Picking Names
Naming is hard
Naming things is hard. That is something everyone has experienced at some point. But choosing good names for your mod(s) is even harder becasue they also need to be descriptive, short and readable. So here are some tips on how to do it right.
Allowed Characters
All IDs can generally only contain upper- and lowercase latin characters and the numbers 0-9. This restriction exists becasue they need to work in URLs and filepaths but also to avoid confusion.
What you need to choose
Your Author ID (only once of course)
A mod ID
A name for the mod
Mod Name and ID
Whatever you choose to call your mod, it has to clearly describe what the mod it/does while also being relatively short. Especially the mod ID has to be readable to allow users to identify mod files just by their file name.
It is recommend to use 2-3 full words. Do not use acronyms, unless they are already used by the
base game (like RTG
). Also avoid shortening words except for stuff like Astroneer
=>
Astro
. The mod name should include spaces (unlike the ID) and can also be a bit longer.
Here are some good examples:
RocketLauncher
for Rocket Launcher ModLavaLamp
for Lava Lamp ModMoreTradables
for Mo’ Tradables
Here are some bad ones:
QTRTG
for Print QT-RTG. Here it is unclear what the mod does in the mod ID.Astronium
for Super Astronium. Not even from the full name it is clear what the mod does.Pumpkin
for PUMPKINS!!!. Again what does it do.6A1S
. What does this even mean?
Mod ID extension
You can extend your mod ID with your author ID like this modid.authorid
. In practice it looks
like this PickupRovers.Konsti
. This is to differentiate two mods with the same base mod ID that
are by different authors. This new string will be the new mod ID used in both filename and
metadata. Also this is the only time a single dot is allowed in IDs. Note that this is a relatively
new addition and not all programs/website will support it.