Instant Text for Vampire: The Masquerade — Coteries of New York

Instant Text is a lightweight Vampire: The Masquerade — Coteries of New York mod that makes dialogue text appear instantly. It is a BepInEx 5 plugin for the VtM Coteries of New York typewriter effect, replacing the built-in Slow / Standard / Fast dialogue speed presets with a single-frame instant text mode while preserving dialogue advancement, choices, and audio triggers.

Features

• Instant dialogue text for Vampire: The Masquerade — Coteries of New York.
• BepInEx 5 plugin for Windows, Linux, and Steam Deck / Proton installs.
• Runtime F8 toggle with optional on-screen ON / OFF indicator.
• Preserves PixelCrushers Dialogue System typewriter events like onBegin and onEnd.
• MIT-licensed source for modders who want to inspect or adapt the patch.

Requirements

• Vampire: The Masquerade — Coteries of New York (Steam / GOG / Epic)
• BepInEx 5.4.x — Mono x64 for your OS (BepInEx_win_x64_*.zip on Windows, BepInEx_linux_x64_*.zip on native Linux, also BepInEx_win_x64_*.zip when running through Proton).

Install

1. Install BepInEx 5 by extracting its zip into the game's install folder so that BepInEx/, doorstop_config.ini (and the relevant launcher shim) sit next to VtM Coteries of New York.x86_64 (Linux) or VtM Coteries of New York.exe (Windows / Proton).
2. Launch the game once and quit — this lets BepInEx generate its config tree (on Linux you have to launch via the run_bepinex.sh script and update the executable_name variable in the script).
3. Copy InstantText/ from this release into BepInEx/plugins/, so the DLL ends up at BepInEx/plugins/InstantText/InstantText.dll.
4. Launch the game. Text in dialogue scenes should now render instantly.

Linux + Proton note

BepInEx 5 (Mono) works with Proton without extra steps for this game. Install the Windows BepInEx zip into the game folder. If startup feels sluggish on the very first run, set the Steam launch option:

WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winhttp=n,b" %command%

Configuration

After the first launch with the mod installed, edit BepInEx/config/com.copilot.vtmcony.instanttext.cfg:

Key	Default	Meaning
Enabled	true	Master toggle.
ToggleHotkey	F8	Press in-game to flip Enabled live.
ShowToast	true	Show a small on-screen "ON / OFF" indicator on toggle.

The hotkey takes effect immediately — newly started lines will render at the new speed. The lines currently being typed when you press it finish under the previous setting.

Build from source

Build requirements:

• .NET SDK capable of targeting net46
• Local reference assemblies in libs/; see libs/README.md
• zip and unzip on your shell path when using build.sh

Then run:

./build.sh

The script compiles src/InstantText.csproj in Release mode and writes the installable package to dist/InstantText-v1.0.0.zip.

Uninstall

Delete BepInEx/plugins/InstantText/. To remove BepInEx itself, delete the BepInEx/ folder and the BepInEx loader files (e.g. winhttp.dll / run_bepinex.sh) it dropped in the game folder. No save files are touched by this mod.

How it works

The game exposes typing speed through Settings.GetCurrentTypingSpeedValue(), whose int result is fed into the PixelCrushers Dialogue System typewriter via AbstractTypewriterEffect.SetSpeed(float) (chars-per-second). The mod adds two Harmony postfix patches:

1. Settings.GetCurrentTypingSpeedValue → returns 100000 when enabled, so any subsequent UpdateTypingSpeed call propagates "instant".
2. AbstractTypewriterEffect.SetSpeed → clamps charactersPerSecond to 100000 when enabled, covering any code path that bypasses the settings layer.

100000 is large enough to complete every dialogue line in the typewriter's first coroutine tick, but small enough to leave the if (charactersPerSecond > 0f) early-out untouched, so onBegin / onEnd and RPG-Maker-style pause tokens still execute correctly. Toggling at runtime invokes Settings.OnSettingsApplied, which re-pushes the value to every active typewriter.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.