W3 Mod Workbench 1.9.0

W3 Mod Workbench 1.9.0

The app now updates itself.

Highlights

• Check for updates (under the ⓘ button, or Settings > General > Updates): asks GitHub for the latest release and shows what's new in it.
• Download and install: downloads the new version, checks it against the checksum GitHub lists, and puts it in place of the one you're running. Restart now starts it.
• Carry on where you were: after the restart, the new version opens again your project and its scripts, the bundles and folders in the file list, the files in tabs, the viewers and editors open on a file, and the Tools windows.
• Nothing lost: it won't update while anything has changes that aren't saved or work still running (scripts, XML, JSON, strings, materials, item edits, a build, an extraction). It lists them so you can save or close them first.
• Check when the app starts (off until you turn it on): at most once a day, and an Update to … button shows when there's a newer version. Skip this version stops it pointing one out.
• If the app's folder can't be written to (such as under Program Files), it downloads the zip for you to unpack instead.

Coming from 1.8.0? This release is the first with the updater, so to get it from 1.8.0, download the zip below and unpack it over your copy as usual. From here on, the app can update itself.

Privacy

• Checking for updates asks GitHub for the latest release, and only when you ask, or at start-up if you turn that on. Nothing about you is sent. See PRIVACY.md.

Full details are in CHANGELOG.md.

W3 Mod Workbench 1.8.0

W3 Mod Workbench 1.8.0

Finding things in the game's worlds (loot, monsters, merchants, action points), quest graphs, voice lines and lip sync, worlds in 3D, glTF meshes both ways, and REDkit's source files cooked by Build.

Highlights

• Loot Locator (Tools): search an item or a loot table and the game's map shows every container, herb, beehive and monster that can give it, coloured by its chance at your level, with what the game's roll gives each exact spot. --loot-find does the same from the command line, as CSV.
• Bestiary, Merchant Finder and Action Point Finder (Tools): every creature's page and spawn places, every merchant with what they sell and where they go through the day, and every spot NPCs work, rest and shelter from the rain at (thanks glassfish).
• Quest graphs: .w2phase and .w2quest open as REDkit's quest editor draws them, with every block searchable, Find GUID, Used by, Compare, and Make listener for Native Quest Hook.
• Worlds: .w2w opens as a map (terrain, layers, foliage, the game's own minimap, sharp up close) and in 3D, lit from the game's own data, with a World environment panel to force weather and time of day.
• Item editor (Tools): every item with its stats, abilities, recipes and the loot tables that give it.

Making mods

• Voice lines (Tools): unpack and pack .w3speech files, make .wem from your own .wav recordings, convert lip syncs to and from REDkit's .re for Blender, and make a lip sync from a recording. For the big speech jobs, RedSpeech Tool by nikich340 is supported too.
• glTF: export meshes as .glb for Blender and other 3D tools, import a glTF back onto a mesh, or make a new mesh from one.
• Build cooks REDkit's meshes, materials and entities as the game's own cook does, and builds cube maps, texture arrays and the project's own DLC. Replace with picture makes a texture from your own picture. (Not yet tried in the game.)
• Make a mod of a game file, Compare two versions of a file, and project files handled as in Explorer (cut, copy, paste, rename, duplicate).
• Sounds: upgrade old sound mods to bank version 150, see everything a bank holds, and banks the game won't load are flagged at Build.
• Load order analyser: check a downloaded mod before installing it, and see what two mods change in the same file.

Scripting

• The built-in compiler refuses what wcc_lite refuses, in the same words on the same lines.
• Decompiled scripts compile back to the same code far more often, from relapse12's fixes (thanks).

Viewers and the command line

• New viewers for particle systems, environments, dialog sets and simplex trees; entity effects and mesh particles play in 3D; Worn by Geralt shows an item on Geralt as the game equips it.
• What uses this file? sees inside cooked entities and world layers.
• Command line: CR2W files through standard input and output (Python scripts), --match/--skip, voice line and strings commands, and --loot-find.
• A frame rate panel for the 3D views; faster scene and cutscene playback.

Fixes

• Dyed gear showed small coloured squares; Blood and Wine and Hearts of Stone scenes stood actors inside one another; the Forgotten Wolven swords showed no mesh.
• Some mods' files with a stale header checksum wouldn't convert to JSON; older banks' objects and sound IDs were read wrongly.

Full details are in CHANGELOG.md.

W3 Mod Workbench 1.7.0

W3 Mod Workbench 1.7.0

A big one: a standalone Asset Browser, a new 3D renderer, cloth simulation, sounds, Script Bench, the app's own mod packer and compiler (no REDkit needed to build), and translations into 7 languages.

Highlights

• Asset Browser (Ctrl+Shift+A): every game file in one window, with Game files, Mod DLC, Mods and REDkit's r4data. Filter by class, file type, DLC and folder, search with regex, set bookmarks, see what uses a file, and show EasyAssetBrowser categories and tags (thanks Vincent.02).
• New 3D renderer (Direct3D 11): lights the game's materials the way the game does. Hair, skin, eyes, dyes and stubble look right, posing is much faster, and the 3D views recover from graphics device failures.
• Cloth moves as in the game: a port of the PhysX/APEX cloth solver for all 592 .redcloth resources, plus an Apex Cloth tab in the mesh viewer to tune and save settings.
• Sounds: all 90,995 of the game's sounds and voice lines play (Opus, Vorbis, PCM, haptics), with a sound viewer, bank browser and WAV export. Sound events open from anywhere they're named.
• Translations: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian and Brazilian Portuguese, picked in Settings > Language.
• A new guide (F1): a page for everything the app does, with screenshots. F1 in any window opens its page.

Making mods

• Build without REDkit: the app packs bundles, metadata.store, texture.cache and soundspc.cache itself, byte for byte as wcc_lite does. Pictures are cooked into textures.
• Build always ships compiled scripts (precompiled.rsblob). Also ship the loose scripts is optional. Install copies the build to the mods folder.
• Copy to project from anywhere. The game's files and installed mods are read-only everywhere.
• Material viewer and editor (.w2mi / .w2mg): edit parameters with a live preview on any mesh or entity, and save them to your project.
• CR2W ⇄ JSON: every CR2W version (120 to 164), bulk edits, Resave as version 164 for 196,943 of REDkit's 196,948 older files, and saved recipes you can export as Python or batch scripts (thanks Jaxonic).

Scripting

• Script Bench (Ctrl+Shift+E): your project's scripts, the game's and installed mods' in one tree. Override with a click, compare with the game's, and compile with F7.
• Checks as you type, with completion, snippets, rename (F2), refactors (Ctrl+.), format document, parameter hints, faded unused names and @wrapMethod/@replaceMethod completion.
• Built-in compiler matches wcc_lite: the same passes, errors and warnings, and byte-identical blobs on real mods.
• Compile a folder of scripts without a project: right-click it in the tree > Compile these scripts. The blob is saved beside the folder.
• Find in files is now in Script Bench, with scopes, file filters and regex.
• New tools: Console commands, Quest facts, Scripts log, Key binding helper, Hashes and IDs.

Viewers

• Scenes: laid out like REDkit's scene editor, with a timeline and a 3D preview with voices, lip sync, walks, props, cameras and lights. Read through plays a whole scene.
• Cutscenes: rebuilt like REDkit's editor, with dressed and dyed actors, faces, sound and camera framing that matches REDkit.
• Entities, meshes, textures, cube maps and texture arrays, now closer to REDkit, with properties read from REDkit's source files.
• New viewers: animation sets and rigs, animation events, behaviour trees, job trees, spawn trees, steering graphs, communities, journal, a JSON editor, and a Properties window for every other resource.
• REDkit's strings database can be searched by key name, scene or voiceover (thanks glassfish).

Settings and polish

• Settings redone in sections, with new options: project folder, the game's settings folder, the game's language, editor font and tab width, texture detail and edge smoothing.
• Themed tooltips, icons on every menu, softer list selection, disabled buttons that look disabled, and w3modworkbench:// links that open a file in the Asset Browser (off until you turn them on).
• Privacy: the app collects nothing. EasyAssetBrowser tags (the only thing that goes online) are off until you turn them on. See PRIVACY.md.

Fixes

• A scene at full texture detail could run out of memory (18.5 GB, now about 6 GB).
• Cloth showed the wrong part of its texture, and was flung away when an animation looped.
• File names with accents read and write correctly. Cutscenes that fade in no longer stay black. Dyed clothes no longer show red and blue masks.

Full details are in CHANGELOG.md.

W3 Mod Workbench 1.6.0

W3 Mod Workbench 1.6.0

Highlights

• Texture caches: open the game's, a DLC's or a mod's texture.cache like a bundle. A viewer shows each texture with its mip levels and channels, and saves PNG or DDS. .xbm files in bundles find their texture in the cache.
• Thumbnails and a preview pane: View switches the file list to small, medium or large thumbnails, and the preview pane (Alt+P) shows the highlighted file: a picture, or highlighted script, XML or text.
• Real projects: a project is now a .w3bench file in the mod's folder, with a workspace that reopens where you left off.
• Built-in script compiler: Compile works without REDkit.
• XML overrides viewer and usage graph, and the load order analyser now includes mod.io mods.

New in the file list

• Meshes extract with their .buffer files, even from a separate buffers0.bundle, and textures can be extracted as PNG.
• Compare two files (Ctrl+D): text side by side with the differences marked, anything else byte for byte.
• Other copies of this file (Ctrl+Shift+D): every open copy at the same path in load order, with the one the game uses marked and whether the others really differ.
• Show in Explorer (Shift+Alt+R) and Show extracted file, plus a Copy submenu (path, name, folder, location on disk).
• What each file is: hover a name to see what kind of file it is (mesh, buffer, entity, quest phase and more).
• Export the list as CSV, and recent folders and files beside Open folder and on the start screen.
• A mod's bundles, compiled scripts, texture cache, strings and loose scripts are grouped under one entry in the tree.

Fixes

• Clicking a thumbnail after previewing a script could hang the app.
• Uncompressed textures showed with red and blue swapped.

See the changelog for everything in this release.

W3 Mod Workbench 1.5.2

W3 Mod Workbench 1.5.2

Search the game's scripts and your installed mods without opening anything first, browse them straight from the start screen, and get an outline and better folding for XML.

Find in files

Tools > Find in files (Ctrl+Shift+F) searches the text of files in folders, like Notepad++. No project, archive or script needs to be open.

• Look anywhere: the game's scripts, the installed mods, REDkit's scripts, your open script projects, or any folder you pick.
• Filter by file name: *.ws; *.xml, with ! in front to leave files out (!*.bak).
• Match case, whole words or a regular expression.
• Results by file, with the match picked out in each line. Click a line to open the file at the match, and use F4 / Shift+F4 to step through them. The game's scripts open read-only, and go to definition works from them.

Browse the game and your mods

• Browse game scripts lists the game's own scripts in the main window, read-only.
• Browse installed mods opens everything in the mods folder, as Open folder does.
• Both are on the Tools menu and on the start screen.
• The game's scripts no longer carry a PROJECT badge.

XML

• Outline for XML previews and the XML editor: a tree of the file's elements, each with the attribute that names it (ability DLC5 Nilfgaardian Armor _Stats). It follows the cursor, filters by name and keeps up as you edit.
• Folding in the preview, and a softer look for the fold markers. A folded element keeps its attributes, so it reads <ability name="DLC5 Nilfgaardian Armor _Stats"> instead of <ability>.
• Double-clicking an XML file now opens the preview. Open in XML editor is on the right-click menu.
• In a split view, each side shows or hides its own outline.

Fixes

• Splitting a preview with only one XML tab no longer hangs.
• Go to definition on a type written after a colon (out vector : Vector) now goes to the type, not the variable with the same name.

Download W3ModWorkbench-v1.5.2-win-x64.zip below, unzip and run W3ModWorkbench.exe. No install needed.

W3 Mod Workbench 1.5.1

W3 Mod Workbench 1.5.1: Load Order Analyser

New in this release: a tool that reads all your installed mods and tells you what will break, what collides, and which mod wins.

Load order analyser

Tools > Load order analyser (Ctrl+Shift+L)

• Reads everything. Every mod and DLC is read. Compiled scripts (.rsblob) are decompiled to what they declare and use, and loose scripts, bundle contents and strings are read too. Priorities come from your mods.settings; mods without one go by folder name.
• Collisions. The same script file in two mods, the same function replaced or added twice, wraps stacking, classes, global functions and enum values declared twice, bundle files with different content, and string IDs with different text.
• Breakages. Annotations that point at a class or function the game doesn't have (usually a mod made for another game version), and mods that use something nothing installed provides.
• Dependencies and order. Scripts compile in reverse load order, so a dependency like Shared Utils has to load after the mods that use it. The analyser flags a dependency that is missing, disabled, loads first, or has a priority when the mod using it doesn't, and tells you the fix. Leftover mods.settings entries for removed mods are flagged too.
• Who wins. Every clash with a clear outcome shows a ★ winner on its row and in a WINNER box, with the winning mod starred in the file lists. A merged-files mod that loads first is treated as the answer to the clashes it covers.
• Easy to read. Filter by Problems, Warnings and Notes, pick a mod to see only its findings, and Save report writes everything as Markdown.

Script merger setting

Settings has a new path for Script Merger Remastered by relapse12. With it set, the analyser suggests the merger for clashes it can't settle and has an Open Script Merger button. It's a separate download that this tool only starts, never bundles.

Also

• New help page for the analyser, and the Settings and shortcuts pages are updated.

Good to know

Everything is read on your PC and nothing is changed. The game's exact ordering rules aren't fully documented, so a few findings are worded as risks, not facts. If you find a case where the analyser is wrong, please report it.

Full changelog: see CHANGELOG.md.

W3 Mod Workbench 1.5.0

W3 Mod Workbench 1.5.0

The biggest update yet: a tool that checks whether a mod was copied from another, plus searchable game strings, a mod menu builder and a stub generator.

🕵️ New: Source inspector

Tools > Source inspector (Ctrl+Shift+I) compares two mods and shows how much of one is in the other. Each side can be a folder of loose files, bundles, compiled scripts, or a mix.

• Compares code, not text. Comments, spacing and letter case are ignored. The code is also compared as a shape with every name and value replaced, so renamed variables, functions and classes still match. Compiled .rsblob files are decompiled first.
• Menus and XML are compared element by element, and text files line by line.
• Bundle contents are unpacked and fingerprinted with SHA-256, so identical files are found under any name or path.
• Telltale details: distinctive comments, messages, class and function names and menu keys found in both, plus functions copied whole or with new names.
• Coding style: indentation, brace placement, spacing, naming habits, comment density and function size.
• Fair to honest mods: the game's own scripts can be set aside, so two mods that wrap the same function aren't called copies.
• Easy to read: a verdict with key findings, a breakdown by kind of content, every matching file with a side-by-side view that marks the shared lines, and a report you can save as a web page or Markdown.

Similarity is evidence, not proof. Mods for one game share its code and common frameworks, so read the matches before drawing a conclusion.

🛠️ Also new

• Search game strings (Ctrl+Shift+G): find the ID, key and text of any string the game, its DLC or your installed mods load, in any language. Copy an ID or a ready-made GetLocStringById(...).
• Strings editor: Check IDs finds IDs you share with the game or other mods and suggests a free block. Load translation carries an old translation over a mod's new strings, marking the new ones.
• XML editor: colouring, folding, a live well-formed check, Format, and saving that keeps the file's encoding.
• Mod menu builder (Ctrl+B in the XML editor, or Tools > New mod menu): build user_config_matrix menus with forms: pages, toggles, sliders, option lists and presets, with the strings and the WitcherScript that reads each setting.
• Stub generator (Ctrl+Shift+W): exact @wrapMethod, @replaceMethod, @addMethod and @addField code from the game's own scripts.
• Outline side bar in script previews: a tree of classes, structs and enums with their members.
• Open in external editor from the right-click menu, and a PROJECT badge on script projects.
• New app icon, and new Help pages for all of the above.

🐛 Fixed

• The About card (the i button) now stays open until you click elsewhere, press Esc or click the button again, instead of closing when the mouse moved.
• The downloads badge in the README now works.

📥 Download

Grab W3ModWorkbench-v1.5.0-win-x64.zip below, unzip it anywhere and run W3ModWorkbench.exe. Nothing to install, .NET is included. Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.

"Windows protected your PC"? The exe isn't code-signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Full changelog: CHANGELOG.md

W3 Mod Workbench 1.4.1

W3 Mod Workbench 1.4.1

The preview is now a script editor. Open a mod's scripts, change them, and compile them into a .rsblob with REDkit's own compiler, without leaving the workbench. Go to definition, the definition popup and everything else from 1.4.0 keep working while you type.

New: script projects

Open a folder of .ws files and it's listed as a script project: a REDkit project's workspace\scripts, a mod's content\scripts, or any folder of loose scripts. Opening or dropping a single .ws file opens its whole project.

• Edit straight in the preview, with undo and redo. Highlighting, go to definition, the popup, the outline and parameter hints all follow your edits.
• Save (Ctrl+S) writes the file back in the same encoding it came in, so nothing changes but what you typed. Ctrl+Shift+S saves every changed file.
• Unsaved files get a dot on their tab and a ● in the title. Closing a tab, a window or the app asks first: Save, Don't save, or Cancel.
• The same file open in both halves of a split shows the same text, so an edit in one is in the other too.
• After a save, references, find in files and the other searches see the change right away.

New: edit a decompiled mod

Decompiled scripts are still read-only, but Edit as project saves a compiled mod's scripts to a folder you choose and opens them as an editable project in the blob's place. Your open tabs switch over to the new files at the same spot. It never writes over a folder that already has scripts in it.

New: compiling

Compile (Ctrl+Shift+B) builds a project into a .rsblob with REDkit's wcc_lite.exe, the same compiler REDkit publishes with.

• Point Settings at wcc_lite.exe, or let Find automatically look for REDkit in your Steam and GOG libraries. Until it's set, Compile is greyed out and its tooltip says why. Editing and saving work without it.
• Changed files are saved first, after asking. The first compile asks where the blob goes and remembers that for the project; right-click Compile to change it.
• Warnings and errors are listed under the files, grouped by file. Click one to jump to its line, and F4 steps through them. Show log opens wcc_lite's full output.
• wcc_lite often leaves the file name out of its messages when a project has several files. The workbench works out the file from the name in the message and the line it's on, and marks those as guessed.
• When a compile fails, nothing is written, so a blob that already works is left alone.

REDkit is free on Steam and GOG for owners of the game. Nothing of REDkit's ships with the workbench: Compile uses your own install.

Help

A new guide page, Editing and compiling scripts (F1). The Settings, shortcuts and troubleshooting pages now cover the editor too.

Install

Download W3ModWorkbench-v1.4.1-win-x64.zip below, unzip it anywhere and run W3ModWorkbench.exe. Nothing to install. It never changes bundles or compiled blobs; the only files it writes are scripts you save and the blobs you compile, where you choose.

See the changelog for the full history.

1.4.0

W3 Mod Workbench 1.4.0

W3 Bundle Explorer is now W3 Mod Workbench. It started as a way to look inside bundles, and it now reads and navigates compiled scripts and edits string tables too, so it has a new name and a new icon to match. Your settings carry over the first time you start it.

New: strings editor

Drop a .w3strings file onto the window, or a strings .csv, and it opens in a table you can edit.

• Change text, IDs and keys, add and remove strings, and search through them.
• Save as a .w3strings file the game reads. The output is byte for byte what the modding tools' encoder writes for the same CSV.
• Copy to every language writes the same file for all 15 languages in one go, the same set of copies a mod's encode script makes.
• Export to CSV for the modding tools or a translator.
• Key names come back from a strings CSV in the same folder, since a .w3strings file only stores their hashes.
• Warnings for duplicate IDs, IDs outside your mod's range, and keys two strings share.
• Opening a folder lists its strings files in the tree, beside the mod's bundles.

It uses its own encoder and decoder, written for the next-gen UTF-8 format, so it also opens next-gen files that older decoders can't read. Pre-next-gen UTF-16 files open too.

New: finding your way around scripts

• Go to definition: Ctrl+click or F12 on a name opens where it's declared: in the same mod, another open archive, the game's scripts, or your installed mods' scripts. Follows a.b through types, return types, casts and extends, and takes a @wrapMethod to the original.
• Find all references (Shift+F12): every place that uses a function, class, variable or enum value, worked out the same way, so same-named methods in other classes aren't mixed in.
• Who else changes this (Ctrl+Shift+F12): the @wrapMethods, @replaceMethods and overrides of a function, the methods mods add to a class, and the mods whose loose copy replaces a game script.
• Type hierarchy (Shift+Alt+H): a class's base classes, subclasses and states, or a method's base versions and overrides.
• Go to symbol (Ctrl+T) and find in files (Ctrl+Shift+F) across everything that's searched.
• An outline bar showing the class and function you're in (Ctrl+Shift+O lists the whole file), and parameter hints in calls.
• A definition popup when you rest the mouse on a name. It shows the declaration, what it belongs to, an enum value's number and a struct's fields.

New: comparing

Compare with game version opens the game's copy of a mod's loose script beside it and marks every added, removed and changed line. Compare with an open file does the same for any two files. F8 steps through the differences.

Previews

• Files open as tabs in one window, with split view (Ctrl+) side by side or top and bottom. Tabs can be dragged between groups and windows.
• Back and forward (Alt+Left / Alt+Right, or the mouse buttons) with a history list. Going back to a tab you've closed opens it again.
• Pin tabs, and Ctrl+Shift+T reopens the tab closed last.

Looks

• Eight colour themes in Settings > Appearance: Windows, one for each witcher school (Wolf, Cat, Griffin, Bear, Viper, Manticore) and Graphite, each in light and dark.
• Softer selection highlights that keep text readable in every theme.

Install

Download W3ModWorkbench-v1.4.0-win-x64.zip below, unzip it anywhere and run W3ModWorkbench.exe. Nothing to install, and it never changes your game files.

If you had W3 Bundle Explorer, you can delete it once you've started the new version: your settings are copied across on its first start.

See the changelog for the full history.

W3 Bundle Explorer 1.3.1

First public release of W3 Bundle Explorer.

Highlights

• Browse and extract .bundle files from the base game, expansions, DLC and mods, in both the current and older bundle formats. The whole game loads in about a second.
• Decompile REDkit compiled scripts (precompiled.rsblob) back into readable WitcherScript: classes and states, enums and structs, global functions, and @addField / @addMethod / @wrapMethod / @replaceMethod changes grouped by the game class they touch.
• Preview text files without extracting, with WitcherScript syntax highlighting (grammar by WebSpam), line numbers and search.
• Light and dark themes, a settings window, and a full built-in guide (F1).

Download

Download W3BundleExplorer-v1.3.1-win-x64.zip below, unzip it anywhere and run W3BundleExplorer.exe. Nothing needs installing: .NET is included.

Requires Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. The exe isn't code-signed, so if Windows SmartScreen warns you, click More info, then Run anyway.

Thanks

WebSpam for the WitcherScript syntax highlighting, Aelto for his tw3-cahirb decompiler research, and the AvalonEdit team for the code view.

See the changelog for the full history.