Packaging

Follow these steps to make your mod installable by the Moolah Mod Launcher.

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Mod metadata

Start by creating a directory with the name and version of your mod. For example: MyMod-v1.0.0.

Next, create a file called pd3mod.json inside. This file contains metadata about your mod, such as a unique identifier, version, name and description. To see all available fields and their types, see the page on pd3mod.json or the json schema.

Why pd3mod?

Those familiar with Unreal Engine modding know that mods usually come packaged as a .pak file. The advantage of pd3mod is that it can contain both a pak file and additional files for scripting extensions such as UE4SS.

Additionally, pak files lack a lot of metadata. pd3mod allows for specifying a mod identifier, version, name, description, dependencies and much more. This is intended to be used by the launcher to provide a better experience for the end user.

Here's a simple example of what the metadata file could look like:

pd3mod.json

{
    "id": "modid",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "name": "Example mod",
    "description": "This is an example description! Tell everyone what your mod is about!",
    "authors": [
      "Me!"
    ],
    "license": "MIT",
    "icon": "icon.png",
    "environment": "*",

    "contact": {
      "homepage": "https://modworkshop.net/mod/26824",
      "sources": "https://github.com/MoolahModding/site"
    },

    "depends": {
      "payday3": "*"
    }
}

The id and version fields are required. Version must follow the Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 specification.

Adding your content

Next, if your mod has a pak file, add it to a folder called Paks. Make sure your pak's file name ends with _P.pak, which will ensure any asset replacements get applied correctly.
If your mod has UE4SS lua scripts or DLLs, you can add those to a folder called ue4ss.

UE4SS mods

You should not add an enabled.txt file, as the Moolah Mod Launcher will handle this by updating UE4SS' mods.txt file.

All together, it should look something like this:

MyMod-v1.0.0
├── paks
│   └── MyMod.pak
├── dlls
│   └── main.dll
├── scripts
│   ├── main.lua
│   └── util.lua
├── icon.png
└── pd3mod.json

Finishing up

With all of your files in the right place, you can now zip up the contents of the directory. Make sure pd3mod.json is at the root of the zip file and not in another subdirectory.

Finally, change the file extension of the resulting .zip file to .pd3mod and test it out with the mod launcher. The mod should now be ready to upload to your preferred mod hosting site.