Hi, my name is Crauzer and you may know me as the CTO of Natoken/Runeforge and lead developer of league-toolkit, I'm excited to share some groundbreaking changes coming to the League of Legends modding ecosystem. We're introducing a completely new approach to mod creation and distribution that will revolutionize how creators develop and share their work.

Mod Projects

We're introducing a completely new way of creating mods. Moving forward, you'll be able to create mods without relying on programs like cs-lol. Similar to how developers create projects for their applications, you'll create dedicated projects for each of your mods locally on your machine. This new approach enables us to provide more features while making the entire creation process simpler and more robust.

How Will Mod Projects Work?

Using our new tooling, particularly the league-mod CLI tool, you'll be able to create mod projects directly on your machine. Each project is defined by a folder containing a TOML configuration file, which stores all the mod metadata and additional data required by the modding tools to package the mod into its final form - the .modpkg file for distribution.

Distribution

The new mod project concept allows us to fully streamline the mod creation workflow. You'll be able to rapidly iterate and package mods using our new tooling with simple commands. For example, typing league-mod pack -v 1.1 will package your entire mod project into a distribution-ready mod file. This represents a game-changing improvement for creators, significantly optimizing the development process.

New Mod Format

We're transitioning away from .fantome mod files for several compelling reasons. The new .modpkg format offers significant improvements over our current technology.

The .fantome format, created when WAD files were first introduced to the game, is essentially a renamed .zip file with JSON metadata. Currently, cs-lol is the only tool that allows creators to generate these files through a CLI in a reproducible way.

Key Advantages of .modpkg

We're addressing all current mod distribution and packaging challenges with the new format, including:

• Chromas/Variants Support: Ship chromas and mod variants as a single package, with individual toggling support in the installer

• Improved Performance:

  • Enhanced compression and speed through zstd-compressed file chunks

• Enhanced Metadata:

  • Built-in license information for better enforcement

  • Distributor identification (for example, Runeforge)

  • Optional creator signatures for integrity verification and impersonation prevention

  • Original path preservation for improved file extraction and management

Release Timeline

We understand developing and maintaining these improvements requires significant effort, but we're committed to delivering them as soon as possible. Our roadmap includes:

1. Beta versions of the new tooling: Early 2025 (January/February)

2. Implementation of the new mod format and features into cs-lol for smooth transition

3. Release of the new Runeforge installer built on this technology

We have many more exciting features, tech improvements and developments for the entire community running on the foundation RuneForge has created. 2025 is a year of many developments, updates and improvements to the community which has been stagnant for many years, and we are excited to share all of our plans with all of you in the coming year!