Recommended Mods for Custom Missions, Side Ops and Beyond

One of the big problems I've seen people have with MGSV is the lack of narrative or just any mission content more complex than the generic Eliminate Tank 04 or Extract Soldier 20 kinds of side ops. Well, the modding community's been working on more content for MGSV players on PC to enjoy, and making tools for more people to make more of such mods!

Essentials

You'll definitely need these two for most of these mods.

SnakeBite Mod Manager[www.nexusmods.com]

GitHub[github.com]
Being that all the following mods come in .mgsv archives, you will definitely need the mod manager that uses them. Its installation is very simple, and it'll guide you through it, like directing it to the game's mgsvtpp.exe. Despite the warning of size mismatch at the start of the mod space setup, it will also work fine on the Japanese voice version of the game - tested it myself!

Infinite Heaven[www.nexusmods.com] by tinmantex

While that's not even a fraction of the Infinite Heaven mod's capabilities in modifying various exposed internal settings[www.nexusmods.com], it includes add-on systems for missions, side ops and unique locations - you will definitely need it for any mod that adds such content!

All following mission and side op mods do not require any setup in Infinite Heaven - you only need to have Infinite Heaven installed as is for all those mods to work. However, seeing how only one side op can be active within a "questarea" at once, you might want to use Infinite Heaven's "Side ops menu" to force activate a specific side op you wish to play, specifically the "Open specific sideop" option, or other random repop options like "Sideop selection mode", set to the "ADDON_QUEST" side op type if you wish for the game to prioritize the custom side ops when choosing random ones from the list.

In addition, Infinite Heaven's Nexus Mods page has four example side ops - three side ops set on Mother Base about animals breaking loose, and another about rescuing Pequod from a support helicopter crash in Central Africa.

IHHook[www.nexusmods.com] by tinmantex

IHHook will also provide a visualized, much easier to navigate in-game menu for Infinite Heaven, and will also hook into the .exe and give way to certain functions that were previously not open to Lua!

Missions

These mods will actually add an entry to the MISSIONS LIST on the iDroid and will act like most of the game's main story missions, meaning they have a lot of freedom for creators to ensure a more fun experience for the user!

Huey's Exile Recut[www.nexusmods.com] by me

An Infinite Heaven add-on mission that attempts to recreate what may have been a full fledged story mission, a combination of what in the final game is the SIDE OP "Extract the AI Pod" and the Mother Base cutscene "Pass Judgment on Huey."

Bees Uncut[www.nexusmods.com] by me

A modification of an existing mission that restores some cut content, such as an alternate approach and some additional prisoners to extract, in Episode 6: "Where Do the Bees Sleep?"

THE PHANTOM PAIN (E3 Version)[www.nexusmods.com] by me

A prequel of sorts to TGS 2014 Special Mission - a recreation of a variation of Phantom Limbs shown off in a live demo at E3 2014!

TGS 2014 Special Mission[www.nexusmods.com] by me

A recreation of a mission which was originally created only for demonstrations at Tokyo Game Show 2014!

Yellow Asset[www.nexusmods.com] by Ventos/laranjinho

A rescue mission that includes a little mockup cutscene, OSP playstyle support, completely new enemy soldier patrol patterns, optional objectives, Sahelanthropus, and even more!

Side Ops

These mods will add entries to the iDroid's SIDE OPS LIST. While they don't have as much memory, environmental and general freedom as Missions, they're more accessible, and have been around for much longer!

RET SIDE OPs by retali8

Part 1[www.nexusmods.com]
Part 2[www.nexusmods.com]
Part 3[www.nexusmods.com]
Part 4[www.nexusmods.com]
Part 5[www.nexusmods.com]

Minkoff's Side Ops by M8T

U.S. Naval Facility Bombardment[www.nexusmods.com]
Naval Ops - The Sahelanthropus[www.nexusmods.com]

Mekehl's Side Ops by Mekehl

Rescue the Four Medical Scientists[www.nexusmods.com]
Destroy All Walker-Gears at the Communications Area[www.nexusmods.com]
Extract the Stolen DD Walker Gears[www.nexusmods.com]

Tora's Sideop Pack 01[www.nexusmods.com] by To4oo4

This is the first side op pack by Tora, containing varied side ops for additional entertainment from MGSV! This mod currently adds 8 side ops, but will eventually include fifty!

Boss Operations[www.nexusmods.com] by SuperNark

The first side op by SuperNark! Eliminate the heavy infantry units and rescue the soldiers - but watch out for traps!

"The Camera Man" Trilogy[www.nexusmods.com] by 0ecd66ee83

A three-part series of side ops by 0ecd66ee83! Extract the prisoners and eliminate the mysterious Camera Man!

Part 1[www.nexusmods.com]
Strikes Back[www.nexusmods.com]
Part 2[www.nexusmods.com]
Lost in a Jungle[www.nexusmods.com]

Driver's Ed[www.nexusmods.com] by me

"Pass through all the checkpoints on the deck of Mother Base within the time limit. Stop a vehicle on the starting point to make the markers appear and the training begin."
A recreation of some cut side ops we've only ever had names and descriptions of left over in the game's files!

Knights Of War[www.nexusmods.com] by TaliKnight

Aliens.

REVENGE - Supply Demolition[www.nexusmods.com] by me

Destroy the enemy's new supply of equipment! That equipment was brought there to counteract your own actions against the enemy, so completing this assignment might make future missions easier...

Operation R.Y.A.N.[www.nexusmods.com] by Your401kPlan

Eliminate the CIA cell embedded within the Red Army, stationed at OKB Zero.

Operation Extrude[www.nexusmods.com] by amars464

Infiltrate the enemy fortress OKB Zero and extract plans for the ultimate weapon, Metal Gear!

Skill Challenge Side Ops[www.nexusmods.com] by amars464

amars464 returns with a pack of 8 side ops that test your skill at shooting targets, along with other challenges!

Morbid's Side Op Expansion Pack[www.nexusmods.com] by morbidslinky

The very first custom side op pack, a whopping 50 of them in total, all hand-made!

"Tales from Mother Base" Side Op Collection[www.nexusmods.com] by Adam_Online

A collection of side ops used to create Adam_Online's machinima series that aims to tell lore-friendly stories from the perspective of Diamond Dog soldiers.

Quest Sand[www.nexusmods.com] by Ventos/laranjinho

A series of four side op packs, each one having three of them, making the current total twelve - all exploring what can be achieved with manual side op sequence scripting and the wide variety of little tricks within!

XOF Ops[www.nexusmods.com] by me

A side op pack of five and three much more involved and detailed ones added later on, all using XOF soldiers as the main enemy combatants, including one in an indoors location you only visit once in the vanilla game, and another with a surprise boss encounter!

Missions Sans Frontieres[www.nexusmods.com] by amars464

Twelve side ops created with the Side Op Companion and FoxKit route builder that serve as nice examples of those tools' usage!

Nuclear Quest[www.nexusmods.com] by Ventos/laranjinho

A big side op with the objective of extracting a nuclear weapon! Surveillance cameras, XOF soldiers in special NBC gear, a gunship and a complex little structure built within Yakho Oboo with the prototype in-development level editor FoxKit will guard it!

Prisoner Extraction 7780[www.nexusmods.com] by me

This side op is purely fictional. It cannot harm you in any way, shape or form.

Boss Sheep[www.nexusmods.com] by Ventos/laranjinho

Ventos' first side ops - a four pack - about a group of animals commanded by a sheep seeking world domination through mind control of humans!

Extract the Assets[www.nexusmods.com] by Ventos/laranjinho

A much more recent and involved custom side op by Ventos. The objective - locating and extracting an engineer developing UAV drones and gun cameras for the enemy PF!

Beyond

tinmantex's port of the MGO map ports, all including rescue side ops!

Red Fortress[www.nexusmods.com]

Gray Rampart[www.nexusmods.com]

Amber Station[www.nexusmods.com]

Jade Forest[www.nexusmods.com]

Desert Base[www.nexusmods.com] by Ventos/laranjinho

A custom map created by Ventos using MGO and TPP assets!

U.S. Naval Prison Facility (Pre-Alpha)[www.nexusmods.com] by me

An in-development port of the map from Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes! Includes the map and the free roam mission on the MISSIONS LIST. Aside from just those two, you'll need a US Marines soldier appearance add-on[www.nexusmods.com] installed (just installed - no setup required) and a tool called Archive Transferrer (from File Monolith[www.nexusmods.com]) that converts the Ground Zeroes data archives for the game to pull textures from.

As the file formats and data functionalities have changed drastically between March 2014 and September 2015, this map will be in a long process of conversion, as plenty of those file formats are still unreversed or have no tool support that would make the process much easier available.

Small Ruins[www.nexusmods.com] by Ventos/laranjinho

A mod (that does not require Infinite Heaven!) that adds a custom structure to Afghanistan, created from scratch (with the game's prop assets and other entities like a waterbank) with the in-development Fox Engine level editor FoxKit.

Unknown Place[www.nexusmods.com] by Ventos/laranjinho

A similar mod to Small Ruins by the same creator - this time adding a much larger tropical area in the middle of the desert in Afghanistan!

Tools

These are the tools that were used to create the mods listed above! If you're interested in making mods yourself, you can look into them!

The very basics for unpacking/repacking are:

• File Monolith's[www.nexusmods.com] Archive Unpacker which unpacks the game's archives in an easily accessible way, even unpacking the packs within the archives and putting both in one folder, just so you can easily find some files, and Mass Texture Converter, which will convert all .ftex/.ftexs files within a specific folder - your extraction folder from Archive Unpacker for instance - into DXT1/DXT5 .dds files. There are more very useful tools in File Monolith for much more specific uses, so feel free to take a look on the Nexus page for more!
  
• GzsTool[github.com] which will unpack individual archives and the packs within, and also repack them for you.
  
• FtexTool[github.com] which converts .ftex/.ftexs files (former being the main file which connects the latter's together, latter being the mipmaps) to and from DXT1/DXT5 .dds.
  
• AutoPftxsTool[github.com] which automatically repacks unpacked _pftxs folders into the texture pack .pftxs files, saves a lot of trouble as SnakeBite's mod building companion app MakeBite doesn't already do that on its own.

And the more complicated, bigger tool projects of ours:

FoxKit[github.com] by youarebritish, Joey35233 and kleril

An in-development level editor built on Unity, currently going through a complete overhaul. Currently its main function can pretty user-unfriendly because of how much has to go into automating the building and visualizing of files with so many possible types of entities, but its route editor is completely functional!

Image by Ventos

As FoxKit's more automated data array/parameter file-editing functions are still under development, the alternative is the more tedious XML manual editing decompiling one - but honestly when you get used to it it's not that bad, just not quite there for the patience required for bigger, more precise projects, FoxTool.[github.com]

FMDL Studio v2[github.com] by BobDoleOwndU

A tool that imports and exports models in the Fox Engine format, also built on Unity. It can import Fox Engine's Fox Model files, .fmdl, export them to ASCII .fbx or COLLADA .dae and back again!

Side Op Companion[www.nexusmods.com] by morbidslinky

GitHub[github.com]
An application that alleviates a great deal of the more tedious manual work involved in creating custom side ops. Even with the most minimal understanding of modding in general, users can create their own side ops with this, or at least have a decent starting point if they decide to enhance the resulting files with manual scripting work!

VfxTool[github.com] by youarebritish

A decompiler tool for .vfx files - which cover a lot more than you'd think, not just smoke or explosions. The format is mostly reversed, however it works in nodes - and this is an XML decompiler for the time being - so it'd be really hard to make completely custom .vfx files before it could be integrated into a node editor for it be easier to know how they work, so currently mods using this tool would have to utilize existing .vfx files as a basis, for example:[www.nexusmods.com]


Would you, person in the audience, be the first one to make a completely custom .vfx file by documenting how their node structures work, or help this tool's creator in making a node-based editor? Who knows?...

Epilogue

If you're interested in knowing more details from our people about making mods such as these (and we really do need more interested people, as you can tell by the repeated names in this guide) or just wish to follow the development of our current members' ongoing research and development, including outside of missions or side ops, you can join our obligatory Discord server, Modders' Heaven![discord.gg]

[caplag]

The .exe-hardcoded UI limit is 192, according to notes in Infinite Heaven!

[Nite]

Is there a hard limit on side ops that can be added? Currently my side ops total is 240 and want to add more

[caplag]

The former not sure, but the latter means SnakeBite forgot to install stuff from /MGS_TPP/mod/quests/

[Siyan]

Yellow Asset has my interest through adding UAVs, but upon zoning in have... yellow assets! (looks like character models have the NVG effect on) and crashes!
When installing e.g. Morbid's Side Ops, I get a few more added to the list but a bunch of numbers are missing. If I enable all side ops in IH I can see them, but they remain grayed out.
Any idea for either of these issues? Steam verify + deleting all IH data didn't do the trick

[caplag]

That's SnakeBite, @VigilanteJustice!

[VigilanteJustice]

That's awesome, but is there a Workshop for all of these wonderful mods? Anything like Nexusmods' easy-to-use old Vortex program they abandoned for some reason? I'm not good with zip files.

[Uridium923]

This makes me genuinely wonder if an ad hoc "Mission 51" is possible if these are possible. Though, that would be extremely ambitious.

[Evil]

hideo. i like big titties. im sorry hideo.

[HIDEO KOJIMA]

don't mod my game. you play it base. its not the hideo-way.

[pavma7]

this is very cool