Installing mods locally

Users

As a user, you may want to install mods locally due to:

• The mod not being on Thunderstore.
• You can't connect to Thunderstore.

To install a mod locally, you have two options:

• Select your profile and "drag and drop" the zip file into your installed list.
• Select your profile and locate the "Install local mod" option in the settings as shown in the image below:

Developers

You may wish to provide users with beta releases of your mods prior to releasing on Thunderstore. This can be a valuable way to receive feedback and bug fixes prior to a major release.

Due to the amount of users who use r2modman, you may have received a request to provide a ManifestV2 zip. This is extremely easy to do, and if done correctly, it will even prompt an update to the Thunderstore release once uploaded, providing that the release number is higher than the locally installed one.

Providing a ManifestV2 version can also simplify the installation process, and prevent the need for written instructions.

What is a ManifestV2?

A ManifestV2 is a work-in-progress manifest specification for future Thunderstore uploads, which also conveniently provides extra information that r2modman requires to link it to a Thunderstore mod when possible.

This manifest specification can potentially change, as the specification is a work-in-progress.

What does a ManifestV2 look like?

A manifest in a V2 format is extremely similar to your existing manifest.json file. All information within your existing manifest exists in V2, however will have a different key.

An example manifest.json V2 file looks like this:

{
    "ManifestVersion": 2,
    "AuthorName": "Author",
    "Name": "Author-DisplayName",
    "DisplayName": "DisplayName",
    "Version": "1.0.0",
    "Licence": "",
    "WebsiteURL": "",
    "Description": "",
    "GameVersion": "N/A",
    "Dependencies": [],
    "OptionalDependencies": [],
    "Incompatibilities": [],
    "NetworkMode": "both",
    "PackageType": "mod",
    "InstallMode": "managed",
    "Loaders": [
        "bepinex"
    ],
    "ExtraData": {}
}

Remember that this is an example. You MUST edit this file to match your own mod.

Where does it go?

You'd simply replace your regular manifest.json with this new one. The file name and location within the zip are identical.

If you're still confused, feel free to contact me in the Thunderstore modding discord server @Ebkr#3660.

Note

This is to provide a managed installation for the mod via r2modman. It is not a convenient solution for testing your own mods. For testing your own mods, I'd recommend producing a symlink from the plugins folder to your output DLL.