Alpha 20 Updating a mod

[ERIDIUM12]

Afternoon all, I'm asking a question just in relations to modding. Ive recently got into modding and a friend of mine has released a good mod. But we cannot figure out how to add updates to the mod without forcing people to have to download the entire mod repeatedly. Especially since we just wanna add some items or new creatures, animations, game crashing bug fixes, etc. Please any advice you have would be really appreciated.

[doughphunghus]

"But we cannot figure out how to add updates to the mod without forcing people to have to download the entire mod repeatedly"

You will have to make a "server side mod" (which is what its being called), meaning it contains no content that cannot be sent from the server to the clients.

Basically, the mod can't contain any new icons or 3D models or sounds or blocks (any unity.3d files containing new assets don't sync basically)

Things that *are* synced from the server to the client (inside a mod):

- Any .xml or Localization.txt file inside the mod's /Config folder

- The "ModInfo.xml" file at the base folder of the mod

- POI's (inside the mod), probably uncommon but I'm including it.

 

I'm not 100% sure, but you may also have to be running 'a real server" for the game and not just hosting the game on your PC, but it sounds wrong so maybe someone can correct me on if you have to run a real "game server" for clients to get server side mods pushed to them.

 

Anyway,

for "making new items", you basically have to re-use an existing item icon (like if you wanted a "pencil" you could choose to have that icon be the ...errr... dart trap ammo.  To make it a bit "nicer" you can also tint the icon ( in the XML) to be yellowish so its more pencil looking.  Then you can put the item and description text in Localization.txt to make it say "Pencil" and whatever you want for the description.

 

If you want some example mods to look at that are purposefully server side mods, I have a few (steal/borrow/use any of the xml or parts you want):

You've got mail

sous-chef-of-the-apocalypse

 

ALSO: if you want to have nice icons, you can make sure all the "items" you want are in the mod (any new item added with a new icon will need an update for everyone!), and use "default" icons for them (with the tinting trick). Then, you make another mod that overrides the icons to add the "nice" ones.  This way you can have a server side mod "working" and then choose to add the icons once its "done " (or less frequently) if you want them.  An example is the icon mod for the "Sous Chef of the Apocalypse" mod:

sous-chef-of-the-apocalypse-client-icons which I added for anyone * server side people as well) to add the icons if they wanted HOWEVER the icon pack mod must be loaded on all clients, since the icons don't sync.  If you think "hey, I'll add the icon mod, and then if the client doesn't load it, then its ok they won't get the special icons" this is wrong and will not work, because the "client icons XML" sent from the server is pointing to the new icons and you can't have a "use the icon, but if its not on the client use the default" in a mod (yet. it would be really nice to have this feature if you're not going to allow the icons on the server to sync with clients.).

 

Edit: If you choose to have the "server side mod" and tehn a "client icons mod" for it, remember that mods load in alphabetical order first! The client icons mod must load after the server side mod.  The easiest (well, IMHO) is just to name both mods the same and append some text to the icon mod.  As an example of the Sous chef mod, I added '-client-icons' to the mod name, so it loads right after the main Sous chef mod to add/override with the icons.

 

Edit: just to be clear, for your "Especially since we just wanna add some items or new creatures, animations" this same 'double mod" trick may work for adding creatures/assets. just have "defaults" in your main mod, and then override them in your second mod to use the assets (if you can). Sure, you might have a "horse" entity and have it running around as a default "large dog" (before deploying the override) but it might make bugfixes and other things easier as you may not have to redeploy if those changes/fixes are not related to unity.3d assets