Vein Toolkit

A modding framework for VEIN that lets you add new craftable recipes to the game — on launch, no buttons, no editing game files. You write a small JSON manifest; the toolkit registers your recipe into the game's own crafting system so it shows up and crafts natively.

v1 — Recipes. Future versions add more (items, gear, and beyond). v1 does recipes, and does them properly: net-new recipes, native display, real crafting.

• Add new recipes that craft any existing item from any existing ingredients
• Pick the category tab (Weapons, Fuel, Medical, Gadgets, …) and the bench it crafts at
• Zero art, zero Lua — a recipe is a small cooked shell + a few lines of JSON
• Recipes are additive — nothing existing is overwritten

To USE recipe mods (install + play someone's recipes): just the game + this toolkit. Copy it in, done. No tools, no coding.

To MAKE your own recipes: you also need Unreal Engine 5.6 and the ability to build a C++ UE project (Visual Studio). You cook a small recipe "shell" in Unreal — it's the only step that touches UE. The full steps are in docs/MAKING_RECIPES.md.

If you don't have Unreal or don't know how to use it: that's the prerequisite, not a bug. Go install it and follow the guide — the instructions are complete and in plain English. The rest is on you.

Copy the contents of runtime/ into Vein/Vein/Binaries/Win64/:

• runtime/dwmapi.dll → Binaries/Win64/dwmapi.dll
• runtime/ue4ss/ → Binaries/Win64/ue4ss/

That's the complete runtime (UE4SS + the VEIN signatures + the pak loader + VeinCF). Launch the game once and check Binaries/Win64/ue4ss/UE4SS.log for the VeinCF startup banner.

Already running UE4SS? Just replace your ue4ss/UE4SS.dll with this one and copy ue4ss/Mods/VeinCF/ in.

See docs/MAKING_RECIPES.md for the full walkthrough.

The short version — a recipe mod is just a folder you drop in Mods/VeinCF/mods/:

my_mod/
├── manifest.json        # the recipe(s), in plain JSON
├── MyRecipes_P.pak      # the cooked recipe shell(s)
└── AssetRegistry.bin    # cooked alongside the pak

And the recipe itself reads like English:

"recipes": [{
  "asset": "/Game/Vein/New/CR_MyThing",
  "registry_bin": "AssetRegistry.bin",
  "makes": ["/Game/Vein/Items/.../BP_Result"],
  "needs": ["/Game/Vein/Items/.../BP_IngredientA", "/Game/Vein/Items/.../BP_IngredientB"],
  "tab": "Weapons",
  "bench": "Standard"
}]

A working example is in examples/banana_plunger/ — a craftable Banana Plunger (Banana + Nail → Plunger, at the Standard workbench). To try it: copy the banana_plunger folder into ue4ss/Mods/VeinCF/mods/ and launch — it's in the Weapons tab.

Want to bulk-add recipes, hack on the framework, or branch into new content types? Read docs/FRAMEWORK.md — the architecture, the manifest reference, the CF Lua API, the engine toolkit, and how to add a new content type.

• Do I need Unreal Engine? To make recipes, yes (to cook the shell). To use recipes someone else made, no.
• Do I need to code? No to use. Basically no to make — you set values and run a cook command — but you do need to install Unreal and follow the cook steps.
• Nothing shows up / it crashed. Check ue4ss/UE4SS.log for the VeinCF lines. Usual causes: a wrong content path in the manifest, or the pak/registry not matching your game version.
• Will it break when VEIN updates? Possibly — the runtime is built for a specific VEIN version and cooked content is version-matched. A big game patch may need an updated build.
• Can I make new items / guns? Not in v1. v1 is recipes (combining existing items). New item types are a future version.

This repo ships the prebuilt runtime so you can just use it. The DLL is compiled from the VEIN UE4SS fork — https://github.com/Alustrial/UE4SS-Vein — which is the engine base (UE4SS + VEIN signatures + stability patches). You only need that repo if you want to rebuild or extend the DLL itself; the recipe framework (Lua) is right here in runtime/.../VeinCF/ and src/.

Vein Toolkit is MIT licensed — see LICENSE. Built on RE-UE4SS (MIT) with the original VEIN port by xmathayus; full credits and third-party license text in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. Vein Toolkit by Alustrial.