The Blood of Dawnwalker, Rebel Wolves' vampire RPG with more than a touch of Witcher 3 running through its veins, is about to claw-slide down a wall into release street. Depending on where in the world you live, it'll either arrive late on September 2nd or first thing on September 3rd. Ahead of that, in a bid to accelerate modders' early attempts to put their own spin on the game, Nexus Mods have released some of their own open-source tools designed to cut some of the faff out of Unreal Engine modding.
"If you’ve ever built mods for Unreal Engine games, you know how frustrating it can be to deal with command-line arguments, manual asset cooking, and complex folder structures," the modding site wrote in a post announcing the tools, which they've released via GitHub. Our new plugin fixes all of that. Dropping directly into your Unreal Engine editor (supporting versions 4.26 all the way through to 5.8), it provides a clean interface to create, prepare, and package your projects.
"Out of the box, it includes built-in Mod Templates - including a ready-to-roll template for UE4SS - and lets you save custom templates to speed up future updates. Even better, you can cook, package, and publish updates without ever leaving the editor. Once you've posted your mod on Nexus Mods at least once to grab your unique upload code, the integrated Upload API lets you push updates straight to the site in one simple workflow."
As of writing, the tools come with features like cross-version Unreal support, markdown rendering, and in-app guides to help modders get up to speed. The likes of additional templates and "expanded editor utilities" are planned to arrive further down the line.
It's not mentioned in Nexus' post, but aside from an understandable desire to see one of this year's biggest RPGs quickly establish itself near the top of the site's modding charts, I'd be surprised if the fate of some other Unreal Engine RPGs in recent years hasn't contributed to the decision to release these tools. Oblivion Remastered, released last April, is the one I'm thinking of. As an Elder Scrolls/Bethesda game and a revamp of a game which had already spawned thousands of mods the first time around, upon release last year it was anticipated to have a chance of taking off to the ludicrous extents Skyrim and Fallout 4 have from a modding perspective. Instead, after a strong first few months, it tailed off, with only 465 mods released for it in the past year - paling in comparison to the 24,871 released for Skyrim Special Edition in the same time. Even classic Oblivion has amassed more new mods in that time period, with 872.
So, with Dawnwalker also being built on Unreal Engine 5, I can see the site's staff fearing a similar fate might befall it. Hence the desire to make it easier for modders to get going early doors, with the hopes many won't burn out or start working on mods for another game by early next year. This isn't a situation unique to Dawnwalker either, with The Witcher 4 making the jump from the in-house REDengine used for The Witcher 3 to Unreal 5. So, making sure big Unreal engined RPGs can and do take off in the way their in-house engined cousins have is something I'd imagine's very much on the brain of modding sites.
If you're still in two minds about whether to give Dawnwalker a go right out of the gate, here's my review. I'm not quite sure what I'm hoping for mod-wise for it yet, but here's hoping it does prove fertile ground.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/aiming-to-supercharge-the-blood-of-dawnwalkers-early-mods-nexus-mods-release-their-own-streamlined-open-source-unreal-modding-tools
