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ACTIVATING MODS USING STEAM LIBRARY LINKS

By AlexRight

Mods are the backbone of this wonderful game and have kept it alive so far. The way to start mods is going to the game menu and select the mod. Then the game will re-start and hopefully the mod will have been loaded.

To me the time needed for this operation was too much: I wanted a quick way to start a mod directly from the library.

This guide is intended to automatize the start of mods from the Steam library.

Changing the start options of the base game sometimes can be tricky if you forget which mod you started (expecially if you start them using the workshop numbers).
The problem is that if you play multiplayer and have different mods enabled you shall crash the saves!

That's why I decided to make a link in the library for every mod I play, so you won't make any mistakes.

Award

Created by

AlexRight
Offline

Category: Modding or Configuration, Workshop

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

21 Feb, 2018 @ 1:41am

29 Oct, 2021 @ 1:12am

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882	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

OUR FINAL PRODUCT

DOWNLOAD A SMALL MOD FROM THE WORKSHOP AS AN EXAMPLE

LOOKING FOR THE MOD FOLDER DOWNLOADED FROM THE WORKSHOP

CREATING A LINK IN THE LIBRARY TO ACTIVATE THE MODS

SETTING THE LINK TO CALL THE MOD

CHOOSING PROPER ICONS FROM MODS FOLDERS

CONCLUSIONS

SOME WORKSHOP MODS AND THEIR NUMBERS

Comments

OUR FINAL PRODUCT

I managed to make them work like this, I hope you shall as well.
Do the steps as I wrote them and following the order, it should work.
If it doesn’t, try reading back.
I don’t want to make a statement of rules, this method was best to me but couldn’t for someone else. Free to choose of course!

This will be our final product:

DOWNLOAD A SMALL MOD FROM THE WORKSHOP AS AN EXAMPLE

The mod in question is “ESB to RotJ” and you can find it in the workshop.
I choose this one because it’s quick downloading.
For those who don’t know, to download a Workshop mod just click SUBSCRIBE in the workshop mod page and await for the download to finish.

LOOKING FOR THE MOD FOLDER DOWNLOADED FROM THE WORKSHOP

1) Once you have downloaded a mod from the workshop, its folder shall be in the path

(YOURSTEAM FOLDER\steamapps\workshop\content\32470\MODNUMBER)

MODNUMBER is because the mods are referred to with different numbers the computer can understand. Not very friendly and to us it’s very easy to mistake the folders.

In our case, the mod we downloaded is in this folder:

YOURSTEAM FOLDER \steamapps\workshop\content\32470\1207694913

As you can see I have many folders for the various mods in my 32470 folder.

CREATING A LINK IN THE LIBRARY TO ACTIVATE THE MODS

This new folder can be called from Steam Library creating a new Game Link and changing its Running options

1) At the bottom left side of the library press ADD A GAME - -> ADD A NON-STEAM GAME

2) You will open all the program files you installed onto the PC, click BROWSE

3) Look for the Steam folder where you installed Empire at War Forces of Corruption, the last folders in the path are:

…\Star Wars Empire At War\corruption

4) Inside you will find “swfoc.exe” which is the executable to the game. CLICK IT and then press ADD SELECTED PROGRAMS so it can show itself in the Library.

5) Once done the new link in the Library will be called “swfoc”.

SETTING THE LINK TO CALL THE MOD

1)Click Properties and Rename it to the mod you are going to activate when you click upon it.

In our case I shall call it:

Empire at War to Return of the Jedi

The link in the library can be as long as you wish to be self-explanatory when you have many mods links.

2) SET LAUNCH OPTIONS

The final step is telling the link which is the path to the mod folder.

Just paste the following line:

STEAMMOD=1207694913

Obviously you shall change the NUMBER based on the mod you are selecting.

4) I did for every mod I have in the library so, whenever I want to play a different mod, I just have to press the link and it will automatically start the mod, without changing any parameters.

It’s just as easy as playing an ordinary game in the Steam Library.

CHOOSING PROPER ICONS FROM MODS FOLDERS

Usually, in the mods folders you shall also find an icon image. It is just needed to find where it is.

1) Select icon from the link just created

2) Go to the path of the mods

"steamapps\workshop\content\32470"

3) Open the correct folder where your mods reside, in our case we know the example mod is in

1207694913

Now what? There are no icon files :(

That's because the procedure is looking for "Program files".

Guess what, we can look for "any kind of file" and we shall also find icon images.

4) Selecting "All files" we can find the mod icon

5) Clicking on it we shall insert the mod icon in our Steam library link.

Hi Luke!

CONCLUSIONS

I hope this monologue has been of some help to those eager to play wonderful mods out there and I apologize for my English because I’m not mother tongue so forgive me If I made some mistakes.

Enjoy!

SOME WORKSHOP MODS AND THEIR NUMBERS

Usually in the Mod page in the Workshop they shall write down which is the number of their mod.

Otherwise you can right click on top page and click Copy URL.
For the mod used in the example

if you paste it in any text file you shall get this for example.

Guess what, the number towards the end of the line is the mod number you where looking for.
Enjoy !

Here I summarized some of the numbers

Awakening of the Rebellion 2.8 1397421866

Empire at War Remake 1770851727

Republic at War 1129810972

Battlefront commander 1125764259

ESB to ROTJ 1207694913

Phoenix Rising 1126761873

FOC Alliance 7.63Xb 1125874785

Absolute Enhancement Mod 5.2 1161377079

Thrawn’s Revenge: Imperial Civil War 3.0 1125571106

Fall of the Republic 1976399102

48 Comments

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MASO96001 22 Dec, 2024 @ 5:57am

so im posting some one ells mod here for ref material Awakening of the Clone Wars in the description there's STEAMMOD=3387971722 from my experience if u put STEAMMOD= and the ID of the mode from workshop in property which u get by right clicking in steam library posting it in select launch options under the general tab u get auto start ass that particerler mod and getting the ID for a mod is ass simple ass right clicking on mod in workshop copy link and copy paste somewhere and grab the ID number at the end DNW if it works for other games but think so

M0butu 27 May, 2024 @ 12:53pm

Using this disables audio for some reason (AotR MOD). When I choose Options even the button Audio is greyed out.

This is especially odd since I used this method often in the past and this never occured before.

boneless water 13 May, 2024 @ 9:26am

this is sick, im gonna use this for when im done with the base game

McCloud Jr 13 Mar, 2024 @ 2:52pm

@mrawesome927

The way described here skips the in-game mod menu completely. Which makes loading the mod MUCH faster and in some cases easier.

mrawesome927 13 Mar, 2024 @ 12:12pm

Subscribed to mods but they arent showing up in the mod menu in game

tigertank909-YT 25 Feb, 2024 @ 1:36pm

what

RandomGuyYouMet 15 Oct, 2023 @ 3:39pm

are images optional?

ShadowDragon_79 24 Jul, 2023 @ 10:19am

Okay sorry, seems I got it a bit wrong - while the links work while I'm online, when offline I again get the "stock-FoC-problem"... maybe it was that from the beginning out...

So, when offline, I have to resort to using the '<EaW>/corruption/Mods'-folder and select the mod ingame instead of using the library-links... - annoying.

Also, there seems no way to use multiple mods through the ingame-menu... (although I tried that only briefly...)

__________________________________

So, in short :
Online the library-links work, while offline it's necessary to copy the mod into the respective subfolder.

=============================================

ShadowDragon_79 18 Jul, 2023 @ 2:28pm

@HMS Hood ( and others who might have the same question ) :

Haven't tested yet, but judging from various workshop descriptions, I'd say you have to use multiple parameters in the single field just with a space in-between them like this:

"STEAMMOD=#####" "STEAMMOD=######"

Haven't tested yet, but in theory it should work...

=============================================

ShadowDragon_79 18 Jul, 2023 @ 2:02pm

... Ok, found the error, now it works. Thanks to the OP for the good idea.

What the error was... Actually, the parameter was correct, but you have to have parentheses around it like this:
"STEAMMOD=<NumberOfMod>"

Without the parentheses, it will only start stock EaW:FoC .

... Oh, and don't alt-tab during the first loadingscreen, that'd permanently set the game to inactive ( had to stop it via steam and launch again without alt-tab...

)

Anyway, again thanks to the OP for this tip, it works now.

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