Unable to load modded files/Modded files do not load

[Chilled Legumes]

Hello!

This is a problem that I've had before, and was never able to figure out. I must be missing something, because the most basic of actions, having a file load into the game, everyone seems to be able to figure out how to do it, except me.

I've created a modded file; in this instance, i have replaced the categorybonus from 0.10 to 0.30 for specialist traits for scientists, which is essentially me copying everything from 00_scientist_traits.txt, cutting out the unnecessary traits, and changing the category bonus to 0.30

Now, when trying to load this into the game, after activating the mod, it doesn't do anything. I've changed the base game file to change the categorybonus and that does work.

So, the few questions that i have:

1) What am i doing wrong? Why is my mod having trouble running?
2) How can i tell myself when i'm doing something wrong? I've enabled debug output and it is not populating any file that i can find (i was looking in the log folder near where the mods go)
3) Anything else that I should know about?

I find it very unsettling that I am having issues that nobody else seems to be having, and that nobody can help me fix, considering my last thread with an issue like this was a bust :S

 

[Ekyman]

Your modded files need to be in their own folder. In the mod file you told the game they were in mod/Scientist Category Bonus Tweak, so you need to put the common folder inside a Scientist Category Bonus Tweak folder. Your mod file should not be in this folder. You should end up with mod/Scientist Category Bonus Tweak/common/traits/01_scientist_traits.txt and mod/Scientist Category Bonus Tweak.mod. Also, get rid of everything after Scientist Category Bonus Tweak in your mod file. The path in the mod file should only point to the top-level folder that all of your modded files are in, and then the internal layout of that folder should mirror the layout of the standard stellaris/ folder of the base game. The game will figure everything else out for you.

 

[Chilled Legumes]

Your modded files need to be in their own folder. In the mod file you told the game they were in mod/Scientist Category Bonus Tweak, so you need to put the common folder inside a Scientist Category Bonus Tweak folder. Your mod file should not be in this folder. You should end up with mod/Scientist Category Bonus Tweak/common/traits/01_scientist_traits.txt and mod/Scientist Category Bonus Tweak.mod. Also, get rid of everything after Scientist Category Bonus Tweak in your mod file. The path in the mod file should only point to the top-level folder that all of your modded files are in, and then the internal layout of that folder should mirror the layout of the standard stellaris/ folder of the base game. The game will figure everything else out for you.

I've edited the path variable, and that seems to have fixed it. Though I am thoroughly confused, because this is how it originally was created when i created the mod, and it did not load for me.

As for the rest of it, it only appears this way because of how i zipped up the mod contents, these were indeed inside of the folder required, with a second .mod file outside of the folder. I am not sure why it needs to be like this, maybe i was informed incorrectly? This was the instructions given in the "building your first mod" tutorial thread floating around here somewhere.

 

[Chilled Legumes]

So, now that I've fiddled around a little bit, I started realizing that some traits are being populated with the fix, and some arent. I think when the game loads my mod files, it is creating additional traits, not overwriting the existing ones.

is there any way to force them to overwrite/update existing, instead of creating new? Something like surrounding the script in an update block or something? I dunno.

 

[Ekyman]

Naming your file the same as the vanilla file will overwrite all the vanilla file. There's a way to force an overwrite by adding a line to the .mod file, but I'm on my phone and don't remember it (EDIT: you can overwrite stuff by adding replace_path to your .mod file. So to overwrite traits you can add a line with replace_path = "common/traits" (with the quotes). Then only traits that are defined in mod/yourmod/common/traits will be loaded.)

You only need one .mod file, and it has to be outside your mod's folder, in the root of documents/stellaris/mod. Every mod should put two things in that folder: a .mod file and a folder containing all of the new files which mirrors the layout of the game. The .mod file needs to point to the folder containing all of your modded files.