hi @@Xycaleth, i mentioned above that i tried 2 builds from 2015 and 2014 (around Dec.), and they still had the same issue. however, here's where it gets interesting; so i thought before replying to your post i'd quickly try renaming my .pk3s again to load in reverse order in the 2014 build, but this time it worked. huh. so i reinstalled the latest OpenJK from 2016 and tried it again and it still worked. apparently if i rename a .pk3 that overwrites files with any letter not starting with z, the game won't allow it to overwrite files? so for example, i previously renamed zzzz_red_bowcaster to b_red_bowcaster in order to override zzz_customeffects, which didn't work. this time i renamed it to z_red_bowcaster, which did work. i know the game is still loading .pk3s not starting with z, because i recently downloaded CamSP.pk3 and tried it in OpenJK, and it loaded fine. so um, problem solved? lol