How to merge mods

This is not a mod, but a basic guide to combining mods with .cfg files. I have decided that posting this guide here will help beginners who will need some instructions and relieve the burden on the creators of mods to eliminate incompatibilities. Thanks to Stalker Gamma discord for their modding section Stalker 2, which helped me make this guide.

Merging mods is very simple, and all you need is:

1. Notebook++

2. ComparePlus plugin for Notepad++

3. UnrealPak

In this example, we will combine Jake's Longer Days (2x) and Reduced Repair Cost (50%). They both edit the CoreVariables.cfg file, which means that without merging, they will conflict, and only one of them can be used at a time.

1. Drag each .pak file to UnrealUnpak.bat. This will create a folder for each mod that contains the unpacked files.

2. Right-click each CoreVariables.cfg file and select Edit with Notepad++.

3. Press Ctrl+Alt+C for comparison (or go to Plugins > ComparePlus > Compare) (If you see a warning about different encodings, select "yes", then for each file go to the Encoding drop-down list and make sure that UTF-8 is selected. I don't know if this is important, but Unreal prefers this encoding). In the ComparePlus navigation bar, yellow lines appear on the right, showing all the differences between the two files. You can click and drag the navigation bar to quickly navigate to conflicts.

4. Since there are already more changes in the Reduced Repair Cost file, we will just copy the only change from Jake's Longer Days to the Reduced Repair Cost file. This means changing the string RealToGameTimeCoef = 24 to RealToGameTimeCoef = 12. If you suddenly get confused about which of the files is which, move the cursor over the name of the file, and it shows you the path to the folder. We can now save and close Notepad++.

5. Before repacking, you need to make sure that the folder structure is correct. Since we merged the changes into the Reduced Repair Cost file, let's rename the folder that contains this file as we want our merged mod to be called. I'll call it zzzz_MergedMods. The letter "Z" is used to make this mod the last one to load, because Unreal downloads pak files alphabetically. If other conflicts arise, ours will win. Now we need to create a folder tree inside zzzz_MergedMods: Stalker2 > Content > GameLite > GameData. Put CoreVariables.cfg in GameData.

6. Drag-and-drop the zzzz_MergedMods folder to UnrealPak-With-Compression.bat, and it will create your ready-made pak file.

7. Now you can place pak-file in ~mods folder in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl\Stalker2\Content\Paks\~mods. If the ~mods folder does not exist, create it.

Hopefully, it was clear and concise enough to cover combining any mod with a .cfg file. I'm a beginner myself, so if I need to add or change something, let me know! Now get out of here, Stalker!

Credits: preemware