So 1.0.8 has finally been released which means that mods can finally be properly loaded without switching to beta branches.

You won't be able to load mods while playing in the Official Realm of the game but by turning on modding for the Vermintide 2 launcher you will be able to boot the game in the Modded Realm and run any subscribed Workshop mods you like.

(to turn on the modding for the launcher, edit %appdata%/Fatshark/Vermintide 2/launcher.config)

• The compiler now prints a log to the console window. So if you get any compilation or bundling errors, the compiler should at least give you an error message. It will also show it's progress so if it's taking a long time you can see what's taking that time.
  
• Mods are now loaded as soon as all the game lua scripts are loaded but before the major systems get instantiated so you are able to mod those classes before they get instantiated. This might be very early for some mods, but you can check out the game state callbacks described in the readme.txt to get a mod callback at a later time and do your initialization there instead.
  
• Speaking of which, mod game state change callbacks have been fixed so the GameStateMachine actually calls them before and after changing state.
  
• Some other load order fixes, removing race conditions, resolving ordering with UI code, etc
  
• Mods now use the .mod_bundle file extension to separate them from ordinary bundles (this is fixed byt the batch script that builds the mod, if you have your own you'll need to update it)

The Workshop is planned to be opened *soon*. I can't say exactly when as there are several other things that need to match up that could get delayed, but a likely window is in 1-3 weeks.

What does this mean? This means that the Modded Realm and Steam Workshop will be available to everybody. The Vermintide 2 SDK will also be fully available to everybody and not require any steam keys to access. I will also be moving all future updates to a new subforum for modding in the offical forums.

We have also internally been discussing doing some kind of stream during the days before the opening up of the workshop, so if you're very close to getting some mod that looks cool out the door and testable, see this as an added incentive to possibly get some free exposure ;)

Well there are several things on the roadmap after the workshop is opened. The dump of all the source data might be done before the workshop and if not, shortly after. This will basically mean you'll have access to all the uncompiled source data. Both for use as reference for your own creations or to include in your mods. The full potential of this won't be fully unlocked until we start getting the development tools accessible to you guys, but it will at least allow you to see how the file formats are set up and what assets exist in the game already to use.

Speaking of which, beyond QoL improvements, the real tools is the next big milestone on the roadmap. I have no idea when this will be ready, but given vacations etc I suspect it won't be until after the summer, but that's a complete guess on my part. It sort of depends on how well the Workshop is received as it will require a wider array of skills for the Mod Support Team.

Full support of Sanctioned Mods (mods that can't be sanctioned by Fatshark for play in the Official Realm) are also in the works and my aim is that Modders will be able to apply for Sanctioned status shortly after the Steam Workshop goes live. This is very unknown ground for us though, so it will start slow and hopefully ramp up as we get more familiar with exactly what impact this has on the game.

I think I didn't leave anything out. Questions? Ideas? Hype? :)

...as some of you might already know from previous posts.

The workshop is enabled for everybody who is a member of this group. You will be able to both upload, subscribe and distribute mods.

If you switch to the mod_alpha branch of the Vermintide 2 game you will be able to actually load subscribed mods through the mod menu in the launcher.

This branch is still password protected with the pw "modalphatest" until we open up the workshop for everybody.

As well as this, the Mod SDK has been updated with a branch called vermintide2 that should be publicably downloadable for everybody with Mod SDK access. This will be a seperate SDK for Vermintide 2 when we release the modding, but atm this is the available solution. This beta branch has the compiler for compiling Vermintide 2 mods and also the uploader for uploading to the workshop. The supplied pig bots mod can be compiled for vermintide 2 as a proof of concept for anybody want to look into how to do a basic mod with some simple resource usage.

Until there are sanctioned mods, you will have to run the game in the Modded Realm (radio button next the PLAY in the launcher) if you want to run mods, doing so in the official realm will give you file violations.

I'm not sure if modding will be released by then, but by Content Update 1.1 it will at likely be possible for those of you with beta access to the workshop to use the workshop with the base game and not have to resort to switching branches.

ps. if you are running on the branch and want to switch back the the default version of the game, make sure to switch to official realm and start the game before switching branches or you will likely end up untrusted when you switch back. If you've done this anyway, it can also be resolved by setting DisableEAC to false in the launcher.config in %appdata%/Fatshark/Vermintide 2/ ds.

Finally got the new version of the SDK and ModManager live.


SDK:

• Added a help file with all the Engine API documentation for Lua (not sure if this was added previously)
  
• Added another example mod, this time it's a reworked version of the IamLupo's Thomas the tank engine mod. It instead spawns critter pigs for copyright reasons. Might be worth checking out if you're interested if how we set up our characters.

Mod Alpha branch (ModManager):

• Changed startup flow so all mods are loaded after lua files are required but before game progresses to a later game state. Previously it was started at the same time but done async while game state was being progressed so it could be unpredictable when things would get loaded
  
• Run callback in .mod file is now expected to return a table (an anonymous one is created if none is supplied). The table returned is used for storing the mod's state and for various callback functions called by the ModManager at different points. All callbacks are optional, if they don't exist, that step will simply be ignored. All callbacks are called with the returned table as self (implicit first) parameter.
  
• New callbacks:
  
  • :init() - run directly after run
    
  • :update() - run every frame from the ModManager update
    
  • :on_unload() - run before the mod gets unloaded for whatever reason
    
  • :on_reload() - run before a reload is started. on_reload will always be followed by one on_unload since the reload process unloads and reloads mods. This callback will allow you to save any state that you want to keep between reloads before the mod becomes unloaded.
    
  • :on_game_state_changed( change, state_name) - This is called everytime the game state machine changes state. It's called with "exit" as first parameter before the old state is exited and "enter" as first parameter after the new state has been entered.

This patch should hopefully make it easier for you to control the load flow, unload flow and update your mod without having to use hooks simply to get an entry point every frame. The question of mod load order is still undefinied and is high on my list, but from Monday and forward I will start looking into Steam Workshop and what consequences this will have for the modding. Hopefully Steam Workshop will help with some things like global unique identifiers to mods etc. WIth global unique identifers, letting the user and mod creators define used load order and needed load order respectively will be a lot cleaner, so that's why I'm choosing to go with workshop first before attacking load (and update) order.

I also have on the todo list to provide better in game logging for the mod stuff, right now all modding is done to file, but this will also be addressed soon^tm

if you want to test the mod unloading/reloading, ctrl+shift R is still the in game command for this.