How Heliosphere works

Heliosphere works differently than other mod websites. Like other mod websites, it lets you, as a creator, upload your mods in two formats: TTMP and PMP. However, unlike other mod websites, Heliosphere will then process your uploaded mod.

Without going into too much technical detail, Heliosphere unpacks your mod, checks to see if the files inside have already been uploaded, then compresses and uploads any new files to its own storage servers.

After the website processes your mod, users will be able to download it either as a PMP on the website or directly into Penumbra via the in-game plugin. Both methods use the same behind-the-scenes logic: all the files are individually downloaded and decompressed and then reconstructed into one coherent mod pack.

Heliosphere will never offer TTMP downloads. However, most people want TTMPs so they can import into TexTools. TexTools has added PMP support in their Dawntrail release, which means you are able to import Heliosphere mods into TexTools (and export PMPs out of it)!

One of the many benefits of this system is that you can offer streamlined mod updates just by uploading a new version of your mod. Users can get those updates automatically if they choose to, and otherwise, they're only a click away. When they receive these updates, they are only downloading new or changed files instead of redownloading the entire mod.

If this is sounding good to you so far, you'll probably like Heliosphere's way of doing things. However, the rabbit hole goes deeper, as Heliosphere has some more-complex systems available to creators. In order for you to best understand how to use Heliosphere, we'll take a step back and define some terms in the next section.