Hi Squaddies,

November is over, time to police that moustache and get your Christmas presents ready! In other news: What a great month it has been for Squad Modders. Alpha 8 of Squad is out and with it the new version of the SDK. In addition to this, the first community map was integrated into the game officially! Now, let’s see what has happened since the last time we met here:

Kokan by ChanceBrahh

As the admin- and moderation team of the Community Modding Hub, we also feel quite proud of this. The first community-born map is now officially in Squad’s map rotation! ChanceBraah’s beautiful recreation of Project Reality’s Kokan is not only great fun for old-school PR players, but also a blast for new players!

Congratulations ChanceBraah!

Ocean/Water Material Tutorial by Axton

We love our community because they are quite a helpful bunch of people, which not only produce great stuff, but are also never afraid to share their ways of work and help other creators with it! Like this tutorial by Axton on using the Community Ocean Shader from the UE4 boards in Squad which you can find on YouTube.

Escalation 1985

Lets hear what the ESC85 team has to say about their latest endeavors:

Reuters. 22nd October 1985.

A spokesperson from NATO headquarters, Brussels, has told Reuters that NATO has ordered their armed forces to mobilize and deploy to battle positions in response to the Warsaw Pact nations build up of forces on its Western borders. Reserves are being called in throughout the Atlantic alliance, affecting hundreds of thousands. Washington has denied comment so far, but the president is rumored to address the nation tomorrow.

Tovarisch,

We are still busy building Escalation 1985 and have a few rivets and bolts to fasten before we are ready to reveal the grand vision, but the Cold War will be getting hot very soon.

Check out a small video teaser they made on YouTube.

Gunsight Peak by Axton

Axton is a busy man. He does not only work on tutorials but also on his map Gunsight Peak. Its a 8x8km map featuring US and Russian forces set in a beautiful mountainous environment.

Serene and Norfolk Island by The Flash

The Flash is in the early stages of developing his map Serene. Its Eastern European based and has some nifty little tricks in its sleeve. Serene features a realtime Day/Night Cycle with moon phases and weather. Snow can also accumulate on the map and change the terrain.

He does not only work on one map though, two are currently in development by him quite the busy bee. It is a 1:1 scale representation of an island off of the East Coast of Australia. 8x8km in size it is planned to be a loose representation of the island.

Afghani Map by Hatton001

Based in northern Afghanistan and designed around a high risk, high reward gameplay with steep hills providing great vantage points but leaving you vulnerable to fire with very little cover. The towns and the valley floor will create a sharp contrast by comparison with plenty of cover and concealment with the possibility of being shot from any angle, teamwork is a must in these close quarter combat environments.

Iwo Jima by BillNye

Based off prior Iwo Jima style maps, BillNye wanted to see how a beach landing would play out in Squad. It’s designed to be an asymmetrical AAS map similar to Kohat v2, with the map ending if the final point on the island is captured. Hes hoping to reach a nice balance of overwhelming firepower with the BTRs and rocket boats for the RU Forces and many hidden random to a degree generated spawn points for the Militia.

Civilian still life with tomato by MadMak.41

MadMak.41 is concentrating on the finer parts of art with his newest creation. Always fun, looking forward to future illustrations!

Upcoming Improvement and Expansions to Modding

As you may have read previously during the November 2016 Recap, there are many changes and additions coming down the line when it comes to the inventory components and systems including some light kit customisation. If not, you should definitely go check it out here.

The current systems in place are the oldest in the developer’s code base, created in 2014 for the original Squad prototype. This in turn means that the systems are very limited, especially for modders. Although achieving different things is possible, the developers want to create a more flexible and robust system that can lend itself to a whole lot of different genres of content.

CoreInventory (name may change in the future), will become a mod-able platform as well as the groundwork for kit customisation. This is great as currently creating a weapon that has different equipment attached means it has to be a whole separate weapon Blueprint in order to function which is also tied to the animation system aspect which is receiving an overhaul – what this means for the player is a swift exit for having to swap a whole weapon when youre just using the UGL (M203/GP-25) and for the modders it means youll be able to create a whole host of unique weapons and attachments in a more streamlined manner!

For the general weapon behaviour, youll be able to customise attributes such as Damage Gameplay Effects which are stackable effects that can severely affect the player and drastically change the flow of gameplay – this can be tied to suppression as well.

Overall, we as modders can expect a LOT more exposed values and functionality to play with in the future. We will have a lot more freedom and create all sorts of crazy weapon types and not be limited to the original genre of Squad. If anyone is looking at sci-fi oriented mods, the SDK update that includes these systems once theyre complete will be an amazing toolset for you to use.

Community Contributors

We have quite a bunch of talented guys in our Community Modding Hub Discord server, right now we’re sitting at nearly 2,800 members! To honor those who have contributed their time and knowledge to create tutorials, guides, assist others in problem solving or even get their creations implemented in game we have now created the Community Contributor role in our Discord server.

So that’s all for this month, hope you enjoyed the read and are as excited as we are to see all this progress in the community. See you in the new year!

Squad Modding Hub Management Team Out.

Please note: Offworld Industries is not responsible for mod content. Please contact the creator for assistance.