Sims 4 Mod Archives

[rmm200]

I don't find this in the Knowledge Base.

Sims 4 mods have two components. Well three if you count script mods.

 

The Sims 4 / Tray contains custom content. Households, clothes, etc.

The Sims 4 / Mods contains regular mods in the form of .package files and script mods in the form of .ts4script files.

 

How should the archive be structured for successful installation?

If the high level archive folder is Mods, Vortex sticks these in Mods / Vortex Mods.

 

What happens to files at the top level of an archive?

 

How should custom content Tray files be packaged? Top level or in a folder called Tray?

Vortex does not create a folder called Tray / Vortex Tray.

[Tannin42]

Vortex will automatically detect if a mod contains stuff intended for the Tray directory based on a bunch of known file extensions.

It doesn't matter to Vortex if the mod is Tray exclusively or Mods, it should manage both correctly.

 

Now the algorithm by which Vortex unpacks those mods is a bit complicated because it tries to accommodate mods no matter how they have been packaged but basically it will use file extensions to figure out if a file should be in Tray or Mods.

 

e.g. if your mod contains files

/foo.package

/bar.blueprint

/narf.unknownext

 

then foo.package will be sent to Mods, bar.blueprint and narf.unknownext to Tray

If the layout had been

/a/bar.blueprint

/b/foo.package

/b/narf.unknownext

 

if would have put foo.package and narf.unknownext to Mods and only bar.blueprint to Tray.

 

If you have subdirectories, the files with a known extension determine where files in that directory go, in the second example "b/foo.package" told Vortex that the entire b directory should be unpacked to "Mods" including narf.unknownext.

If you have no subdirectories or a subdirectory contains known extensions for both Tray and Mods, the extension will determine where the file goes for each file individually with files with unknown extension defaulting to Tray (like narf.unknownext in the first example).

The directory tree gets flattened in this process, the files will end up directly in "Tray" or directly in "Mods/Vortex Mods"

 

All this however is only for mods containing any known "Tray" files, if the mod contains no files with a known Tray extension it is unpacked as-is to "Mods/Vortex Mods".

[rmm200]

Vortex will automatically detect if a mod contains stuff intended for the Tray directory based on a bunch of known file extensions.

It doesn't matter to Vortex if the mod is Tray exclusively or Mods, it should manage both correctly.

 

Now the algorithm by which Vortex unpacks those mods is a bit complicated because it tries to accommodate mods no matter how they have been packaged but basically it will use file extensions to figure out if a file should be in Tray or Mods.

 

e.g. if your mod contains files

/foo.package

/bar.blueprint

/narf.unknownext

 

then foo.package will be sent to Mods, bar.blueprint and narf.unknownext to Tray

If the layout had been

/a/bar.blueprint

/b/foo.package

/b/narf.unknownext

 

if would have put foo.package and narf.unknownext to Mods and only bar.blueprint to Tray.

 

If you have subdirectories, the files with a known extension determine where files in that directory go, in the second example "b/foo.package" told Vortex that the entire b directory should be unpacked to "Mods" including narf.unknownext.

If you have no subdirectories or a subdirectory contains known extensions for both Tray and Mods, the extension will determine where the file goes for each file individually with files with unknown extension defaulting to Tray (like narf.unknownext in the first example).

The directory tree gets flattened in this process, the files will end up directly in "Tray" or directly in "Mods/Vortex Mods"

 

All this however is only for mods containing any known "Tray" files, if the mod contains no files with a known Tray extension it is unpacked as-is to "Mods/Vortex Mods".

 

Tannin Thank you!

Any chance this text could be copied verbatim to the Knowledge Base?