Monday Musings #49 – A Wild Steam Workshop Appears!

Steam Workshop Mods are coming to MoteMancer. Happy Monday!

Mods have been part of the plan for MoteMancer from the beginning. The automation genre itself was born from mods, so it only feels right to pay that forward. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what role mods should play here, and I’d like to share some of that philosophy today.

A Platform for Creativity

First, I want to underscore what mods have meant to me as both a developer and a player. Modded Minecraft isn’t just a player’s vision brought to life, it’s a playground where many people first learn how to make games at all.

In every role I’ve had, a core thread has been carrying forward the tradition of innovation and craftsmanship so it can inspire the next wave of developers, the same way it inspired me.

My developer friends and I often joke that the modern engines are Unity, Unreal, Godot, and Minecraft. The last one comes with world generation, established systems, and a massive canvas to build on. It’s far easier to expand on something functional than to start from nothing, and even small changes like tweaking rules or swapping assets can be the spark that gets someone started.

The Role of MoteMancer Mods

Players have had a wide range of ideas for how they want to play and evolve MoteMancer. Some fit cleanly into the base game, some come with tradeoffs, and some don’t align with the core experience I want to preserve. But those ideas are perfect seeds for mods.

A simple example is No Chasms. Some players want complete freedom to build without terrain constraints. I want the default experience to embrace those constraints, but that makes this a perfect mod. It’s straightforward to implement and serves as a great learning example.

Alongside that, I’ll be providing starter mods like Infinite Reach and Ignore Plane Blocking as templates to build from.

One of the big advantages here is that mods don’t need to maintain systemic continuity. Infinite reach as a research upgrade doesn’t make much sense if you can toggle it on instantly. Power systems interacting with chasms don’t matter if chasms don’t exist. When a change breaks the internal logic of the game, that’s often a sign it belongs in mod space rather than the mainline experience.

The Where and the How

This is my first pass at building a modding ecosystem, so I expect to iterate on it.

For now, mods live alongside Foundations, since conceptually they occupy similar space. I’ve also set up a GitHub page with example mods so you can test and develop locally. Creating a mod is as simple as adding a folder next to your save files.

Uploading is handled directly in-game. If you’re working on a mod, an icon will appear that lets you upload it to Steam Workshop and link everything together. As long as it works locally and your files are named correctly, the process should be smooth.

Mods are tied to your account, so your work is safe and won’t be overwritten by others.

So Without Further Ado...

Steam Workshop is already live with a set of CyanAvatar Approved (TM) starter mods. They’re fully functional and meant to serve as clean templates to learn from. You will need to be on build v0.4.014 or beyond to use them.

I’ll be pushing a patch alongside this post with full support, and will follow up with a more formal guide and improved presentation soon. But it’s Monday, and this is what I’ve been musing about, so here we are. It’s just as important to see dev works in progress as it is to see finished results. Everything starts simple and grows, including your future mods :)

Go forth, create, inspire, and have fun.

Back to the Lab 🌿 ~CyanAvatar