How to play with mods and keep your stars

Details of how to play with mods AND save star ratings

Intro

Some mods disable saving stars. These are mods that change levels, scripts, weapons and gear.

But there is a workaround. You can run the mods locally, ie. by modifying the games core files, instead of enabling them from the game's Workshop menu. It's a bit of a hack, and if the mods you're using update then you'll have to do it all over again, but it works.

In this example we'll use REBALANCE and its compatible version of Level Pack.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1973847853
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1980522551

Music and texture mods don't prevent stars from saving, so you are free to enable them from the in-game Workshop menu. If any of them prevent you unlocking stars, disable all of them, test the game, then enable them one-by-one to find which mod is preventing stars saving.

Get your mods

Subscribe to the mods you want in the Steam Workshop. Keep their pages open. Eg:

s teamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1973847853
s teamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1980522551

note: the S is separate because otherwise Steam Guides changes these URLs into the mod previews you can see above

Start the game.

Enable the mods you want to use. This step is important because it will tell you if there are any conflicts.

Double-check the Workshop pages you have open. Close any that you can't use because of conflicts, and only keep the pages for the mods that you can use open.

When you know which mods you can use, disable them in the game, then close the game. But keep the web pages open.

Prepare the game folder

Open the game folder. (You can do this in Steam: right-click the game in the left side list, go to Manage > Browse local files).



Rename the media folder to "media_VANILLA". Open the renamed folder and add a text file called VANILLA.txt.

Copy and paste the "media_VANILLA" folder. Rename this one "media_MODS". Open it and rename the text file to "MODS.txt".



The text files aren't important to the process, but if you ever lose track of which folder is which, the text files will tell you :) You can also edit the MODS.txt file and paste in the URLs to the mods you're using and their names, to keep track of them.

Note: If you plan to use lots of different mods, have a look at the last section, "Good backup structure" for some advice on keeping them all organised..

Copy the mod files

Press Win+R to open the Run dialog

Paste this and press enter:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\KillHouseGames\ActionSquad

Copy and paste the file "userdata.bin" and name it "userdata.bin.bkp". This is your save file. If anything goes wrong, you can now restore your save.

Open the folder named "mods".

This folder contains all the mods you've downloaded.



Look at the Steam Workshop pages for the mods you subscribed to earlier.

At the end of their URLs is a long number. This corresponds to the numbered mod folders.

s teamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1973847853
s teamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1980522551

1973847853 = REBALANCE
1980522551 = Level Pack - REBALANCE Compatible
1970000194 = Weapons Pack (includes Rebalance)

Open the folder that corresponds to your mod ID. Go into the "mod_root" folder, then the "media" folder.



Copy everything from here.

Open your "media_MODS" folder and paste in the files you just copied. Choose "Yes" to overwrite.

Repeat the process for the next mod.

Be careful of conflicts

Something to remember is: There might be more files in the "mod_root\media" folder than the files that are actually used in the mod. If you have issues, or want to play it safe from the start, look in the "mod_root" folder for a file named mod_desc.xml and open it in a text editor like Notepad or Notepad++. At the end of the mod_desc is a list of the files the mod uses.



REBALANCE (shown above) changes a lot of things so it could conflict with lots of mods. To use Level Pack with it, use the special compatible version of the mod (1980522551).

If you look at the mod_desc.xml for Level Pack - REBALANCE Compatible you'll see it only includes one file, missions.xml, which doesn't conflict with REBLANCE's files. The rest of the files are all commented out, with <!-- and --> (so these lines are ignored)

Ready to play

Now just rename "media_MODS" to "media", and you're ready to start the game!

If you're using Level Pack, this is the point when you should perform the setup. See "Notes on Level Pack" below.

When you the game it, it will tell you there is a "CHANGE DETECTED" but that's normal.

You might also want to double-check the Workshop menu. It's a good idea to disable every mod and restart the game, to make sure that if there are issues, they're not being caused by a mod that was accidentally left enabled.

Testing

To test if stars save properly, you can reset your progress through Options > More Options, then play the very first level. BUT make sure you made a backup of your save file first, otherwise your progress will be lost forever!

When you've done your test, you can delete the freshly reset userdata.bin, then copy and paste your backup (userdata.bin.bkp) and rename it to userdata.bin to restore your save file.

But always keep that save file backup safe, just in case. For a more organised approach to just renaming files, see the "Good backup structure" section below.

Reverting to vanilla

You can go back to vanilla by just renaming your folders. The text files let you keep track of which folder is which. If you want a more structured approach, check out the section below, "Good backup structure".

Level Pack mod setup

The level pack mod requires some setup. There are instructions on the main mod page.

I made a batch script that can set everything up for you, via the "Symlink Guide - Automatic" guide linked in the description. When you switch media folders remember to run the script again.



I wrote the setup script before I made this guide, so the message "You can now enable the Level Pack mod" doesn't apply, because you've basically enabled it already by overwriting the main game files.

If you see this[github.com] message then you already ran the setup for this particular media folder, so you don't need to do it again.

Good backup structure

I personally have a lot of media folders, because I make and test a lot of mods. And once you have more than two media folders, things can get confusing, and the main game folder can get cluttered.

You can handle this with a master folder named "media_versions".


"vanilla fastboot" uses the "skip intro images" trick from pc gaming wiki[www.pcgamingwiki.com]

When you want to swap which mods you're using locally, you can just delete the current media folder, copy and paste the media folder for the mod you want into the main game directory, then rename it to media.

This approach means you don't need to worry about accidentally deleting the wrong media folder, because you're always copying and pasting from that main "media_versions" master folder.

You can take the same approach to your save files too:



This way your backups are always safe, and by renaming the media folders or save files, you always know which is which.

[Demon_Hawk]

Not sure if this is a new bug or what, but, even though there are mods in my "Steamapps/Workshop/Content/686200" folder, the game itself does not recognize that any mods are downloaded.

As in, when I start the game and check Workshop Content from the main menu, it hasn't detected any mods downloaded.

Furthermore, in the Appdata location, no mods are listed in the KillHouseGames folder. I see the folder titled "mods" but aside from a mods.xml, nothing is there.

I have; Verified game cache.

Deleted everything (backing up my save file) and reinstalled

Bashed my head against the wall in confusion.

Any other suggestions?

[darkly77]

@The God Of Hummus - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1970000194

[MrHummus]

You can get a fucking flamethrower!?
Please send me the mod link

[darkly77]

@The God Of Hummus - Have you seen my Weapons Pack mod? git gud don't give you a flamethrower

[MrHummus]

or you could just git gud

[darkly77]

I think what happened was, the backup you made of media (media_VANILLA) was for the old version other game (1.2.5), prior to the latest patch (1.2.6).

So I'd guess restoring the folder didn't work because the game's EXE file was probably updated to latest (1.2.6) so expected the media files to be at the latest version too (also 1.2.6).

Re-installing the game probably fixed it because the latest version of the game was installed fresh, including both the EXE and media files (both 1.2.6).

[『Slabvolvo』]

I reinstalled and now it works. So it was because my game can't auto-update?

[darkly77]

Edit: The game was recently updated to 1.2.6 (on 08-Apr-2020, but my automatic update wasn't scheduled until 19th April). This may have broken mods

[darkly77]

@Diver Down You can restore the original game files in Steam with the "Verify integrity of game cache" option. It's in the game Properties under Local Files. To open properties either right-click the game in your list, or when viewing the main game page in Steam (the program not the store) click the cog icon then click Properties

Be sure to disable all mods and levels from the Workshop menu before you do

[『Slabvolvo』]

@darkly77 Hey dude,ive encountered some problem.
so i went back to vanilla to play with my friend but...

IT DOESNT WORK! AND THE WARNING IS STILL THERE!