INI Master

INI Master

A settings window for every ASI plugin in Crimson Desert. Checkboxes, sliders, dropdowns and key boxes in place of a text editor, and it works while the game is running.

Most ASI plugins keep their settings in an ini beside them in bin64. Changing one means finding the file, reading the comments and hoping the value you typed is one the plugin accepts. INI Master finds the game, lists every plugin that has an ini, and turns each file into a page of controls, with the mod maker's own comments as the help.

INI Master is a program you run on its own. Nothing goes into bin64 and the game never loads it.

To give a mod a better page, whether you made it or not, the guide is Adding INI Master help to a mod.

What you get

• []Every plugin on one list. INI Master finds Crimson Desert through Steam's library list, Epic's manifests or the usual install folders, then lists each .asi in bin64, and in the scripts and plugins folders under it, next to its ini. If it misses the game, press Game folder and pick the Crimson Desert folder or bin64. The "Show ini files without a plugin" box below the list adds files such as OptiScaler.ini.

  []A control for each setting. On and off values get a checkbox, numbers with a range get a slider, a list of choices gets a dropdown and a key gets a box you press the key into. The name of the key in the file sits beside each label, so you can still match it against a guide.

  []The help the mod maker wrote. The comments above each key become its description. Hover a setting for all of it, or click it to pin the help at the bottom of the window with the type, the default and where the help came from.

  []Changes while you play. With "Save as I edit" on, each change is written a moment after you make it. A plugin that rereads its ini picks it up in game. For one that reads its ini only at startup, the page says so and marks those settings "Next launch".

  []A way back. A dot marks every unsaved change. The two buttons on its right undo that change, or put the default back when the mod declares one. The first save of each file in a session copies the old file to a backups folder, and More, Open backups of this ini goes straight there.

  []The raw file when you want it. The File text tab edits the whole ini as text. "Plain text values" swaps every control for its raw value, for the times a guess about a setting's type is wrong.

  It leaves your files alone

  Saving rewrites only the values you changed. Comments, blank lines, key order, spacing, line endings and encoding stay exactly as they were, so a diff of the file shows your edits and nothing else.

  Text in any script reads and saves correctly, whether the file is UTF-8, UTF-16 or the Windows code page it already used. If a value holds a character that code page cannot store, INI Master refuses to save and names the character. It never writes a question mark in its place.

  If a plugin rewrites its own ini while INI Master is open, the page reloads with the new values and keeps your unsaved edits on top.

  Better help for some mods

  Comments get a mod most of the way. A mod maker who wants exact types, ranges, labels and defaults can describe them, and INI Master reads that description from a few places, later ones winning over earlier ones:

  • []The ini's own comments.

    [];@ lines in the ini.

    []A MyMod.inimeta file beside the plugin.

    []The same file embedded in the .asi, with one line in the plugin's resource script.

  A mod that embeds it shows "Embedded help" on the list. Master Looter and dofo7777's Crimson Route both do. Mods that ship help in several languages show it in the language INI Master is using, which is why Crimson Route reads entirely in Chinese in one of the screenshots.

  Setting up a mod that has no help

  You don't have to be a mod's author to give it a proper page. Anyone can write the help for any mod, and it lives in a file of its own, so the mod itself never changes.

  []Select the mod and choose More, Export metadata template. It saves a file named after the ini, OptiScaler.inimeta for OptiScaler.ini, holding everything INI Master already read out of the comments.

  []Edit it. The .inimeta file in the guide lists every field, from labels and types to ranges, choices, defaults and groups, and [url=