BusinessBridge Beta

Lets AI competitors open the custom business types that supported mods register, so modded businesses in Big Ambitions can face rivals just like vanilla ones.

Big Ambitions generates its AI competitors from templates that only know the business types the base game ships. A custom business added by a mod can therefore end up with its market to itself, because no AI rival ever opens one. BusinessBridge changes that for mods that integrate with it: a supported mod registers its business type, AI templates and layouts, and the game's AI can then open and run businesses of that type, in new cities and in existing saves.

It is infrastructure rather than a gameplay mod. BusinessBridge adds no businesses, products or stores of its own, and it does not find business mods by itself: a business mod gains AI competitors only when its creator has integrated it with BusinessBridge. High Ambitions is the current reference integration. Each provider mod decides which AI templates and building sizes the AI may use, so how much competition appears differs between mods and between cities.

BusinessBridge produces a diagnostic support bundle from inside the game. The bundle is anonymised as it is written, checked again before it is zipped, and it is the fastest way to get a problem here diagnosed: attaching one means versions, registrations, cache state and recent events are read automatically.

Why BusinessBridge exists

Let modded businesses compete like vanilla businesses. More businesses. More competition. Less duplicated development.

• For players: custom businesses from supported mods can take part in AI competition, instead of always leaving you a market with no rivals in it.
• For mod creators: one shared framework for AI integration, so a business mod does not have to build the same AI support from scratch.
• For the community: a common integration approach encourages compatibility between business mods, reduces duplicated development and makes custom businesses more attractive to play.

BusinessBridge was built as a separate framework on purpose, rather than inside High Ambitions, so that any Big Ambitions mod creator can use it. It handles registration, validation, AI template building, layouts, business logos and the city-load lifecycle, and reports every decision it makes. A creator registers their own business types, AI templates and a layout for each building size they support. The developer documentation and creator SDK are public, and integrations by independent creators are especially welcome: each one shows us where the documentation, the API or the creator experience can improve.

What to install

• Subscribe to BusinessBridge on the Steam Workshop and keep it enabled, together with the business mod that uses it.
• On its own, BusinessBridge adds no businesses and no AI competitors. It only takes effect for business mods that integrate with it. Of the mods on this site, High Ambitions requires it.
• Installing BusinessBridge does not add AI competitors to a business mod that has not been integrated with it. If you would like a particular mod supported, that is a request for its creator.

What's new in 0.1.0-beta.3

A compatibility update, built for Big Ambitions Build 3682. Update High Ambitions to 0.11.1-beta.1 at the same time. AI competitor registration, templates, layouts and saves behave exactly as before, and the creator contract is unchanged at beta-2, so the 0.1.0-beta.2 creator SDK remains current.

Aluna's Trainer compatibility

• A compatibility workaround for the HarmonyX runtime distributed with Aluna's Trainer. Aluna's Trainer distributes HarmonyX as the global 0Harmony assembly. The game keeps only one assembly under that name, so BusinessBridge 0.1.0-beta.2 could not add its category to the in-game Help sidebar while it was loaded.
• BusinessBridge now keeps its native Help integration in that environment. When the global Harmony cannot safely provide what it needs, BusinessBridge uses the shared BitFlip compatibility runtime, an isolated copy of the standard Harmony build that High Ambitions ships too, and if even that is not safe it adds the Help category without any patch. Aluna's Trainer and its HarmonyX are not replaced, modified, unpatched or disabled.
• Tested with the current Workshop versions of Aluna's Trainer, Aluna's Phone Pages and Aluna's City News running alongside BusinessBridge, High Ambitions and ImportFirst.

Compatibility notice and diagnostics

• The Help integration is optional and falls back on its own. Whatever happens to it, AI competitors for modded businesses are unaffected.
• If the Help integration genuinely cannot be enabled safely, an on-screen notice says so once per game session, confirms that AI competitors are unaffected and that the Help pages still open from Settings > Mods > BusinessBridge > Help, and recommends submitting a support ticket with your Player.log attached. The notice is never stored in your save.
• Player.log and BusinessBridge's own log now record which Harmony path the Help integration used and why, so support can see it straight away.

Fixed

• The Help sidebar entry is now removed properly when you leave a city and added again cleanly on the next city load, instead of being left behind and added a second time.
• Windows paths on the Troubleshooting page now show their backslashes.

Support

If BusinessBridge is misbehaving, open a ticket. No account is needed, and nothing you send is published. This project produces a diagnostic bundle: attaching it means the important details are read automatically instead of being asked for one at a time.

Report a problem with BusinessBridge

Building a mod that integrates with this?

BusinessBridge has a separate developer track: the registration contract, layouts, logos, version compatibility and a release checklist. It is kept apart from the player help on purpose.

BusinessBridge developer documentation