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Now I have searched around a bit and can't really find a conclusive answer regarding games made by either Unity or Unreal Engine to support moddings.

By mods I mean scripting, characters, maps etc. - similar to CS

What I have read is it is rather a big project to make games support mods in Unity whereas in Unreal Engine they first lately start to really support modding features thus still not really ready. Or am I all wrong?

And yes I am new in this area though not new to programming, 3d modeling and designing. This is more meant for a personal small project to play around a bit and get more experience.

So I am wondering if some people have tried it out or know successful games which got full mod support made by these 2 game engines? Or perhaps there is a 3rd game engine I don't know about which can do the job or capable of it with some programming?

If they are moddable - would that mean I either gotta make other people download the Unreal Engine or Unity to make the mods, or do I need to write my own standalone program? And does anyone know about the license rules regarding this if using those 2 engines as a modkit? (I read about it before, a forum past 1 year old where it wasn't free to use either as it is now, so still unsure about royalties, license and all)

user2180833
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  • re license, mods are generally considered to be free, and I would say it would be in the interest of developers to allow mods and to keep them free such as on Steam in order to maintain interest in their products. – Martin Aug 13 '16 at 19:39

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No, no one would need to download Unity3D to build a mod for your game, as your game is distributed as a assembled EXE file, it would not be openable as a Unity Project so there would be no point peple building mods for it in Unity3D.

Unity games do allow Mods, they're very flexible, but the Mod system is something you have to build yours from scratch, to fit your needs and criteria. There's no default mod system on Unity3D.

Typically Unity3D Production games I've seen use Mods as external option files in a directory that are included at runtime, when matching verious criteria. these files can be text files of .ini settings, or model render and mesh files etc. etc.

The best way of thinking about the Mods (that I've seen on Unity games) is that they are assets that are appended to your Unity3D game engine.

Good luck.

Martin
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  • just for reference, TurboDismount actually has modding tool as an editor plugin, used in Unity3D editor https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=229436864 – mgear Jan 24 '17 at 10:49
  • But Banished is not a Unity3D game. – aganm Mar 02 '20 at 02:28
  • @aganm I was previously under the idea that it was, I was pretty certain at the time of writing; exploring they are now (perhaps always) using their own developer so I have removed that reference from my Answer. Cheers – Martin Mar 02 '20 at 10:41
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I don't know about Unity, but you can create mods in Unreal. In the engine they are handled as Plugins, so modders can create mods with the same engine the developer used (that's at least how I understood it). Here's a link to the wiki where the process of creating a moddable game is explained in more detail. https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Modding:_Adding_mod-support_to_your_Unreal_Engine_4_project

Tobias Nöthlich
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  • I've only just seen that this question is almost a year old, how come you dug it back up? – Martin Aug 13 '16 at 20:32
  • Checked Unreal Engine 4 Tag and displayed only unanswered questions. – Tobias Nöthlich Aug 13 '16 at 21:45
  • ahh, fair enough. But the Original Poster has a low rep (implying they don't visit much) and it's a year old so I doubt the OP will ever see our answers.... – Martin Aug 13 '16 at 22:00
  • Thank u for ur answer. It is great and helpful. A lot had happened during this one year, and must say both engines have improved a lot. I wished I could pick both urs and Martin as answers. But thank u both. – user2180833 Sep 17 '16 at 21:23
  • No problem, his answer is way more in-depth. Glad I could help :) – Tobias Nöthlich Sep 18 '16 at 12:57
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I don't know about Unity, but there are plenty of games with mods for UE4. Conan Exiles runs UE4 and can be very heavy with mods (people create dedicated, unofficial servers for the modified versions), and there are also people creating content for the newest Unreal Tournament as the project has been pretty much abandoned by Epic Games.

Grzegorz Oleksa
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  • Please provide additional details in your answer. As it's currently written, it's hard to understand your solution. – Community Sep 02 '21 at 13:48
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Mod support is totally up to developer of the game in both engines I think. So, developer should build the entire game around this feature: modular structure, loading data, scripts and resources at runtime, creating naming conventions, writing docs with the describing of this conventions, etc.

Engine just may or may not distribute the tools for importing assets at runtime. For Unity it is Asset Bundle system. (Unfortunaly I didn't work with UE).

There is a good article about modding for Unity game engine: http://www.turiyaware.com/creating-a-moddable-unity-game/

Arugin
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