v0.22 - Modding and Steam Workshop support

TLDR:

• IMPORTANT. Platform updated to newer 64-bit only version, report if you suddenly cannot run the game.

• Full modding support with Steam Workshop upload

• Steam overlay enabled

• Region map image is now fully generated

• Next cults update moved to the next update

I was fully in the midst of the next cult update: rival cults were up and attacking the base screaming like mad, you could build cult base structures, you could upgrade your cult to the second level, and even attack the enemy base. All of that mostly in the skeletal phase, sure, PLENTY of work left before the update would be ready to upload, and then I returned to ponder upon one of the old thoughts, about people wanting mods for some reason. Some of you might've seen the pinned thread "what would you like to see from mods?" with zero responses. Me too, I had no idea what people want with mods. Sure, we all know a game or two with a gajillion of them, Skyrim, Half-Life and all that, but what would the hypothetical Parasite mod look like? I thought about two of my unannounced projects that I work on from time to time, mod support in these is very much understandable - I know what people can do and how to do it. But then it suddenly occured to me that if I don't know what specifically can be done, it's better to just open up everything . So there you have it, I've heard Caves of Qud mentioned multiple times, so I studied their mod system cursorily and fleshed out what I want: simplified "register entity" API plus event hook, plus full access to game internals for the braver souls. Starting from there, I've asked the AI about the security issues with the current platform and it turns out, the way it is (was) set up is downloading and putting script code into the game would be tantamount to RCE (remote code execution) with full disk drive and computer resources access. Surely, downloading a random script and running it with full OS privileges is fine? Ok, just kidding. I've upgraded the platform to the latest version and set the flags in such a way that it's now ok to do that. Not to get into the nitty-gritty details but the Javascript code the game downloads for the mods runs in a sandbox with very limited access to files (assets, mostly, through a bridge layer) and no access to network. Now I can say with some confidence that running a mod in the game will probably not turn your computer into a Bitcoin mining node or something like that. So, a few more iterations and now we have: a) Platform was updated and 32-bit support dropped. Steam itself has dropped 32-bit support some time ago so I don't think it's necessary. b) Mod SDK included with the game as a zip file. It's so small there's no point in putting it away online separately from the game. Documentation is the zip file as well in markdown format. Docs are copied into the Steam Guide (for now, until I think of a better place online to reference). c) Tool to publish mods on Steam included with the game (required Node.js) d) Two example mods in Steam Workshop e) Debug mode is now included in the game so if you really want to cheat, now you can do it without any trouble. I probably shouldn't have pointed that out, hmmm. f) Running non-Workshop mods is possible, the docs explain how g)

Infra

enums had to be converted to strings for the mods to add their own goals, skills and things like that. Save game compatibility was assured. h)

A neat bonus

Steamworks support enabled, so we finally have Steam overlay (hooray). I can even do achievements now if I want to (I don't). Now onto some technical details. What is required (at least parts of the list) from the mod author: a) Working Haxe language knowledge. Haxe compiles into Javascript which runs in the Electron platform, which is essentially browser + Node.js server. If you only know Javascript, that's fine, Haxe provides compilation-level checks on top and is mostly a subset of ECMAScript, it's gonna be easy to learn. In theory, you CAN produce raw Javascript but that's on you. Also in theory, Typescript can be supported in the future if enough people want it. b) Some HTML/CSS/HTML5 Canvas/Chrome devtools knowledge. The more you know, the more you'll be able to do. c) Node.js installation will only be required to run the Steam mod publish script so setting it up can be done later d) Working Haxe 4.3+/IDE setup, VS Code or the like. Sounds scary? I wholly recommend asking ChatGPT for help, with the setup and all. If you tell it to "use web", it will give you very good actionable advice on getting it going, building webpages (which is essentially what the game is, a glorified webpage) is what the AI is VERY good at in 2026. Ask me on the new Modding sub-forum as well, I'll be glad to help. The SDK is based on four distinctive approaches and the assumption that any mod will use one or more of the three: 1) Entity registry. Mod authors can register new entities with the engine using `register*` API. This covers a lot of the essentials like items, AI traits, pedia articles, skills, goals, evolution. More will be added when needed by someone. This is the best way to add stuff because the engine will cover the rest, like game restart and save/load support. 2) Asset override. Currently this is covered by adding files to mod folder, they replace default game art, sounds, music and styles. I didn't implement the "replace one icon in entities atlas" API yet but it'll be done soon. Replacing full image to change parasite icon is, of course, not very efficient. 3) Event bus. A mod can hook up to various events with self-describing names like `ai:die` or `area:leave`. The event will receive necessary data and mod code can do something it wants at that moment. The amount of supported events is small now but I can add a lot more when asked to. 4) Visual FX system. This one intentionally left simple for reuse and no ingame fx provided.

You can see the examples in chainsaw mod

screen shake and reddish tint. 5) Monkey-patching. The mod SDK offers full access to game internals with `game` object. It is fully typed through the externs, and some of it is hidden but there's really nothing stopping the mod author from doing anything to the game state, or UI, or the visuals. The caveat is that these changes can break anything and you wouldn't even know it until much later. In particular, save game support can be broken very easily, you can do whatever to some game object AI, save, and notice that something is wrong only when the game is loaded because the state was serialized partially or not serialized at all. There is a whole article in the docs describing the guards SDK has and also describing how easily they are bypassed. Not four, five, of course, five, I mean five, yes. Steam post image The two example mods in Workshop are testmod and chainsaw. First one is mostly interesting to modders, it has a few checks and examples inside.

The other one is better

it adds a chainsaw into the game with custom fx, attached skill, event art and a little minigame with save persistence. The source code for both is included with them, you can do what you want with it. The mod support is in no way exhaustive, more like a sketch of the supported approaches. If you have any questions, or need any new event bus/registry additions, do not hesitate to ask in the new Modding section of the Steam discussions for the game. Events are especially trivial to add.

View on Steam

That custom fx, btw, has got me thinking about adding more animations into the base game, I'll see about it later. Moreover, mods are fun to do to test some ideas that aren't ready for the main game so I'll do more. Next mod will be a full game reskin, just to test it's possible and work out the potential issues. At this point I've had to make a decision: either continue current work on cult expansion, or release mod support since they're not in any way related. In the end, I decided to leave the current cult base code in the game while blocking access to level 2 cult upgrade ordeal in the UI. There is a small chance that newly enterprising mod hackers will access the unfinished code but that's on you. It's unfinished, it'll break save game compatibility for you and it might crash your game, etc, etc. Do not open Necronomicon, if you find it. I repeat, DO. NOT. OPEN. IT. Now onto some more things: Steam post imageActually, even before I started working on rival cults and cult base, I spent a week or two working on region map image generation. Now it looks way neater than the old tiled one. Note that now you can see the unknown region tiles darkened but without location markers so that the map is not fully dark when you start the game. You'll also notice that there are woods and mountains on the map. I don't have support for these yet in the game but at some point I'll implement that, base uninhabited area will be different for plains/wood/mountains. And hopefully even with highway going through it. And maybe since we'll have highways, then... Nah, nevermind that.

Steam post imageAnother neat visual change, LOS in area mode is now drawn smoothly with lines instead of tile by tile. AI/player vision still works with tiles, so there's no "partially visible" state for anything. This took faster than I thought. It also has a minor bug in some cases, I'll get to it soon.

Steam post imageAgain, I've got something to show: inventory actions list was compacted visually so that each item takes one row. At some point the game will have unique item icons, so that might be reworked again. Stay tuned.

I also did a rework of the main menu background because the old one was way too heavy on my laptop GPU which made it noisy. And now it has a few more neat things, it's WebGL based and 60 fps limited which is way less taxing. I think it's about 30% load for me which is fine. Main menu appearing has a fx effect on it too. And HUD was optimized not to take GPU load when nothing was happening.

Cheers.

Full changelog:

• ai: aggressive ai will investigate source of noise

• ai: separate lastSeenX/Y from roamTargetX/Y for alert chase target

• area: areas marked as small (lab, underground lab, sewers, corpo office) will double ai vision/hearing range

• area: smooth area LOS overlay

• area: trees are now see through

• bugfix: "you are being watched" text optimized for gpu usage (even that took a lot for platform reasons)

• bugfix: clear stored target on detaching from host

• bugfix: hud was taking 12% gpu when nothing happened

• bugfix: if cult ordeal requires level 1+ followers, then followers of level 1 will be attached to it first

• bugfix: loading game with no active team after team spawned in the current game did not reset team to zero

• bugfix: stop movement and clear path on changing ui state

• bugfix: stopped law on law attacks

• bugfix: thugs and police cultists will now correctly calm down after fight

• chainsaw: initial contents

• console: `ai trace/untrace` command to debug ai states

• console: `mods` command

• console: fully refactored with more understandable commands like `give`, `ai`, etc

• console: tab completion and command/sub-command hints

• core, mods: exception stacks will have hx line numbers (yay)

• core: enums replaced with string abstracts + old save game compatibility. save game version bumped to 3

• core: exceptions.txt -> log- .txt. Old exceptions.txt is retired. You can also see valuable logs from game preload there which won't be visible in console.

• Removedcoremigrated to more secure environment, direct nodejs access disabled
• Addedcoresandbox, web security and context isolation enabled

• cult: when leaving area with followers in combat, you'll get a warning and some of them might die because of that

• debug: file-based toggle instead of different builds with macro condition

• mods: initial mod support: registry, event bus, fx system, externs, settings, save data, asset overloading (sounds, music, images, css), mod load/enable/disable ui, mod dependencies, publishing, documentation

• Removedmodsloading save game with mod content when that mod is disabled will scrub mod items, goals, skills, etc references from the data and notify they were scrubbed

• region: map image is now fully generated

• region: renamed high-densite area -> downtown

• sounds: blood splats

• steam: steamworks integration - overlay and workshop

• testmod: initial testmod contents

• Adjusteduibody inventory actions list reworked

• ui: highlight uses translate instead of scale

• Adjusteduimain menu background and effect changed

• ui: region mode tooltip is now redrawn only when mouse changes tile