A Better Way to Mod: A Standardization For Modders and Users

[DiamondMind28]

Reposting this here since it got buried in the mod forum.

 

Right now, every non-graphical mod requires that you install its files in a maze of folders which you can quickly get lost in. If you've installed more than 5 mods by now, you realize how confusing this can get; it can be hard to remember which mods you've installed or how to uninstall them.

 

Credit to polymorpher for their initial explanation which allowed me to understand this. If you haven't read that yet, please do so because I'm assuming that you have that knowledge. Unfortunately, they only explained the what and not the how. I'll go over that now quickly.

 

Explanation of how installing the mods work (modders, skip this part):

 

Every non-graphical mod you're installing has a similar set of instructions. It requires you to navigate to the directory "The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\content" and pick a specific subfolder, such as content0 or patch0. then you open the "bundle" folder. This is where the bundle files are kept that contain a lot of the games information that you can edit -- again see polymorpher's explanation for more detail.

 

The instructions ask you to paste all their files directly into the bundle folder. No, you cannot create a subfolder because of how the files work together. There will be a few things that you are always putting in there:

• Quickbms.exe
• A folder
• A .bms file
• A .bat file

If you read polymorpher's guide, you should know what most of these do. Quickbms is the program which unpacks the .bundle file, and the .bms file lets you run quickbms properly. The folder is the output for the .bundle file, and once you edit the output, what you reimport to the the .bundle file.

 

However, the .bat file is a little different. In general, the .bat extension is a way to tell your computer to run the command line (cmd) for the computer. In these .bat files, the modder puts in code which tells the computer to open quickbms and and then gives the program instructions to reimport from the edited folder -- the same thing you did manually in the tutorial, but now done for you. If you know anything about code, you know it has to be very specific; the code can't choose what files and folders to use like you do when manually running quickbms. The modder has to code exactly where the files and folders are. This means that if you install anything in the wrong place, the program will tell you that the process failed.

 

The standard code for quickbms:

quickbms [options] <script.BMS> <input_archive/folder> [output_folder]

A sample code used for Witcher 3 mods:

quickbms -G -w -r witcher3.bms patch.bundle MyMod

The code does exactly the same thing you did to reimport your code by clicking on a few different screens. More information on how to use quickbms is available here: http://aluigi.altervista.org/papers/quickbms.txt

 

The better modders also give you a way to uninstall the mod. So you also are given another .bat file, named uninstall_mymod and another folder which contains the original code for the game that will be reimported.

 

Why does this matter?

 

So the modder chooses where everything goes, the user has to follow the instructions exactly otherwise the code doesn't work. This is creating a headache for everyone; people are confused, modders are getting complaints, etc; and this is creating a file structure mess where you might not be able to install or uninstall mods correctly.

 

My proposed solution: There should be standard method of installing mods in a specific directory. This will solve a few problems:

 

• Modders don't have to provide the quickbms and witcher3.bms file in every download. Since these are the same with every mod, we can keep these in one place. (And not rename witcher3.bms every time!)
• A file path separate from the rest of the witcher 3 content means that files aren't scattered or lost. This makes finding them, and hence installing/uninstalling them, easy.
• A standard set of instructions for installing mods so people don't get confused by all the different ones.
• For future updates, it's easy to see what is or is not affected.

Now, after all that, my solution is rather simple:

1. Everyone should create a folder called Mods in the Witcher 3 game folder (the name doesn't actually matter, but it's good for standardization).
2. Quickbms.exe and witcher3.bms will be placed within mods
3. Each mod should have it's own subfolder within Mods.

That's the easy bit. Of course, now the .bat files are in a separate place from a lot of the files. I'm going to use the Over 9000 mod (using the 120 edit) to show how to solve this.

 

Original code: quickbms -G -w -r witcher.bms patch.bundle 120\

 

Changed code ..\quickbms -G -w -r ..\witcher.bms ..\..\content\patch0\bundles\patch.bundle 120

 

The ".." means move to parent directory. So the code says:

• Move to the parent directory and launch quick.bms
• Open the GUI (-G), allow the program to write (-w), launch the reimport function (-r)
• Move to the parent directory and use witcher3.bms as the script
• Import the information to: Two parent directories up, then the appropriate folder
• Use the information contained in the folder 120 (which is in this folder) to import

If we do this, then a lot of headache will be alleviated and this will hopefully start us coalescing into an actual modding community.

 

And thanks to all the modders who are the ones doing all the hard work!

 

You can do this yourself for any mod by following the instructions above. I can give you advice specific mods if you post here.

[ChiefyWombat]

I posted a couple days ago in /r/thewitcher3 on Reddit about this.

I am willing to help any modder by creating a mod installation program. It would give you more fluidity in the process, better error/bug reporting abilities, and greater control over the entirety of the process. I'm pretty decent in VB.Net and experienced in AutoIt.