How do I upload a mod? (PC Steam only) - Further Explanation

This guide will provide more details on how to turn your mod into a Steam mod.

The basis for it is the post by Gilgamesh on the Aspyr Support forums.
Make sure you read that first, hopefully this guide will explain anything you don't understand:
https://support.aspyr.com/hc/en-us/articles/205258020?utm_source=Steam&utm_medium=WorkshopPage&utm_campaign=KOTOR2

This guide will not cover how to make a working mod, only how to turn your mod into a Steam mod.

Prepare some folders with short paths that you can easily remember.

Examples

Your main mods location:
E:\MyMods

The mod you want to upload:
E:\MyMods\MyFirstMod

Make sure you always put your mod's contents in a folder named override, so for the example you put them all in E:\MyMods\MyFirstMod\override

Some easy to find location for your preview images:
E:\MyMods\MyPreviews

You now need to make a vdf file, which will act like a reference file for your upload.
It needs to have the file extension .vdf, but it is a plain text file that you can make with a plain text editor like Windows Notepad.

Start with this as content, with example values, you can tweak it later:

"workshopitem"
{
"appid" "208580"
"contentfolder" "E:\\MyMods\\MyFirstMod"
"previewfile" "E:\\MyMods\\MyPreviews\\myawesomefirstmod.jpg"
"visibility" "0"
"title" "My First Mod"
"description" "This is my first KotOR 2 Mod!"
"changenote" "Version 1.0.0"
}

Notes:
- "appid" is the id for KotOR 2, so don't change that.
- "contentfolder": notice the double backslash, use that instead of single backslash. Also notice that this path does not include the override folder (it still needs to be in there though).
- "previewfile": must be under 1MB in size. Suggested formats include JPG, PNG or GIF.
- "visibility": I found that this gets ignored. If you want to hide your mod after publishing you can go to it on Steam and turn off the visibility there if you like.

p.s.
You can change the title and description after publishing.

Save the file as a .vdf file once you have tweaked the values.
The location is not very important as long as you can find it again. To stay in line with the examples it could be in E:\MyMods\VDF and as a file name MyFirstMod.vdf.

Now we need to get the program that will use the vdf file to upload your mod.

First get it at:
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD

Again I recommend to keep the path to this as short as possible.
If you only have a C: drive then I would put it in C:\SteamCMD. If you have more drives then maybe put it on another drive to keep your C: clean.
Make sure after extracting that steamcmd.exe is in that folder and not something redundant like C:\SteamCMD\steamcmd\steamcmd.exe

steamcmd.exe is a basic command line program. Some of you may know what that means (and could possibly skip this section), some of you may have never seen the Windows command prompt.

Before there was an operating system with a graphical interface like Windows (and after), we used to do things by typing commands. Some programs still do and there is still a way to use those programs, with the command prompt.

In most of the latest Windows versions the easiest way to start it is the Run option:
- Hit Windows key + R
- type cmd

You will now likely start at your user account folder, you will need to learn about a few basic commands to navigate to where you stored steamcmd.exe.
- to go to the root of the drive you're at, type: cd\
- to change drives, for example to go to E:, type e:
- to change directory, type cd foldername, for example: cd SteamCMD

You're ready for the final sections once you've navigated to the folder where steamcmd.exe is located.

Now through the command prompt it's a matter of running steamcmd.exe with the correct parameters. You can't have Steam running for this to work.

For example enter (tweak to your situation):

steamcmd.exe +login YourSteamAccount YourSteamPassword +workshop_build_item E:\MyMods\VDF\MyFirstMod.vdf +quit

If all went well then you can check out your mod on Steam, maybe add some more images, tweak the description if needed.
The .vdf will get a new line, with the id of the mod. If you use the vdf again it will update the mod because of that line (instead of making a new mod).

Some words of warning, from what I learned:

- I recommend starting with a reskin mod or something straight forward like that
- If you know how to add unique items that aren't in the game yet then that's fairly safe too, make sure you add details
- A part of the Steam audience will just hit the subscribe button after seeing an image, they will ignore instructions, warnings, might not know English etc. If they run into problems they will turn to you, or worse turn to the general discussion area having no idea what's going on.
- After learning about how restricting Steam mods are I can't say I'd recommend including any .2da files in your mod. Also note that most people use TSLRCM, which includes quite a few of them. You can try to communicate things but with the above point in mind... I would not recommend it.