No sign of a download quite yet, but this long-awaited update should be up for both Steam and DRM-free (via GOG et al) versions of the game within the next few hours. We gave retro dungeon crawler Legend of Grimrock a glowing review earlier this year, and later took a peek at the beta version of the upcoming dungeon creation suite. All signs are pointing to this game having a very long life ahead of it. The toolset contains everything used to create the original dungeon, and supports importing fan-made content such as new graphical tilesets, sounds, items, monsters and more.

In the few weeks since our editor preview, Almost Human have polished up, refined and tuned the editor further, and produced a concise but helpful series of official tutorials teaching newcomers everything from the basic UI to the scripting system. In addition, they’ve bundled together every resource they had legal access to redistribute (the sound effects are excluded, sadly) as a starting point for modders to use in producing new content for the game. You can find all of these on the official Modding page for the game here, and a series of video tutorials on Youtube in this playlist here.

While a powerful editing suite is great news in itself, the real news here is that there’s already an integrated framework for distributing mods created in it. On the Steam side of things, the game has full Workshop integration, letting you upload content straight from the editor, and download directly into the game. For those with the DRM-free version (bought direct or via GOG), the Nexus network have set up a mod hosting page for the game, alongside their hugely popular Elder Scrolls and Fallout modding sites. You can find out more and see an official change-log since the editor beta here, and the editor should be released in full later today.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Eternally Dungeon Crawling – ‘Legend Of Grimrock’ Editor Released Today

When I reviewed Almost Human’s neo-retro dungeon crawler Legend of Grimrock, I admit that I may have rated the game with a future feature update in mind. While the dungeon in the game is fiendishly clever in its design, there were rumblings that a full level editor would be released soon after launch. Weeks passed, turning to months, and no editor surfaced. Doubt began to set in – would we ever see one? Would it even give us anywhere near the quality of tools needed to replicate the quality of the base game? With the first public beta release of the Grimrock editor, I’m happy to say that any and all doubts have been crushed like so many unequipped adventurers.

Anyone with the Steam edition of the game (although the editor will eventually come to all versions) can grab it now by right-clicking on the game in their Library panel, opening up the Properties screen, and opting in to the option given in the Betas tab. The update is quick and painless, and adds two intuitive options to the main menu – Dungeon Editor and Custom Dungeon. The former launches the editing suite, and the latter gives you a list of all player-made dungeons on your PC, as well as a Steam Workshop link so that you can browse and download more; a process that only takes a few seconds.

To say that this editor is easy to use is a huge understatement. Within five minutes of starting, and without any documentation, I had created a small dungeon of several rooms, lit it with torches and placed a few enemies to fight. I then immediately began playing this from within the editor itself using a handy picture-in-picture preview window. Within another five minutes, I’d figured out basic switch/door logic. Another five minutes after that, I created a large chamber that completely transformed in configuration, using a simple toggle switch on the wall linked up to a maze of secret lifting panel walls. Within half an hour, I believe I had learnt just about everything you’d need to make a respectably detailed dungeon, although the very most complex puzzles and traps will require a bit of LUA scripting, but even that is handled entirely in-editor.

So, making quality dungeoneering experiences is a walk in the park, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to letting you use all the tools and resources in the base game, Almost Human seem to be opening up mod support to allow changes to everything short of the core gameplay mechanics. Custom tilesets, sounds, graphics, enemies and gear are all possible. They’ll require the use of external tools in order to implement fully, but it should be no more complex than modding any other game. With a little bit of artistic talent and a dash of elbow grease, it doesn’t look like it would be hard to completely recreate classic dungeon crawlers such as Eye of The Beholder, graphics, monsters and all.

Those who are sticking to the DRM-free version of the game won’t be starved for mods either, of course. While the Steam Workshop integration is nice, the Nexus modding hub have set up a Grimrock Nexus page to help support those that can’t or won’t use the Workshop UI. In short, everyone wins. The editor is currently in beta, although given the level of polish on show already, I’d be quite surprised if the full editor update wasn’t pushed out within a week or two.  Legend of Grimrock is currently available for $15, and if you buy it direct from the developers, you generously get both the DRM-free and Steam editions of the game.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – DIY Dungeons – Hands On With The ‘Legend Of Grimrock’ Editor

For those of you who enjoy modding, you know how much effort it takes to go through the variety of websites and forums scouring for a specific mod or update. If you have ever wanted to simplify that process, this is your chance to do so — at least, when it comes to indie games. Axel Rothe had similar desires and ideas when it came to modding for indie games, but he actually managed to put his ideas to the test and develop a modhosting community, hoping that modders and non-modders alike will enjoy using a more streamlined method of downloading and updating mods.

This idea seems really exciting to us at IGM and so we decided to do an interview with Rothe about Xenolith: The Foundry, the aforementioned community, in order to gain some insight and distinguish what makes it so different from other communities. We hope this helps everyone establish an idea of what to expect:

Indie Game Mag: I’m sorry, but I have to admit: Axel Rothe is suspiciously similar to Axl Rose, what’s going on here?

Axel Rothe: Oh, no they are on to me! Actually you aren’t the first to make this association, but I must disappoint you that I am in fact not the lead singer of Guns and Roses, as much as I would like to be.

Xenolith: The Foundry sounds like an intense RPG, but apparently you guys are a modding
community for indie games. What can you tell me about Xenolith?

Xenolith is a project that I developed after noticing the lack of a good modhosting site in the indie scene.

The site acts as a database for modifications of indie games uploaded by the creators themselves.

Modders can add descriptions, pictures and of course files to their mods page. Above that they can
also add source code for others to use.

Feedback is very important for modders. Users can show their appreciation by liking a mod or by
giving direct text feedback. And most importantly users can subscribe to their favorite mods.

Subscribing is free and ensures that whenever an author updates their game the subscribers will be
notified about the newest version.

What sets Xenolith apart from the Desura and ModDB communities? What makes you
different from other modding communitites?

Desura is more of a competitor to Steam than Xenolith. Like Steam, Desura allows modders to
upload their mods, but only if they are cool with it. This is usually means that only really big mods get
uploaded and smaller but maybe better mods never get on Desura or Steam.

We allow any size of mod on the site should it be as simple as an ini settings file or a full blown
overhaul.

ModDB is well, cluttered to say the least. I think ModDB is a good site, but it has such an incredible
amount of dead projects and games that were abandoned on the site that finding anything turns into a
fox hunt.

We try to keep the site clean of dead projects and all pages as simple as possible. So instead of each
mod having 25 different pages and a bunch of extra stuff, we have everything on one page.

Are you trying to go for a more social approach?

I think it’s quite important to communicate with your players. This is what made indie big. For the first
time developers were asking their players for input and it was all about making the game better and
not thinking about how to leech the players dry like certain larger companies like to do.

Modders are like mini developers and they to need to communicate and receive feedback.

But in contrast to developers modders aren’t out for the money and therefor the sharing aspect is very
important. That’s why we added the possibility to share source code directly on the site with full mark-
up.

Thus far, how much success have you had with developers? What about with the public?

Some like the KSP developers are a little more conserved and aren’t too cool with advertisement of
external sites.

However developers like Chris Simpson from Project Zomboid and Chris England from Xenonauts
have been very forthcoming and even encouraged their users to use Xenolith.

The Data Realm developers were also very happy to finally find a decent modding database that’s not
a wordpress blog run by a 12 year old. There are actually tons of sites like these and when Xenolith
was new many thought that Xenolith was just another blog. Seems we proved them wrong.

With over 580 users and almost 100’000 views I can safely say that we must have some kind of
appeal to the average gamer. Our reddit posts also received almost 100% positive feedback.

What is the hardest thing in trying to have people using your modding database?

Definitely getting people to leave the “uncomfortable” comfort of the forums. While forums are messy
and unsuitable for modding directories, many have accustomed themselves to the thread-system.
They don’t want to try something new, even if it is easier.

The ones that do give Xenolith a try usually don’t leave anymore.

How welcoming and friendly is the community to new modders and users? Are there
tutorials and the like?

Yes, we have several writers who compose modding tutorials and game guides. Anyone can use the
site. There is no such thing as a bad mod, if you like what you made there are at least hundreds that
would like it as well.

Why develop a new modding community?

As it stands there aren’t any modding platforms for smaller indie games and smaller modders.
Whenever I was looking for a specific mod for example Minecraft, I had to scour a messy forum. Often
I had to abandon the search because I just couldn’t find the mod.

Another thing was that mods were updated frequently, but I’d never be informed about it. So I took it to
myself to create something that covered all indie games and would make it convenient for both players
and modders to use.

The current systems just didn’t do it. I mean Nexus-Mods charges money to be able to subscribe to
updates. That’s not really an option in my opinion.

Do you think there is a fair bit of interest in modding indie games? It seems to serve a niche audience, but could it also have casual appeal? How?

Looking at the Minecraft I think this is a rather large niche. Indie games aren’t small time things
anymore and now thanks to Kickstarter I know we will be seeing more indie games popping up.

Modding has always been something that casual gamers have had some trouble getting into.

I am currently developing a mod manager that will help installing mods from our site directly into your
game. It will hopefully not just serve to be a great tool in general, but also a great way for casuals to
appreciate mods. I can’t give an ETA at the moment, because I’m still in a very early phase and can
only work on it in my free time.

What games would you like to see on the platform that have yet to make the leap?

We’ve covered most of the officially mod supporting indie games out there, so instead of getting more
games on the site we need more modders of the currently supported games to join us.

It would be great if we could get the same response from the other communities like we are getting
from the Project Zomboid and Cortex Command crew.

What would you like to tell the indie (and gaming) community as a whole?

Indie is about sharing your ideas and creations and using the right platform is important.

——————————————————–

And with that, we want to thank Axel for answering our questions and giving us a much better idea of just what the hell Xenolith: The Foundry is about. For those of you interested in checking it out, whether it be for downloading mods or making your own, check them out on their official site.

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Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Xenolith: The User-Friendly Indie Game Mod Community [Interview]

This one made quite a splash when we first talked about it here. An expansive, detailed, semi-scripted ‘adventure’ world for Terraria with a whole mess of new gear, enemies, bosses and gameplay elements. Blending the mega-popular 2D platform sandbox with also-popular hardcore dungeon-crawl Dark Souls, The Story Of Red Cloud seems to have really hooked a lot of players who would otherwise be tiring of the old grind for familiar gear, and now it offers an even larger departure from normal Terraria gameplay thanks to recent changes.

Over the past day or two, the game has gotten a series of quite significant updates, including two three new playmodes, including a super-easy mode, for those who are afraid of the stiff death penalty, an evil difficulty mode for those who thought the combat in general was too easy, and a sandbox mode for those who want a bit more freedom in exploring the hand-crafted dungeons. This is especially important, as on easy-to-evil modes, you cannot mine your way through ‘barrier’ pieces or place blocks at all anymore. This is all dungeoneering, all the time, with only a few small exceptions.

Other updates include improved enemy AI, especially among the new enemy types, and various balance-related tweaks and tunings regarding item drop rates. You can find the new version and the full change-log on this Terraria Online forum thread. The installation process for the mod is a little convoluted, but it’s well worth the effort if you’re finding yourself tired of the ‘vanilla’ gameplay. Highly recommended if you’re in the market for something a little more challenging than usual.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Terraria Mega-Mod ‘The Story Of Red Cloud’ Updates & Expands

Just Cause 2 isn’t an indie game by any stretch of the imagination, but this little piece of coding genius makes it worthy of some IGM coverage. An anarchic, slightly tongue-in-cheek arcade sandbox game, Just Cause 2 was praised for its enormous open environments and emphasis on mindless, unhinged chaos over any kind of narrative coherency. However, one complaint levelled at the game rung true: It would be so much better with friends. Enter JC2-MP.

Currently in semi-public beta testing, JC2-MP‘s developers boast a record of over 470 players crammed into a single server. That is a ridiculous number of cars, planes, choppers, grappling hooks and parachutes, but it also goes to show just how impressive their work to date has been. There’s one of these test events running right now (at the time of writing), so if you’re quick, you might be able to get in on the action. It’s just players running around and causing trouble right now, with no AI, but it’s an astounding feat of modding already. Here’s some extensive, enthusiastic gameplay footage from Nerd³ to give you an idea of what to expect:

Once this fully goes live, I’d not be surprised if Just Cause 2 sees the same kind of massive resurgence as Arma 2 in the wake of zombie mega-mod Day Z. Primarily the work of modder-supreme Gibbed (notable for his work in adding mod support to Far Cry 2 and Red Faction: Guerilla, among others), this one is still heavily in development and not quite ready for prime-time, but if you own JC2, you just absolutely follow the official Twitter feed, and bookmark the site. This is looking great already, and can only get better. And, as mentioned, the test server is up at the time of writing. Go, Rico, Go!

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Hail To The Modding Kings – ‘Just Cause 2: Multiplayer’

Free stuff is always good news, and niche games getting long-term support is great to hear as well. E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy was a pretty divisive game at launch, and to be fair, it still is. A hugely ambitious mash-up of Warhammer 40k, Shadowrun, Aliens and god knows how many other fictional universes, it put you in the combat-boots of a psychic cyber-monk assassin with amnesia working for a mysterious agency that may or may not be secretly at war with itself and/or the galactic government. It actually makes less sense than that in action.

At launch, it was buggy, unpolished and unbalanced. It really did feel like the small French studio behind it had bitten of vastly more than they could chew, but they’ve chewed on for a full year now and show no sign of stopping. The game has seen a series of major patches and updates, refining the game, reworking the AI, rebalancing everything. The quality of the core gameplay has consistently improved since release. Today marks the release of the largest and most eagerly anticipated patch. Weighing in at approximately 1.3 gigabytes, here’s the highlights from the lengthy change-log:

Additions:
• Added: Custom maps support: FGD and guidelines to create your own levels.
• Added: New NPC on Temple allowing to play custom maps.
• Added: New secondary and coop missions map: cm_wurstercorp (cc_tuto2).
• Added: New custom secondary and coop missions map: cm_cu_minos.
• Added: Possibility to use firearms while underwater.

Changes:
• Updated: Improvement of the slaves AI (clones, drones…).
• Updated: Decreased the ammunition weight.
• Updated: New system of secondary and coop missions (cm_).
• Updated: Falling in pits does not restart the mission anymore.
• Updated: New interface when speaking with the NPCs.
• Updated: Increased the maximum avatar level from 230 to 250.
• Updated: Great decrease of the latency when using a blade.
• Updated: Federal Special Forces now use plasma weapons instead of laser weapons in multiplayer.

All that and more, plus a huge list of bug-fixes. So, in short: Two new zones, each of which with a variety of randomly trigged mission objectives for high replayability. On top of that, the game now officially supports third-party levels created using the standard Source modding tools, meaning that players can expand the game themselves. The player level cap has also been extended, and the AI for summonable NPC allies has been boosted. It’s a pretty big update, and a good reason to reinstall the game if you haven’t played it in a while. And if you’ve never played it before? Well, Rob Fearon’s review just about sums up the experience.

EYE: Divine Cybermancy is available now via Steam for $10 or your regional equivalent.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Ambitious Cyberpunk FPS/RPG ‘E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy’ Gets Some Free DLC

It’s always nice to hear that a game will be officially moddable, and it’s even nicer when it’s a stalwart PC favourite. Nigoro’s La-Mulana made a comparatively huge splash on the nascent indie scene of the mid-2000s, helped kickstart the popularity of the entire ‘Let’s Play’ video concept, and was one of the core inspirations for Spelunky. The updated remake of it got trapped in Wii development hell for quite some time, but now it’s coming home, and this time you can tweak and tune it to your hearts content.

While it sounds like the game won’t be completely customizable according to this official blog post, you should be able to alter all the sound, music, graphics, translation and time-attack stage files to taste. Nigoro themselves suggest that someone try porting all the original version’s graphics and audio to the new edition of the game. The developers also say that they want as many people around the world as possible to play the game, so are completely cool with unofficial translation patches.

Don’t like the new look? Re-retrofy it, then!

There’s no release date on the remake set in stone quite yet, but there’s rumblings that it’s coming out sooner, rather than later. I can say with a dash of mystery and some surprising certainty that the remake is looking spectacular, and is a genuine improvement on the original faux-MSX stylings of the freeware original, which you can find here.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘La-Mulana’ PC Remake To Support Modding

Were you one of the lucky 18,000 or so people who nabbed the most recent Indie Royale bundle? Well, you’re the proud owner of one copy of Escape Goat. It’s a great game, and the PC version is twice as long (and thrice as hard) as the original Xbox Live Indie Games release. It can be even longer (and harder) if you like it that way; the game includes a full level editor, and easily shared level files. The only thing it was missing was an official place to share your custom dungeons full of goat-torture with other, like-minded people.

Thankfully, the developer has opened an official Custom Worlds page. Currently it only contains one new world for the game, although that number should increase quickly as word spreads that there’s an official level-sharing page. No worries about file-hosting either, as it lets you upload the levels direct to the sharing board. If you’ve made any Escape Goat levels, share it with the world and let the puzzle-platforming fun continue. And if you don’t own Escape Goat? Go buy it on Desura. It’s really good.

Terraria and Dark Souls, two great tastes that normally would have nothing at all do to with each other. Until now, that is. Now that development of the exceptionally popular platform-sandbox action-RPG is complete, the community have moved in and started picking apart exactly how it works, and putting it back together in strange new ways. The Story Of Red Cloud is one of the most impressive and ambitious mods to be released so far, and sports a rather hefty feature list. Here’s just some of it:

• Dark Souls Game Mechanic
• 12 uniquely themed Dungeon areas spread between both normal and hard modes
• 18 bosses (7 vanilla plus 11 mod bosses)
• Custom Soundtrack inspired by Princess Mononoke & Zelda
• Over 150-200 new mod items, weapons, and armors compiled from a dozen of the best mods from the community

In short, it’s a hand-crafted world, rather than a randomly generated environment. Things are more controlled and scripted than in regular Terraria, but there’s still nothing stopping you from taking the world apart with a pickaxe or building yourself a fortress home, but the focus does seem to be on exploration, combat and gear more than the regular playstyle. It’s definitely a little darker than the usual happy-go-lucky adventuring, with the story (as it is) beginning with you waking up in a shallow grave, and digging to the surface reveals that your homestead has been burnt to the ground, along with your protagonist’s parents. Grim, considering the cute 16-bit style. Still, this is more Zelda than Dragon Age, when push comes to shove.

‘So’, I hear you ask; ‘Where does the Dark Souls part come in?’ Well, that’s your whole secondary progression mechanic. Each enemy type drops a certain number of souls, and they effectively act as a secondary currency. You can spend them (via certain special crafting recipes) at rare demon altars scattered around the world in order to upgrade both your character and your gear, although you’ll still be able to get some mileage out of the regular Terraria construction system. Unlike Dark Souls, this mod isn’t going to force you head-first into a meatgrinder – there’s even included Easy and Hard mode variants of the mod, just in case you want something more casual or hardcore.

Swimming in lava might be bad for your 'Elf

Probably the largest weakness here is the storytelling. Terraria was never designed to tell a story – you tell your own through playing – so your own character’s internal monologue, dialogue with other characters and even hints on dungeon progression are all provided through signs posted throughout the world. It would have been nice if there was some kind of involved dialogue system, or some way to present this information without using such an awkward kludge, but Terraria was never designed to be modded in the first place. It’s impressive that they’ve done so much without any official tools or support, and I’d imagine that the quality of fan-made tools will improve for quite some time to come.

There’s clear limitations imposed by the framework of the game it’s built on, but the world of The Story Of Red Cloud is well designed, and the many dungeons are complex, multi-layered things with plenty of switches, mechanisms, traps, blind drops and obstacles. Enemy spawning – however it is managed – seems to be a lot more controlled than in regular Terraria as well, and an optional plugin allows you to wield an ‘off-hand’ weapon so that you can alternate between melee and ranged styles more freely, although this, too is a little bit of a kludge, overriding the right-click ‘use’ functionality and not looking too hot in action. Useful, though, and it does technically let you dual-wield weapons, if you’re really looking to put the hurt on something.

Souls, and the slimes that hoard them.

The installation process for The Story of Red Cloud is a little bit convoluted, but shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, and is well worth a play if you’ve already exhausted all there is to see in regular Terraria. There’s a lot of fun to be found in exploring a hand-crafted world, rather than a procedurally generated one. The mod is still being actively developed with small updates being released every now and then (the main focus being high-level balance right now), but it’s currently considered stable and complete. You can find the latest build and full installation instructions on this Terraria Online thread. If nothing else, this should help those feeling Terraria withdrawal pains survive until the release of Starbound.

For the past few years, The Battle For Wesnoth has been one of the grand pillars of PC freeware/open-source gaming, but a quick poke through our archives here shows that we’ve not said anything of note about it – clearly an egregious oversight to be rectified. What better time for it, too? A major new release is looming and a release candidate is available now for the public to pick over, so put on your robe and your wizard hat; it’s time for some hex-based strategy RPG’ing.