Community Crunch 394: Custom Cosmetic System, Bonus Rates, and More!

Remember the upcoming Simple Game Framework and Custom Cosmetic system we unveiled last week for the Development Kit? Well, this week we’re diving deep into how you will be able to unleash your inner architect and fashionista to transform your ARK experience!

The new “Custom Cosmetic” system allows players to dynamically apply player-generated costumes to players and dinos, end-user-created skins to armors and weapons, and end-user-created skins to all the game’s structures. These can have endless client-side functionality, including network messaging and limited persistent replicated data storage. For structures, this effectively enables infinite visual variety and functional enhancement through player-created cosmetics, which do not require any server-updating or loading onto the server.

Phase 1, launching Feb 1, will require clients to manually install such Custom Cosmetic Mods in order to see and use them on Official Servers.
Phase 2, launching April 1, will automatically download them in the background when encountered during gameplay. Note: Clients can disable usage of these globally or per-Mod-ID. Servers can disable globally or use a whitelist (we suggest servers use our official whitelist, which will be the default). The cosmetics allowed on official servers will be dynamically-white-listed on a daily basis by Overwolf and Studio Wildcard to avoid any exploity or issue-causing cosmetics.

Here are some initial functional Structure Custom Cosmetics that we’ll be launching next week, as simple examples to show Modders some things that can easily be done in addition to visual swaps:

Clean Glass Wall.png

Can be placed over any normal wall & turns it into an adjustable glass panel (can hide borders to create larger or different-sized panes & can make it opaque, transparent, or one-way)

Party Lamp Post.png

Can be placed over the normal or the omnidirectional lamppost. Adds the ability to set a primary & secondary color (White, Red, Green, Blue, or the paint color of the light), a primary & secondary intensity (off, low, medium, high) & a blink speed (fast, slow). Fast blinking creates a strobe effect & slow blinking blinks every second. The slow blinking is synchronized to the network time so that turning on multiple lamps will keep them all blinking in sync. (network time is overkill for this, but we wanted to give modders an example that’s useful for longer periods as well)

Tic Tac Toe Table.png

Two players can play a game of tic tac toe on the wooden table. Keeps a running total game wins & identifies players by their unique ID string, so should be able to keep playing across sessions (no time out, so can each make a move when back at base… the game can be reset at any time, though).

Download & play new custom content created by players, including new maps, creatures, items, and game modes, through a dedicated new Mod-bowser directly within the game. Enjoy an endless stream of new ARK content as the creativity and talent of the community is fully unleashed for the first time across gaming platforms and stay tuned as we spotlight more Cross-Platform Mods each week!

This video features:

Garuga lets build.png

Are you interested in modding for ARK? Here’s your chance to dive in! Our seasoned modding expert, Garuga123, will guide you through the creative process of making a new character – from animations to physics. This three part series will start on Saturday, February 3rd, at 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM Pacific and continue every other week at the same time.

Bring your questions, enthusiasm, and a thirst for knowledge as we embark on this modding journey together. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to learn from one of our most popular modding members.

Session 1
- February 3rd, 10 AM – 12PM Pacific
- Visual elements – starting a new character, setting up the animations, mesh, physics, etc.

Session 2
- February 17th, 10 AM – 12 PM Pacific
- Blueprinting – setting up the actual character BPs
Session 3
- March 2nd, 10 AM – 12 PM Pacific
- Going Live – getting the mod prepped, testing issues, uploading, etc.