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 4.27.2 and press install.

Modding Kit 

To develop your mods, you will need to use the AstroTechies ModdingKit, which can be downloaded from this link.

Choose “Code” -> “Download ZIP” on the GitHub website and unzip the file to wherever on disk you would like your project to be located.

If you are familiar with version control software, you may wish to instead clone the ModdingKit for easier updates.

Wwise (optional)

This step is not required.

Astroneer uses Wwise as its sound engine. If you want to make mods which play sounds, you may wish 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 the Astro.uproject file from the AstroTechies ModdingKit 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 Visual Studio project files (optional)

This step is not required.

If you’d like to use Visual Studio to edit or build the AstroTechies ModdingKit, simply right-click on the Astro.uproject file and select “Generate Visual Studio project files”. You can then open the new “Astro.sln” file in Visual Studio and build the project as desired.

If the option does not appear, you can try to instead execute the following command on the command line:

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

Replace UE_INSTALL_PATH with your Unreal Engine installation folder, which is usually found at C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_4.27\. Replace PATH_TO_PROJECT with the path to your copy of the AstroTechies ModdingKit.

Example:

"C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_4.27\Engine\Binaries\DotNET\UnrealBuildTool.exe" -projectfiles -project="C:\Users\username\Documents\Astro.uproject" -game -rocket -progress

First-time Launch 

Now, open the Astro.uproject file included with the AstroTechies ModdingKit by double-clicking it. If you receive a pop-up asking if you would like to rebuild missing modules, press “Yes” and wait.

If double-clicking the Astro.uproject file fails to open the project, right-click on Astro.uproject, select “Open with” -> “Choose another app”, scroll down and click “Choose an app on your PC,” and browse to and select the executable file at UE_INSTALL_PATH\Engine\Binaries\Win64\UE4Editor.exe. Replace UE_INSTALL_PATH with your Unreal Engine installation folder, which is usually found at C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_4.27\.

Developing Mods 

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