Hello Rulers!
The main change in this update: Steam Workshop is no longer just for mods. You can now publish maps and scenarios there too, and even bundle them into packs.
How it used to work
Until now, sharing a map was a small quest. You made it in Warnament Map Editor, a separate app that comes with the game and sits right next to the game files. Then you posted the file on Discord or somewhere else. Anyone who wanted to play it had to find it, download it and drop it into a special folder on their device.
Now you publish your map to the Workshop, and other players just press Subscribe. The map loads into their game automatically.
Packs
A pack is a set of mods, maps and scenarios that downloads together as one Workshop item. Say you're a Napoleon fan. You make a Napoleonic Wars mod and an 1804 scenario, put them into a pack and publish it. Everyone who subscribes gets the mod and the map at once, without collecting the pieces one by one.
How to publish
Open the game and go to Mods. You'll see the mods, maps, scenarios and packs you already have in the game. These are the ones you made yourself and put into the game folder. Pick any of them and press Publish. Enter a name and a description, add an image if you like, and it's in the Steam Workshop.
To update it later, make your changes and press Publish again. The game will update your existing Workshop item instead of creating a new one.
Is it hard to make a map?
Honestly, it's medium difficulty. It's not so much hard as routine. A map is made of vertices: you find a source map you like and trace the provinces over it. There are two videos on our YouTube channel: one about Map Editor itself, and one about the drawing mode that makes creating maps much faster. Players have also recorded their own tutorials.
With mods, you don't have to start from a blank page at all. There is a Standard in-game mod in the Workshop. It's the game's own default mod: download it, change some numbers, and you'll see the changes in the game. You can also pick the standard mod in the in-game Mods menu and press Export. You'll get a copy that you can rename and rework into your own mod. That's much easier than starting from zero.
If you get stuck, there's a step-by-step guide on Steam (it's also behind the "Learn More" button on the Workshop page) and a Mod Editor Guide on our Discord. The Discord also has chats in different languages and a Community Resources section with a Mods forum, where the people who make mods and maps hang out.
"Can ChatGPT make a map for me?"
People ask me this, and right now the honest answer is: not really. It doesn't know enough about the game's formats. With a scenario you might get lucky if you give it an existing one and ask it to make a new one along the same lines. With a map, the chances are very small.
This is what I want to work on next. I'm preparing a special text file for AI agents like ChatGPT, called Agents.md. With it, you could simply write "make me a map and a scenario about the Napoleonic Wars", and the agent would understand the format and try to help. It didn't make it into this update. I can't guarantee it will always work, but in other projects I know of, agents are already very good at making mods when they have a file like this. I want to polish it properly, so that even someone who has never made a mod could start creating their favorite scenarios for Warnament. I hope it will be ready in one of the next updates.
Why does this matter to me? Making a mod is almost like making your own patch, or your own game. Only it's much simpler, and there's already a community ready to play it with you. I know this from experience: I've spent more time in Minecraft with IndustrialCraft and BuildCraft than in the vanilla game. Those mods completely changed it.
What I'm waiting for
My bet for one of the first big Workshop releases is The New Order. It's an alternate history where Germany won the Second World War, set on the Europe map. The authors already have both the map and the scenario, and now they're putting everything together. All the pieces are ready, so I expect to see it in the Workshop soon.
What worries me
If you open the mods forum on our Discord right now, there are a lot of mods there. There are far fewer in the Workshop. Maybe not everyone uses Steam, maybe not everyone plays on PC, and maybe not everyone is allowed to publish. As far as I know, Steam only lets you publish once your account has spent at least $5 in the store. So if you've made something great and it lives only on Discord, please consider putting it in the Workshop too. That way many more Rulers will find it.
Fixes
Since the last update, you've found a thousand ways to break the game with mods. I've spent a good part of this week fixing them, so that a broken mod doesn't just crash the game and you get a clear message about what exactly is wrong. In this update:
- If a mod adds expenses to buildings, they are now shown correctly in the country menu.
- Fixed a bug where resources created in mods couldn't be traded.
- The game starts faster.
- Improved translations and added them where they were missing.
Please keep breaking things and tell me about it. Share your maps, scenarios and packs in the Workshop and write your thoughts in the comments!
How to join the development?
Want some more Warnament? Here's what you can do:
- Suggest your ideas for the game on our Discord server
- Create a map in the free standalone map editor app
- Create your own multiplayer server
- Create a guide for the game
- Create a mod
- Help us translate the game into your native language
- Play Warnament beta for free on Android
- Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and watch weekly videos about the development process
- Follow Warnament on Twitter
- Leave a comment under a video of your favorite content maker, to let them know about the game
