We’d like to support mods for our game, and there are a couple of things still unclear to me that I would like to have clarified if anyone knows.
-When making your game available to mod, does it expose the entire Content directory? Including every asset that doesn’t make it into the game, and purchased assets from the marketplace? Is there any way to limit what is exposed in the mod kit? And are there safeguards in place to prevent people from exporting these assets?
-How does it work regarding plugins? We are using several paid plugins in our game that are integral to the function of it. Are plugins included somehow?
-Should we plan to add mod support only after our game is done? We’re in Early Access and we aren’t done locking down the way everything works, so otherwise it seems like if we were to change up our in-game systems at all, it could break everyone’s mods.
Everything that is part of your game is shipped by Unreal in the PAK file.
When the game is run, it opens the PAK file, which basically becomes the content folder, at that point.
It is possible to encrypt the PAK file, it’s in the shipping options. But someone who is determined, can still get around this, because your game has to unzip the PAK to run. It’s up to you.
Any plugins you have in your project, automatically get shipped with the game. If you’re running without a pure blueprint project, without Visual Studio, you will probably find you do need VS, when you try and make the shipping build. I think it’s meant be possible to do without VS, but I never managed it. ( VS is free ).
If you’re asking if you can use these plugins in your shipping build, of course. That’s part of the Marketplace agreement.
If you want to add mod support to your game, it’s a good idea to have some working form of that from the outset. You don’t have to, but then you will probably be issuing a large patch later on to get that working.
Most release platforms ( like Steam ), have a decent patching system. You can just upload the difference ( the tools are provided by the platform ), and the patch will be sent out.
I should have been more clear that my questions are all in terms of adding mod support to our existing game. We already have our game for sale in Early Access on Steam, but soon we want to add mod support.
So my first question is is if we have some control over what content the users have access to when they download the mod kit. And also if people are able to freely export things, the way you can out of a regular UE4 project.
My second question about the plugins is since we are using them in our project, do users somehow get these marketplace plugins included with the mod kit project? They will be necessary to run the project correctly.