How/where does the game keep track of enabled and disabled mods?

[tauceti]

I'm getting tired of trying various methods to manage per-server mod profiles and always ending up with jankiness and duplicated mod files that I don't need bloating my hard drive. All I need is checkbox profiles. All my mods stay in my mod folder at all times, and simply which ones are ticked off are changed based on the profile. Since for some reason this hasn't been implemented into the vanilla game yet (the closest thing is the Early Mod Toolkit and even there it results in duplicates for mods I use on each profile), I need to know: how does the game's mod manager keep track of which mods are enabled or disabled? What file should I look for? This way, I would be able to swap that file out for another one to easily remember and change which mods should be active.

[LadyWYT]

25 minutes ago, tauceti said:

per-server mod profiles

I know that server mods are stored in their own special folders in the ModsByServer folder in VintagestoryData; each server will have its own folder. You shouldn't need to mess with those folders at all, save for the occasional check to delete old mods in the event a server updated its modlist, or to delete the folder of servers you no longer are going to play on.

Singleplayer mods are what is stored in the Mods folder. I'm not sure how the mod manager tracks which mods are enabled or disabled, but generally your singleplayer modlist won't interfere with whatever you're doing in multuplayer. As for a proper mod manager to make swapping lists easy...I want to say there's a couple out there, but I'm not sure of the names, nor of their effectiveness. I do know that the ability to switch modlists is a highly requested game feature though.

[Echo Weaver]

2 hours ago, tauceti said:

All I need is checkbox profiles

YES PLEASE. We have official word that mod profiles are on the horizon.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Singleplayer mods are what is stored in the Mods folder. I'm not sure how the mod manager tracks which mods are enabled or disabled, but generally your singleplayer modlist won't interfere with whatever you're doing in multuplayer.

I don't find this to be true, and it bugs me.

Mods in your personal mod folder are still loaded when you connect to a multiplayer server, and the client-side features are run. This is good if you have some client-only mods (I'm a big fan of Simple HUD Clock) that you don't want to play without, but if you keep all the mods in your mod folder that you play in single-player, it can bork things up with the mods being used by the server. I run a separate version of VS with no mods at all that I use to connect to multiplayer servers.

Secondly, multiplayer is designed for all mods to be available on ModDB and auto-downloaded from there. You can side-load mods, but it's a hassle -- you have to find the correct folder in your ModsByServer folder, and those folders are named by IP address. Then drag the mod in there. This was a big deal when the modder of the Rivers mod was banned because a lot of servers use that mod. The modder made his mod available for a separate download, and folks trying to connect to servers that used it had to side-load it. 

At any rate, the current system is not the smoothest, and I hope there will be improvements on multiple fronts.

[LadyWYT]

8 hours ago, Echo Weaver said:

I don't find this to be true, and it bugs me.

Mods in your personal mod folder are still loaded when you connect to a multiplayer server, and the client-side features are run. This is good if you have some client-only mods (I'm a big fan of Simple HUD Clock) that you don't want to play without, but if you keep all the mods in your mod folder that you play in single-player, it can bork things up with the mods being used by the server. I run a separate version of VS with no mods at all that I use to connect to multiplayer servers.

Secondly, multiplayer is designed for all mods to be available on ModDB and auto-downloaded from there. You can side-load mods, but it's a hassle -- you have to find the correct folder in your ModsByServer folder, and those folders are named by IP address. Then drag the mod in there. This was a big deal when the modder of the Rivers mod was banned because a lot of servers use that mod. The modder made his mod available for a separate download, and folks trying to connect to servers that used it had to side-load it. 

At any rate, the current system is not the smoothest, and I hope there will be improvements on multiple fronts.

You are correct on this; it's caused me occasional issues as well, but that's also why I said that it generally won't interfere  though I suppose it also depends partly on which mods one uses and how many  When I run across issues in multiplayer though, the singleplayer mods are one of the first things I usually check, though in fairness the only server I play on is my friend's so it's also easy to troubleshoot problems.

[EWsssfhioewhg]

Disabled mods are listed in the serverconfig.json and clientsettings.json files in VintagestoryData, down near the bottom of both files in a section labeled "disabledMods" or "DisabledMods," depending on the file.

I don't think a list of enabled mods is kept anywhere. The game seems to just load every mod by default except those on the disabled list.

It might be cumbersome to swap out those files, as they contain a lot of other information besides just the mods.

[Thorfinn]

It respects variant instances, though, doesn't it? /addModPath adds a permanent entry to the mod load list, but that has to be invoked at least once before it "automatically" finds it, unless you install mods in the default %appsdata%" or in the install directory .\mods

Yes, I agree, though. It needs a better mod handler. At the very least, it needs to respect the mod version that the game world was based on, rather than count on people making proper instances of every variation they play. Which means keeping a list of enabled rather than disabled, though this is going to be a tad counter-intuitive, as you would have to add new mods to your existing world, rather than them just being automatically added.

[EDIT]

Then again, I don't know why I expect this of VS, other than the quality of the coding. I can't think of any other software that even goes so far as VS does to support custom installs. Every other recent game you have to fiddle around manually making backups of save folders and copying them back for whatever "game" and "version" you wanted to play.

[EDIT2]

Thinking about it a sec, this is probably already a done deal, since single player is just a multiplayer server that does not have network support. It's going to take some time for us who have been around a while to grok that we no longer enter the game through "Single Player". Or maybe they retain "Single Player" as just a quick launch?

Edited October 12, 2025 by Thorfinn

[EWsssfhioewhg]

I don't know the specifics of how the game handles loading mods internally, but I do know that you can't 100% rely on it not to load disabled mobs. I was recently bit by this issue when I upgraded a mod and disabled the older version. I received mod-related errors when the game started, complaining about not being able to locate a certain class. Those errors went away when I deleted the older version from the mods folder, so the game interacts with all mods, disabled or otherwise, when it loads. One of the more well-known mod authors recommends always removing a mod rather than disabling it for this very reason.

[Thorfinn]

Huh. Have not run into that other than cases where there were obsolete entries in either the cache or the settings. But because of where the disabled list is retained, you have to make absolutely sure you create a new instance (just another desktop shortcut) any time you want to do that, keep old and new mods in the same place, or it will absolutely mess things up.

[EDIT]

There are cases where you have to do more, make a copy your whole install directory, then kill the cache and delete whatever settings were for that particular mod, because of where settings are stored, per install, rather than per world.

Edited October 13, 2025 by Thorfinn

[tauceti]

On 10/12/2025 at 2:04 PM, EWsssfhioewhg said:

It might be cumbersome to swap out those files, as they contain a lot of other information besides just the mods.

damnit!! hopefully then something better is implemented into the base game then, or someone figures it out for a mod... for now i guess i'm just going to do what Early Mod Toolkit does, but manually (swapping out my mod folder for another one) until something simpler comes along. i guess i've just been really pampered by the way the minecraft TreeLauncher works XD (it has various modules you can reuse for profiles rather than duplicating files needlessly), but seriously though like all i need are those checkbox profiles...

[Thorfinn]

 

[tauceti]

exactly the opposite of what i'm asking for- i don't want to have copies of mod files, let alone the entire game, the point is to save space

[Thorfinn]

That's not what this does. All you are making copies of is the desktop shortcut. That's why we were talking about why it would have been loads better to default to new mods not being enabled in existing savegames, but instead you have to decide to include it. Otherwise you get goofiness like older versions of the game with newer versions of the mod, or even mods using a completely different API.

Edited October 19, 2025 by Thorfinn

[tauceti]

oooh... gotcha, my bad, i only skimmed since typically these sorts of things involve copying entire directories and stuff. i'll do a deep read!