Reload mod changes without exiting the game

[bmaupin]

I just started learning to mod Civ 6, and as expected my mod has errors.

In Civ 5, I could delete my mod directory from Mods/ and I would see it disappear from the mod menu. Then I could make my changes and copy it back and it would reappear. This way I could make changes to the mod while the game was running without needing to exit the game every time.

However I'm having trouble doing this with Civ 6. As best as I can tell, all of the mod content is loaded when Civ 6 is loaded. This is different from Civ 5 which seemed to load the mod content only when you go into the mods menu.

If I try to start a game if my mod has errors, it will fail to start and show me a message. But if I fix the error and try to load a second game, Civ 6 freezes after starting the game and I have to kill it.

Anyone figured out how to reload mod content without exiting the game?

 

[bmaupin]

I figured out a workaround: every time the main menu is loaded after exiting a match, mod changes are reloaded.

So to reload mod changed without exiting the game, I can just start a new match, make changes to my mod, then exit the match, and the mod changes are reloaded. But if at any point my mod has errors and the "Error Starting Game" dialogue appears, I need to exit Civ 6, otherwise if I try to start a new match after that Civ 6 will freeze.

 

[Ryan F. Mercer]

Are you using ModBuddy? I don't typically need to mess with the actual folders in Explorer.

It really depends on what kind of changes you are trying to make. For most stuff, you can just exit to the main menu, makes changes to your mod in ModBuddy, rebuild the mod, then start a new game. But if you're adding new textures or audio, then you will need to restart Civ because all of that is imported when you first launch the game. Additionally, anything on the front-end (main menu, before starting a game) is imported before reaching the main menu. When you enable a mod with front-end files, it changes which files are imported, but you have to restart Civ to import them. The reverse is also true when disabling a mod with front-end files.

Also, a note of warning. It is possible for the game to crash in such a manner that it will immediately experience issues upon restarting Civ, so you need to restart it again. Sometimes this is obvious because it crashes, while other times it will run but with inexplicable issues. This is due to something still being stuck in memory and needing a restart to clear it out.

I have a tutorial that explains a lot of this. You can find it here: WhysMod Template VI