Break Ankles 🦵💨

A silly Gang Beasts mod: press Right Shift (keyboard) or RT (gamepad) to do a quick backdash with a whoosh + a random meme sound effect. While backdashing you take 0 damage, so you can zip backwards right through a swinging punch. The dash has a 3 second cooldown for balance.

Local play only. The mod is fully disabled in online matches (can't be used to cheat / desync), and controls are read per-player from the game's own input system (Unity Input System) so it works for each local controller.

Requirements

• MelonLoader 0.7.x installed for Gang Beasts (needed for IL2CPP games)
  • Grab it from the Thunderstore Gang Beasts page
  • Run Gang Beasts once after installing MelonLoader so it generates the game's proxy assemblies
• The mod is standalone — no other mods required (Cement is not needed)

Install

Option A — Mod manager (r2modman / Thunderstore Mod Manager):

1. Download BreakAnkles-1.0.0.zip
2. Drag it onto your manager / import the zip
3. Enable it in the profile (make sure MelonLoader is in the same profile)

Option B — Manual:

1. Copy Mods/BreakAnkles.dll into Steam\steamapps\common\Gang Beasts\Mods\
2. Copy the UserData/BreakAnkles folder into Steam\steamapps\common\Gang Beasts\UserData\
3. Launch the game

Usage

• Each press = a quick backward step (slight hop) + whoosh sound + a random meme sound from your BreakAnkles folder.
• 3s cooldown between backdashes (shown by simply not triggering).
• Attacks that land while you are backdashing deal 0 damage.
• Backdashing just before a real attack hits logs BREAK ANKLES! in the MelonLoader console.

Settings (UserData/MelonPreferences.cfg or MelonLoader's settings)

• Enabled — master switch
• RequireIncomingAttack — false by default: you can always backdash; set true to only allow it when an attack is actually incoming
• LocalOnly — true: disables the mod online
• CooldownSeconds — time between backdashes (default 3)
• DashSpeed / HopSpeed — backdash strength & hop height (defaults 7 / 1.5 = a clean quick step, not a launch)
• IFrameSeconds — 0-damage window during a backdash (default 0.8)
• AttackRange — how close an attacker must be to count as "incoming" (meters)
• KeyboardButton / GamepadButton — Unity Input System control paths (defaults rightShift / rightTrigger)

Sounds play through Windows audio (system volume), not the game's volume slider — the mod bypasses the game's audio system entirely, since Gang Beasts strips Unity's web-audio decoder. This is what makes playback 100% reliable.

Adding your own sounds 🎵 — the meme folder

Drop any .wav, .ogg or .mp3 files into:

UserData/BreakAnkles/Sounds/Weave/          <- backdash "whoosh" sounds
UserData/BreakAnkles/Sounds/BreakAnkles/    <- random meme sounds (played each backdash)

Every file in each folder is loaded at startup and picked at random each backdash (never the same one twice in a row). Perfect for the "where are you going?", Duolingo "correct", ankle-snap and other memes. Two original synthesized samples ship with the mod so it works out of the box (a whoosh + a cheerful "correct!"-style chime with ankle snaps) — just replace the files with your own memes.

Format note: .wav files decode natively and always work. .mp3 (and most other media) is played directly through Windows — no conversion needed, even if the file has a misleading .wav extension (common with YouTube "download as .wav" tools — those are usually MP3s and still work). The one thing Windows can't decode out of the box on some PCs is .m4a (AAC) and .ogg — if one of those is skipped, convert it to .wav and it'll play. Sounds go through your PC's audio at system volume.

Building from source

Requires the .NET SDK (the mod targets net6.0 — the runtime MelonLoader 0.7.x runs on).

# Edit GameDir in BreakAnkles.csproj if your game is elsewhere, then:
.\build.ps1

This builds BreakAnkles.dll straight into Gang Beasts\Mods\, installs the sample sounds (without overwriting custom ones), and produces a ready-to-upload BreakAnkles-1.0.0.zip.

How it works (for the curious)

• Hooks Femur.StatusHandeler.AddDamage with a Harmony prefix: while the local player is inside the backdash 0-damage window, incoming damage is skipped — the attack does 0 damage.
• Watches each local actor's InputUser.pairedDevices for the rightTrigger / rightShift control (Unity Input System) — edge-triggered, per player, with a configurable cooldown.
• Scans Actor.CachedActors every frame for a nearby actor whose ControlHandeler attack flags (leftPunch, rightPunch, leftKick, rightKick, headbutt, leftGrab, rightGrab) are active — used only for the "BREAK ANKLES!" log + the optional incoming-attack-required setting.
• Applies the backdash as a short backward velocity step on the ragdoll rigidbodies (BodyHandeler.GetAllRigidbodies()).
• Refuses to run when GameManagerNew.CurrentGameType is not Local/LocalServer.

Troubleshooting

• On first launch, check the MelonLoader console:
  • "Break Ankles initialized!" + "Harmony patches applied (damage weave active)." → everything hooked.
  • If instead you see "Could not apply Harmony patches, using invulnerability-flag weaving only", the mod still backdashes + plays sounds, but the 0-damage window relies on the game's own invulnerability flag.
  • "Loaded N weave sound(s), M break-ankles sound(s)." → sounds found. If 0 of either, check the folders below.
• No sounds playing — check the folder names/casing at UserData\BreakAnkles\Sounds\Weave\ and ...\BreakAnkles\, restart the game, and watch the MelonLoader console for the "Loaded N weave sound(s)" line. .wav always works; .mp3 plays through Windows directly; only .m4a/.ogg files Windows can't decode are skipped (with a warning naming the file) — convert those to .wav.
• Backdash doesn't trigger on controller — make sure the controller is the one paired to your player (the mod reads the device the game assigns to that player). The control path rightTrigger is used by default.
• BreakAnkles.dll not found by MelonLoader — confirm the file is directly in Gang Beasts\Mods\, not in a subfolder.