DrivingRangeTheater
Does your lobby host step away for a bathroom break between games? Do you and your friends often wait for someone to finish something AFK between furious 18-hole battles? This is the mod for you. Add a mod to r2-modman with a /videos folder and it's content will be displayed in beautiful big picture cinema to enjoy as a group while you wait for whoever to finish making dinner, using the bathroom, or having appendicitis (looking at you Baustin).
Don't know how to make a mod? drop a video file over at http://calenray.com/SBG-driving-range-theater-mod-maker/ and it will automatically turn the video file into a compatible mod to view from your very own golf drive-in. Be aware that it's not a quick process to re-encode video files and assemble mod-packages entirely client side (in browser). I am a busy fella so I may or may not get around to efficiency improvements, feel free to open a pull request for the site as it's open source to allow other developers to add improvements! (github for contributors: https://github.com/Calen-Ray/SBG-driving-range-theater-mod-maker)
Speaking of being a busy fella, here is chat gpt rewriting my three paragraph explaination of the mod framework into something more organized. Cheers.
Turns the driving-range leaderboard TV into a video player. Hit the cycle buttons (forward / back)
to flip between clips; each client controls their own playback volume from the pause menu.
This mod is a framework. It does not ship with any videos. Pair it with content mods, or drop
your own files into Videos/ under any plugin folder.
Install
Via r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager:
search for Cray-DrivingRangeTheater and install, plus any content packs you want.
Manual install: drop DrivingRangeTheater.dll into
<r2modman profile>/BepInEx/plugins/Cray-DrivingRangeTheater/.
Requires BepInExPack 5.4.2305.
Every player in a lobby needs the same mods installed, including the same video content, because
cycle state is server-authoritative and replicated via Mirror.
Usage
- Original button: next video.
- Cloned button beside it: previous video.
- Pause menu while on the driving range: client-local
Screen res, Theater volume, and
Screen fit controls.
- If the screen trims the edges of a clip, adjust
OverscanCompensation in
BepInEx/config/cray.drivingrangetheater.cfg.
Adding videos
Drop video files into any of the following locations under a plugin package — the framework
scans all of them at startup and sorts across all matches alphabetically, deduping by path:
<plugin>/Videos/ — canonical.<plugin>/Video/ — also accepted (singular).<plugin>/ (plugin root) — only if a same-basename audio sidecar
(.ogg/.wav/.mp3/.m4a/…) sits next to it. The sidecar requirement keeps the scanner
from picking up unrelated mp4s a plugin ships for other reasons.
Video
Recommended format: MP4 (H.264 8-bit / yuv420p). This is the safest format for Unity's
VideoPlayer backend on Windows. Also accepted by extension: .webm, .mov, .ogv, .mkv,
.m4v, but decode support varies. H.264 10-bit (High 10, yuv420p10le) will fail with
VideoPlayer cannot play url.
Transcode problematic files with:
ffmpeg -y -i input.mp4 -c:v libx264 -profile:v high -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 22 -preset veryfast \
-c:a copy output.mp4
Audio
Super Battle Golf has Unity's native audio disabled project-wide, so the VideoPlayer's built-in
audio paths are silent. The framework plays audio from a sidecar file next to each video through
FMOD.
Ship an audio file alongside every video with the same basename, for example
1 Gwimbly.mp4 -> 1 Gwimbly.ogg. Accepted extensions, first match wins:
.ogg, .wav, .mp3, .m4a, .aac, .flac. If no sidecar is found, the video still plays
silently.
Extract .ogg audio from an existing mp4 with:
ffmpeg -y -i input.mp4 -vn -c:a libvorbis -q:a 4 input.ogg
Audio is played as a 3D FMOD sound positioned at the theater screen, not as a global 2D mix.
Sync is maintained by a 2-second drift check against VideoPlayer.time; the framework corrects
mismatches greater than 250 ms with channel.setPosition().
Prefix filenames with 01-, 02-, and so on to control playback order.
Authoring a content mod
Ship a Thunderstore package depending on Cray-DrivingRangeTheater:
Cray-MyVideos/
|-- manifest.json
|-- icon.png
|-- README.md
`-- Videos/
|-- 01-intro.mp4
|-- 02-highlights.mp4
`-- ...
The framework scans your Videos/ folder on next startup. No code is needed.
How it works
- Video scan: at plugin
Awake, walks BepInEx/plugins/*/Videos/* for supported formats.
- Screen takeover: a Harmony prefix on
DrivingRangeStaticCameraManager.ApplyCurrentCameraIndex
suppresses vanilla camera activation and drives the theater manually. Active video decodes into
an offscreen RT, then gets composited into the vanilla driving-range screen RT with a configurable
overscan-safe margin so the existing in-scene display path keeps working.
- Screen resolution: the mod upgrades the original shared
match_setup_camera_render_texture in place and rebuilds the six vanilla driving-range camera
caches against the chosen size. Supported client-local options are 1024, 1536, and 2048.
This keeps the hidden screen binding intact while improving final display sharpness.
- Forward button: the vanilla
nextCameraButton remains wired to
CmdCycleNextCameraForAllClients. The SyncVar currentCameraIndex still drives playback; the
mod just reinterprets the index against the video list instead of the camera list.
- Back button: at scene-start time the mod clones the forward button's GameObject, offsets it, and
swaps its
DrivingRangeNextCameraButton component for DrivingRangeBackCameraButton, which
sends TheaterCycleMsg { direction = -1 }. A server handler updates the SyncVar accordingly.
- Volume slider: a small pause-menu child panel shown while the pause menu is open and the theater
is active. The sliders write to BepInEx
ConfigEntry<float> values so volume and screen-fit
changes persist.
- Audio playback: FMOD sidecar audio starts when the active clip actually begins video playback,
then stays synced against the
VideoPlayer clock with periodic drift correction.
Building from source
Requirements: .NET SDK 7.0+, a Super Battle Golf install.
git clone https://github.com/Calen-Ray/SBG-driving-range-theater.git
cd SBG-driving-range-theater
dotnet build -c Release
The build copies the DLL into your r2modman Default profile automatically.
Packaging for Thunderstore
pwsh tools/package.ps1
Produces artifacts/Cray-DrivingRangeTheater-<version>.zip ready to upload.
Releasing
Automated via .github/workflows/release.yml — publishing a
GitHub Release uploads the attached zip to Thunderstore.
One-time setup. Add a THUNDERSTORE_TOKEN repository secret (Settings -> Secrets and
variables -> Actions). The token comes from
thunderstore.io/settings/teams/ under the Cray team.
Cut a release:
# 1. Bump version_number in manifest.json and add a CHANGELOG.md entry.
# 2. Commit + tag + push.
git commit -am "Release v0.2.0"
git tag v0.2.0
git push --follow-tags
# 3. Build the zip locally (CI can't build — hosted runners don't have the game DLLs).
pwsh tools/package.ps1
# 4. Create the GitHub Release with the zip attached; the workflow publishes on release.published.
gh release create v0.2.0 artifacts/Cray-*-*.zip --notes-file CHANGELOG.md
License
MIT, see LICENSE.
