Great news for everyone!
The HSA team has always listened closely to the wishes of our players and, whenever possible, met their needs and wants. However, some of the particularly complicated areas require thourough preparation and comprehensive check of the issue. Therefore, we were forced to keep the development of the system for supporting user modifications (mods) to our game in secret for a long time. We had to make sure that it was possible from the technical point of view and we also needed to refine the basic part of the game (integration of the necessary mechanics). Aside from that, the bureaucratic issues have taken a lot of time, as we needed to get permission from Epic Games to distribute a modified version of their engine. All this did not give us the opportunity to tell the community about this area of work in advance.
We consider it important to describe the capabilities of the new system. Our modding system is largely unique and complex. It includes the following main components:
- A flexible and versatile custom modification toolkit (SDK) called Hellsplit Workbench that allows you to: - create and integrate almost any custom content, ranging from classic weapons to complex equipment (from a tank or submarine to a spaceship) - create game levels (both from scratch and based on the existing content in the game) - create custom scenarios (from simple training missions to complete game campaigns and even your own modes) - create your own characters (avatars, enemies) - customize, replace and add your own sounds and music
- A simple and intuitive system for searching, installing and managing modifications (integrated into the game itself, which is important) is provided for those who are not interested in the creative process, but at the same time are willing to see the results of the creativity of others.
- For those who wish to help other members of the community in creating their modifications, we plan to integrate the ability to share mod sources.
- From the developers side the availability of a basic set of full-fledged mods already at the start (i.e. immediately after launch) is guaranteed.
The work on mods is currently at the stage of the so-called internal testing. This means that developers, among other things limited by legal issues, had to find primary SDK testers among their close friends. It is they who are currently creating their mods with the help of our toolkit. Upon completion of this stage (and this is planned to be done by the end of the year), we plan to arrange testing of the SDK already among the members of the gaming community. And if successful results will be achieved, we plan to make the toolkit available to everyone without exception.
All the news connected with the development of HSA Workbench will be primarily updated on our Discord channel. In the same place we are creating a new channel where we will share the testing results with you. Join us to keep up with the news!
We were happy to share this news with you and hope to see you in the arena again :swords:
Thank you for your support, warriors!