Add Singularity Bombs to your Weapons Locker

Overview

[Now includes installable mod!] Singularity Bombs are the rarest weapon in RFG, but with the power of modding, we can erase this problem once and for all and create all sorts of destruction by making Singularity Bombs replenishable! Behold: the Internet’s first-ever guide—in the nearly-6.5 years since the game’s release, as of my writing this; seriously, people?—to making this all-too-fun weapon infinitely obtainable within a single gamesave!

The Introduction (a.k.a. “Who am I? Why am I here?”)

UPDATE (12-Nov-2015): IT IS QUITE POSSIBLE THAT THE PROCESS DETAILED IN THIS GUIDE DOES NOT WORK. I was playing RFG last night and received the warning message when I went to exchange my Singularity Bombs for another weapon at my Weapons Locker. (This also would mean that the only functionality of the installable mod provided at the end of this guide is to adjust the blast radius of the final explosion of a SB; I can confirm based on thorough-ish tests that this functionality IS intact.) I am in the midst of exploring the possibility of turning the Proximity Mine weapon into Singularity Bombs, but I have been running into roadblocks. I will continue this effort, however. In the meantime, I may add some more options to my existing mod to make SBs more customisable. I will also be rewriting this guide as a beginner’s tutorial to modding RFG, using an example that is actually functional. And if there are any veteran modders (or developers…?) with knowledge as to the whereabouts of the code that removes SBs from Lockers, I would really appreciate any pointers.

My sincerest apologies to anyone whom I may have misled through this guide. I will make it up to you by figuring out how to actually do what I thought I had done!

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Singularity Bombs are the rarest weapon in RFG, the few that exist being obtainable only by finding them in the field and being used up for good (within a given save) once detonated. Fear not, however! With the power of modding, we can erase this problem once and for all and create all sorts of destruction and/or mayhem with replenishable Singularity Bombs!

As of my writing this, I have been playing RFG for an unhealthy amount of time spread out over 6+ months, and after beating the game, I decided to explore the mods people had made to spice things up. What I wanted most of all was a mod that gave me infinite ammo…for all weapons; unfortunately, none of the infinite-ammo mods out there enabled me to black-hole the Scheiße out of the EDF. In fact, several different but similar Google searches provided (false) evidence that making Singularity Bombs available in the Weapons Locker (and thus making them replenishable) was entirely impossible.

tl;dr The Internet sucks.

Anyway, after much digging-through of RFG’s XTBL (asset) files, I finally figured out how to add Singularity Bombs to my Weapons Locker just today, and it works like a charm! And I thought it was high time that someone set the record straight: you can have as many Singularity Bombs as you damn well please!

(And naturally, I also tweaked the file a bit more for myself to allow me to take/carry 9999 bombs at a time. Boom!)

The Process (a.k.a. “Let’s give the Red Faction WMDs!”)

You are going to feel compelled to ask me this exact question. Trust me: I, too, wish that such a mod existed.

I can tell you that I do plan to put one together for this eventually; first, however, I need to research how I would actually go about doing that. (I believe there is a guide about that here on Steam. I will check it out in the near future.) Give me some time to do so, and your patience shall be well-rewarded.

In the meantime, if your patience is wearing too thin like my own was, you can indulge your singularity-ish(?) desires by following the not-terribly-complicated steps below!

UPDATE (2015.11.8): Well, what do you know? I actually did this crap! You’re welcome! (Scroll down to the last section of this Guide for more information.)

I hope the wait wasn’t too unbearable for you! (If it was, you need to work on having patience. It was only a day.)

IMPORTANT: Since initially posting this guide, I have discovered that, even after applying this mod, removing Singularity Bombs from your active weapons at an Ammo Box—as opposed to the Weapons Lockers found at safehouses—will cause the warning message about losing the Bombs forever to appear. If you accept the warning, YOU WILL LOSE THE SINGULARITY BOMBS FROM YOUR WEAPONS LOCKERS AND AMMO BOXES ENTIRELY. If this happens, you will have to follow the steps in this guide again from the start. When I put together the “installable” mod for this, I will look into getting rid of this issue. Until then, make sure to only switch out your Singularity Bombs for other weapons at Weapons Lockers.

Hold on! Before you begin, you should be aware that until I do build that mod for Mod Manager, every time you make changes to the misc.vpp_pc file—be it by activating/updating your mods using Mod Manager, modifying your game using Your Faction Guerrilla, or altering your game using some other automated utility—you will unfortunately need to go through a large percentage of this process again, as those applications completely overwrite said file when they do something to your game. Sorry!

Alrighty, first thing’s first: make sure you have downloaded and extracted the Gibbed.Volition Packer/Unpacker[www.factionfiles.com] program. Done? Okay, now we can (finally) begin!

There are two ways to do this: 1) the easy way that involves drag-and-drop, and 2) the harder way that involves using the command line. You can only use the easy way if you use the edition of Gibbed that I linked to above. You can use the harder way with any edition of Gibbed.

1. Open two windows of your file browser. In one, navigate to the folder to which you extracted Gibbed, then open the “bin_rf3” folder. In the other window, navigate to …/Steam/SteamApps/common/Red Faction Guerrilla/build/pc/cache.
2. In the “cache” window, click and drag the file misc.vpp_pc onto the file named Gibbed.RedFaction.Unpack.exe in the “bin_rf3” window.
3. Wait a few moments! When Gibbed has done its thing, return to your “cache” window and notice that a folder named “misc” has been created in “cache.” Open that folder.
4. Search within this folder for the file weapons.xtbl. Open it in your favorite text editor, such as Notepad or Notepad++.
5. Don’t panic when you see the bajillion lines of code! You will be searching for a specific chunk of text (or string, for you techies): “<Name>singularity_bomb.” You want the second occurrence of this string; it should be located around line 3450 (assuming you have line numbers in your text editor).
6. Now that you’ve found that, move down about 45 lines or so until you see a few lines of code flanked on top and bottom by “<Flags>[…]</Flags>.”
7. Delete the line of code that reads “<Flag>never in cabinet</Flag>.” (Make sure you are, in fact, deleting the flag in the right weapon entry; don’t just search for this line of code and assume you would be deleting the right one.)
8. Save the file and close your text editor.
9. In the “misc” window of your file explorer, go back out to the “cache” folder. In that, click and drag the “misc” folder onto the file named Gibbed.RedFaction.PackVPP.exe within the “bin_rf3” window. Wait for Gibbed to do its thing again. Feel free to close the “bin_rf3” window at this point.
10. Backup a copy of your “cache”-located misc.vpp_pc file somewhere safe (not in “cache”). Then, delete the copy in “cache.”
11. Look for the file misc_PACKED.vpp_pc in “cache.” Edit the filename to get rid of the “_PACKED” part so that it now has the name of the file you deleted from the folder a few moments ago.
12. Start up RFG!

1. In your file browser, navigate to …/Steam/SteamApps/common/Red Faction Guerrilla/build/pc/cache. Find the misc.vpp_pc file and make a copy of it. Keep the copy somewhere safe (outside of the “cache” folder).
2. Create a folder somewhere in the vicinity (such as inside) of your “cache” folder. Name it something simple. (We’ll use “misc” in this example.)
3. Open up the command line. (In Windows, it’s called Command Prompt.) Enter cd “[the directory in which you have the Gibbed unpack executable]”. (The quotes are important if any of the folders on the way to your Gibbed directory has a space in its name.)
4. Enter [filename of your Gibbed VPP unpacker executable (probably something like “Gibbed.RedFaction.UnpackVPP.exe)] -o “[…]/build/pc/cache/misc.vpp_pc” “[…]/misc”. (The last “misc” is the path of the folder you created in step 2.)
5. Wait for Gibbed to do its business—eww—and then open up the “misc” folder.
6. Follow steps 4 through 8 of “The Easy Way.”
7. In the command line window, enter [filename of your Gibbed VPP packer (NOT unpacker!) executable] -c “[…]build/pc/cache/misc.vpp_pc” “[…]/misc”. (If you accidentally use the unpacker again, go back to step 5.)
8. Once Gibbed is done, start up RFG!

The Catch (a.k.a. “Where my Bombs at?!”)

Singularity Bombs won’t just show up in your Weapons Locker. Remember how most other weapons first appeared? That’s right: you had to pick them up in the field!

AUUUUUUUUGH!

With any luck, you haven’t already found and used all of the Singularity Bombs in your save file. If you have…feel free to launch into an angry session of swearing and Thermobaric explosions, then start a new game.

I am not going to list off all of the locations of the Singularity Bombs found around the colonized Martian sectors; that’s what Google is for. I will tip you off to the one in the Old Coot/Parker’s shack just north of the Mohole (in the Badlands). And there’s also one in a small building just south of the main EDF facility (air base) in the Badlands, a building that resides within what seems to be a small vehicle repair depot flanked on both sides by EDF checkpoints.

Google can help you find others.

The good news? Once you pick up just one Singularity Bomb in the field, you will be able to pick up some more—up to two at a time, unless you altered the Singularity Bomb’s <Max_Count> value in weapons.xtbl—at any Weapons Locker at any Red Faction safehouse at any time!

HAPPY SINGULARITY-ING(???)!

The Mod (a.k.a. “The Process requires too much effort!”)

As promised (see section “The Process…”), I have put together a Mod Manager[www.factionfiles.com]-compatible mod for those of you who do not have too much time on their hands. In addition to enabling Singularity Bombs to show up in your Weapons Locker, this mod also gives you the ability to modify the blast radius of the final explosion of a detonated Singularity Bomb.

To install, download the ZIP archive, then extract its contents to your “mods” folder. (This should be located in the root of the “Red Faction Guerrilla” directory within your Steam games folder. Create it if it does not already exist.) Open up Mod Manager and check off the box to the left of the “Singularity Bombs Mod” listing on the left side of the window. Feel free to also adjust the “Ending Blast Radius” setting to your liking on the mod’s page. (It is set to “1x” by default.)

If you notice any problems or bugs, please tip me off to them within a comment on this Guide. Thanks!

DISCLAIMER: THIS MOD IS A WORK-IN-PROGRESS. It is also the first actual mod that I have ever written from scratch for any video game. Don’t expect perfection! (More features may be added in the future…?)

Singularity Bombs Mod[drive.google.com] [v0.1][08-Nov-2015]
by EzloSpirit

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit [link].