Greetings Captains! Many of you have been asking questions about the Star Command Isometric Enhanced New Creation Editor, aka SCIENCE. For those that don't know about it, SCIENCE is our in-game modding tool. We have occasionally had the Maps portion of SCIENCE available in a test version on the beta branch, but it largely has not fully been discussed. Please keep in mind that some of the screenshots and assets we will be showing here are still works in progress. Modding is one of those things which we have designed and redesigned in our efforts to get it right. We want players to be able to customize and build everything in the game, but we also want to keep the difficulty level & story as presented. We want creators to have the freedom to do whatever they want to do, but we also want to ensure that someone doesn't break the full game to the point of needing a redownload simply by making a mistake while learning our tools. Ideally, we want SCIENCE to be a tool set that is not incredibly difficult to understand and use for beginners, but has enough flexibility that experienced modders can really do a lot.

Maps

The main portion of SCIENCE right now is the Maps portion, where you can build or create a ship of various objects/weaponry/crew to fight or explore. You can pick a hull, draw out a floor map, add in walls/objects/treasures, and create a decent looking map. But a ship is far more than just a simple collection of floors and objects, and we want you to be able to make yours more than that as well. Within SCIENCE Maps, we have added several characters that you can bring in and place on your ship. We have also extended out our Captain Creator to allow for non-captains to be built and saved into SCIENCE, just on the off chance someone wants to write themselves into their own Star Command fanfic.
We have also added in things like Trigger Tiles and Cargo Areas that you will be able to use in your own encounters in the future.

Lights

Much like any good house/apartment/dumpster, your ship will also need some good lighting. While we can't bring the entirety of Unity's lighting engine into the game, we have been working on a custom tool to allow you to build and save your own lights onto a map. You can set their range, color, type, intensity, as well as update a lot of position/rotation aspects. They are saved in a list, so you can go back and change them as needed.

Quick Battle

Once you have built a ship with lights, you might be wondering how to test it out. For this, we have added a Quick Battle option. In Quick Battle mode, you choose a ship you have created and then choose how many extra characters you want to put on it. Once chosen, the ship spawns with your specifications and the battle begins! Can a generic player ship take down your custom ship? If so, you can always spawn another ship and continue the fight!

Steam Workshop

Once you have edited your ship to be crazy difficult, you may well want to show off your work and watch other people die to it on Twitch. Or just put it up on Steam Workshop. For that, we have added a Bundler as well as tools to upload to and browse from our Star Command Steam Workshop page. With the bundler, you can choose to put in any set of custom Maps, custom Characters, and custom lighting designs.
Once you have chosen all the items you want in this bundle, you can then upload it and watch the comments roll in.

Future Plans

While this is the start of what we have planned for SCIENCE, we have plenty more to come. Probably the next pieces after these will be custom Objects and Hulls, so you can fully customize all aspects of your ship. From there, we also want you to be able to write your own stories, so we have plans to add in areas for custom Dialog, Encounters, and Missions. Among the other options we have discussed for some point in the future are custom Races, custom Galaxies, and a place to build and move around the UI. We hope to have this in your hands for testing and breaking the game fairly soon. We can't wait to see what feedback you have for us and what ships you create! Cheers, Warballoon