Mod Validator – A Tool For Modders
This tool will help you find code block inconsistencies, trailing symbols, mismatched and unused SIDs, verify Generators and track missing localization strings.
Welcome to Mod Validator, a utility app I designed for myself while working on Desolation due to it’s scale, to save me some time finding any errors in the mod and fixing the bugs and crashes.
After using what was initially just a script for a while, I decided I wanted to share this tool with community that will save people making big mods that have tons of files the time it takes too look for a single instance of some mismatch or something being misspelled.
This is how Mod Validator came to be the way you see it now. It comes with documented and highly configurable .ini file so you can tailor it to your project.
FEATURES:
Structure/Delimiter Validation – MV can scan all of your mod’s .cfg files for errors such as unclosed/unopened “struct.begin/end”, “{}”, “[]” with the ability to add extra delimiters in the ini.
Header/SID Validation – MV can scan through your .cfg and check if all your struct headers are equal to the SID stored inside of them.
Generator Validation – MV scans through your ItemGeneratorPrototypes directory and can do several things, such as check if the right item Type is nested in the right Category for it to spawn (with the ability to map them in the .ini file), check if a Generator is used as an ItemPrototypeSID or vice versa.
Localization Validation – MV is able to scan your mod’s localization .json files (any amount) and check if all your item/effects and other entries have the text for them. If some of them inherit the vanilla game localization MV will also take it into account.
Orphan Elements Tracking – MV will scan all of your new content and find out if some of it is not used anywhere, like a missing Generator you forgot to link to somewhere or an item you forgot to add to it.
Flexible Configuration – MV lets you disable and enable it’s specific features via the .ini file as well as add extra things to account for or ignore when checking for errors, tailored to your project.
Easy-to-Read and Descriptive Report – Once MV finishes all the work, it will generate a “report.txt” next to it, which will contain all the error reports split into categories and files, going as deep as to tell you which line and column is having trouble in some cases.
Pre-Configured Validators – MV comes with pre-configured .ini that should be enough for most of the mods to have a total checkup. So just set up the Directories and run the app, if you don’t want to configure it more in-depth.
USAGE:
Download and unpack the Mod Validator wherever you’d like.
Set up all the required Directories in the .ini which is documented to tell you what’s what.
Run ModValidator.exe
Read the generated report.txt to find and fix potential issues in your mods.
KNOWN ISSUES:
Mod Validator can sometimes generate false-positive errors for some things, for example an Effect without a localization string that is not meant to be seen by the player. However, for such cases there are properties in the .ini that can be set up for it to ignore such things.
