HOWTO: Highlighting Kill Weapons In Battlefield 2142

I’ve been playing a little Battlefield 2142 recently. Because I notice little things, I missed the weapon highlighting that I was used to in Battlefield 2. In trying to rectify this, I found that it’s actually quite tricky to find out how to do this. Most searches include posts about the BF2 version, with 2142 in the text as they by happenstance have a 2142 forum whether the HOWTO was posted.

So! Here’s what to edit and what to change.

1. Go to the 2142 install directory, then navigate to the mods folder, then bf2142, then finally the Localization folder.
   eg for me it is D:\Games\2142\mods\bf2142\Localization – just substitute C:\Program Files\ or whereever.
2. IMPORTANT: Back up the file “strings.csv” in this directory. Copy it somewhere safe. Actually do this step – not having backups SUCKS. Trust me, I know.
3. The highlighting code is |C1001. So, open strings.csv in Excel or OO.o Calc or notepad and search for the line: HUD_HUD_KILLEDBY_KILLS. The first entry is the English version. Change it from
   §0#PLAYERNAME1# [§1#WEAPON#§0] #PLAYERNAME2#
   to
   §0#PLAYERNAME1# [|C1001#WEAPON#|C1001] #PLAYERNAME2#
4. Save and close
5. (optional: if things didn’t work, restore the backup and try again… you did back up, right?)

Similarly, if you want to know what someone was killed with for teamkills (I do), go to the HUD_HUD_KILLEDBY_TEAMKILLS line, and change
§0#PLAYERNAME1# [§1Teamkills§0] #PLAYERNAME2#
to
§0#PLAYERNAME1# [|C1001Teamkills - #WEAPON#|C1001] #PLAYERNAME2#.
Voila! Highlighted, weapon’d teamkill notifications.

I haven’t tested it yet, but I think that other colours and size modifiers should work. Try codes used from BF2, replacing the hash (#) with a vertical pipe (|). Let me know if it works.