Setting up the Modding Kit

These are the requirements for making custom items with Unreal Engine and the Modding Kit.

Visual Studio

Download Visual Studio 2017 or higher.

When running the installer, on the “Workloads” page make sure you select “Desktop & Mobile > Desktop development with C++” and “Gaming > Game development with C++”.

If Visual Studio is already installed you can run the installer and press modify to add the necessary workloads.

Unreal Engine 4

Open Epic Games launcher and go to “Unreal Engine” tab.

Next go to Library and add a new engine version.

Select 4.23.x where x can be any number, and press install.

Modding Kit

To develop your mods you will need a modkit which can be downloaded from this link.

If you are familiar with version control software you should clone it for easier updates.

Wwise (optional)

Astroneer uses Wwise as its sound engine. If you want to make mods which play sounds you need to install Wwise.

Go to Wwise website and head to Get Wwise -> Download Wwise.

If you don’t already have an account, create one. After wwise installed has finished downloading, open it and select WWISE in the top bar.

Click on latest and change it to All > 2019.1 > 2019.1.8.7173 and press install. Once presented with options select these:

  • Packages

    • Authoring

    • SDK (C++)

  • Deployment Platforms

    • Apple

      • macOS

    • Microsoft

      • Windows

      • Visual Studio 2017

      • Visual Studio 2019

After it has finished installing go to Unreal Engine tab in the top bar. There press on the burger menu and Browse For Project.

Select Astro.uproject in the file picker.

Now press Integrate WWise into project. Here select All > 2019.1 > 2019.1.8.7173.

In the wwise project path field press on the triangle on the right side and click New.

Now press the Integrate button.

Generating project files

To generate the project files we will need to run the following command:

"UE_INSTALL_PATH\Engine\Binaries\DotNET\UnrealBuildTool.exe" -projectfiles -project="PATH_TO_PROJECT\\Astro.uproject" -game -rocket -progress

Open cmd in your project directory and copy this inside cmd. Remember to replace UE_INSTALL_PATH with your unreal engine installation folder which is usually found at C:\\Program Files\\Epic Games\UE_4.23\\.

And remember to change PATH_TO_PROJECT with path to the modkit.

Example:

"C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_4.23\Engine\Binaries\DotNET\UnrealBuildTool.exe" -projectfiles -project="C:\\Users\\username\\Documents\\Astro.uproject" -game -rocket -progress

Run the command, and then open the Astro.uproject file and if it asks to build unbuilt modules press yes and wait.

Developing Mods

You can now start with Adding Custom Items with the Unreal Editor.