“Having played the original TTRPG back in the Stone Age, I was excited when I heard they were making this game under the direction of Mike Pondsmith,” Cyberpunk 2077 modder Darkcopse told me .
“However, I’ve been too entrenched in the tech world for decades to be an early adopter of anything. So when it launched, I read the reviews and sighed. However, I watched to see if it would be on the vine Wither or bear fruit. Post-1.31 patch [arrived]it’s clear that CDPR is working hard to achieve [its] Like many people, I walked into Night City for the first time. “
“Despite the rough release process, I’m glad that CDPR has continued to develop the game,” said modder DJ_Kovrik. “It’s great to see a lot of ideas coming out of the community. [were] Things implemented by modders – such as vehicle purchases, dynamic minimap zooming, pocket radios, and more – end up in the game itself [via updates]”.
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“After playing every life path, I discovered a modding community itching for closure [the] gaps and bugs in its gameplay and expand its potential,” Darkcopse continued. “To be fair, many of the new gameplay features introduced by mods already exist in some form within the game’s code. It’s just not implemented. These modders dig deep to make this “cut content” visible and functional. It really shores up the game and gives CDPR time to polish the features. “
One of the early mods that brought some long-desired features to the game was the “Virtual Studio.” This is a way to make items and vehicles (thanks to DJ_Kovrik) purchasable through the website on the game computer – and it continues to add new storefronts regularly. This is also the origin of Darkcopse’s in-game modifications.
“Getting all the costumes for Cyberpunk 2077 was ridiculous, and I couldn’t escape the fact that in 2077 I couldn’t order anything online,” they recalled. “So, I found the Nexus Mods website and the Virtual Atelier mod. I started creating a store that had everything but bugs and missing features that I wanted [to include], making it more immersive. So I made some modifications, as I do for several mods I use.
“As a professional programmer, this was almost as much fun as the game itself. I then contacted the mod’s successor, DJ_Kovrik, to see if they wanted to merge them into the source code. We worked on some features and fixes Some collaboration, and then he refactored the entire mod to make it better than before and incorporate my changes.”
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Since then, Darkcopse has created Missing Persons – The Restorer’s Hidden Gems and its updated, Phantom Liberty -themed sequel Pacific Typhoon – The Hidden Gems of Dogtown. Based on finding little randomly placed secrets, discoveries, and lore-filled scraps of information scattered throughout the base game world, these mods are designed from the ground up for “terminal completionists” – to the delight of modders Acknowledge this and be themselves.
“On the forums, I would see all kinds of ‘look what I found’ posts from people, pretty much everything [were] These hidden gems… it was inevitable that someone would point it out,” they explained. “After turning them all into Pokémon, I thought creating [a] The mod will help players find all these hidden gems in the most immersive way possible. “
Darkcopse says these two mods wouldn’t have come out without another member of the game’s modding community, the brilliantly named keanuWheeze. The modder added a full subway system to the game back in 2021. They credit the “Corrupt NCPD” – a mod by keanuWheeze that allowed V to bribe Night City’s police – for really showing them how to set up a hidden gem mod.
“After dissecting how to send phone messages, I had to create a task tracking system that would load at runtime and maintain state between different game saves,” they reveal. “Then it’s a matter of figuring out what triggers certain gems to spawn or not, and writing the message yourself, try [to] incorporate [NPC sender’s] mannerisms and spoken language. “
Both mods rely on a number of very useful framework mods that form the basis of many of Cyberpunk’s larger mods and help bring them to life. “Cyber Engine Tweaks, redscript, RED4ext, ArchiveXL, TweakXL, and WolvenKit are great,” explains the modder. “These core mods don’t overlap to a great extent and provide modders with a set of tools to handle a variety of tasks. You can – and some do – use all of these tools to create a mod Group.”
As DJ_Kovrik puts it, these framework mods “define the Cyberpunk 2077 mods we see today,” and the community that makes them certainly hasn’t stopped modding the game since their emergence. “It’s been three years since this game [was] has been released, but many modders are still very active in providing content such as modding guides and tutorials,” the modder explained, “not to mention all the authors [of those] It’s great that base mods and tools are still actively supporting every new patch they release for the game. “
Many of these veteran modders are members of the Cyberpunk 2077 modding community Discord server, which Darkcopse believes hosts “a wealth of information about Cyberpunk 2077 mods,” as well as a large number of “advanced modder” [who] “It’s amazingly encouraging and helpful for new modders.” In fact, for those asking for help, this kind of help is even more important for “Cyberpunk 2077” because this The game’s post-launch journey is unique and well-documented.
DJ_Kovrik specifically cited Cyberpunk: Edge Runner as having “increased the number of players who not only want to install mods, but are also interested in how mods are created,” in addition to increasing the number of people who are just playing the game. Base game.
“There were a lot of new modders at the time, many of whom are still active now,” they said, adding: “[Patch 2.0], which largely redesigns many of the game’s systems, further improving all the excitement of the game. So it’s a bit of a shame that Phantom Liberty is the only expansion when the game has a solid foundation for adding new content. “
What awaited those new future modders was, and still is, an interesting learning curve – especially if you want to create something fairly complex. “The whole process of mod creation can be quite complex as there are many tools and each one has its own purpose. [you] Modify some part of the game or engine,” DJ_Kovrik outlines.
“So finding the right tool can take some time, especially for beginners. Also, we were limited [regards to] function [is] Exposed to scripts and available for modification,” they added. “A lot of the core parts of the game are hidden inside the engine and cannot be called from scripts, so using these things will require more advanced programming skills. ”
According to DJ_Kovrik, creating new missions in the game is “currently still very difficult to modify.” This is something that some modders like Deceptious have been working on. New missions are currently rare, but Darkcopse believes they may become more common in the future.
“Quest-based mods will always outnumber bugfixes, cheats, quality of life, immersion, and especially cosmetic mods for almost all games,” they note. “Typically, quests will touch many areas of the game engine. This requires collective knowledge of how to manipulate these areas – [Cyberpunk] The 2077 modding community has been particularly collaborative in this regard – and then a plan was put together on how to tie it all together with some engaging content to make the journey worthwhile. That’s why some of the most complex and extensive mission-based game mods are for games from many years ago. I think Cyberpunk 2077 has the potential to be a platform for fan-based expansions like this… given time. “
Going forward, it’ll also be interesting to see what the community can do with Cyberpunk’s sequel (currently codenamed Project Orion), the development of which has only been properly underway at CDPR since we entered 2024.
“I’m not very familiar with Unreal Engine mods, so it’s hard to tell what we can expect [modding-wise]but I wanted to mention that it’s great to see further collaboration and exchange between CD Projekt and the modding community,” said DJ_Kovrik. “The release of Redmod is definitely a step in the right direction, although compared to all other versions Than, its functionality is a bit limited. [the] Fan-made tools, so hopefully CDPR won’t stop there and will continue to support modders. “
In terms of gameplay, both modders have a few things they’d like to see, in addition to the in-depth storytelling and interesting characters we’ve all come to expect from CDPR. Darkcopse believes that “the illusion of a world that operates regardless of how the player behaves, not just around them” is important, while DJ_Kovrik mentions “lifepaths that impact story and gameplay, and possibly more in-game activities, such as Gwent in The Gwent”. The Witcher 3. “It would be nice if there were more customization options for gear and vehicles,” the latter added.
“I understand that some people in the community have tried to implement similar functionality for Cyberpunk 2077, but with the current mod capabilities, this is a difficult task.”
Whatever we end up with when Orion finally arrives, hopefully it will allow these fine folks and their fellow modders to continue creating their own interesting stuff in the world of cyberpunk.