In current implementation of addons in Half-Life Alyx, which is inherited from Left 4 Dead 2, when there are conflicting files between multiple enabled addons, the latest enabled addon will overwrite every other addon's conflicting files.

This becomes a critical issue when multiple addons use the same initialiser script files that are executed by the server automatically, causing all addons except one to fail to load.

This simple piece of code which needs to be saved in your /game/gameinit.lua file, and placed in your mod directory /Half-Life Alyx/game/hlvr_addons/<addonid>/scripts/vscripts/ will iterate through all enabled addons, and try to execute /<addonid>.lua file.

The purpose of this is to run every addon's initialiser script regardless of which addon was overwritten. The reason addon ID is used is because there is no way to read files or directories in VLua.

One problem with this approach is that the addon ID becomes the workshop submission ID after uploading the addon. Since it is not possible to know the submission ID before upload, you will have to reupload right after creating a new submission.


1. Create new submission
2. Change placeholder initialiser file/folder name
3. Update submission

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pcall is used to try to find and run the files, and continue without printing noise if they were not found. If xpcall were to be used, (compilation) error messages would have to be manually printed to a console channel different than the vscript error channel, ruining channel filtering and hinder debugging.

If the developer wishes to see compilation errors, the initialiser script can be a buffer to include another script with 'DoIncludeScript'. This is the suggested method for the best development experience.

As the scripts are loaded before the player is spawned, you will probably want to know when the player spawns. The 'player_connect_full' event can be used for this.

The initialiser scripts are automatically executed on both client and server side. It is important to run your script only where it is needed. You can use IsClient() and IsServer() to control where your script it executed.

Put this condition check at the top of your script files to make sure they are executed only on server side:


The following files and directories are reserved for the game files, creating these may lead to unwanted issues:


It is also important not to use generic file names, such as 'main.lua'. Keep files organised in your working directory.

This was fixed in Left 4 Dead 2 with the 'mapspawn_addon.nut' and 'director_base_addon.nut' files that are executed for each addon. Let Valve know of this problem, otherwise it will move on to future titles.

Until then, the community needs to agree on a standard to follow.