[How-To] Edit and stream DLC guns weapons.meta files

FiveM Resource Development & Modding Modding Tutorials
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I made this guide because I saw some comments in another thread that said there was no guide on streaming weapons.metas for the various DLC guns in GTA V. I originally typed this in that thread, but since i bothered to type it all out, i figured i may as well post it as a topic. I hope someone finds it useful!

Editing DLC Weapons Meta Files

Note: For the purposes of this guide, I’ll be editing the weapons.meta of the Assault Rifle Mk.2

Part 1: Open IV

  1. Open “OpenIV” and select the windows version of “GTA V”.
  2. Navigate to update\x64\dlcpacks\mpgunrunning\dlc.rpf\common\data\ai
  3. Open “weapons_assaultrifle_mk2.meta”
  4. Select and copy the entire contents of this file.
  5. Open a blank notepad or code editor document and paste the entire contents of the weapons.meta file you just copied.
  6. Save this new file and name it ‘weapons_assaultrifle_mk2.meta’ (or whatever gun your editing so weapons_yourgun_mk2.meta)

Part 2: Editing the weapons.meta

There is an abundance of tutorials and guides available online on how to edit these meta files, so for the purposes of this guide, and as a proof of concept, i will only be making a single obvious edit.

  1. Navigate to line 45 of our new weapons.meta it should be:
<DamageType>BULLET</DamageType>
  1. Change this line to:
<DamageType>ELECTRIC</DamageType>
  1. Now navigate to line 75, it should say:
<Damage value="40.000000" />
  1. Change it to:
<Damage value="0.000000" />
  1. Now save the file.

Part 3: fxmanifest.lua

  1. Create a new notepad or code editor document and paste in it the following:
fx_version 'cerulean'

game 'gta5'

author 'Change Me'  --put your name here

description 'Change Me'  --put whatever you want here

files {
	'weapons_assaultrifle_mk2.meta'
}

data_file 'WEAPONINFO_FILE_PATCH' 'weapons_assaultrifle_mk2.meta'
  1. Save this file and name it fxmanifest.lua

Part 3: Building your resource

  1. Create a new folder and name it whatever you want. I’ll be naming mine mc_weapontest
  2. Drag the two files we just created (fxmanifest.lua and weapons.meta) into this folder.

This is about as simple as a resource can get, only one file and the fxmanifest, no subfolders, just the two files.

Part 4: Adding the resource to your server.

  1. Move your new resource to the resources folder in your fxserver. I store all my weapons related resources in a [WEAPONS] local folder, so for me this resource is going to:
\resources\[weapons]\mc_weapontest
  1. Add this to your server.cfg and save it:
ensure mc_weapontest
  1. Clear your server cache and restart the server.

Make sure you are watching the server console for any errors loading your new resource

Part Fin:

  1. Log into your server, spawn in whatever gun you edited, and shoot some peds with it! If you did everything right, you will now have a taser assault rifle (or whatever gun you changed).

Tip: You need to keep the weapons.meta file name the same between OpenIV and your resource, if you change it the game will attempt to load both metas when you spawn in the gun, which will cause a crash. Unfortunately, that means you cannot merge metas for add-on weapons.