Hello from the Paradox Mods team!
And welcome to our first dev diary! We’ve been working on some cool features over the past months, and we’re very excited to take you through all that’s coming in the next update, which will be out, if all goes well, at the end of this month.
Our overall goal is to constantly improve your experience while using Paradox Mods. From long-awaited features to smaller changes that make your day-to-day use of the platform more enjoyable, let us take you through this journey!
As we continue to improve the platform and introduce new features, we are keen to share more of that progress with you. Let us know if you would like to see more of these in the future.
Playsets are a core concept in Paradox Mods; they allow you to easily switch between completely different styles of setups based on how you like to enjoy the game. And these experiences are worth sharing!
In the updated version, you will be able to share your playsets with others and subscribe to theirs, making it much easier to get friends set up with the same modded configuration - or try out different experiences from the community.
Now, let us take you through how to share and subscribe to playsets and the thought process behind it all.
Starting off is simple. Going into your playset, you’ll notice a new layout and a new button on the right side saying “Make playset public”.
You will have the option to select a new name and description for your public playset, though you are free to keep your current ones.
Once your playset is public, you can share it with anyone else using your playset’s link or its ID. Both sharing and subscribing can be done through Paradox Mods in-game and on the Paradox Mods website.
Making a playset public is a simple enough concept; however, we quickly realized that it would not be very practical. It puts a lot of strain on the playset's author not to accidentally add or remove mods from their subscribers' setup.
Taking this into consideration, we wanted to make the process less stressful for both the author and the subscribers of the playset. So, we landed on a system that we believe works best for everyone involved.
When you make a playset public, we take a snapshot of your enabled mods in the playset and create a publicly accessible version of said playset.
This allows your playset to stay your own, private playset that you can keep using and trying things out in without worrying about the public side of it.
Changing the mods in your playset will not automatically reflect on your subscribers’ side.
Once you’re ready, you can update the public version of the playset with all the changes you made. This will create another snapshot of the playset represented by a new version that others can see and switch to.
By default, when someone subscribes to a playset, they will be pinned to the version that they were viewing. This is done to lower the chance of surprises for subscribers. What that means for you as the author of a public playset is that publishing a new version won’t risk breaking other players’ setups when they update.
Lastly, you can delete a specific version of your playset if needed, without deleting your whole playset.
It was important to us that getting your hands on a public playset should be easy and straightforward.
When someone shares their playset with you, they’ll either give you the link to the playset on the Paradox Mods website or the playset’s ID directly. Both of those can be used to get to the playset.
Following the link will allow you to subscribe to the playset directly.
When you subscribe to a playset, you will be pinned to the version that you are viewing by default. Being pinned to a version means that we won’t automatically move you over to a newer version.
This is done so it won't be automatically updated if the author publishes a new version. Instead, we'll show you that an update is available for the playset, and you can then switch to another version if you want. That gives you, the subscriber, more control over how you use a shared playset.
On the flip side, mods that are part of a subscribed playset will receive updates through the same regular process as mods in a private playset.
To keep it simple, we only allow the playset's author to add or remove mods from it. However, you still can locally disable mods in the playset.
And if you need more control, you can take it a step further. We've also added the option to duplicate any playset. That way, you can create a private version of the shared playset and make it your own.
Our next area of focus is the in-game Paradox Mods experience. We’ve listened to your feedback about the overall speed to get into, browse, and manage mods inside the Paradox Mods UI.
To improve this, we’ve reworked the underlying layer, also known as the PDX SDK.
Previously, all actions required mod downloads to be completed before moving on to the next step. This meant that subscribing or synchronizing would only finish when the download itself was complete.
We’re changing this behavior so that actions and mod downloads are no longer dependent on each other. Actions can now be completed without waiting for downloads.
This means that opening the Paradox Mods UI takes seconds and is no longer affected by mod downloads. Subscribing to mods will also get that same benefit, whether it’s a small or large mod; the download will happen in the background, so you can keep browsing or add more mods.
Mods downloads have gotten two important changes to help reduce the wait times to get your mods ready, whether it’s after a patch where multiple mods got an update, or if you’ve subscribed to multiple new mods on the Paradox Mods website.
First, we’re updating the progress percentage tracking for all stages so it is more precise and consistent. This results in larger downloads that no longer get stuck towards the end of the process.
Second, we’re introducing parallel downloads, allowing up to 3 mods to be downloaded at the same time. And, to make this more effective, we’re also including a smart queuing process that makes sure one large mod is being downloaded alongside two smaller mods, making as much use of both network and disk speeds.
Sync conflicts have historically been a pain point. To address this, we’re improving the sync process to significantly reduce the likelihood of encountering a conflict.
But should a conflict arise, we’re also adding more information about the situation to empower you to make an informed decision on how to resolve it.
Earlier this month, we rolled out a set of quality-of-life and UI improvements to the Paradox Mods website to make browsing a smoother, clearer, and more enjoyable experience.
We refreshed the browsing, mod, and author pages with a cleaner, more readable design, while still preserving each game’s unique visual identity.
Lastly, we introduced a paginated browsing experience, replacing infinite scrolling to make navigation clearer, more structured, and easier to pick up where you left off. Combined with performance improvements, this also makes the overall experience feel snappier and more responsive.
And with that, we’ve reached the end of this first dev diary. Thank you for reading! We’re excited to start rolling out these features and hope they make your experience even better.
