the background and draws Orange Guy and Blue Guy the way
ROUNDS does (the face you made in ROUNDS, legs, gun, health bar) on Vampire Survivors's stage, exactly where VS puts
them and on the layer VS draws its own hero on: enemies in front of them and the Mad Forest's treetops cover them.
Character select shows each one standing as ROUNDS draws a player at rest, at VS's own size, with the gun's icon.
- ROUNDS's gun instead of VS's weapons. It fires by itself at the nearest enemy (the mouse aims it while it
moves), with ROUNDS's ammo, reload and bullets; right mouse or Space is ROUNDS's block. ROUNDS runs the gun, so
every card works with ROUNDS's own code: Bouncy bounces off the screen edges, Poison ticks, explosions hit crowds.
- Every level-up is a ROUNDS card pick, and so is a treasure chest (at most one a minute). ROUNDS's own pick
screen (5 cards, its rarities, art and rules); the card goes into your ROUNDS player at once. Chests that come
sooner give their gold alone.
- ROUNDS's card bar where VS shows your items. Each guy's ROUNDS cards fill VS's item area at the top left as
ROUNDS's own card bar does: a square with the card's two letters on the guy's colour per card ("Co" for Comb), in the
order you took them, ten to a row. VS's own weapon and item slots are hidden there, but VS still collects and uses its
pickups.
- Every card shows. A mod card that comes with no picture (PCE ships 40 of them) gets the two letters ROUNDS's
card bar shows for it, big, in the card's colour; MapsExtended no longer shrinks the first card of a pick away; the
cards stand in front of the guy's face in the pick.
- Five stages, unlocked as in VS's own adventures. Mad Forest, Inlaid Library, Dairy Plant, Gallo Tower and
Cappella Magna (VS's main stages that need no DLC), each VS's own (enemies, bosses, gems, gold, pickups, music).
Surviving 10 minutes in a stage (15 in Cappella Magna) is its goal: it gives gold and opens the next stage on the
adventure's chapter list, where you pick it when you like.
- Vampire Survivors's night. VS decides when an enemy's hit lands (its own pacing); the hit takes ROUNDS's health,
and ROUNDS's death ends the VS life (VS's revivals bring ROUNDS's player back). ROUNDS's slows, stuns and silences
land as VS's own slow, freeze and defang.
- Harder than 0.2.0. ROUNDS cards make a guy strong much faster than VS's items: the guys start with 70 health
instead of ROUNDS's 100 (health cards multiply it as in ROUNDS), and need more experience per level.
- Its own adventure, straight away. VS opens on the Vampire Rounds adventure's menu: the adventure's art covers the
screen while VS's warning, title and menus are passed (Back leaves the adventure). Its own progress, roster (Orange
Guy and Blue Guy, both open from the start) and stages; no VS merchants (they sell VS weapons). Your VS story and
characters are untouched; Orange Guy and Blue Guy only appear in it.
- Thunderstore card mods. The Vampire Rounds launcher (what Melty starts) browses ROUNDS mods on Thunderstore
(card mods only, ticked by default), installs them with their dependencies into the hidden ROUNDS's own BepInEx,
turns them on and off, updates them, and can copy an r2modman / Thunderstore Mod Manager profile or a profile code.
Their cards show up in your picks, with their own code (the launcher is Roundhead's, MIT, the same creator).
- A face editor. The launcher's FACES window shows each guy's face and your eight ROUNDS faces to start from;
EDIT opens the face editor, like ROUNDS's own: every eye, mouth and detail ROUNDS has (EYES, MOUTH, DETAIL 1,
DETAIL 2), shown on the guy, and you drag them on the face to place them. Faces are in their own colours, in the
launcher and in the game (ROUNDS's soft-shadow material turned them dark grey in the engine's pictures). The faces
are Vampire Rounds's own: ROUNDS's saved faces stay as they are.
Needs ROUNDS on its old-rounds-for-mods Steam beta branch (ROUNDS > Properties > Betas).
How it works
managed/VampireRoundsLauncher.exe (src/Launcher, .NET Framework 4.8): what Melty starts. Thunderstore browser on the
left, your mods on the right, PLAY starts VS (with --vr-rounds naming ROUNDS's folder) and waits for it. Mods go
where the hidden ROUNDS's BepInEx is, UserData/VampireRounds/rounds/BepInEx/plugins/<Owner-Name>, listed in
UserData/VampireRounds/rounds/mods.json; its log and download cache are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\VampireRounds.
The face editor writes each guy's face (ROUNDS's PlayerFace values: a part and an offset for the eyes, mouth and two
details; src/Shared/FaceFile.cs) to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VampireRounds\faces.txt, which the engine puts into ROUNDS's
in-memory face selection before it makes its players. Its pieces come from a hidden ROUNDS run with
--vampirerounds-faces (about ten seconds, redrawn whenever ROUNDS's saved faces change): ROUNDS's eight faces on each
guy, each guy's bare body and every face part, all pictured in one frame around the face (faces/parts, with
parts.txt), so the launcher lays a face together from them. --draw-faces draws them without the window.Mods/VampireRounds.dll (src/VsMod): the MelonLoader mod for VS. It adds the adventure (VS's unused
ADV_LIB_001 slot), its five stages (copies of the player's own stage data under stage slots no VS stage uses:
TEST, TESTONE, ADV_0001TEST, ENTRANCE, CASTLE; sheets/stages.json) with their goals (VS's adventure
progress), Orange Guy and Blue Guy (VS's own custom-character system), starts the hidden ROUNDS, opens VS on the
adventure's menu under a cover, shows the card logos in VS's item panel (CardSlots), and runs the link every frame.Plugins/VampireRounds.InteropFix.dll (src/InteropFix): MelonLoader 0.7.3's Il2CppInterop cannot find
Class::GetDefaultFieldValue on VS's Unity 6 build and VS crashes two seconds after start with any MelonLoader
mod; this points the hook at the right function (the byte pattern was first found by the Isaac Survivors mashup).
It also looks after MelonLoader's first start (and its first after a VS update), when MelonLoader builds VS's
assemblies for 1-3 minutes before any mod loads: the build runs beside a window that keeps answering (Windows no
longer calls it Not Responding), and an old assembly another plugin holds open is set aside instead of failing the
rebuild. The launcher shows a note meanwhile (src/Launcher/LoaderWatch.cs, FirstStartNotice.cs).UserData/VampireRounds/rounds (src/Engine + BepInEx 5.4.23.2): loaded into ROUNDS from where Melty installs it
with Doorstop's command-line arguments (its log: UserData/VampireRounds/rounds/BepInEx/LogOutput.log); the engine is
's ROUNDS arena (MIT, the same creator) adapted to VS: Orange Guy and Blue Guy held where VS puts them, VS's enemies
mirrored as trigger circles, the screen edges as walls, bullets flying straight. ROUNDS still opens a window in batch
mode; it is kept off screen as a tool window that takes no focus.
Nothing from either game is in this repository or the package: each player's own ROUNDS draws the characters and
runs the cards, and their own VS supplies the stage.
Building
Windows, .NET SDK 8, Python 3 with Pillow, your own VS and ROUNDS on Steam.
- Interop assemblies for VS: run Cpp2IL 2022.1.0-pre-release.21 (
--output-as dummydll) on VS, then
Il2CppInterop.CLI 1.5.1 generate --use-opt-out-prefixing with Unity 6000.0.62's libraries, into
~/vsr-work/vs-interop (MelonLoader makes the same ones on the first start).
- BepInEx 5.4.23.2 (
BepInEx_win_x64_5.4.23.2.zip from its GitHub releases) unpacked into ~/vsr-work/dl/bepinex,
and the license texts (BepInEx, UnityDoorstop, HarmonyX, MonoMod, Mono.Cecil) in ~/vsr-work/dl/licenses.
- The design sheets in
sheets/ are the source of truth: python -I tools/sheets.py gen, then
python -I tools/sheets.py preflight --code (must say clean; it checks hook targets against your decompiled games).
python -I tools/package.py 0.4.1 builds all four projects (the launcher too) and writes dist/VampireRounds-0.4.1.zip; Melty installs
it with the recipe in tools/recipe.json. melty.json at the root is the same recipe with * where the version goes:
Melty reads it from this repository, so keep the two in step.- Developer runs:
devtools/devinstall.py on|off (puts the staged build into your games and takes it out again),
devtools/run.ps1 -Auto [-Slow] [-Hero blue] [-Cards "Explosive Bullet"] (self-playing runs, optionally starting with ROUNDS cards;
VAMPIREROUNDS_DEV_ALLSTAGES=1 opens every stage and VAMPIREROUNDS_AUTOPLAY_STAGE=<stages row or slot> plays it), devtools/shots.sh
(screenshots), devtools/cards.ps1 (every card ROUNDS has, whole and as its logo, with what it is drawn with, into
%LOCALAPPDATA%\VampireRounds\cards\sheet and cards\audit.txt).
%LOCALAPPDATA%\VampireRounds\dev-launch.txt gives the launcher's next VS starts their switches, one line each (Melty
test runs too): regenerate makes MelonLoader rebuild VS's assemblies as on a first start, VAMPIREROUNDS_NAME=value
sets a switch (VAMPIREROUNDS_DEV_NOPUMP=1 / VAMPIREROUNDS_DEV_NOSETASIDE=1 bring back the old first start).
- Cover art:
python -I tools/cover.py (from PowerShell; needs Edge and the internet for its fonts) repaints
media/art/card.png (Melty's game card) and media/art/adventure_bg.png (the adventure's backdrop in VS) from
tools/cover.html; the package takes the backdrop from that PNG.
Test mode
While %LOCALAPPDATA%\Melty\test\vampire-rounds.json exists, the mod plays by itself (into the adventure as Orange,
walking a circle and stepping away from the horde, taking picks) and writes pass <check> lines for: engine-ready,
adventure-listed, run-started, rounds-drawn, gun-fired, enemy-hit, card-picked, card-logo-shown. A run that plays by
itself never writes VS's save, so a test leaves the player's progress as it was.
License
MIT (LICENSE.txt). Third-party in the package: BepInEx (MIT), UnityDoorstop (LGPL-2.1), HarmonyX (MIT), MonoMod (MIT),
Mono.Cecil (MIT).
