-To see the old version (before 18-12-2021) of this page, look here.
Nearly Dead officially supports modding, and we prepared tools, assets, and steam workshop to share it. This Guide explains the environment settings for basic modding and how you can upload the mods.
Basic settings[]
This section will explain the basic environment setting for Near Dead modding in the following order.
- Download the unity package and resources folder.
- Install Unity Hub and Unity Editor
- Creating Unity account(If you already have it, you can skip it.) and Activate non-commercial license.
- Start Unity and Create a project
- Import the Custom Package you downloaded while doing (1).
First, please download the '.unitypackage' file which contains the assets of and modding tools Nearly Dead. You can get the latest version from this page.
ND uses Unity for development, so it is necessary to install the Unity editor first to use the modding tool. After downloading and installing Unity Hub through this link, run the installation file and install it:
To use the Unity, you must sign a license and create an account for this.
There is a cogwheel-shaped icon in the upper right corner of Unity Hub. If you press it, it will go to the Preference window.
Click the License Management tab and click 'Login' at the bottom (click it even if you don't have an account, you'll be able to create one).
Click "Create one" to make your account (see the next image below this one). If you already have an account, you can skip creating one and log in.
Enter the email, password, username, and name, agree to the required terms, check reCAPTCHA, and click 'Create Unity ID'.
A confirmation email will be sent to the email you entered. Press "Link to confirm email" to end account creation.
When you return to Unity Hub, log in, and return to license management in your the preferences menu, the "Activate New License" button is now available. Click on it.
In the license agreement, check 'Unity Personal' and check 'I don't use Unity in a professional capacity' and click Done.
License activation is over. We are now ready to use Unity Editor.
But there won't be anything prepared in Unity Hub at first. Unity Hub is only a means to use editors for each version, so you need to download the editor first. Near Dead is using Unity 2020.1.13f1. Open the link and click 'Unity Hub'.
You may see this popup. Click choose application:
Click 'open link'
This will Install unity 2020.1.13f1. A blue progress bar at the top of the tile will indicate the download and installation progress (not visible in the image below)
If you're done installing the editor, go back to the Project tab and click the Create New tab.
Select '3D', specify the desired project name (NearlyDeadModdingTool for example) and the save location, and press the Create button.
When a new project window appears on the Assets tab, press 'Import Package' → 'Custom Package' and open the .unitypackage file you downloaded earlier.
Press Import while all of them are checked in the Import Unity Package window. Usually, all you have to do is press it without having to check anything.
It may take a considerable amount of time for the task to be completed.
After everything is done, We're ready to use the modding tool! On the Window tab, click "Nearly Dead" → "JSON_Editor" and drag the prepared ND-only editor in the desired location on the tab bar, and you're finished with the basic setup.
In the next section, you can learn about the elements of the editor.
Basic elements in the editor[]
JSON_Editor, a tool that mainly creates and changes data for Nearly Dead, consists of the JSON file itself and sub-items.
First, you need to create a folder for your mod in the \resources folder.
Give it a name you like
Open the folder in explorer by right-clicking the folder and selecting 'show in explorer':
Next, create a .JSON file to use as a core file (this will contain all of your mod's data). Text files are created by right-clicking in your mod folder and clicking "New (W)" → "Text Document." Put the following text in the text file as it is:
{
"mod id": "core",
"data": [
{
}
]
}
After that, give the file a name you like (can be the same as your folder name) and change the extension to .json and the core file preparation is completed. Go back to unity and into the search bar in the project tab and search for 'refresh'. Then doubleclick on the Refresh_JSON_Scene file and click on play. Wait until the play button turns blue and press it again. Observe the following gif:
Refreshing takes a long time. You need to refresh every time you perform file operations on .json files outside the unity editor (like you just did in the windows file explorer).
When your file preparation is done, you can select your mod under 'Select JSON File' to start editing.
The main controls are as follows:☃☃
- Select the JSON core file to work on.
- Save the JSON core file you worked on.
- Generate project as the mod.
- Upload the mod. You should log-in state in Steam client.
- Select the type of sub-JSON item.
- Add a new sub JSON item.
Now we're ready to create a mod. The following is the production method for the sub-item for JSON categories.
the modding example can be check below links:
Mod creation & Steam Workshop upload.[]
In order to create the added json-core files and multiple types of files as a mod, creating a meta.json file through 'Generate Mod' for recognizing the folder's sub-folders as a mod is a necessary step to do.
In order to create or upload a mod, a preview image must exist in that folder as the name and extension of 'preview.jpg'.
After you select the project folder to be turned into a Mod using a File Explorer after pressing the "Generate Mod" button, you will see the following screen. At this time, if you click somewhere else, the window will disappear, so please be careful.
- Create a name of this mod.
- Write a description of this mod.
- Create changes of this mod.
- Specify the display form (Visibility) of the Steam Workshop when uploading the mod.
- Create a meta.json file of that mod.
- Cancel the operation.
Uploading on Steam Workshop through 'Upload Mod' has almost the same function as creating the mod. However, please keep in mind that you must be logged in to the Steam client to run the upload function normally.
When uploading the mod in which the meta.json file was created through 'Generate Mod', the information of the meta.json file is imported as it is.
- Create a name of this mod.
- Write a description of this mod.
- Create changes of this mod.
- Specify the display form (Visibility) of the Steam Workshop when uploading the mod.
- Upload the mod to the Steam Workshop.
- Cancel the operation.
View downloaded workshop mods[]
If you want to see what the files of mods downloaded trough the steam workshop look like, open your windows explorer and go to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\1268900". This folder contains the mods you downloaded trough the steam workshop. Each mod is contained within a seperate folder. The folder name is the same as the ID of the steam workshop item. You can see the ID of the steam workshop item by looking at the URL at the address bar of your browser or steam client:
You could also use this to verify that the workshop item you made contains the files you uploaded.