What Kind of MOD Is It?
Gears – A Mod Settings Manager (author: Laydor) appears to be a MOD built to serve, as its name suggests, as an “integrated manager for MOD settings.” Its category is User Interface (UI), and it provides a system that lets you view and change the various settings of supported MODs from within the game.
In 7 Days to Die, the way settings are configured varies from MOD to MOD, and there are plenty of cases where you can’t make adjustments without directly editing XML. Gears can be described as a MOD that aims to make such settings manageable from an in-game UI screen. It’s explained that, during development, it received a great deal of feedback from the 7DTD modding community, and that its features were selected and refined over a long period of time.
One important caveat is that it is not compatible with Easy Anti Cheat (EAC). Gears won’t work unless EAC is turned off, and on servers it can only be used in environments where EAC is disabled.
Main Features
- In-game UI for settings — For supported MODs, you can view and change their settings from a dedicated UI window.
- World Settings — Settings tied to the world save, which are said to be synced across all clients on the server. The design lets you access them from the same place as the vanilla world settings, whether starting a new game or loading one.
- Redesigned vanilla world settings screen too — The existing world settings window itself has also been reworked.
- Global Settings — It also supports settings that can be changed from the main menu or the in-game Esc menu.
- Extensibility for modders — You can add setting entries in XML or C#, and a GearsAPI is said to be provided for creating, changing, and manipulating settings.
- Can be made optional — The design lets modders choose whether to make Gears a requirement or an option for their own MOD.
Installation Tips
As with typical MODs, you’ll likely install it by extracting and placing it into the Mods folder. As mentioned above, you need to turn EAC off, so keep in mind that for single-player you’ll disable EAC in the launch settings, and for multiplayer you’ll need an environment with EAC turned off on both the server and client sides.
Also, Gears itself is a “foundation for managing settings,” and whether you can actually adjust settings depends on whether each MOD supports Gears. Before installing, it’s a good idea to check whether the MOD you want to use claims Gears compatibility. For detailed usage, referring to the author’s explanation (full guide) is the surest bet.
Who Is It Recommended For?
- Players who have multiple MODs installed and want to manage settings collectively via a UI rather than by editing XML directly
- Administrators who want to sync world settings to everyone on their server (assuming EAC-off operation)
- Modders who want to give their own MOD an easy-to-understand settings screen
Conversely, for those who want to play with EAC enabled, or those who mainly use lightweight MODs that require almost no setting adjustments, this may not necessarily be a must-have MOD.
*This article is an introduction based on information posted on Nexus Mods. Specifications and compatibility status may be updated, so please check the latest information on the distribution page before installing.