Yoda's solution to conflicting weapons mods.

Introduction

The following procedure comes AS IS. You use it at your own risk and remember to BACKUP your files before you start messing with them.

If you don't wanna read my rambling and want to go directly to the fix go to the paragraph that reads "SOLUTION TO THE WEAPONS MOD CONFLICT" at the bottom of the article.

I love toys... and some weapon mods out there have an astounding amount of very FUN toys :) I'm specifically referring to the NMM and Drag weapon mods. NMM came first. I installed it and I loved it right away. Then Drag was announced and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. When it came out I installed it full of anticipation for endless slaughter of bad guys with the most exotic weapons you can imagine. No go.

The Problem

The "!find key" error message was there, all over the NMM mod now. It wasn't preventing me from playing the game and using the weapon but I am a perfectionist and I don't like messy stuff like that. Either one or the other mod would have to go.

I wasn't going to give up my toys that easily.

There's a file called strings.txt that contains the names that are to be displayed for weapons and such. Without that file the names of the weapons and ammo and whatnot will appear as "!find key". Very annoying. It's pretty obvious that GR doesn't support multiple strings.txt. Or rather it will use the strings.txt of one mod and ignore all the other ones. So if you have 2 weapons mods chances are you have 2 strings.txt and only one is being used. The weapons of the mod whose strings.txt is being ignored will have the "!find key" error message.

What Needs Done - Explanation

Assuming that you have the NMM mod installed, the following will give you an example of how to manage the strings.txt for that mod. If you have another mod installed and the mod has a strings.txt you would find it at Ghost Recon\Mods\THIS-IS-A-MOD\shell\strings.txt where THIS-IS-A-MOD is the name of the mod you are working with.

Here's what I did: I opened the strings.txt (at Ghost Recon\Mods\nmm_gr_mod\shell\strings.txt) of the NMM mod and noticed that the entries for the new weapons that the author created look like this:

// weapons and items .... .... "WPN_nmm_g36" "G36" "WPN_nmm_mk23sd" "Mk23SD" "WPN_nmm_m21" "M21" "WPN_nmm_m4sop" "M4SOP-MOD" "WPN_nmm_mp5sdsp" "MP5A4/SD" "WPN_nmm_m249para" "M249-PARA" .... .... // actions

You find this after a comment that says "// weapons and items" and before a comment that says "// actions".

The strings on the left columns are called Name Tokens and the one on the right are simple descriptive strings that will appear in the weapon display during the game.

If you open up the gun file under ghost recon\mods\nmm_gr_mod\equip\nmm_g36.gun you will notice

• this is an XML file
• there's a node in the XML file like this: <NameToken>WPN_nmm_g36</NameToken>

Ok, that WPN_nmm_g36 that you see in there is the "WPN_nmm_g36" that GR will look for when scanning the strings.txt. If it doesn't find it... you get "!find key" for that particular weapon.

YOU CAN SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH Real quick, if you feel adventurous and you wanna experiment, go in the gun file and change the name to something else like WPN_nmm_g36test for example.

BTW always backup your files before you mess with them. Suggestion copy the nmm_gr36.gun file to nmm_gr36.gun.bak in the same directory (copy the file in the same directory and change it's name by adding a .bak at the end. This is what I usually do at least. You might find some better way to do it... ).

After that, fire up GR and start a quick mission. Go to a soldier and scroll the weapons until you get to the G36. Guess what! That damn "!find key" is there! Now kill GR and go to the strings.txt. Change the "WPN_nmm_g36" to "WPN_nmm_g36test". Fire up GR again and... you know the drill by now. Lo and behold! the name is back. This could be useful if you happen to have 2 different weapons from 2 different mods that have the SAME TOKEN NAME. Just change the token name in on of the gun files and change it in the strings.txt and leave the other weapon alone. The conflict should be gone.

SOLUTION TO THE WEAPONS MOD CONFLICT:

Ok let's cut the chase and fix the NMM mod so that it can co-exist with the Drag mod.

I copied all the entries in the Ghost Recon\Mods\nmm_gr_mod\shell\strings.txt file of the NMM mod that looked like WPN_nmm_something. I copied all this entries and pasted them at the end of the "// weapons and items" section and before the "// actions" section of the drag Ghost Recon\Mods\drag\shell\strings.txt file. I saved this new string.txt.

So now the drag strings.txt contains all the entries for both mods. I renamed the strings.txt of the NMM mod to strings.txt.old This way GR would be able to find only ONE strings.txt, the drag mod strings.txt. The NMM mod strings.txt file is useless but I like to keep it around just in case. The .gun files of the NMM mod will look for Name Tokens and they will find them in the only strings.txt file that is left, the drag one.

FINAL NOTES

This should work with any mod out there that needs a strings.txt file (not all of them do) and that is conflicting with another strings.txt file. In order to make this work for other mods you have to get a little creative and look for the entries in the strings.txt file that are pertinent to that particular mod and copy them in the ONLY strings.txt file you decided to allow in your GR mods. Keep only one strings.txt file alive, update it with the entries of new mods when you get them and remember that even if you did everything right you might need to STOP AND RESTART GR before it accepts the new changes. You might have to activate and reactivate the mod too. GR is a little stubborn when it comes to accepting changes.

If you intend to merge mods and then redistribute them to the public, please remember to make sure you are doing it with the consent of all the mod authors. It is generally frowned upon to alter and distribute someone elses work, but for playing around on you own computer this fix works a treat.

And that's it folks. "!find key" is gone. Enjoy your multiple weapons mod fix!

:)

Yoda