Variants versus versions

An important idea on Heliosphere is the difference between variants and versions.

• variant
  • one of potentially several alternative installs of a single mod
• version
  • one of potentially several iterations of a single variant

The difference between them is more easily explained by example.

Suppose you have ported or created an original outfit. If you made several variants of the outfit for different bodies, you might choose to distribute them as individual variants on Heliosphere instead of as options in one large variant.

For another example, suppose you've made upscales of large swathes of the game, and you've done so in 2k and 4k resolutions. It wouldn't make sense to provide both resolutions in the same download, but since they're just different variants of the same mod, you create a 2k and a 4k variant on Heliosphere.

Users can install multiple variants of the same mod and even have multiple variants enabled at the same time. They're just a way to organise your mod without multiple pages for different subclasses of the same mod.

Many creators do not need to use variants. If you don't need this level of control, just ignore variants. Keep the one called "Default" and go about your business as usual.

So what's a version? A version is just an iteration of a variation. In our first example, imagine you had a Bibo variant of your outfit and a YAB variant. Both start at version 1.0.0. Right now, you have a unique 1.0.0 (Bibo) version and a unique 1.0.0 (YAB) version.

If you fix a bug in the YAB variant, you might change the version number in the PMP/TTMP to 1.0.1 and upload the fix to the YAB variant. Now you have three versions: 1 in the Bibo variant and 2 in the YAB variant.

• 1.0.0 (Bibo)
• 1.0.0 (YAB)
• 1.0.1 (YAB)

Lastly, the variant called "Default" is a bit of a special case. It is usually omitted from your mod name, so if you only have one variant, you should usually keep it called "Default".