Creating Skyline Plugins

Skyline is an environment for linking, runtime hooking and code patching originally designed for Super Smash Bros Ultimate but can be used with other Nintendo Switch games.

This is a great tool for modders who want to create mods that require code changes, as it allows you to write your mods in Rust or C++.

Note

This guide is for advanced users who are already familiar with reverse engineering and coding in general, if you don’t know what reverse engineering is or don’t know how to code we recommend starting with a more introductory guide.

Installing Skyline

For Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, you’ll need to use a custom version of Skyline, which can be downloaded from the releases page of the GitHub repository.

1. Go to the latest GitHub release.
2. Download skyline.zip.
3. Extract the downloaded file, and copy the exefs directory to this directory on your Switch SD card: atmosphere/contents/010051f0207b2000/

Tip

If you are testing your mods on an emulator instead of hardware, the path structure inside atmosphere/ remains identical, but starts from the emulator’s virtual SD card root:

• Ryujinx: Ryujinx/sdcard/atmosphere/contents/010051f0207b2000/.
• Eden: eden/sdmc/atmosphere/contents/010051f0207b2000/.

Compiling Skyline yourself

Alternatively, you can compile Skyline yourself by following these instructions. This is recommended if you want to use the latest features or if you want to contribute to the project.

1. Clone the GitHub repository with git clone https://github.com/tlmodding/skyline-ltd.git.
2. Enter the skyline folder with cd skyline-ltd.
3. Compile it by running make all.
4. Rename living_the_dream.npdm to main.npdm, and skyline.nso to subsdk9.
5. Move the files to the exefs directory (if it does not exist, create it yourself) to this directory on your Switch SD card: atmosphere/contents/010051f0207b2000/

Logging

Skyline

1. Setup your Switch or PC ip address with cargo skyline set-ip <IP_ADDRESS>.
2. Run cargo skyline listen to start listening for logs.

Note

Replace <SWITCH_IP_ADDRESS> with your Nintendo Switch’s actual local IP address (found in your console’s Internet Settings). If you are using an emulator on the same computer, you can use localhost.

Netcat (Linux)

1. Run the following command in your terminal while the game is running:

   nc <SWITCH_IP_ADDRESS> 6969

2. Look for the logs in the console output.

Note

Replace <SWITCH_IP_ADDRESS> with your Nintendo Switch’s actual local IP address (found in your console’s Internet Settings). If you are using an emulator on the same computer, you can use localhost.

PuTTY (Windows)

1. Open PuTTY.
2. Enter your Switch/PC IP address and set the Port to 6969.
3. Select Raw as the Connection Type and click Open.

Writing mods with Rust

1. Install cargo-skyline with cargo install cargo-skyline.
2. Create a new project with cargo skyline new <project_name>.
3. To build a project simply run cargo skyline build.
4. Once built, your compiled plugin will be located in the target/aarch64-skyline-switch directory. This is to be copied over to atmosphere/contents/010051f0207b2000/romfs/skyline/plugins/