Migrating from Mods Manager Bridge to OpenKH Mods Manager Patching

This guide helps you migrate from using Mods Manager Bridge (build_from_mm) to patching your game using OpenKH Mods Manager itself. This guide is not meant to be a first-time setup guide - it assumes you already have a working setup with Mods Manager and Mods Manager Bridge, and that you’re comfortable using them to patch your game.

1. Make sure your game files are back to a vanilla/unpatched state before migrating

You absolutely want to make sure you start from a fresh set of game files. There are two ways to accomplish this:

• Option 1: Verify your game in Epic Games Store. This is the most foolproof way to ensure your game files are unpatched.

• Option 2: Use the restore option in Mods Manager Bridge to restore the backup packages it created automatically when you first patched. This option will be faster than verifying in Epic Games Store since the backup files are already on your PC.

• Go to your game installation folder and delete the DBGHELP.dll, Luabackend.toml, and Lua54.dll files before continuing as well.

2. Install the latest version of the OpenKH tools

• Determine where you have the OpenKH tools installed on your PC. This is the folder that contains the Mods Manager program that you have already been using to add/remove mods.
• Download the latest version of the OpenKH tools (linked on the Downloads page).
• Copy all files from the OpenKH tools zip file to your OpenKH tools location. When prompted to replace existing files, do so.
  • Alternatively, you could choose to copy all the files from the OpenKH tools zip file somewhere else to start fresh without affecting your existing OpenKH tools version.

3. Run the Mods Manager setup wizard

• Open Mods Manager. The setup-wizard should automatically open first after updating your files. If not please choose Settings -> Run Wizard.

• On the Game edition screen, choose PC Release via Epic Game Store and browse to the folder containing the game executable files (for many setups C:\Program Files\Epic Games\KH_1.5_2.5 but could be different for your PC). Choose Next to move on.

• On the Install OpenKH Panacea screen, just choose Next without installing as we’ll be patching our game files rather than using OpenKH Panacea.

• On the next screen, leave the Launch via Epic Games option unchecked. This option cannot be enabled for the patching setup as it requires the Panacea Mod Loader to work.

• For the Set Game Data Location screen’s Extraction folder location, you can use one of two approaches:
  • Browse to the folder where you extracted your KH2 game data using Mods Manager Bridge originally. As long as you’re confident your extracted game data was from vanilla game files, this option should be fine.
  • Alternatively, choose a desired location and choose Extract game data to start an extraction. This will take several minutes, depending on your PC.
  • Either way, once finished, choose Next to move on.

• Choose Finish to close the setup wizard and save your settings.

4. Configure LuaBackend Hook for Mods Manager integration

Download the latest version of the Seed Generator HERE

Version 2.1.5 and above of the seed generator adds a screen to help you configure LuaBackend Hook automatically.

• Open the seed generator and choose Configure -> LuaBackend Hook Setup (PC Only).

• On the LuaBackend Hook Setup screen, browse to the location where your OpenKH tools (such as Mods Manager) are located, and choose your intended Mod mode. This choice affects the name of the LuaBackend Hook DLL file.
  • Choose Panacea (Mod Loader) if you intend to use OpenKH Panacea to load mods without patching game files. Panacea uses DBGHELP.dll to hook into the game, and it knows to look for LuaBackend Hook’s file with the name LuaBackend.dll.
  • Choose Patch / Fast Patch if you intend to patch your game files. In this configuration, LuaBackend Hook is named DBGHELP.dll itself.
• Choose Check Configuration.

• If you already have LuaBackend Hook installed, the files will all be found, but Configuration File Status may report that LuaBackend Hook is not yet configured for Mods Manager integration. If this is the case, you can just choose Apply Configuration to apply the necessary configuration.
• If any of the files are missing, or if you just want a fresh copy, choose Download/Install/Configure which will download, install, and configure a compatible version of LuaBackend Hook.

After you’ve configured LuaBackend Hook for Mods Manager integration, you can now take advantage of several common mods with bundled scripts.

• Remove GoA ROM, auto save, and soft reset Lua scripts (if they exist) from your Documents\KINGDOM HEARTS HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX\scripts\kh2 folder. We’ll manage these scripts via Mods Manager now. If you have other Lua scripts in this folder, you can still manage those manually. We just don’t want duplicates.
• Make sure GoA ROM Edition is up-to-date in Mods Manager. GoA ROM bundles its Lua script in recent versions.
• Install KH2FM-Mods-equations19/auto-save and KH2FM-Mods-equations19/soft-reset in Mods Manager. The order for these two mods doesn’t matter.

5. Use Mods Manager to configure mods

• Use Mods Manager to add/remove/check/uncheck mods as usual. (You may have fewer or more mods than shown here.)

• You may notice that your old Game tab in the top left has been renamed to PC. This is where you can Patch or Fast Patch your game now.
  • If you’ve been using fast_patch all along in Mods Manager Bridge, the Fast option works mostly the same. If you’ve needed to use the full patch option in Mods Manager Bridge, then you probably want to avoid the Fast option here as well.

• A console window will come up while patching and will disappear once finished. After the patching has finished, start your game normally and your chosen mods should be applied.

6. Patching a new Randomizer Seed

• Works essentially the same as it did before. Remove the previous randomizer seed from Mods Manager, add the new seed, and then Build and Patch again.

7. Restoring original files (if desired)

• The first time you patch within Mods Manager, backups of your original game packages will be made, so the first patch will take longer than subsequent patches. Choose Game -> Restore if you ever want to restore your game files to their original state from these backups.

What happens to my old KH2PCPATCH files?

The new update to the mod manager allows it to load in kh2pcpatch files as if they were regular mods. Just add your kh2pcpatch files the same way you would add a zip seed and the mod manager will handle everything for you.