Create Mod Pack
Creating a new Mod Pack is designed to be a straight forward process that does not require a lot of effect to get your own Mod up and running. However, it also provides you with the tools needed to create a tailored experience that your users will thank you for. A single Mod Pack can easily contain your Mod and all of its variations, allowing you to reduce the overall Mod Pack size thanks to not needing duplicate files and giving users a single location for all the changes.
Accessing the window to begin creating a Mod Pack is easily found in the top left corner of Relink Mod Manager.
- Click on File.
- Select Create Mod Pack.
Note
Mod Packs do not support every language (though a lot are), if text appears as ? then the language used is not supported and it is strongly recommended that you translate your text into another language.
Every Mod Pack has the same basic metadata fields. Enter the following fields:
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Mod Name: To be displayed to users.
- Your final Mod Pack ZIP Archive can have a different name, but that's not recommended for user clarity.
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Description: For giving users a quick run down of your Mod's purpose or directions/information for it.
- If the text length is less than 128 characters and it does not include line breaks, the text will be shown on the same page as Mod Settings. Otherwise it gets displayed in a new dedicated Description tab in the Mod Details panel.
- Author: Is ideally your username on the Mod website this is going to be found on, but feel free to leave it as Unknown or whatever name you prefer to go by.
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Version: This should always be a number following the format pattern of
#.#.#However, you may technically use your own scheme or even leave it blank.- For clarity to users, it should follow the suggested pattern. Using
1.0.0is a great starting point for new Mods!
- For clarity to users, it should follow the suggested pattern. Using
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URL: If you want to allow your users the ability to click a button and jump to a website for your Mod, enter that here.
- URLs must be valid
http://orhttps://links and should direct to a page related to the Mod, resources for the Mod, or the Mod Author.
- URLs must be valid
Note
Only Mod Name is required but the more information you provide, the better the experience is for your users!
We're nearly to the fun part! In order to inform the Relink Mod Manager about what files you want to have in your Mod Pack, you'll need to click on the Set Directory button and select the root folder of where your potential Mod Files exist. To have the easiest time possible in future steps, it is strongly recommended that your directory be setup the same as how you intend the Mod Files to be installed into the game directory, starting with putting everything inside a folder named data.
For example, if we use the Mute Sierokarte and Parrot Mod, our ideal directory structure would look like the following:
Modding Workspace/MuteParrot/data/sound/English(US)/vo_np0200_m.bnk
Modding Workspace/MuteParrot/data/sound/Japanese/vo_np0200_m.bnk
With the above example, we would want to select the MuteParrot folder when using Set Directory.
Once that is done, the box under the Mod Files In Pack section will list out every file in that directory and make them selectable in the future steps of this process.
Note
This list is only updated when you perform Set Directory or Refresh Files. While you do not need to take any additional actions if you change the contents of a file after the list has been updated, you MUST use the Refresh Files button if you add or remove any files from the directory.
Lastly, you have the option of checking the box for Include Unreferenced Files In Mod Package. What this mean is, if you want to include preview screenshots, ReadMe documents, modder resources, or anything else that will not be installed to the game when a Mod Option is enabled, you should check this box. Otherwise, leave it unchecked and any file you end up not using in your Mod will not be included in the file ZIP Archive.
Tip
When files are referenced in your Mod Pack they will appear in 🟢 Green text in the file list. You can also hover over each file to see how many Mod Options are currently referencing a single file. If no Mod Options reference a file, it will remain in 🔴 Red text and not be added to the final Mod Pack unless the previously mentioned option is checked.
To keep your Mod Options neatly organized, you have Groups. Each Group has a Group Name and a Selection Type along with as many Mod Options as you want (covered in the next section).
Once you've entered a name in the New Group Name textbox and clicked the Add New Group (Green Plus) button, the Group will have been added to the bottom of your current list of Groups.
The next step is setting the Selection Type in the dropdown box. You have two choices here, either Single (Default), or Multi. While in Single Mode, users will be presented with a dropdown box during Mod Configuration and be able to only select a single option at a time from your list of Mod Options within this Group. If you use Multi however, users are presented with a checkbox for each Mod Option you provide and can enable or disable them in any combination they want.
Screenshot shows after a single option has already been added. You will have no options by default and must add them yourself per the Adding Options section below.
Important
When a Group Selection Type is set to Single and only one Mod Option is added, users will not be presented with any dropdown menu choice. Instead, that entire option is automatically connected to the overall Mod's enabled/disabled state.
This is useful for when you have a Mod with no actual options and just want it to be a simple on/off for the entire Mod. Or for when you want your Mod to have a base "these files are always applied when enabled" option, and then provide additional user customization options in a different Mod Group.
In this case, the name of the Mod Option and Group Name will not be present to users, so giving it a useful reference name is helpful. Ex: "Base Files"
Tip
There are Up and Down arrows to the right of each Group and Mod Option. These can be used to reorder their respective items in case you added something in the wrong order or wanted to adjust your lists. They can be pretty handy when you are editing an existing Mod Pack and adding new items into it as well!
Now it's time to actually provide Mod Options for your Group. Very similar to adding a new Group, look to the bottom of the Group you want to add an Option to and enter the Mod Option Name into the Add New Option textbox then click the Add New Option (Green Plus) button.
Note
There is a circle or box next to each Mod Option, just before the Mod Option Name, depending on what your Group Selection Type is set to. This controls what option is defaulted to in Single mode, or which options are enabled by default in Multi mode. You can change it to whatever order you want for each of your Mods.
Warning
The Red Minus buttons are for deleting the respective item next to them. Be careful not to delete the wrong thing. Everything here is saved in real-time and there's no undo!
To finish off the creation of the Mod Option, you now need to add Mod File and Game File Bindings to it. These bindings inform the Mod Pack which file from within the Mod should replace which file from within the Game installation.
To begin this process, click on the Edit Bindings (Orange Pen) button next to the Mod Option you want to create/edit the bindings for.
In this new Mod Option Bindings window, you can specify an Option Description to display when the specific Mod Option is hovered over by a user. In addition to the actual file bindings. You have two options for how to approach adding bindings to a specific Mod Option, either one file at a time via Add New Binding button or automatically add every single file at once to this via the Add All Unreferenced Files As New Bindings button. The first button is generally the easier approach for ensuring your Mod Option has only the desired files in it. Regardless of which you use, like everything else in this creation process you can click on the Delete (Red Minus) button next to a binding to delete it from the Mod Option.
For this example we will use the Add New Binding button.
After clicking the button, a single new binding will appear at the bottom of the current list and be waiting for you to configure it. Select the Mod File Path from the dropdown that you want this option to be bound to. This means when the option is enabled by a user, this file from the Mod Pack will be installed into the game directory (where in there is decided by the next step)
Now you decide what Game File this Mod File is going to replace via what you decide to enter into the textbox.
Every Game File Path should start with data\ to have the file end up in the game's data directory. If your directory structure was setup to mirror the game file that is to be replaced, you can click on the Copy Mod File Path Down (Blue Down Arrow) button to copy the current value of the Mod File Path down to Game File Path textbox.
Important
The Mod File Path does not need to match the intended destination for the file in any way. The file will be automatically renamed and placed in the path specified in Game File Path. This allows you to have variants of files bound to different Mod Options, allowing users to decide what variant of your Mod to install all from within a single Mod Pack.
For example, if we wanted to replace the Japanese voice over in the game with the English one using the above screenshot, we only need to set the Game File Path value to data/sound/Japanese/vo_np0200_m.bnk
Note
To aid Mod Authors in rapid iteration testing, if your Mod File Path ends with .json but your Game File Path ends with .msg, the Mod Manager will automatically convert the JSON file into MSG (MessagePack file) during the mod install step. Though, it is still strongly recommended to do this conversion from json to msg prior to including it in your Mod Pack to ensure you've correctly created the file that will be loaded by the game.
Once you've finished setting your bindings, you can close the window. As the window text will note, all changes you make are immediately saved and applied. You can reopen this window at any point in the future to make further adjustments.
Once you've finished setting all of your Mod Groups, Options, and Bindings, it's time to finally save your Mod Pack to a ZIP Archive file.
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Click on the Save Mod Pack button at the bottom of the window.
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Enter in a name for the Mod Pack (ideally using one that matches the Mod Name) and save it.
- Wait for the confirmation prompt that your Mod has been saved.
You've now successfully created a Mod Pack that's ready for importing into the Relink Mod Manager and distribution to other users. If you ever need to make changes to the completed Mod Pack, you can follow along with the guide for editing a Mod Pack.
Additionally, you can check out the guide on converting Mod Packs for other Mod Managers over to Relink Mod Manager Mod Pack versions. There's even a guided tutorial to show you step by step exactly how it's done!