When the developer kit first launched for Studio Wildcard's ARK: Survival Evolved, the Steam Workshop was a blank slate with creative opportunities everywhere. There were dozens of ideas I had for mods, but aside from tinkering around with Unreal content examples, this was going to be my first unguided experience working in the Unreal editor. I decided to focus on simple tweaks that I knew would make gameplay more enjoyable for me and my friends.

 

TorchBoost began as a mod that simply increased the tiny light radius standing torches provided - to a level that was comparable to the handheld torch. However, as a mod, there are often limitations in how you can go about solving a problem. The first issue I stumbled on was figuring out how to create a child of a blueprint, but still be able to modify its components (specifically an ActivatedEmitter component). I ended up creating a post on the UnrealEngine forums and Drake answered my question.

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As I worked on my mod more, as well as actively helping other modders solve their own problems on the forums, I was able to take my experience and experiment with other aspects of my mod. For example, through the use of visual scripting, I could now dynamically change parameter values for the light sources.

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In all, TorchBoost has been an invaluable learning experience for me. It also allowed me to share my experiences with other modders to help solve their own issues as they also went down the same road as me.