How should I update a mod?

[TheInternetIsForThis]

Last weekend I posted a mod for a game, and it was approved and linked in the game's main page. I've been continuing to add to the mod, and was hoping to clarify some points before I potentially committed a faux-pas of some sort.

• Is it okay for me to edit the OP for my mod to update it? According to the survival guide, I shouldn't have edit access to anything beyond 15 minutes. However, both replies and my original post still appear to allow me to edit.
• Is it considered rude for me to reply to the game's main thread to let people know the mod has been updated/exists?
• Is it considered rude to reply to my own mod's thread to let people know that the mod has been updated? And if not, would it be considered rude if that would be a double-post?

I've poked around the various forums looking for stickies on the subject, but the closest I've found are the rules for game updates, which don't seem to be applied in the mod forum.

 

[Papa Ernie]

Last weekend I posted a mod for a game, and it was approved and linked in the game's main page. I've been continuing to add to the mod, and was hoping to clarify some points before I potentially committed a faux-pas of some sort.

• Is it okay for me to edit the OP for my mod to update it? According to the survival guide, I shouldn't have edit access to anything beyond 15 minutes. However, both replies and my original post still appear to allow me to edit.
• Is it considered rude for me to reply to the game's main thread to let people know the mod has been updated/exists?
• Is it considered rude to reply to my own mod's thread to let people know that the mod has been updated? And if not, would it be considered rude if that would be a double-post?

I've poked around the various forums looking for stickies on the subject, but the closest I've found are the rules for game updates, which don't seem to be applied in the mod forum.

"Yes, it's ok" to all questions.

Btw, if you haven't done it, you can create your own mod thread and then contact a moderator to add/update the link in the game's op. That way you'll always be able to edit the op of your mod thread at your leisure.
Mod Forum
Mod Uploading Rules

 

[anne O'nymous]

• Is it okay for me to edit the OP for my mod to update it?

Not only it's okay, but it's what you've to do. Basically speaking, each update should include :

• Update of the version shown on the mod thread's title ;
• Update of the mod version, mod release date, and supported game version, in the OP ;
• Update of the change log in the OP if there's one (recommended) ;
• Update of the link to download the mod.

• Is it considered rude for me to reply to the game's main thread to let people know the mod has been updated/exists?
• Is it considered rude to reply to my own mod's thread to let people know that the mod has been updated? And if not, would it be considered rude if that would be a double-post?

For both, the answer is no. But sometimes it can feel weird, therefore, personally, I include a detailed change log (in spoiler if it's in the game thread, to not annoy the readers not interested), and few words, to not looks like pure ads.
I do it for each update in the mod's thread, including the potential bug fixes. But for the game thread I limit to one message by update of the game itself ; the bug fixes and potential addition made in between being included in the change log of the next message.


I don't say that it's how you have to do it, but I never had bad feedback/comment while doing this. So, at least it's not the bad way to do it.

 

[khumak]

Not directly answering your questions since others have already responded to those. I just have a few additional suggestions based on experience with my own mod:

1. Set your mod up so that it does not require modifying the vanilla game's files and ideally so that it will work with any version of the game. This will make your life MUCH easier.

If the dev goes back and changes earlier content it could still break things for you but using my own mod for example, the last 4 or 5 updates of the vanilla game required zero changes by me for my mod to work with it. When I was changing the vanilla game's script directly, it took me hours to do an update each time there was a new version of the game.

2. Track your mod related variable changes in separate variables only used by your mod rather than modifying the vanilla game's variables. That way you're much less likely to break any vanilla events or have any future changes made by the vanilla game break your events.

As far as advertising for your mod I'm not really sure what the protocol is for that. In my case I would periodically make a post every month or 2 when I had an update for my mod that it had been updated and never got any complaints, but the OP never included a link to my mod so I'm not sure how many fans even knew it existed. Ideally I would have preferred to have the OP include a link to my mod so people at least knew it existed, but maybe the dev and/or OP didn't consider it worthy. Or maybe I just had to put in a request and didn't realize?

 

[TheInternetIsForThis]

Not only it's okay, but it's what you've to do. Basically speaking, each update should include :

• Update of the version shown on the mod thread's title ;
• Update of the mod version, mod release date, and supported game version, in the OP ;
• Update of the change log in the OP if there's one (recommended) ;
• Update of the link to download the mod.

For both, the answer is no. But sometimes it can feel weird, therefore, personally, I include a detailed change log (in spoiler if it's in the game thread, to not annoy the readers not interested), and few words, to not looks like pure ads.
I do it for each update in the mod's thread, including the potential bug fixes. But for the game thread I limit to one message by update of the game itself ; the bug fixes and potential addition made in between being included in the change log of the next message.


I don't say that it's how you have to do it, but I never had bad feedback/comment while doing this. So, at least it's not the bad way to do it.

Thank you for the detailed reply, that makes it much easier to move forward. I was already planning to do something fairly similar, so knowing the expectations makes it much easier.

Not directly answering your questions since others have already responded to those. I just have a few additional suggestions based on experience with my own mod:

1. Set your mod up so that it does not require modifying the vanilla game's files and ideally so that it will work with any version of the game. This will make your life MUCH easier.

If the dev goes back and changes earlier content it could still break things for you but using my own mod for example, the last 4 or 5 updates of the vanilla game required zero changes by me for my mod to work with it. When I was changing the vanilla game's script directly, it took me hours to do an update each time there was a new version of the game.

2. Track your mod related variable changes in separate variables only used by your mod rather than modifying the vanilla game's variables. That way you're much less likely to break any vanilla events or have any future changes made by the vanilla game break your events.

As far as advertising for your mod I'm not really sure what the protocol is for that. In my case I would periodically make a post every month or 2 when I had an update for my mod that it had been updated and never got any complaints, but the OP never included a link to my mod so I'm not sure how many fans even knew it existed. Ideally I would have preferred to have the OP include a link to my mod so people at least knew it existed, but maybe the dev and/or OP didn't consider it worthy. Or maybe I just had to put in a request and didn't realize?

Thank you for the advice. Entertainingly, seeing as I'm a long-term modder (Minecraft, Bethesda, Stardew Valley, assorted others), I did know most of this already. I've limited my changes to specific entrypoints, I'm keeping the updated copies of my files separate from the game files so I can easily compare them with a diff viewer in the event of an update, and I'm setting up the numeric block for my variables at 1000, which for the moment seems to be overkill since the base game is currently capping out at less than 100.

Based on how the game's content is implemented, I already know for a fact that I'll need to rebuild parts of my mod when the developer adds new content. Unfortunate, but unavoidable. Luckily, the only parts of the base game's content that I need to worry about updating are basically content indices, since I'm not touching the existing content for the moment.

 

[khumak]

Thank you for the advice. Entertainingly, seeing as I'm a long-term modder (Minecraft, Bethesda, Stardew Valley, assorted others), I did know most of this already. I've limited my changes to specific entrypoints, I'm keeping the updated copies of my files separate from the game files so I can easily compare them with a diff viewer in the event of an update, and I'm setting up the numeric block for my variables at 1000, which for the moment seems to be overkill since the base game is currently capping out at less than 100.

Based on how the game's content is implemented, I already know for a fact that I'll need to rebuild parts of my mod when the developer adds new content. Unfortunate, but unavoidable. Luckily, the only parts of the base game's content that I need to worry about updating are basically content indices, since I'm not touching the existing content for the moment.

I'm sure you'll be fine then. Sounds like you're more experienced with modding than I am. In my case what I did was to use a separate script file for my mod that used label overrides to redirect away from certain vanilla events (without changing vanilla files) to my mod and then just linked back to the vanilla game again at the end of my mod events.

There were still a few events that he would rarely change to add extra options in future updates so I had a list of like 5 events that I had to double check the vanilla script each time to see if he changed them but other than those I could be pretty sure that regardless what he changed I wouldn't have to do anything for my mod to work with it. Took me some effort to transition my mod to using that method but saved me a ton of time in the long run.

 

[TheInternetIsForThis]

I'm sure you'll be fine then. Sounds like you're more experienced with modding than I am. In my case what I did was to use a separate script file for my mod that used label overrides to redirect away from certain vanilla events (without changing vanilla files) to my mod and then just linked back to the vanilla game again at the end of my mod events.

There were still a few events that he would rarely change to add extra options in future updates so I had a list of like 5 events that I had to double check the vanilla script each time to see if he changed them but other than those I could be pretty sure that regardless what he changed I wouldn't have to do anything for my mod to work with it. Took me some effort to transition my mod to using that method but saved me a ton of time in the long run.

In my case, it's because the game is programmed with some assumptions. I can add new content (characters, towns, shops, etc), and they're all indexed by ID. Unfortunately, if I try to skip IDs with these, the game crashes. Fortunately, the game also doesn't store any town specific data. The save is just a bunch of numeric stats (by character), and a big list of true/false flags. So anytime the game adds new content, I'll have to pend my content to the end of the plaintext files it stores data in, and update the two data managers I had to patch because it made further assumptions with backgrounds and music. Beyond that, there's a third existing class I'm likely to modify, which will wind up being a case of pasting my functions into the class and editing a single big if chain in one function.

So yeah, work required anytime new content happens, but bugfix updates should generally be fine.