February 9, 2024 - Since June 2015 when it first unlocked the ARK Development Kit in Steam Workshop, the vibrant ARK modding community has been a driving force behind the game’s continued expansion. Today, Studio Wildcard released a major update to the ARK Development Kit to allow its creative modders more ways to reshape ARK to their imagination! These updates include a Custom Cosmetic System and a Simple Game Framework – along with the capability for all Survivors to now start transferring items between official servers, on both PC and console.
Check out the new platformer game-demo which demonstrates these new modding features: “Super Steamboat Willie!” Grab your trusty hammer (or duck), and venture forth on an action-packed adventure through this cartoon world, and bring a friend along for local or online cooperative play, now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam!
"Custom Cosmetic" System: Now Survivors can dynamically apply player-generated costumes to players and dinos, skins to armors and weapons, and skins to all the game's structures adding both visual variety and functional enhancements. These can be dynamically added onto any server, including Official Servers.
Included today are five examples ready for download and for use on Official Servers: the Steamboat Willie Cosmetics, Clean Glass Wall, Party Lamp Post, Tic Tac Toe Table, and Gun Rack. Studio Wildcard will release the source content for these items so creators can immediately jump in and see precisely how they have been set up. More advancements in Custom Cosmetics will be coming in the near future including the ability to add new hairstyles and emotes!
Official Transfers Are Here!: Survivors can now move items, creatures and characters onto the map without restriction. Transfers are only for Official Servers at the moment, but soon the functionality will be made available on Unofficial Servers as well.
New Simple Game Framework and Platformer Game Demo: Studio Wildcard has created a powerful, flexible framework that enables creators to build entirely new games from scratch inside of ARK. Custom maps, game modes, even entirely new experiences within or outside the ARK universe can be created as cross-platform mods! Today’s update includes a fully playable cartoon platformer-game built in the framework, along with the source for it in the ARK Dev Kit. It’s a demonstration of the creative flexibility and freedom using Simple Game Framework and a small example to jump-start new creative creations in ARK: Survival Ascended from the modding community.
With the launch of ASA, for the first time ARK mods crafted on PC now run on consoles, with 1400+ mods now available for cross-platform play, and many more added every day. Everything from new weapons, armor, and creatures to fully-fledged game modes and high-quality maps are now easily available to both PC and console players through a dedicated Mod-browser found directly within the game. To view all the mods available visit the official home of ARK: Survival Ascended mods on the CurseForge page.
ARK: Survival Ascended is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S Windows PC and Steam for $44.99. The definitive survival experience returns better than ever featuring Unreal Engine 5 graphics, PC/console cross-play and official mods for console! Create a Survivor, form a tribe, and the tame, train, breed & ride dinosaurs within a living ecosystem. Monitor your food, water, temperature, and weather patterns. Slowly expand outwards, then start to harvest, build structures, farm crops, customize each visual design, and proceed to explore to uncover the true nature of The Island and the worlds beyond.
For the latest updates, join the ARK Survivor’s conversation on Discord, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, subscribe to us on YouTube, visit our website at playark.com and watch us tame ‘n train leviathan dinosaurs on Twitch.TV.
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ABOUT STUDIO WILDCARD
Founded in 2014 by industry veterans Jeremy Stieglitz and Jesse Rapczak, Studio Wildcard’s mission is to bring AAA quality to ambitious indie titles designed for core gamers. The team emphasizes direct communication with its active community, implements player feedback into its fast, iterative dev cycle, and provides tools to drive user-generated content. Studio Wildcard includes distributed developers across multiple continents, as wherever talented developers reside, Wildcard seeks them out! www.studiowildcard.com
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