What’s better than a modern classic that gets everything right about old school first person shooters? If you answered the same modern classic, but with the option to add custom content, then you sir/madam, are a winner. Why is that, you ask? Well, New Blood Interactive has just released the Alpha for the DUSK SDK, something David Szymanski has been working on for a while. With this SDK, players can start modding the game, and there’s even basic support for maps from other games (Half-Life, Quake and Quake 3 for now).
Does that sound like something you want to try your hand at? Then head over to the New Blood Interactive Discord server and look for the #dusk-mods channel in the “Modder’s basement” subcategory. Alternatively, we’ve also shared the info on how to access the SDK Alpha branch on Steam below, but you should really join their Discord if you wish to take full advantage of the recently released modding tools.
Steam branch code: oohatinybarn
Info from Darth Zombie on the New Blood Discord channel:
• You can load Quake 1, Half-Life and Quake 3 BSP files (including BSP2, not to be confused with Quake 2)
• You cannot make maps for any game mode other than campaign mode at this time.
• Custom model replacements didn’t make it into this build, they’ll be coming soon! You can still replace textures and sounds.
• Loading texture WADs is not yet supported, so some maps may have missing textures.
• The console is not present in this build. Nor is any form of multiplayer.
• A new cheat has been added: NBCLIP, which will toggle noclip mode.
• There is no func_vehicle yet. I am sorry.
• Water will only work when func_water is used, we don’t (yet) support implicit water through texture names.
• Transparent textures in Half-Life BSPs are not yet supported.
• Quake 3 BSP support is rather preliminary, so expect collision to be not quite right.
• Half-Life level transitions are not yet supported.Workshop support will be coming in a future patch, stay tuned and enjoy!
HOW DO I LOAD MAPS?
Go into the DUSK game folder (SteamApps/common/Dusk) and find the SDK/mnt/local folder.
Inside this folder, create a new folder for your mod (for example: halflife_maps)
Then inside that folder, create a new folder called maps. Put all of your BSPs in here. Once you enable your mod in the modding menu, they will be accessible from Campaign -> Custom Level
Quake-format maps will require palette.lmp inside the mod folder (halflife_maps in the previous example)
Info from David Szymanski on the New Blood Discord:
HOW DO I MAKE MODS?
Create a folder in SDK/mnt/local and name it whatever you want your mod to show up as in the in-game menu. Inside that folder, textures/sounds/maps should be placed in corresponding folders named “textures,” “sounds,” and “maps.” If you want sounds or textures to replace the default ones, name them the same thing as the corresponding sound/texture found in SDK/mnt/local/sounds or SDK/mnt/local/textures (the file extension needs to be the same as well). Make sure to activate the mod in the modding menu. See above for more information about loading custom maps.
If you want to chat about this SDK with other like-minded folk and don’t want to join the New Blood Discord server, then there’s always the Steam Community forums (but really, you should join their server, both Daves are incredibly helpful when they aren’t memeing around, and sometimes even when they are).
