Modding

My current obsession is playing ARK: Survival Evolved on a private PVE server with a couple of friends which I plan on opening to the public in the future. I am absolutely captivated by the game’s ability to blend Minecraft’s survival, exploration, resource collection, base building, Pokémon’s ‘Gotta Catch Them All’ mentality, and Tamagotchi’s need to constantly take care of your pets.

I find that the game is everything I wanted from the aforementioned games all rolled into one dino covered package, but I want it to do more. I have a few ideas that I have been working on between my overly excited responses of taming my first bronto and third rex (may the first two rest in peace as I avenged your deaths by killing that low level Dimorphodon that flew circles around you while I was off adventuring.

Rail System and Minecarts

My most ambitious of the current modding projects would be the Rail System and Minecarts.

Is there a resource node heavy area that is near your home that you love to pillage every chance you get? Do you despise your pack dino’s ability to get caught on ever sapling you pass?

Then you need to build a better industrial infrastructure and that is where the rail system comes into play.

The plan is to make the Rail system to be a mid tier engram that would allow semi-established

Storage Cart

The Storage Cart will use an instanced version of the storage crate from the game (highlighted in blue), mounted on top of a basic rail cart, this will be able to be pushed by hand or moved via the Engine Cart, and have the same storage capabilities as the default storage crate.

The benefits of this would be that players can load many of these up and connect them together and push many carts worth of material back home. These carts would greately improve material collection as well as provide a new dynamic to PVP servers where raids on resource trains could be a viable strategy for disrupting enemy plans.

The possibilities for trade and role playing elements are also possible.

Engine

The Engine will allow trains of resource carts to be moved without a survivor needing to push them, this will be fueled by gasoline.

The Engine will aid more towards autonomy and efficiency. A survivor could be continually sending resources back to base with another survivor unloading the trains and sending the trains back to their original destination.

Tribes can send resource shipments between each other and role playing could benefit greatly from these types of relationships.

Rails

Rails will be crafted at one of the crafting stations and would be a mesh extruded along a spline that would allow a natural curve and course for the track.

Further Plans

• I further plan to work on a refrigeration cart that would allow the transport of perishables.
• Adding stopping points to allow for long looping tracks that can have multiple preset destinations

At this time, I do not plan on adding any sort of survivor transportation or allow building on the carts, because face it, that’s what dinos are for.

Power Cables

This mod it due to my disdain for the way the current power cable system looks.

The functionality of power cables is fine, I just think that instead of a metal bar with cables wrapped around it, having cables strung between anchors would look much more appealing.
The power cables would be spline meshes generated when the object is placed, hang realistically depending on the distance between the two anchors.

Here is a concept of what the power cables would look like and I have not started working on this mod just yet.

Bait

This mod is not of my own design, this one is based off of some suggestions I have seen around the ARK community.
Simply put this mod would add a craftable item that would draw dinos near. This would help with hunting and taming.
This mod is going to require tweaking of the dino behavior.
This mod has also not been started.

Thanks for taking the time to read, I would love any feedback you could give as these are just as much for me as for the community.