As you were wondering why you didn't find an .lua file from an old Mod, let me help you with that.
The script (.lua file) has to be made by the Mod's author, it doesn't come automatically when you're making a Mod. More and more authors are making some for their old or new Mods since AMUMSS is becoming a standard tool in the modding community, but of course there are still quite a few old Mods (and some new ones also) that doesn't provide any.
Users should ask (nicely) Mod's Authors to upload one when it's missing, as it can be really helpful for merging purposes as well, and if they need help to do so they can reach out to the NMS Modding Discord community.
Do you have any advice on updating mods that don't come with an LUA file? Is it a matter of diving into the MBIN and comparing that with the vanilla MBIN file?
Yep that's it ! You unpack the .exml files from .mbin files, compare them with NotePad++ (compare plugin) or WinMerge (not so pretty but great tool that can compare up to 3 files, like the orignal from vanilla, the old modded one and the new one where you can duplicate the changes from the modded one).
It's an excellent tutorial, my dear friend, thank you very much! I've already updated and merged (for personal use only) several mods without conflicts after a small problem that I have overlooked and caused crashes, and I decide to share it so that others can fix it.
You don't have to merge multiple lua files like crazy. First you have to identify all those that modify one or two identical .mbin files (example: UltraBaseBuilding and GBase that modify BASEBUILDINGTABLE.MBIN) then copy those lua files to the ModScript folder and merge them. If there are lua files that don't have conflicts with others, then you have to make the patches individually. It's somewhat tedious, but it's safer, so you won't have crashes or other problems if you do all that work.
EDIT: You have to pay close attention to what each lua file says, so there will be no conflicts in case the game tries to determine which value it should overwrite, if that of mod A or mod B. I hope I have explained it well.
Awesome I am glad you like it! And this is great information, I will add it to the tutorial! So essentially you only merged the lua files for conflicting mods like better rewards and rewards rework, and then with the different sets of merged mods, you simply put the pak files together through AMUMSS to make a final patch to make them all work together best, correct?
So that was first about updating old Mods, merging Mods is an other topic (pretty similar one though).
As Alex985 said for most users i would advice to only merge Mods modifying the same file, .MBIN (and even if one Mod A is modifying 3 files and Mod B is modifying only one, but similar one to Mod A). Watch out for values modified by both .lua files, you can change them manually to your liking in the .lua files so they both match. Otherwise the last .lua file to go through AMUMSS wins (same when two Mods modify the same file, last mod to load that file wins).
You would have to choose a lua file (or a couple if needed) from Mod A you'd want to merge and same from Mod B, put them both in the "ModScript" AMUMSS' folder, run "BUILDMOD.bat", answer whatever you feel like to the questions asked, then get the pak file, to use instead of the ones coming from those two Mods, (that can be renamed to whatever) in "CreatedModPAKs".
That merge needs to be done again every time a Mod is updating !
@Rickles I wouldn't advice you to put all your .pak files through AMUMSS, you'd be better off keeping it simple, like if a Mod is updating you just need to update one merge. You could make a .pak file with all the .lua files you need (or a single .lua file with all the changes from all your .lua files but that's more for advanced users) but it can get confusing when several Mods are updated by some big NMS/HG updates, so again i'd advice to keep it simple, one merge (.pak) for every Mods modifying the same .MBIN.
There are informations about merging process in "General Information on AMUMSS.txt". Patching files is a bit different from merging files, useful when two Mods are modifying the same file but only one's got an .lua file, see "Creating a Patch for existing MOD PAKs.txt". Both .txt located in AMUMSS folder.
To Clarify . . . PSArcTool.exe . . . does not make a LUA from a PAK of an outdadet Mod only Extract the Content in the PAK and is no LUA in the PAK then it s#*! happend ? ! ? Sorry i have to translate English and so sometimes Content Context is not clear also by TranslationSoftware .
13 comments
As you were wondering why you didn't find an .lua file from an old Mod, let me help you with that.
The script (.lua file) has to be made by the Mod's author, it doesn't come automatically when you're making a Mod.
More and more authors are making some for their old or new Mods since AMUMSS is becoming a standard tool in the modding community, but of course there are still quite a few old Mods (and some new ones also) that doesn't provide any.
Users should ask (nicely) Mod's Authors to upload one when it's missing, as it can be really helpful for merging purposes as well, and if they need help to do so they can reach out to the NMS Modding Discord community.
If you need tips you can have a look here :
https://stepmodifications.org/wiki/NoMansSky:Tutorials/Getting_Started
and other links from there.
You don't have to merge multiple lua files like crazy. First you have to identify all those that modify one or two identical .mbin files (example: UltraBaseBuilding and GBase that modify BASEBUILDINGTABLE.MBIN) then copy those lua files to the ModScript folder and merge them. If there are lua files that don't have conflicts with others, then you have to make the patches individually. It's somewhat tedious, but it's safer, so you won't have crashes or other problems if you do all that work.
EDIT: You have to pay close attention to what each lua file says, so there will be no conflicts in case the game tries to determine which value it should overwrite, if that of mod A or mod B. I hope I have explained it well.
As Alex985 said
Watch out for values modified by both .lua files, you can change them manually to your liking in the .lua files so they both match. Otherwise the last .lua file to go through AMUMSS wins (same when two Mods modify the same file, last mod to load that file wins).
To recap :
You would have to choose a lua file (or a couple if needed) from Mod A you'd want to merge and same from Mod B, put them both in the "ModScript" AMUMSS' folder, run "BUILDMOD.bat", answer whatever you feel like to the questions asked, then get the pak file, to use instead of the ones coming from those two Mods, (that can be renamed to whatever) in "CreatedModPAKs".
That merge needs to be done again every time a Mod is updating !
@Rickles
I wouldn't advice you to put all your .pak files through AMUMSS, you'd be better off keeping it simple, like if a Mod is updating you just need to update one merge. You could make a .pak file with all the .lua files you need (or a single .lua file with all the changes from all your .lua files but that's more for advanced users) but it can get confusing when several Mods are updated by some big NMS/HG updates, so again i'd advice to keep it simple, one merge (.pak) for every Mods modifying the same .MBIN.
There are informations about merging process in "General Information on AMUMSS.txt".
Patching files is a bit different from merging files, useful when two Mods are modifying the same file but only one's got an .lua file, see "Creating a Patch for existing MOD PAKs.txt".
Both .txt located in AMUMSS folder.