loading add-ons

[chronomancer]

I'm having trouble getting TOME to acknowledge that my add-ons exist. Following the instructions on the wiki, http://te4.org/wiki/Addons , it seems that I need only put the add-on in a properly named and located directory, and it should show up in my list of available add-ons in-game. This is not happening. As a test, (to make sure my mod isn't simply wrongly coded), I've also tried un-zipping a mod from the net and putting it in a directory named "tome-modname", in my add-ons directory. This also fails.

Am I doing something wrong?

As a work-around, I've tried moving my new content inside of an existing mod's teaa, and the effects work properly... but I get a message that my characters are invalid due to using a mod with a bad hash.

edit: is this message posted in the correct directory? I see there are both "development" and "add-ons" directories, not sure what the distinction is.

[HousePet]

This forum is correct.

Can you give us the path to your init file, and also the contents of the init file of your addon?

[chronomancer]

Suddenly my fresh attempts are working somewhat better; my mods show up in the addons list. Not sure what I was doing differently the first time around. However, the secondary problem returns: the changes work just fine, but I get the message: "online profile disabled due to invalid addon hash".

Reading through the forums and wiki, I see suggestions that I need to "upload the addon" to make it work with online characters. (Presumably offline characters won't be able to get achievements or use the item vault?) What's involved in uploading an addon? So far I was just making quick and dirty rebalancing changes for my own use, indeed, just injecting them into another addon's folder for convenience. I assume that if I upload my addon, it will become publicly available, thus I should:
- avoid bundling my addon with other people's work
- avoid making countless minor incremental revisions
- make some effort to document what changes I'm making

Furthermore, am I correct in my impression that once I have a character using one version of a addon, revising it will break that save file with an incompatible hash?

Are there any restrictions on what addons are acceptable for uploads? (I can't think of anything that might cause problems offhand, other than maybe derivative work based on another user's addons?) Speaking of which, what happens if I want to do exactly that - for example, if I want to mod a talent while using an addon that (among other changes) also mods that talent? Right now, I can simply override it directly with my own changes; if I bundle my changes into a separate addon, can I choose which one will take precedence?

Thanks for any advice, I know this is a lot of questions from a new modder!

In answer to your questions, if they still apply: my changes have been sprinkled in various addon folders - modding the mods, so to speak, since I didn't know how to set file priority - but my original test files were, per the wiki's instructions, placed at C:\Users\SSD\Desktop\t-engine4-windows-1.2.2\game\addons\tome-coolstuff . The contents were cut and pasted directly from the wiki itself, so I'm assuming they'd be ok?

-- My Cool Addon
-- tome-coolstuff/init.lua

long_name = "My Awesome Addon"
short_name = "coolstuff"
for_module = "tome"
version = { 1, 1, 6 }
weight = 100
author = { 'coolguy@invalid.com' }
homepage = 'iamsocool.geocities.com'
description = [[Oh my god this stuff is so totally cool.
Holy crap I mean it's really super cool, like, wow.
]] -- the [[ ]] things are like quote marks that can span multiple lines
tags = {'cool', "stuff", 'cool stuff'} -- tags MUST immediately follow description

hooks = true
overload = true
superload = false
data = true

My latest attempts had one manual revision:
version = { 1, 2, 2 }

[HousePet]

You can upload an addon either manually via the website, or automatically using Steam.
The manual method requires you to package the addon and extract the md5 value from the game log, the automatic method does all that for you.

To be able to edit something another addon has done will require you to alter the weight value of your addon. I'm not sure if it needs to be higher or lower though. Basically it just controls the load order.

Updating an addon version doesn't break the save file in any way, unless you remove certain things the save was using.