7DTD - Mod deployment paths need updating.

[Pickysaurus]

Describe the bug Following an update to the game in April, the paths we deploy mods to need changing. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/251570/view/3190245530492775143

Mods are now loaded from /Mods (i.e. the folder that also stores saves, e.g. on Windows %APPDATA%/7DaysToDie/Mods) in addition to /Mods. In a future build this will change to only load from that new location so no data is written/changed in the program folder at any time.

In the latest update, prefabs have also changed location: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/251570/view/3371525557397399609

Due to Microsoft requirements, custom prefabs can no longer be saved directly to the game folder. They will be saved to the User Defined Folder (UDF). This default location is:

\AppData\Roaming\7DaysToDie\LocalPrefabs

To avoid having to re-save each POI one at a time in the prefab editor, all POI's currently located in...

\Steam\steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\Data\Prefabs

...should be manually moved to the UDF.

[Baradar67]

The UserDataFolder setting can be found in AppData\Roaming\7DaysToDie\launchersettings.json. { "ShowLauncher" : false, ... "UseNativeInput" : false, "AdditionalParameters" : "-UserDataFolder=C:\MyUserData" } }

[IDCs]

@Baradar67 thanks for providing the launcher settings file path.

Regarding item 2 from @Pickysaurus's post - as far as I can see we never actually supported prefab mods, at least not intentionally. Could you please help us identify a unique pattern to differentiate prefab mods from our other mod types.

Currently:

• We first test a mod for the existence of the "bepinex" folder, if the mod has that folder, we place the mod in the game's root directory (by the sound of things this may not function as intended in the future)
• If the first test fails, we look for the "modinfo.xml" file to identify if the mod is prefix-able and deploy it into the Mods directory.
• Any other mod archives that do not pass any of the other tests will be deployed as they are, also into the Mods folder (I'm assuming prefab mods worked with this pattern?)

Looking at prefab mods on the website, it looks like I could ensure that any mod that contains a .blocks.nim or .ins file could potentially be identified as a prefab, and Vortex could then deploy it as necessary. Can you please confirm that I can reliably identify prefab mods in this way?

[IDCs]

I'm not going to add prefab support unless someone confirms that I can uniquely identify those files as a prefab mod (i.e. regular mods do not contain any of those files)

[keywal]

I know this is 2 years late but I can confirm that mods where the .nim or .mesh files etc, need to be placed in the local prefabs folder as mentioned earlier. '\AppData\Roaming\7DaysToDie\LocalPrefabs' for example - https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/1440?tab=files

Just one point to mention. Other mods can include these file types but are usually another level deep and come with other files included. for example - https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/6253?tab=files

The ones we want in the local prefabs folder are nearly always within the first folder and do not come with 'ModInfo.xml'.