Do i need to publish my mods in order to test them?

[otaviomsantos]

i have tried to just compress the mod file and boot up the game but it doesn't recognize the file in the mods folder. do i need to publish it in the mod portal to see if it works at all or is there a different way?

[Qon]

No, you don't need to publish it.

And you don't need to compress it either to test it. You have some bug in your mod or placed it in the wrong spot.

[picklock]

No, a mod does not have to be published on the mod portal for testing.
You don't even have to compress your mod. You can copy the uncompressed folder with the files and subfolders it contains into the mod folder and test the mod.

[Qon]

No, a mod does not have to be published on the mod portal for testing.
You don't even have to compress your mod. You can copy the uncompressed folder with the files and subfolders it contains into the mod folder and test the mod.

Thanks for bringing this up. I was reading through this thread but couldn't find this info anywhere. Though there were a lot of posts to go through so I might have missed some.

[otaviomsantos]

No, you don't need to publish it.

And you don't need to compress it either to test it. You have some bug in your mod or placed it in the wrong spot.

i see, i hope i figure this out in the next few days. thanks for the explanation

[Pi-C]

i have tried to just compress the mod file and boot up the game but it doesn't recognize the file in the mods folder.

I guess you've run into one of these problems:

• Unexpected mod name: If your mod is in a folder instead of a zip file, make sure that the folder name is correct! Assuming you have a mod "my-mod" and the version is "1.1.0", both "my-mod" and "my-mod_1.1.0" are valid folder names. It is important that "my-mod" is the same string as the value of field "name" in info.json. Likewise, if the folder name includes the mod version, the version number must be the same as the value of field "version" in info.json.
• Missing dependencies: Check Main menu --> mods to make sure that all mods you depend on are installed and active.
• Conflicting mod is active: As your mod hasn't been published to the mod portal yet, no other mod will have added a conflict with yours yet. However, if you've added a conflict to your own dependencies, and that conflicting mod is active, this could be the reason your mod doesn't load. There is also a chance that one of the mods yours is depending on can't be loaded because it conflicts with a third mod.

You should keep an eye on the file factorio-current.log in the root folder of your Factorio installation! Restart the game, then you'll see a list of all mods the game will load. If more than one version of the same mod is available, the log file will also tell you which version it has picked. The game will use the version with the highest version number by default (can be changed by adding a "version" field to your mod's section in file mods/mod-list.json) , and it will always prefer the unpacked folder over the zip file.

[otaviomsantos]

i have tried to just compress the mod file and boot up the game but it doesn't recognize the file in the mods folder.

I guess you've run into one of these problems:

• Unexpected mod name: If your mod is in a folder instead of a zip file, make sure that the folder name is correct! Assuming you have a mod "my-mod" and the version is "1.1.0", both "my-mod" and "my-mod_1.1.0" are valid folder names. It is important that "my-mod" is the same string as the value of field "name" in info.json. Likewise, if the folder name includes the mod version, the version number must be the same as the value of field "version" in info.json.
• Missing dependencies: Check Main menu --> mods to make sure that all mods you depend on are installed and active.
• Conflicting mod is active: As your mod hasn't been published to the mod portal yet, no other mod will have added a conflict with yours yet. However, if you've added a conflict to your own dependencies, and that conflicting mod is active, this could be the reason your mod doesn't load. There is also a chance that one of the mods yours is depending on can't be loaded because it conflicts with a third mod.

You should keep an eye on the file factorio-current.log in the root folder of your Factorio installation! Restart the game, then you'll see a list of all mods the game will load. If more than one version of the same mod is available, the log file will also tell you which version it has picked. The game will use the version with the highest version number by default (can be changed by adding a "version" field to your mod's section in file mods/mod-list.json) , and it will always prefer the unpacked folder over the zip file.

The mod is working now, for some reason it wasn't recognizing the zip file, but it did read the folder just fine. After that i just had to iron out misspells and missing icons that i forgot to add