The Steam top seller survival game, ARK: Survival Evolved just released its ARK Dev Kit. The new dev kit is a streamlined, simplified version of the Unreal Engine 4 Editor which allows modders to create content and upload it directly to the Steam Workshop more easily.
“While the ARK Dev Kit does not provide access to the ARK C++ game source code, it does contain all of our editable source art for the game, as well as our editable maps and blueprint classes. Thanks to the power of Unreal Engine 4’s Blueprint system, even without C++ you can modify and extend quite a lot of the game functionality, including new items, weapons, AI Behavior Trees, structures, and all kinds of gameplay classes & game logic.” says their announcement.
Along with the release, Alienware is sponsoring a modding contest in ARK: Survival Evolved with a prize pool of over $25,000. The competition will focus on two categories, “New Maps” and “New Functionality or Game Modes”, and the entries will be judged both by public voting and by a team of judges. The prizes will be divided as follows:
- Grand Prize (1st Place): $15,000 USD, Alienware Area-51 Desktop, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 TI Graphics Card
- 2nd Place: $5,000 USD, Alienware X51 Desktop, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Graphics Card
- 3rd Place: $2,500 USD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Graphics Card
Also along with the ARK Dev Kit release, Studio Wildcard, is releasing a new game mode to showcase this dev kit called “Survival of the Fittest” which is now available via the Steam Workshop. The new game mode is similar to the Battle Royale game modes of other games like Arma 3, H1Z1, etc. Survival of the Fittest pits players against each other in a gradually shrinking map. Players will have to fight each other and the environment as they craft, tame, gather and level at greater rates and the only winner is the last man standing. Kinda’ like Hunger Games but with more dinosaurs being involved.