The AAA-Optional Mod Naming Standard [version 0.1]

[nikosthefan]

I came up with this after reading this post from @Aviex so I am going to give him partial credit.

Whenever a game gets a lot of mods, those individuals (I know I am sometimes prone to this) who tend to install lots of them get a very messy mods folder. That is why I am proposing an optional naming convention to sort all mods in your mods directory.

This is the form I am currently proposing:

AAA-[category]-mod_name_chosen_by_author.smod

Explanation of the individual parts:

AAA

This ensures all mods named using the AAA Standard will be sorted from those that weren’t named using the standard. All AAA-named mods will sort at the top of the mods directory.

Summary

This ensures all mods of a certain category (like biome, UI, or campaign) are grouped together, based on alphabetical order. We could let it do its thing, or we could hold a brainstorm session to come up with a good list of standardized categories.

Mod-name-chosen-by-author.smod

Current naming standard. Self explanatory.

So what do all of you think about this? Is it worth the effort? Does it need to be improved?

• I don’t think this is a good idea
• I think the change will be to big to make
• I am for this change

Show results

• The convention should be a AAA-standard
• The convention should be a ZZZ-standard

Show results

• We need a standardized list of categories
• Letting all authors decide on the category names will work out fine

Show results

[details=On standardized categories]I don’t think a new post beow is necessary for this. For me in this tatement, that is,I don’t ant to shut the conversation down on this.

The reason I thought standardized (or actually recommended categories) is that, if you let mod authors free to come up with their own labels, that it then would become uncoordinated. This means you could have 6 different varieties of mods that change a thing in the UI, because of a whole lot of reasons from the words used to describe the mod type, to differences in spelling. For a naming convention that aims to overviewably (for the lack of a better word) sort mods and group them together based on content, that might not be a good design choice to make.
On the other hand, making a recommended list of categories will take a lot of time, effort and discussing to make right (that means both covering all kinds of mods, and beeing nuanced (and coarse) enough for everyones taste) which is very difficult to do, especially considering that every change after version 1.0 will be difficult to make.[/details]

For those who want to use this, I would advise waiting a few days with making the change while the convention improves to version 1.0

[MoonSight]

I like the idea

It will be one hell of an update for existing mods though, many file paths go somewhat like
["{mod name}/entities/furniture/item.json"]

So for mods using that will mean having to change all {mod name} paths to the changed name, though, i think there may be a program for that, also, i think you can just skip the {mod name} path, i might just be inefficient enough to actually do that

for small mods that’s just a rather small edit, but i would doubt it for bigger ones like the settlement decor and cafe mod, but again, i could be wrong

Well, someone’s gotta start it, might as well do it myself, i believe in such conventions to be worth it, so i’ll go ahead and change some paths for my Tiny little Ballista mod

Thanks for reminding me though, i stumbled accros that post a while ago, just forgot about it since i didn’t have a mod then

Edit: also, i’d personally prefer ZZZ-name

I personally prefer mods being on the bottom of sorting, that’s just me though, i’ll follow the general notion on this one

[nikosthefan]

@Hyrule_Symbol

Edit: also, i’d personally prefer ZZZ-name

I will put it into a poll.

Also note that this is still the first version.
I haven’t gotten enough feedback on whether we need standardized categories (in which case I will have to do some pondering) or whether it is best to let authors free.
bacause of this, I would advise on holding off on changing it for a few days. As you said, changes are not easily made, so it is best to make the convention good now, as supposed to later.

[Raze]

@nikosthefan

standardized categories

I think so, yes. Standardized categorie should make sorting your mods much easier and maybe make it easier for websites and threads to make mod lists etc…

I just tried this change on my own mod and it works out kinda well. Even fixed some mistakes where I had typos in the links

[MelOzone]

I’m not sure we need either AAA or ZZZ. Putting square brackets in the beginning of the name works just fine, and I doubt there will be mods not using this convention but having square brackets in their filename.

Also, I don’t think we need a strict list of categories. What I suggest is a list of “recommended” categories. This way we can motivate to use the same categories and make a publicly accepted “standart” without forcing users.

[nikosthefan]

@MelOzone

Also, I don’t think we need a strict list of categories. What I suggest is a list of “recommended” categories. This way we can motivate to use the same categories and make a publicly accepted “standart” without forcing users.

I agree. I did not put much effort into thinking about how to put it in to words well. The emphasis of the idea (when I wrote it down) lies in the list part. I agree the way you phrase it is the right way of doing so.

P.S. maybe it has to be said, maybe not, i don’t know. I don’t actually think I can force anything on anyone, nor do I want to do that. Even if I were to put in a strict standardized list and told everyone they had to comply with it, people could still decide to do however they please, and I could do nothing about it. That’s for the better though.

[MelOzone]

To be clear, I wasn’t assuming you intend to do that. I just pointed out that from my experience self-regulating societies are more promising than “vertically” regulated ones. As for “forcing”… it’s quite easy: create a mod portal that offers predefined categories to put your mod into. I can name Skyrim Nexus as an example of such “vertically” regulated mod site. As much as I like Nexus, moderating such a place with limited human resources is a pain.
On the other hand, we have imageboard-driven image collections (like *booru sites) where users agree on a certain list of tags and assign them themselves. It also needs moderating, but generally categorizing is handled by users, many of them have the itch to put things in order, so admin work is limited to keeping peace and server running

[nikosthefan]

So I’ve had some pondering on the categories over the last few months.
The first thing I want to present is a change from the AAA-standard (which is the one you prefer over a ZZZ one, according to the poll) to a [category]-standard. It should have the same effect on the sorting, so I don’t think a poll is necessary. (Just say it if you want a vote on that). The reasons for the change are that:

a. It has the same effect on the sorting
b. It makes the convention simpler, by eliminating the AAA part, which didn’t actually convey info, and just sorted things.

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The main issue I had when coming up with categories was that I wanted all types of mods to be represented, while also being able to group small addition mods together.
The basic problem was the question of what [biome] should mean, does it mean just the biome-addition mods, or all mods related to biomes.

It may make sense to have it mean all biome-related mods, because that is what the name says. But I personally wanted it to be all biome addition mods, because all mods that don’t add biomes, but are related to them, can be small modification mods for existing biomes, which is arguably differnt from mods that add entire biomes. There were more places where this happened.

The second thing I want to present is my solution for this problem. This is it:

• Instead of one category label, every mod gets two.
• so instead of [biome] it becomes [mod][biome] or [add][biome] (depending on the mod type).
• There are multiple front tags, the most improtant two being: [add] and [mod]
• [add] are for mods that add things to the game, while
• [mod] are for mods who modify existing things already in the game.
• there are others, which are outlined below.
• So mods that add furniture would get the [add][items]name prefix, while a mod that remodels existing furniture would get the [mod][biome]name prefix.

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Now, for the categories.

In the front categories , there are the following categories

• [add]
  for if your mod mainly adds things. The Doorway mod would be a typical [add] mod.
• [mod]
  for if your mod mainly modifies the game. As a rule of thumb, when your mod adds new gameplay mechanics, it will generally be a game modification.
• [theme]
  reserved for (generally) big mods, that both add lots of stuff and modify the game a lot, generally making the changes/additions around a central theme. Frostfeast and Candledark are good examples.
• [fix]
  mods that fix , or try to fix ‘bugs’.
• [test], [hack] and [wip]
  self explanatory
• [core]
  reserved for official Radiant mod folders, like stonehearth.smod or radiant.smod
• [plug-in]
  for plug-ins
• [pack]
  if ever there will be collections of mods that go around a theme, then the front label [pack] can be used. The secondary label will be the name of the pack that it belongs to.
• [asset]
  for unintegrated assets folders, like folders full of models or animations, textures or sounds. Just in case that is ever needed.

Within the [add] category, there are the following categories:

• [biome]
• [model] voxel models and potentially the accompanying animations
• [life] life forms
  • [creature] moving life, like goblins, or racoons
  • [nature] stationary life, like trees
• [object] non life forms
  • [item] things like talismans or other non-placable stuff
  • [furniture] placable stuff
• [story] or [quest] or [campaign] for mods that add storyline
• [misc]

Within the [mod] category, there are the following categories:

• [biome] mainly changes in world generation, water changes would fall under this
• [UI]
• [AI]
• [architecture]
• [combat]
• [nature]
• [storage]
• [technology], [tech] or [code] under the hood coding stuff
• [misc]
• [text] language and localisation mods

within other front categories, it is preferred to use secondary labels already used above. (for consistency reasons.see “on standardized categories in my top post”)

The categories themselves are, of course, up to debate.