Setting up Modding Tools
Setting up Folders
Start by creating a folder AstroneerModding
in your PC. A good location is your documents
folder. This folder must be on a drive with at least 10GB of free space. If you also want to
make mods with Unreal Engine later you will need another 30GB.
Setting up unreal_pak_cli
When working with .pak files you need some kind of program to extract and create them. We will be
using the community-created unreal_pak_cli
program. The source code can be found
here. To download a
pre-built binary and some useful .bat files click HERE
. (We will
be using this)
Once you have downloaded the .zip extract it to your AstroneerModding
folder. Then go into the
unreal_pak_cli
. You should see the .exe and two .bat files. We will be adding the bat files to
the Windows Send to window to speed up the modding workflow. This is not strictly neccessary and
use the .exe like any other cli tool.
Right click both .bat files and select Create Shortcut
. Then press Win+R
and enter
Shell:sendto
. This will open a new window. Drag both shortcuts into that window. Then rename
them Repack folder with unreal_pak_cli
and Unpack .pak with unreal_pak_cli
.
Extracting the Game Files
First create a new folder in your AstroneerModding
folder called GameFiles
. This will be
where you will extract the game files to.
Next, you will need to find your Astroneer’s .pak file by going to where you have Astroneer installed.
The usual location for this is
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\ASTRONEER\Astro\Content\Paks
.If you have the Game installed anywhere outside the default Steam location you can find it on Steam by right clicking on Astroneer then going to
Properties
and thenLocal Files > Browse
. From there go to the sub folderAstro\Content\Paks
.
Copy the Astro-WindowsNoEditor.pak
files to your GameFiles
folder. Finally in your
GameFiles
folder right click on the Astro-WindowsNoEditor.pak
file and select
Send to > Unpack .pak with unreal_pak_cli
. This may take a minute.
Setting up UAssetGUI
UAssetGUI is tool for viewing and editing cooked .uasset files. Downlaod the latest version from
GitHub. Extract the .zip file to your
AstroneerModding
folder.
Opening an Asset
Go to AstroneerModding\GameFiles\WindowsNoEditor\Astro\Content\Items\ItemTypes
and double click
on FloodLight_IT.uasset
. Since you probably have not opened one of these files before Windows
will ask you for a program. Select “more apps,” then “Look for another app on this PC.” Browse to
and select the UAssetGUI.exe
we extracted earlier. This will set UAssetGUI as the default
program for .uasset files, which you will need for making your first mod.
To make your first mod continue with Basic Modding.