Summary
- A Terraria content creator has crowd-funded a mod pack project.
- The team is currently working on the Bereft Souls, a comprehensive Terraria mod pack.
- They’ve already released an API designed to help others to seamlessly create mod packs.
Terraria has an extensive modding scene and a fiercely dedicated player base, two ingredients that have resulted in a booming community that has been active for over a decade.
With a massive library of mods comes the need for mod packs, fan-made groupings of complementary mods that have ironed out compatibility issues, and other common problems associated with mashing together fan-made content of different origins. These creations are exceedingly common in Minecraft, but bringing these innovations to Terraria has been a slow process because of incompatibility and the manpower required to undertake such a task.
Bereft of Soul
However, several months ago, avid Terraria player and content creator Brome decided to fix this problem. He launched a Patreon to fund a paid team to combine several popular Terraria mods into one giant mod pack with an integrated progression system. It’s a similar approach to the one taken by the mega-popular Minecraft mod pack Feed the Beast. The Patreon currently has over 1000 backers and earns €2,263 ($2,450) per month. The project currently employs four developers, two spriters (artists), and two progression designers.
The result of this collaboration is the Bereft Souls, a comprehensive mod pack that fuses together several major mods, combining their recipes and progression features into one fluid quest book system that maps out progression without the need for external wikis. Bereft Souls isn’t quite ready for release yet, but the team has created several development tools to make the creation of mod packs easier.
They’ve titled this release tPackBuilder, an API that allows modders to bulk change NPC stats and item recipes, with a quest book feature planned to be added in the future. The intention is to allow everyone to create mod packs without the need for extensive programming knowledge, a significant barrier to entry.
It’s not a stretch to say that this project could change the Terraria modding scene forever, even before the Bereft Souls itself has been released. The ability to seamlessly create mod packs is going to make life a lot easier for prospective modders.
- Released
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May 16, 2011
- ESRB
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T for Teen: Blood and Gore, Cartoon Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol