New Wildcard Mod Community Liason

Hey everybody!

A little while ago ARK announced a new role they were trying to fill in assisting with the mod community. I’m very happy to announce that I’m that person. Some of you may know me from my work on Primitive+, but I wanted to introduce myself!

Who am I?
A guy that loves modding, design, art, and programming. I come from a pretty heavy programming background and have always played around with graphic design. When the ARK Dev Kit came around I only had Unity experience in terms of game development. I knew I wanted to try my hand at a mod based on my current obsession with the game. I had no idea it would turn into a dream job. I’m not an expert at anything by any means but I’m hoping to give a lot back to the community.

So… We get our wishlist now???
While working with the team does give me some access to behind the curtains and influence on the future of the development kit, I don’t want anyone to thing magic is going to happen here. From what I’ve seen so far I can tell you it’s a lot more complicated than it may seem. With that said, I will be looking at the most commonly requested things and trying to get them implemented into the dev kit. No promises here! Let’s say we didn’t get any additional functionality added to the dev kit… Could we still make some amazing content? Sure can! I won’t sit here and say the dev kit is perfect and there aren’t things that need to be exposed but I also won’t commit to it. I will commit to giving it my all to make it a reality if it’s something the community wants and will add value. Keep in mind, some things are just out of scope based on the investment the team would have to make to expose or change certain things.

What exactly is changing??
I’d like to try and get things a little more organized in the forums. I won’t lie, I can be OCD about certain things (too many computer windows open) so you all will have to voice your opinion on what makes sense. I’d also like to try and standardize some of the requests for help. While I may not post all the time, I visit the forums frequently and most of the requests for help are either covered in a tutorial buried on page 10 or there isn’t enough information to even help. Over the next few days I will be posting a few stickies on requesting help. There are a lot of talented people in this forum and tons of them that always help out when they can. Not only do I appreciate it (because I’ve used the help before) but Wildcard appreciates it too!

Wait, Wildcard…
They have obviously invested in the future of modding for this game. I wouldn’t be in this position if that weren’t proof of it. To show appreciation, there official ‘dev kit master’ unique skins that are available in game. These are unique and special tokens of appreciation from the Wildcard team for all that you do. In order to keep them unique, they won’t be handed out to just anyone. Being a master is not only showing that you’ve mastered a craft but that you can create the next masters :slight_smile: Being active in the forums or posting tutorials are just a few ways to get this honor. There are already a few people that I’ll be reaching out to based on all of the work they’ve already done. I will post more soon on this topic but be sure to contact me if you think you already fall into this category.

What else will you be working on?
Recently we launched some official servers for Primitive+ and my work on it will continue throughout my time at Wildcard. It’s an extreme pleasure to get to still work on what started this all independently and drive the vision. If you don’t know about Primitive+, its a total conversion that looks to create a more immersive primitive lifestyle. The development life cycle is rather aggressive and I plan to continue on that cycle until ARK gets ready for launch. In addition to that, I’ll be reaching out to some of you authors and streaming some of the things you are working on. Hopefully, that drives a little more visibility and attention to the things you are working on.

Please be sure to reach out to me if you’re interested in helping out in the mod community or if you just wanna say hey! Also, feel free to respond with some changes you’d like to see around the forum to make it a better experience!

More to come!

Hi ComplexMinded,

Congratulations on the new position!

I think there are a lot of people looking forward to seeing some cleaned up, updated “Starting with the Dev Kit Tutorials” :slight_smile:

Congratulations Complex, Can’t wait to see the changes :slight_smile:

congrats complex i think this change is great. ive been putting out tutorials for everyone the past couple of weeks and will be releasing some new ones here in the next couple of days i felt the info out there was getting stale for the new modders coming around so now that we have someone dedicated to helping out its gonna be great it will surely give the community a boost i think :smiley:

Great to hear! I hope this game will have the most pleasant future and that the modding will grow each month.

Congrats to the position. Just to get it clear: Are you now employed by Wildcard or if not, how much different is you job to the former Admins we had? Cause I know that they could make suggestions and so on but lets just phrase it like that: their power or saying was very very limited, if even existing.

No matter what, I do appreciate you strive for more organisation. The forum became quite messy and I somehow stopped helping/answering questions since the questions would just repeat after some time. Maybe a change of structure and organisation will reignite my motivation for help. :smiley: (What I lazy excuse I just brought…)

Anyway, one first request (knowing that this is the wrong place for it :P) - Please get rid of this little missleading thing here: Screenshot - 703bd04d4aacfb3c7730e2255f90f178 - Gyazo

I am actually employed by wildcard. The job is much different in the sense that i work in the office with them and can just tap them on the shoulder haha. So this isn’t a volunteer position :-). And welcome back! You had some things going on with DICE, no?

Congrats! Glad to see an actual position was opened up for this! :cool:

Edit: Never mind… this guy is nearly non existent.

Congrats!
Nice to have someone to take(much needed) care of things here :smiley:
If you need assistance in any way i’ll gladly help out!

Im always happy to help/answer questions but as Kenturrac mentioned it becomes quite tedious answering the same questions over and over because of the messy state the forum is in.

One suggestion for the future: mix up the contests with events that emphasize more on collaboration instead of competition because competition just keeps people from sharing their findings and solutions publicly. With constant contests running and no official documentation this really keeps the community from growing in my opinion.

I’ve noticed that as well. When contests come around, people don’t tend to share things they are working on and are a bit more guarded (obviously so). Great suggestion :slight_smile:

perhaps mix things up and do a contest of who can do the best tutorials :smiley:

As this forum’s help rate and even the IRC died down a bit when the contests first started, up until then this was a very welcoming community (still is but it was more back then)

Anyway Complex, Congratulation with the new position I know for a fact its much needed around here. And if you ever do need any assistance of any kind I am willing to step out and help out in any way you’d like

Wohooo, that is even more awesome. Welcome in the Games industry! Exciting to hear that we have this close connection between Devs and community now. You should give yourself a sweet forum title. You earned it.

And yes, I do. I can basically also run around there and tap people on the shoulders now. Doing some Level Design work there. :smiley:

Divide the forums by MODs and MAPs :slight_smile:

Congrats! That’s great news :slight_smile:

If you are looking for someone to make some more official tutorials I can see what I can do. I’ve made some fairly reasonable ones but they are also a bit specific (so people can just basically follow me and produce stuff without a lot of understanding). But I would be glad to make some more learning based ones if you would like to discuss that. Feel free to add me on steam: thewookie92

Disclaimer: I by no means whatsoever am a professional at this, I learn quickly though and like to help others :smiley:

Hello and congrats on the new job! I hope we can get some great modding done together :slight_smile:

First “official” day in the office. I will be going through the tutorials and organizing things this week!

Congratulations Complex, I’m sure its exciting

Congrats Complex, glad to see you in your dream job :smiley: and that you will be helping with the community. By the way in case you don’t remember me I am one of the developers for the pirate mod

Congratulations!! Please help us we neeed some help finally thank you! T_T