[Tool] Mod Merger

Grim Dawn Mod Merger

I have always been disappointed with the way Grim Dawn handles mods, being able to only load one module. I made a tool that can merge mods together, so you can combine as many mods as you want (as long as they don’t modify the same things).

This is completely untested, so issues are to be expected.

I hope this tool opens the possibility for more, small mods.

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there is a good reason for that, namely that you have no way to resolve conflicts if two mods change the same file, or to reasonably asses what the consequences are of not resolving it

The only one who can do so is the author of a (merge-)mod

what does modify the same thing mean, the same file or the same field within the file ?
Do you identify those cases and let the user know to look into them ?

The same thing as in the same un-archived files. When it comes to db records, that mean individual db records. For quests for example, as long as the quests don’t have the same name, they will be able to be compiled together.

Certain files could definitely benefit from some merging, and I am planning on looking into that in the future.

The mods of many games conflict with each other, but there are many that do not and can be combined just fine. Grim Dawn has many monolithic mods precisely because there can only be 1 loaded. Hopefully this tool enables smaller mods, so players have more options.

And yes, the tool warns you if files are overwritten / conflict.

yes, many games allow mods to conflict with each other and then have the user a) figure out if the ones he wants to use together would and b) what to do about it. I don’t think most users are in a position to reasonably determine this, let alone resolve it (short of not using the offending mod in the mix).

Whether you rather have GD let you fail or force the merge-mod authors to identify and resolve the conflicts because only one mod can be loaded to me is a personal preference. I can see good reason to go either way. I do agree that this lends itself to monolithic mods however, or at a minimum it requires some merge-mods.

Once you get to merging at a field level, this does become interesting. Merging at a file level to me sounds essentially like a ‘copy & paste and skip all files that exist already’. Maybe I am missing something here. I assume you extract and reassemble the arz and arc files, which then would be the part I am missing at a minimum.

Resources are a simple copy paste, but the arc and arz files do require extraction and re-archiving. Previously the only way to do this was within the Asset Manager, and even then it does not detect assets properly, so you will have issues compiling. I am able to merge mods without the asset manager. You cannot meaningfully merge mods by copy pasting .arz and .arc files.

Yes mods will conflict, and like many mod managers for other games, this tool uses a priority system, so you can choose which mods will have priority for overwriting files. Of course there is no guarantee they will be compatible, but there are so many types of mods that do not conflict. A quest pack and a mastery for example.

Yes, I meant copy & paste at the .dbr, .tex etc level, not at the .arz / .arc level

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying this has little / no use, I was just curious what it can do and what not.

There may not be many mods to use this with currently, but that is what I am hoping to change. Being able to easily merge mods means hopefully (hopefully) mod creators will start making mods that are meant to be played with other mods. This wasn’t really possible before the creation of this tool.

So I tried to merge some mods and the result had a warning. It said something like:

Warning: 48 files were overwritten

The merge was successful but I haven’t explored it that much at this point and I noticed that the mod size tripled. Why so?

Thanks for making this tool possible :pray:t4:

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The warning is telling you that some of the mods modify the same files, so part of one mod is overwriting part of another. You can choose which mods have priority by changing their order in the list. It does not necessarily mean it broke any of the mods, but it really just has to be played to see.

Hmm interesting the size increased. It could be I am copying too many files, or not cleaning something up. I’ll look into it, thanks for letting me know!

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Which mod has priority the top or the bottom mod ?

The top mod has priority.

Try this with Reign of Terror and smashngrab, the file output is 300mb only. Did I done anything wrong or is it just not working for them yet?

I tried doing an outdated mod engineering and bojacks smash and grab.

  1. I couldnt move the mods up or down. If I highlighted the mod all it would do was uncheck it.
  2. It told me the merge was successful and had overwrited 2 files but when I go into my new mod its not showing the new engineering class.
    I would love a way to simply update an old mod. Like this engineering mod. I wonder if it didnt work right because the engie mod has its own class layout.

Tried another Catchysm (Cant remember how to spell lol) and Caravaneer. I take it this mod merger doesnt work at all. Tried with a new char and it erases classes from Cat mod.

I can’t seem to properly merge Nydiamar, and survivalmode (crucible) with dom [Dawn of Masteries].both make mods that start in the normal campaign instead of there unique starting points.

Crucible is a weird one, and doesn’t behave like other mods. I don’t think it’s possible to merge it with anything.

Ok tried again with this. Wonder if I had a bad download. Anyway Im still not getting this to work proper. I can now move mods up and down list. Ive tried more then a couple of different mods but each time I get this.

Filename archivewriter.cpp Line 848
Expression OutputFile !=INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE
message no message

Ive tried changing name of my new file. Ive tried hitting the debug button (whats it suppose to do? anything?), ignore, even exit but its always the same. I do get a new mod and can go into it but its definately not smashing them together. What is wrong.

Edit. turned out it was only doing this with newest smashngrab. With other mods trying to combine I wasnt getting this problem. But its still not working with other mods.

I tried using a different smash with grimllilon like your example but even that is not working right. I get mod but when I go in the grimillion stuff isnt there no tq blacksmith, no goin in DC right away, level up no fancy classes. Doesnt matter if grimillion is first or the smash mod both ways no grimillion.

Tried several different combinations of mods with a smash its not working how do I add smash to a existing mod?

Hello LazyGuyWithRSI
Could you pleas help with how to use this tool. Cant seem to find file to start program
even enstall visual studio still cant get to work any help appriciated.

WHY?

Why all tools downloaded from github are missing executable files ;(
There ara “sln” files instead of “exe”…

EDIT:
DAMN IM STUPID! :smiley:

This is the right place to download :smiley:

For anyone having .NET booting issues, it’s this one: