Witcher Conflict Resolver (W3CR)

Witcher Conflict Resolver (W3CR) — 0. 2. 2 Alpha

WitcherScript conflict resolver for The Witcher 3. Offline. Early alpha.

Solve a real conflict once. Turn that decision into a reusable recipe instead of making every player solve the same conflict again.

What this is

W3CR is not another Script Merger interface.

Script Merger is good at finding overlapping code and can automatically handle many simple cases. The painful part starts when a conflict needs an actual decision: which change should win, whether both changes are required, whether the right answer is a load-order rule rather than a merge, and whether an old compatibility instruction is still valid for newer mod or game versions.

W3CR separates those cases:

- AUTO_SAFE — changes compose deterministically, so W3CR merges them automatically.

- KNOWN_RESOLUTION — an exact reusable W3R recipe already exists for this conflict.

- KNOWN_PRIORITY — a confirmed instruction says one mod should override another; W3CR applies the intended priority instead of forcing a code merge.

- NEEDS_USER — there is no safe exact answer yet. W3CR does not guess.

The important part is that a recipe is tied to the relevant exact source semantics, not to one complete prebuilt mod list. The same known combination can therefore be reused in a different overall setup when the actual participating scripts match.

Why the database matters

The long-term idea is a community database of reusable conflict decisions.

One person resolves a genuinely difficult combination correctly, the decision is captured as a code-free recipe and submitted as evidence. Independent matching submissions can then corroborate that resolution, allowing future users with the same exact conflict to reuse it instead of working through the same code manually.

The current public database is still small. W3CR becomes more useful as more real resolved conflicts are submitted and reviewed.

Code-free W3R v7

Public W3R recipes do not contain redistributed WitcherScript source from the game or third-party mods.

They store exact identities/hashes, token/source coordinates, operations and expected result fingerprints. When a recipe matches, W3CR reads the necessary text from your own installed files and verifies the reconstructed result locally.

New recipes use `w3r-source-recipe-v2`, including an additional lexical integrity check introduced after real-world testing exposed a quote-boundary failure case. Existing published v1 source recipes remain supported.

Load order is part of conflict resolution

Some conflicts should not be merged at all; one mod is supposed to override another.

W3CR can plan and apply the complete `mods.settings` order itself. It combines confirmed W3CR rules with declared mod requirements, preserves unrelated ordering as far as possible, assigns unique priorities, detects contradictory cycles, backs up the existing file and applies the result automatically during Backup + Install.

A known priority rule is not treated as timeless. If the current files show that the preferred copy would remove API still used by installed participant scripts, W3CR marks the rule stale and blocks it instead of blindly following an old instruction.

The Witcher 3 5. 0 / Remaster update

W3CR 0. 2. 2 has been smoke-tested against The Witcher 3 build:

`5. 0. 0. 1041720`

The resolver itself can scan and analyze the updated game and continues to distinguish AUTO_SAFE, known resolutions and unresolved conflicts normally.

This does not mean that old mods are automatically compatible with the remaster.

The 5. 0 update changed a significant amount of vanilla WitcherScript. Old mods may still contain scripts based on the previous game version and can therefore produce new conflicts, remove newer vanilla functions or require updates from their authors.

W3CR deliberately does not guess how such version drift should be resolved.

If a stored recipe depends on vanilla code that changed semantically, the old recipe stops matching until that case is reviewed. This is intentional: a game update should create visible review work rather than silently reuse an outdated merge.

The historical pre-remaster baseline is preserved separately for comparison.

What changed in 0. 2. 2 Alpha