Hey Squaddies!

It’s time for a quick Modding 2.0 development update! Progress has been going well since the initial modding release, so we figured it was time to show off some of what’s coming up next.

First off, the Modding SDK UI has been completely redone (by an actual designer this time!). With their help and a fresh copy of the PSD of the new SDK UI, we went straight into implementing the update. It turned out like this!

As you can tell, the tabs on the left the UI for the Modding SDK have all been moved to one window. No more multiple tabs on the top bar!

Every action you need for modding is now in one convenient window.

Sharing Mods

We’ve scratched the old Steam Uploader and wrote a whole new one from scratch. (This one gives more errors than “Something went wrong.”). We’ve also removed the need to have to pick an “Output Directory” when you are cooking your mod. By default, the system will now pick a valid path for you!

We’ve also removed the need to have to click both the “Package” and “Upload” button. If you just click upload now it will perform the “Package” too. The “Package” button now is exclusively for people who don’t want to upload their mod to the Steam Workshop.

Editing Mods

You are now able to edit your mod’s information through the UI after creation. No more having to go through your modinfo info file and change all of the information and hoping you don’t break anything!

This new UI is probably 90% done. All the work that is left to do is small but important: fixing button sizes, handling really long strings, handling edge cases, etc. This should definitely come out with Modding 2.0, or maybe even earlier!

Modding SDK Internals

SMI Files

Modinfo.smi files have been destroyed and replaced with your .mi files. No need to worry though, as soon as you load your mod in the Modding 2.0 SDK, your mod’s SMI file will be upgraded to the new format.

The main reason for switching file formats is Modding 2.0 doesn’t require nearly as much data to be stored locally as the previous method.

Steam Workshop Images

Your mod’s Steam Workshop preview image now lives inside of your mod’s project folder. This was changed to prevent this reference being lost and then not knowing why you can not upload to the Steam Workshop.

Cooking Mods

As mentioned above, you no longer need to pick a package location. The Modding 2.0 cooking system will by default pick a good path for you. The first place it tries is your mod’s project folder. Sometimes this doesn’t work due to various issues (No space available, The pathname is too long, etc…), so cooking will continue to walk up the Squad folder structure until it finds a valid path. If it can’t find a valid path (which is unlikely), you can still specify a cooking directory.

Example Modding 2.0 Project Structure

In-Game Mod Downloads

Finally! This what you’ve all been waiting for, right? We’re happy to report that progress is going well on getting in-game downloads working. This is proving to be a much larger task than originally thought, but steady progress is happening!

Current Work

Currently, work is focused on getting the mods that are being downloaded while the game is running to be recognized by the game. This is quite a bit of work and will be taking up most of my time for the rest of the month, as the engine is not set up to accept PAK files mounted in the middle of the game.

Offworld out.