Mod Creation/Creator Toolkit

The Creator Toolkit is the official platform for tools related to mod creation available within the game on Steam or in the browser.

You can subscribe to the Creator Toolkit through the Mod Manager (just search "Creator Toolkit") or on the mod.io website.

You can then access the Creator Toolkit in one of three ways:

Via the "Creator Toolkit" tab in the Mod Manager
Via the shortcut button on the character selection screen (the asterisk next to the Mod Manager button)
Via the sidebar in-game (located directly below the Mod Manager item)

Local Mods

The primary feature of the Creator Toolkit is the loading of local mods, which circumvents the need of uploading each development iteration to mod.io. In addition, these local mods can be linked to a mod profile on mod.io to enable releasing the current local mod version quickly.

Important Local Mod Behaviors to Note

Local mods are loaded after the Creator Toolkit, but before any other mods. However, load order can be adjusted amongst other local mods.
A local mod linked to a mod.io mod will automatically prevent the mod.io version from being loaded, if installed at the same time.
In order for a local mod to persist data (characterStorage, accountStorage, and settings values), the mod must be linked to mod.io and you must have subscribed to and installed the mod via mod.io.

Modes

There are two modes available for adding and updating local mods. Modfile mode, which is a similar experience to uploading a .zip archive to mod.io for each version; and Directory Link mode, which will automatically create and load a .zip archive of a chosen directory each time the game is reloaded.

Modfile

Using modfile mode requires you to zip the contents of the mod as you would for upload to mod.io, and then manually update the file being used by the local mod.

Directory Link

Directory Link is only available on the Steam game client. Using this mode will create a .zip archive of the linked directory and use it as the mod's package each time you reload the game. While useful for "hot reloading" mods, this also means there are performance implications upon game startup if you have a very large mod or a large number of mods linked.

Ignoring Files and Folders

You can force the Directory Link zipping process to ignore files and folders (so they won't be packaged and bloat the mod) by creating a .modignore file in the root of the linked directory.

The .modignore file itself is automatically ignored

This file should be plain text and accepts one rule per line. Rules are case-sensitive and you may use the * wildcard to match any characters within the rule.

Examples

Rule webpack.config.js matches webpack.config.js (file)

Rule _exclude matches _exclude (folder)

Rule *.psd matches template.psd, logo.psd, my_cool_icon.psd

Rule .*ignore matches .gitignore, .modignore