Unzipped Mod Folders

When developing your mods, you don't need to zip and package them each time you want to test them! To promote fast iteration, Atlan Mod Loader will load unzipped mod files according to the following rules:

1. Each folder inside your mods folder is considered an unzipped mod
2. If a folder's name begins with a $ then it is ignored.
   

For example, if your mods folder has the following contents inside it:

Steam/steamapps/common/DOOMTheDarkAges/
   - mods/
      - MyTextureMod/
            - darkagesmod.txt
            - MyImage.png
      - CombatBalance/
            - DeclA.decl
            - DeclB.decl
            - darkagesmod.txt
      - $RandomStuff/
            - Stuff.decl
      - CoolMod.zip
      - AwesomeMod.zip

When Atlan Mod Loader is ran, it will load two zipped mods, and two unzipped mods. Since the unzipped mod folder $RandomStuff begins with a $ it will be ignored!

Other Benefits

Unzipped Mods have the following benefits:

1. Dark Ages: Unserialized Mapentities, logic decls, and entitydefs will be serialized
2. Eternal: Uncompressed entities files will be compressed.
3. Both Games: Raw PNG files will be encoded into image assets. The encoding uses a lower compression level than Atlan Mod Packager, so this process will happen quicker!

Zipped mods do not receive these benefits. Atlan Mod Loader expects zipped mod files to be serialized, compressed, or encoded in advance! Remember to use Atlan Mod Packager before distributing mods containing these files!