The problem
Installing one KOTOR mod is a solved problem. Installing a build of twenty is not.
Mods overwrite each other. Load order changes the result. A conflict usually shows up hours later as a crash in a module you have not reached yet, with nothing pointing back at which install caused it. The community answer was a long forum post listing an exact order, followed by people getting it wrong.
Constraints
- Has to work with mods as they are already published. No asking authors to repackage.
- Order matters and has to be explicit, because the failure mode is silent.
- The person doing this wants to play the game. Every step of ceremony loses people.
What I built
A flexible multi-mod installer that handles a set of mods together rather than one at a time, sharing the same PyKotor format layer as HoloPatcher.
Outcome
It is published and maintained, and it shares the PyKotor format layer with HoloPatcher, so a parsing fix lands in both.
ModSync continues the project originally released as KOTORModSync, and that original release is still up: its public DeadlyStream file page shows 11,224 downloads and 73,533 views as of August 2026. Both counters are on the page itself, so you do not have to take my word for either.
This is the thinnest of the case studies here, and that is deliberate. The interesting part is how it decides between two mods that want the same file, and I would rather write that up properly than summarise it now.