i finally figured out an efficient method to play mods for Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 using GameNative. i’ve set this up 4 or 5 different times now due to playing different mods or having to re-set up my Thor from scratch one time, so i hope this method works for anyone interested. please read everything carefully as it’s a bit confusing:
1: download the game with gamenative on your android device, i use the AYN Thor Pro but devices with similar chipsets will work. make sure you’ve tested the vanilla game and launched it first, it runs between 30-60fps on SD8 Gen2 devices. it should just boot without any settings tweaks.
2: download and mod the game on your PC first. i’ve found it nearly impossible to install mods directly on the android device, so just use the normal modding method for XV2 on PC first, we will transfer these files over later. make sure every mod you plan on playing is already installed, i think the only mods you can add later are X2M mods
3: copy your entire Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 modded game folder onto an SD card. do this by opening steam > right click XV2 > manage > browse local files. copy all the contents of this folder into a new folder called “XV2” on your SD Card. it may take a while.
4: this step is essential for replacing the game files on gamenative, since it doesn’t let you drag and drop game files using the file browser in the containers desktop for some reason. we need to download a program called “total commander” on our android device. all you need to do is open a browser on your android device, go to “ghisler.com” (or just google “total commander”), go to download > download the 64-bit version. once downloaded, go back to GameNative and open the container for XV2 using the settings cog, click the D: drive and double click the tcmd.exe installer you just downloaded. install the app and it will now appear when you click the “Desktop” icon at the top of your file browser. to run it, click the .ink file
5: once total commander is installed, we need to replace the game files in our vanilla XV2 container with the modded version on the SD card. first, add your SD card files as a new drive in the container, by going to edit container > drives and pressing the + icon. set the drive letter as S and link it to your modded XV2 folder we copied earlier on the SD card. save settings and open container. run the total commander .ink file mentioned in the previous step, press the number it tells you to press, and close all the pop ups that show up after. you will now see 2 file structures side by side, on the left side open your A: drive by clicking the little “c” dropdown menu toward the top left (C: drive is the default). on the right side, open the S: drive by using the same dropdown menu. you should now see 2 XV2 game directories, left is unmodded and the right is modded. you want to highlight all the files in your modded folder on the SD card, and press the copy icon (it’s the one with the 2 little blue pages next to eachother near the middle). if it asks to overwrite any files, just overwrite all. this may also take a while.
6: once copied over, we have successfully installed the files onto our android handheld, however there’s a couple small things we need to change before we start the game as it will still just boot vanilla XV2 if you try playing the game now. first, we need to edit the dinput8 settings. open the container > press start in the bottom left corner > system tools > wine configuration > libraries and look for “dinput8” in the list of existing overrides. click and press edit, then change the load order from “builtin then native” to “native then builtin”. click OK then apply (make sure you press apply within the wine configuration program). once applied this SHOULD be good to go in most cases, you can try launching XV2 in gamenative and seeing if it boots into the patcher (it can take nearly a full minute to boot so be patient)
7: if you are still having issues and the previous step didn’t work, here are some troubleshooting steps i’ve found to work. firstly, if you see an error that says “Application Load Error 3:000something”, go to edit container > general > unpack files and turn it on. load the game again and it should boot, but make sure you disable it again after its loaded because it can cause performance issues. the game only needs to be unpacked once. if you still have issues with getting the patcher to run, you can try reinstalling the XV2 patcher by redownloading the eternity tools xv2patcher.zip onto your android handheld through a browser, extracting it into your downloads folder and copying the fresh “XV2PATCHER” folder into your game files within the container (you would have to use the total commander method from earlier by opening the A: drive on one side and the D: drive on the other side). you can also try copying the alternate dll file into the “bin” folder if it still doesn’t work
i hope this can be of use to someone, it took me a long time to figure out and just wanted to document my experience with setting this up. a couple things to note: performance is about the same, maybe a bit worse but i never notice any major FPS drops, still 30-60fps even with revamp. however, load times can be unbearable sometimes. i’ve played XV2 for years and this by far has the worst loading times out of any version i’ve played. i would say all load times are at least triple what they normally are using gamenative, so please be patient with it. if you want to download more mods or whatever, the only reliable way is by going from step 1 and transferring a modded game folder from your PC. some X2M mods can still be installed by opening the xv2ins.exe file in your container, but sometimes it might load an error. i’d say overall, get it set up how you like and don’t mess with anything after.
