(This is also a gamebanana guide)[gamebanana.com]
join the +r discord to find mods!![discord.gg]

@chloegoaty, @blueribbs

@alt_ohdude, @terminetor566

@mitzutsune, @crossmirage

madine#6795, bleach#0233

@tron7_, @stereosounds

...can be done in 2 ways, via PalMod or via ACR_IM!
PalMod can edit all data, edit effects, display external/custom previews, and has more editing tools. However, ACR_IM lets you share palettes online, so really we want to setup both.

From Steam, select the cog, Manage > Browse local files to be brought to your games Root folder, it's important to know how to get to here.


Download the zip containing a .bat and .exe from gamebanana[files.gamebanana.com]. Extract these files into your Root folder, it should look like this.


Now, we can run PlusR2025.bat and let it do its thing. Once complete you'll have 2 new folders, Mods and Shortcuts.
Mods is where you should be putting any DLL mods you download (make sure the modloader itself is next to GGXXACPR_Win.exe!)
Other mods (sprite mods, palette packs, music mods) should be placed into the Resource folder. This might mean putting the mods own Resource folder into the Root folder, which will then merge them together. You should avoid having Resource\Resource\pr\etcetc.


Now we can get PalMod!
https://zachd.com/palmod/releases/
Download either the latest .zip or .exe, I suggest the .exe as it handles shortcuts for you.
Now that we have PalMod downloaded, we can open it and load the game. Select File::Load Directory::Guilty Gear::GGXXAC+R (Steam, Characters).


From here, we will have to manually find the Root folder. Check your File Explorer window to find where to go, and then select the Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R folder, hit OK, and your palettes will load!


Side tangent, if you have any sprite mods installed or anything that messes with character bins, you'll get this warning telling you about it. If you see this and the Core Palettes look fine in PalMod, you can safely ignore it. Extras will not work and you shouldn't edit them.

Once you have the game loaded, you can pick the Character, Type, and then Slot. EX Characters are loaded with the EX Character game option, they're not in this list.


Clicking the v lets us pick our character from a dropdown menu, lets go with Chipp and load someones palette onto Default Punch. From Tools::Load Palette, we can pick a lot of files, but the most common are .act and .png files. .pngs are best, since you can see the palette, but .act will always work.


sexy chipp palette by @yatoto on discord

Now, we can select File::Patch changes, load up +R, and when we select Chipp's Default Punch palette we will get these colours!

PalMod is split between 2 windows, the main/palette window and the preview window. If you don't like how they overlap with each other, there is a setting later to change this.
Each colour is a "tile", and those tiles are setup to have gradients between colours, which create shading on the image. We want to try and stick to that order

Select a single tile with Left Mouse Click, or drag the mouse across multiple to select a bunch at a time. You can also Ctrl+LMC on individual tiles anywhere on the tile to add them to your selection (or RMC to deselect them)
With tiles selected, you can use

• RGB sliders - to add/remove Red Green or Blue
  
• HSL sliders - to change Hue (the tint/colour), Saturation (how vivid it is) and Lightness (how bright it is)
  
• R<->G, G<->B, R<->B - to swap values around. Note that this can be laggy with +R for some reason
  
• R<-G<-B, R<-B<-G - to cycle the values around. Also laggy
  
• Invert - inverts the colours. Also laggy
  
• Blink - blinks the colour, either inverting it for a second or using the set blink colour. can also be done with ctrl+b
  
• "Pick Color" - brings up a colour picker menu, similar to art programs
  
• Use Ctrl+Shift+V to paste the colour under your mouse into the tiles

Lets drag over 3 tiles, and use HSL to make them blue instead of red.


That's the basics of how to do stuff, but you should experiment! Everyone does things a bit differently.
Personally? I like to start with flat shading, then manually add in shadows to have really good control over the final result.


If you wanna share this palette, you can save as a .act (via Tools::Save Palette) or as a png from the preview window. speaking of preview window!

In the preview window, clicking and dragging will move the image around, this is nice if you've zoomed in (with the mousewheel) to get a better look at the sprites.
From Setttings, you can change the background colour, background image, blink colour, blend mode (dont worry about this) and some other settings. This is also where you can disable the inverting effect of blink if you prefer solid colours (I do)

From here, you can use File::Export Image, then File::Save to share PNGs of your palettes.


Side tangent, clicking on colours will also select them in the main window, and I have issues with this. The colour picking via preview implementation isn't great for +R, it was built for older games and so it has some issues here. It can be fine sometimes, but I suggest getting into the habit of using blink to find things. You can disable it with Settings::Clicks show color in palette.

This is also where you can load custom textures/previews. If the image is a .raw or indexed .png, you can use it as a preview in palmod. Most images exported from PalMod are indexed .pngs. I can do a proper custom preview creation guide if that's something people are interested in.

(this section is going to get more detail as tools are better setup for it, this is the bare basics to get things working online)

ACPR Improvement Mod was recently released, and allows you to use custom palettes online! Anyone else who has the mod installed will see your palettes, and you can see theirs.
I'm not going to go over everything ACR_IM does (it's a lot), only the palette related stuff.
HUGE thanks to DPS-FGC for this release its really cool

Download the Online .7z file from the GitHub release page[github.com]. From here we wanna extract the files into the Root directory, this will unfortunately clutter your folder a ton. The only file you should be worried about here is palettes.ini, that's important.


Now when you boot +R, you'll get a banner at the top to let you know it's installed.
Pressing F1 at any time will open the menu, and we want to do this in training mode to setup palettes.
Expanding Custom palettes shows a few options, clicking Player 1 or Player 2 will let us manually set their palettes from our saved files. In an online match you'll have the option to disable the other players palette if you don't want to see it.


Clicking Palette editor will pop out this menu, letting us edit and save CFPL files directly from the game.


I'm not going to go into detail on how to use this editor, mainly because I don't like it (sorry!) but it is useful for saving CFPL to use for online play.

Palettes modified in the ROM via PalMod are handled automatically by ACR_IM, meaning any edits you make will be shared online without needing to do anything.
If you're not using .cfpl files, they will be shared as [SteamUsername]_[Slot].cfpl.

To use CFPL files, you'll want to make the palette like normal. Select File::Patch Changes, then Tools::Save Palette.

Name and save the file, make sure you save to the correct character folder under ACR_IM\Palettes\ !

Then we can give the CFPL file it's displayed name, along with an author and description.

You can also import CFPL files into PalMod, select Tools::Load Palette, load the file and select a slot to overwrite with it.


Now in +R, pushing F1 to open the ACR_IM menu, clicking Palettes and Player 1/2 will let you select the CFPL file!

If you don't want to do this manually, you can automatically assign CFPL files to palette slots with the palettes.ini file.

By editing the palettes.ini file you can avoid having to manually select palettes. This uses the file name and an index number. When writing the file name for CFPLs, exclude the ".cfpl" part

[Axl]
1="Default"
3="CFPLExample"

This setup will have the Axl Slash palette use the example we just used, without need to selecting anything in ACP_IM.
The index numbers are,
1 Default P
2 Default K
3 Default S
4 Default H
5 Default D
6 EX P
7 EX K
8 EX S
9 EX H
10 EX D
11 Slash P
12 Slash K
13 Slash S
14 Slash H
15 Golden
16 Reload P
17 Reload K
18 Reload S
19 Reload H
20 Shadow
21 Slash D
22 Reload D

Some characters have some pretty severe limitations, Johnny and Eddie being good examples.
By using sprite mods, you can avoid using the base sprites with horrible linking and instead of better sprites with more customisation options. Theres a proper guide here[gamebanana.com]!
These mods also include effects in the character palette, meaning you can have a unique set of Sol fire and Slayer effects for each colour.
I HIGHLY suggest using these over the base character sprites, you can do a lot more with them.