Simple Mod Framework

Have you ever wanted to play without bloom, but couldn’t because Lighting Ultimate needed an update? Or wanted two incompatible mods to be active at the same time, like Realistic AI and Focus? Have you ever wanted to read a lengthy description about a mod framework?

Introducing the


The Simple Mod Framework is the easiest, fastest, most epicest way of creating and playing mods for Hitman 3. Install mods with one click and never worry about updates or compatibility. Develop your own mods far more easily, with automatic handling for many files and a far better development experience.

Do you make mods? Great, the framework has:

  • Advanced compatibility with patch support - mods can patch the same entity multiple times without needing to include the full file
  • Easy localisation - don’t bother with CRC32 and language rebuilding
  • Automatic handling of file types - include contracts without needing to bother with ORES, add new images without creating hashes and patch sound effects easily
  • Easy rebuilding - instead of manually rebuilding everything yourself, let the framework handle your mod to ensure you don’t make any mistakes

Do you not care about that? Great, the framework has:

  • Automatic updates - the framework will tell you if there are updates, and if you want, update the mod for you
  • Settings for mods - you can enable and disable features in any supported mod
  • One-click deployment - all you need to do is hit Deploy, and everything is handled for you
  • Compatibility with everything - mods should never break when other mods are installed or the game updates

Download and run the EXE installer!

  • NoFaTe for ResourceTool
  • Redacted et al for RPKG
  • @AnthonyFuller for HMTextureTools

See the Nexus page for more:

For a list of all SMF mods and some interesting statistics, have a look at the SMF report:

28 Likes

There are mods that work in online and some only work offline. How is that handled? Do I just have to put my game in offline mode and nothing else is to be done?

1 Like

I have a feeling most people skimming this post won’t grasp how revolutionary this is.

If you’re a modder, going from editing your mod file to being in game testing it is now only a few clicks and a lot faster. This makes it viable for me do stuff that was too annoying before, like having to place an object in a map using nothing but XYZ co-ordinates in a text-based editor, then checking it in game and doing it all over again to get the object perfectly positioned. I’d have to manually convert several files and repackage them every single time I made a tiny tweak before, which means one little tweak could take me several minutes to see what it does in game. Now it takes about a minute, meaning placing a CCTV camera perfectly on a wall in Dartmoor only takes a few minutes instead of 15.

If you’re a player it is now ridiculously easy to install a mod. No more renaming things, no more trying to patch your packagedefinition.txt, etc.
Also the ‘patch’ system it uses means people can now have two mods installed at the same time that use the same file. There are big files in the game like the REPO (Repository) which pretty much every single mod that involves items, or changing gameplay settings uses. Other ones are having mods that affect the menu to add in new missions. You can now have more than one of them at a time! However it’s up to the modder to actually use this system.

Here are my two current Framework enabled mods

This accent mod is so old it’s not compatible with the patch system, will have to be re-done from scratch to use that feature. BUT you can click tickboxes in the menu for which maps you want to use, and if this mod is loaded first then other mods that use the patch system should be able to be slapped on top of it and be compatible


All the biggest and best mods are going to have no choice in the future but to use this Mod Framework, because it just unlocks so many capabilities and is easier and is faster.

12 Likes

This doesn’t patch the game to alter its loading from servers. Anything that requires offline mode will require offline regardless of installation method. As long as you’re using the right methods to access offline mode it should be fine.

2 Likes

This is what I love to hear! I’ll be moving back to playing the WoA on PC with the upcoming Steam release after a year on Stadia, and at some point in late January I was planning to make a post in the general Modding thread asking if someone would be kind enough to provide a Beginners Guide for Players (rather than Modders) for someone who has zero experience with modding HITMAN.

It sounds like the tools in this thread might provide the kind of easy to use technical platform that makes a Beginners Guide almost redundant, so massive kudos to @Atampy26 and all the other Hitman modding community contributors for creating something that I can’t wait to get stuck into in a couple of weeks time.

3 Likes

Sorry, I’m completely new to mods and this one looks so simple. I installed a mod to try out but whenever I press “Deploy Mods” I get this message:
image
What am I doing wrong?

1 Like

Place the framework installation folder in the same directory as the Hitman 3 install itself, eg. C:\Program Files\Epic Games\Hitman 3\Framework\Deploy.exe

3 Likes

Very quick question: what makes this different from QuickMod?

2 Likes

QuickMod didn’t have any mod merging capability, and if I recall correctly, it also didn’t support options for mods. It also only supported chunk0 mods, meaning any level-specific changes couldn’t be made.
So it was basically just an installer for rpkg mods, compared to the framework which not only does what quickmod did (install rpkg mods), also makes creating new mods easier and makes it possible to combine mods that edit the same file.

tldr framework is a better quickmod

1 Like

This + peacock + The Sarajevo Six mod and plugin released today made my day, we can finally play this on PC. And it’s extremely satisfying to play it this way. Years of work leading to a good modding experience. The Hitman modding community is so awesome.

Great work guys.

11 Likes

i never play that i think this was playstation only hopefully they add that

1 Like

The mod was literally released, and IOI can’t add it for legal reasons.

4 Likes

yeah i wish ioi would just that

1 Like

sorry i mean i wish ioi would do that sorry if that make no sense

1 Like

I have a question, and I hope it’s not a dumb one. When the game asks for chunk naming conventions and the mod doesn’t have one as it’s file type, do we leave it as chunk0? For example, the 2016 Signature Suit mod has “classic-signature.rpkg” as the name, it isn’t any chunkXpatchY naming type. What should be put it when the Mod Framework is asking about the chunk file?

Depends on which chunk the patch is intended for. Unless explicitly specified, usually the mod targets chunk0.

2 Likes

Are you trying to make your own Framework mod out of a non-framework mod?

If it’s an already made rpkg you can put it in the mod’s folder and implement it by adding this to the mod’s manifest:

"runtimePackages": [{
		"chunk": 0,
		"path": "classic-signature.rpkg"
	}]

But yeah, need to know the chunk for that. Any suit mod can pretty much be guaranteed to be in chunk0, especially if it replaces a suit that’s available on all maps (aka Signature suit or any of the other unlockable suits)

Thanks for the responses, but I am getting a much more elementary error message here.

“Unhandled promise rejection! Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, scandir ‘E:\Downloaded Games\PC\HITMAN3\Runtime\Runtime’”

I couldn’t get it to work like an earlier poster, but unless I’m following Invalid’s post incorrectly, moving all of that into the Framework directory didn’t help, hence the slightly different error message. Having it all in the root folder as the executable gives me djsojus’s error message. My EGS installation is on a different drive than the game, but I doubt that’s the reason for the error message.

It sounds like you put it in the Runtime folder, when you should’ve put it in the HITMAN3 folder

1 Like

When I move it there, I get this message instead.

" Unhandled promise rejection! Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, scandir ‘E:\Downloaded Games\PC\Runtime’"

I’m moving everything wholesale here. Are there certain files that need to be outside of the root directory?