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
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