How to make sure your save-affecting mods name still shows on saves when the mod is not installed.

[Finwickle]

Have you ever seen this? And wondered which mod it was? It's especially inconvenient when you share the save with someone else, for instance for troubleshooting an unrelated other mod. And just annoying when someone shares a save like that with you to troubleshoot.

---

TL;DR: Use a localization tag for your mods name if your mod affects saves, even when you don't provide any localization​

---

It's caused by the modinfo file. This will give the issue:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Mod id="bad-example-mod" version="1" xmlns="ModInfo">
    <Properties>
        <Name>This name will not show when uninstalled</Name>
        <AffectsSavedGames>1</AffectsSavedGames>

Change the name to a localization tag, put it in an XML file and import it in your modinfo file, and it will show the name when you don't have the mod installed later:

This will not give the issue and still nicely show the name of the mod when the mod is removed:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Mod id="good-example-mod" version="2" xmlns="ModInfo">
    <Properties>
        <Name>LOC_MOD_GOOD_EXAMPLE_MOD_NAME</Name>
        <AffectsSavedGames>1</AffectsSavedGames>
...
    <LocalizedText>
        <File>text/en_us/ModuleText.xml</File>
    </LocalizedText>
</Mod>

With something like this in your ModuleText.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Database>
    <EnglishText>
        <Row Tag="LOC_MOD_GOOD_EXAMPLE_MOD_NAME">
            <Text>This name will show when uninstalled</Text>
        </Row>
    </EnglishText>
</Database>

 

[Finwickle]

And no, I do not know why it is this way.

 

[LilBudyWizer]

I wasn't sure why I did that. I just did it because other modders did it so figured it's the way to do it. Maybe I'll learn another language someday. Now I have a reason to do it. I'll now know what causes that and when I see it I can notify the modder as to what they need to change.