Modding: Mods not appearing/functioning on Mac

[Lymmea]

As per a dev request on the Discord channel, I'm reposting my issue here to make it easier on the devs to track/address my issue.

I'm on a Mac, and no matter what steps I take, I can't make any mods appear/function in TCE. Even the mods that come pre-loaded that are meant to be possible to activate out of the box (TRex, etc) don't appear on the mod menu/function in-game, so I think this is unintended behavior/a bug rather than an issue with bad mods.

The mods I subscribed to from the workshop didn't get downloaded to my mod folder. (The pre-loaded mods ARE in there, but don't appear on the in-game mod menu, nor do they appear to function.) I tried downloading the workshop mods manually, unzipped them, and put them in the folder with the pre-loaded mods; nothing. Then I tried going to the User/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/workshop/content folder, where I found the workshop files(which were, aside from the file names, identical to what I'd manually downloaded from the workshop), unzipped those, and moved them to the mod folder. Still nothing.

As far as I can tell, I'm doing everything right, but the game is not recognizing any mods - including the mods put in the correct folder by the devs themselves. On the Discord channel, BlackCobra009 mentioned there was a bug where some users couldn't get mods to show up until they deleted the mod zip-file in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Maschinen-Mensch, which apparently fixes the issue for those users...but Macs don't have that file path. If there's a similar stopgap measure for Mac users until a patch addresses this, I'd love to hear it.

[Lymmea]

As of 1.3.3, mods for Macs are still not working as intended.

The pre-loaded mods that come packaged with the game now display in-game in the Mods menu! However, there seems to be no way to get mods from the Workshop, or make them function. Observed behaviors in troubleshooting:

• Subscribing to a mod on the Workshop does not download the mod to the Users/[User]/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/The Curious Expedition/mods folder. (The mods DO appear in the Users/[User]/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/workshop/content/358130 folder, in folders with 10-number names, as legacy.bin zip files.)

• Manually downloading mods directly from the Workshop and putting them in the Users/[User]/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/The Curious Expedition/mods folder has no effect.

• Unzipping the legacy.bin files and putting the resulting folders (which have the same content as the files directly downloaded from the Workshop) in the Users/[User]/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/The Curious Expedition/mods folder has no effect.

• Deleting the downloaded mods from the Users/[User]/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/workshop/content/358130 folder, and only having them in the Users/[User]/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/The Curious Expedition/mods folder, has no effect.

• Unsubscribing from all Workshop mods, deleting the Users/[User]/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/The Curious Expedition/mods folder, and re-subscribing does nothing, AND makes all the pre-loaded mods disappear. The game does not recreate the mods folder or re-download the deleted pre-loaded mods.

As far as I can tell, the problem is twofold - one, mods from the Workshop aren't being deposited into the right folder when they're downloaded on Macs, and two, even if the user manually deposits mod folders in the correct place, the mods don't appear or function in-game. Obviously whatever is rendering the pre-loaded mods functional doesn't apply to mods the user chooses and downloads themselves. I hope this information helps the dev team figure out what the problem is.

[riadd]

Thanks for the detailed information! It is strange that the prepackaged mods show up, but not newly added mods. I'll investigate this issue further.

[riadd]

Still looking into the issue, but without luck so far since it works on my development airbook.

When you say "Manually downloading mods directly from the Workshop and putting them in the Users/[User]/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/The Curious Expedition/mods folder has no effect.", do you put the ZIP file there? You need to put the unpacked folder there. Also are you getting any error messages when using the game log viewer? You can open it via the mods screen.

[Lymmea]

Yes, I'm using the unpacked folders, not the zip files. I took a screenshot:

As you can see, the unpacked folders look exactly like the folders for the mods that are working, and are in the same place.

As for the error messages, you can see them here:

And as you can see from this image...:

...the pre-loaded mods are appearing just fine in my list, but all of the ones from the Workshop are giving me the same errors no matter what I do. (For the record, I get the same error messages in the log no matter which of my above troubleshooting options I'm currently using.)

[Lymmea]

Adding my system specs, not sure why I didn't think to do it sooner.

macOS High Sierra v.10.13.2
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)
Processor: 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

[Lymmea]

Update: The problem persists with no discernible changes in behavior in v.1.3.4.1

[Lymmea]

Update: The problem persists with no discernible changes in behavior in v.1.3.5.

[Lymmea]

A workaround has been found by community member ATD! Mac users can follow these steps to acquire working mods:

1) Download mods from the Workshop. You can find the mods in your Users/[User]/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/workshop/content/358130 folder, if you've subscribed to them through Steam, within folders with ten-digit names, as legacy.bin zip files. Or - my personal recommendation - find a program to download the mods manually from Steam. I recommend the latter option because doing so will preserve the proper file names for the mod folders, and your mods WILL NOT FUNCTION if the name on the folder is incorrect. If you absolutely have to go through the Steam Workshop, though, you can check what the proper folder name should be by hitting the Show Log button from within the Mods menu within The Curious Expedition. You'll see an error message like this:



Change the current name of the misbehaving mod folder to the name that appears first in the error message. (In this case, ShrineWeight has to be changed to shrineWeight before it will work; folder names ARE case-sensitive.) Again, if you download the mods directly from the Workshop, they should already have the proper names on the base folder and you can skip this step.

2) Go into the folder for the mod(s) you want to use. You'll see that all the names include backslashes(ex: myMod\\mod.hjson). Remove the entire file name up to where the backslashes end; in this case, myMod\\mod.hjson should become mod.hjson, myMod\\langs\\lang_en.csv should become lang_en.csv, etc. If there's a backslash, delete everything that comes before it in the file name.

3) You need to make subfolders within the mod folder. All .csv language files should be put into a 'langs' folder. All image files (.png files, for example) should go into an 'img' folder, if you have any. (Not all mods do.) THE MOD.HJSON FILE SHOULD NOT GO INTO ANY FOLDER; leave that one out. But all other .hjson files should go into a 'src' folder. Changelogs or preview files don't need to be worried about; leave them wherever.

4) Transfer your properly configured files to your Users/[User]/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/The Curious Expedition/mods folder.

5) Congratulations! Your mods should now appear and function in-game.

Obviously, this is super clunky to have to do ourselves, but hopefully now that it's clear what's not working, the devs will be able to address the issue. To sum up, the issues arising with people trying to use Workshop mods on Macs:

• Mods aren't being sent to the Users/[User]/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/The Curious Expedition/mods folder, but instead only appear in the Users/[User]/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/workshop/content/358130 folder.

• Mods, when downloaded from the Workshop, have incorrect file names (namely, a bunch of dead weight) that need to be edited before they'll function.

I have no idea what's causing those things to happen, but now that it's been determined what the problems actually are, hopefully that can be figured out and addressed.

[riadd]

Thanks for the write-up! This is very helpful in figuring the issue.