How to merge mods
This is not a mod but a basic guide on how to merge .cfg file mods. I figured posting this here would help the most newbies who could use some instruction and take a load off the mod makers to resolve incompatibilities. Thanks to the Stalker Gamma discord for their Stalker 2 modding section which helped me make this guide.
Merging mods is very easy and all you need is:
1. Notepad++
2. ComparePlus plugin for Notepad++
3. UnrealPak
For this example we will merge Jake’s Longer Days (2x) and Reduced Repair Cost (50 percent). They both edit CoreVariables.cfg which means without merging they would conflict and only one would be usable at a time.
1. Drag and drop each .pak file onto UnrealUnpak.bat. This will create a folder for each mod containing the unpacked files.
2. Right click each CoreVariables.cfg file and select Edit with Notepad++.
3. Press Ctrl+Alt+C to compare (or navigate to Plugins > ComparePlus > Compare)(If you get a warning about different encoding select yes, then for each file go to the Encoding dropdown and ensure UTF-8 is selected. I don’t know if this is super important but Unreal prefers it). The ComparePlus NavBar on the right will have yellow lines showing all differences in the two files. You can click and drag the navbar to quickly navigate to conflicts.
4. Because there are more changes already in the Reduced Repair Cost file, we will just copy the single change from Jake’s Longer Days into the Reduced Repair Cost file. This means changing the line RealToGameTimeCoef = 24 to RealToGameTimeCoef = 12. If you ever get confused which file is which you can hover over the name of the file and it will show you the folder path. Now we can save and close Notepad++.
5. Before we can repack it we have to ensure that the folder structure is correct. Since we merged changes into the Reduced Repair Cost file, let’s rename the folder containing it to whatever we want our merged mod to be called. I will name it zzzz_MergedMods. The Z’s are to ensure this mod loads last since Unreal will load pak files in alphabetical order. In case there are still other conflicts, ours will win. Now we have to create this folder tree inside of zzzz_MergedMods: Stalker2 > Content > GameLite > GameData. Place CoreVariables.cfg into GameData.
6. Drag and drop the zzzz_MergedMods folder onto UnrealPak-With-Compression.bat and it will create your completed pak file.
7. Now you can place the pak file into the ~mods folder at S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl\Stalker2\Content\Paks\~mods. If the ~mods folder doesn’t exist, create it.
Hopefully this was clear and concise enough to cover merging any .cfg file mod currently. I’m a newbie myself so if I should add or change anything let me know! Now get out of here, Stalker!
