06 · Shipping

Getting your mod out of your development folder and onto other people’s machines, and finding out why it does not work when it does not work.

Page	Read it for
Packaging	Mod folder layout, building a `.vl2`, `.dso` compilation, what to distribute
Hosting and testing	LAN, listen, and dedicated servers; PURE mode; a fast test loop
Debugging	The console, `trace`, `dump`, the telnet debugger, and the errors you will actually hit

The short version

A mod is a folder. GameData/MyMod/ with scripts/ inside it. Zip it and that is your distribution.
Server-side mods need no client download — datablocks are transmitted at mission start. New art and new GUI do need one.
Delete .dso files before distributing, or ship only .dso files if you want to obscure your source. Never ship a mix of stale ones.
-mod disables PURE, so every modded server is a non-PURE server. That is normal.

Check	Why
Fresh install test	Your dev folder has leftovers; a clean install does not
`.dso` files cleaned	Stale compiled scripts are the number one support question
Console clean on load	Errors on startup mean something did not register
Dedicated server test	Half of all mod bugs only appear without a canvas
Bots tested	New content is invisible to bots unless you told the AI about it
A second client connects	Datablock transmission, ghosting, and the patch’s authentication phase only show with a real remote client
README with the launch command	Users will not guess `-nologin -mod MyMod`

Your users are on a patched install, so ship and test for one.


Test loop	Unchanged. `-nologin -mod MyMod` works the same.
The one new must-do test	Connect a real remote client. `local` connections skip the patch’s authentication phase entirely, so a whole class of server-mod bug is invisible on one machine. See Hosting and testing.
Never ship patch files	`IFC22.dll`, `t2csri.vl2`, `console_client_patches.cs` — not yours to redistribute, and versions move independently.
Never shadow patch paths	`t2csri/*` and `base/loginScreens.cs` are claimed. Shadowing them breaks authentication.
Say what you tested against	“TribesNEXT preview 20250922” in the readme saves everyone time.
New failure modes	Listed in Debugging.