[2023] Community Blog #026

The first blog post for 2023! Featuring our new support site and help center, a helpful mod for aspiring mappers, showcasing a popular community suggestion, and more.

Welcome to SDG Support (Help Center)

Last month, we launched our new Unturned support site and help center, which can be found at support.smartlydressedgames.com. Not only does it contain a lot of helpful articles for common issues, but there is also a user-friendly way to file support tickets!

We are still adding (and improving!) our support articles, and we would like to continue expanding it with more official articles and guides to help with technical and player support issues. Many of these guides go more in-depth than we ever could over email.

If you have feedback on the support site, please feel free to let us know!

Mod Showcase: Simple Doors & Keys Mod

This month we are showcasing a simple, and incredibly useful, objects mod by biedaktokox!

Several curated maps, such as Elver or Arid, incorporate locked doors as part of their progression systems. If you’ve enjoyed those maps, you may have wanted to implement a similar system of locked doors on your own map! Creating your own custom maps can be a lot of fun, but learning to create objects—and utilizing NPC condition/reward logic to create features like locked doors—can be challenging.

biedaktokox’s Simple Doors & Keys Mod has you covered. Their mod adds several color-coded locked doors, each with a matching color-coded key (or keycard) to open them! The perfect mod for mappers looking to add special areas to their map, but don’t want players to just be able to walk in immediately.

Suggestion Showcase: Animatic’s UI Redesign

We love well-thought-out and high-effort suggestions, and it’s been a while since we’ve showcased a popular community-made suggestion for the game.

Recently, AnimaticFreak—with help from fellow players Dug, ToothyDeerryte, and Renaxon—posted an idea for a main menu UI redesign onto our official forums. We’ve linked one of their concept videos below, but there’s two more in the original suggestion post!

There were actually a few UI-related suggestions last year – although they’ve mostly been modding/plugin-feature requests. Currently, there’s no major UI changes planned until the UI Toolkit rewrite. (Unturned currently uses uGUI, but also maintains support for IMGUI.)

If we ever did a future menu revamp for the main menu specifically, there’s a lot of projects and games that would likely be a big inspiration for us. We do actually want to replace cosmetic icons with the work-in-progress cosmetic previews though, similar to the suggestion’s concept videos. Last year, the Stockpile was updated to use the new cosmetic previews and newer outfit previews!

Artwork Showcase

Revisions to the Server Hosting Rules

We recently revised the rules for hosting servers. These revisions merge a lot of the previous updates into the core rules themselves, rather than having them be a footnote (or header-note?) at the top of the page. We also better clarify on what is (or isn’t) allowed under the current rules.

It’s important to note that rules-wise: nothing has actually changed. These revisions are just meant to make the rules more understandable – not just for server hosts, but also for players.

Here’s a summary of the revisions: (1) we clarified what a “consumable microtransaction” is, (2) added a couple more examples, and (3) expanded on the monetized filter section to provide information about each individual option.

Answering Your Questions…

Q: Is there a way to wear two cosmetic glasses at the same time?
No—these items use the same cosmetic slot, so they cannot be used at the same time. There are some masks or hats that physically occupy a similar space despite not using the same slot. Consider mixing-and-matching with some of those instead.

Q: I’ve been enjoying A6 Polaris but how do I add the map to my server?
Add any Steam Workshop mod (including any curated map) to your server by adding the file ID to the server’s WorkshopDownloadConfig.json file. You can find any file ID in the URL for the mod’s Steam Workshop page. For example, A6 Polaris’ mod ID is 2898548949. We also maintain a list of file IDs for curated maps in our official documentation.

Q: When I last tried to play Carpat it had weird, buggy terrain! Is this going to be fixed?
Carpat received a small patch towards the end of last year, to fix terrain/materials issues.

Q: Help! Recently on the Russia map, I met this mega zombie with an eye above it. What is it?
That’s a boss from the curated Kuwait map. It sounds like you’re either playing on a multiplayer server with custom difficulty settings, or you’ve accidentally changed your single-player difficulty settings to allow for it to spawn on the Russia map.

Q: How do I report bugs on console?
You can send the console team your bug reports through their dedicated bug report form.

Send Us Your Questions!

Have questions? Is there something cool you think should be featured? You can reach me through my Twitter handle @MoltonMontro or via email. We also check our official community forums.

The first blog post for 2023! Featuring our new support site and help center, a helpful mod for aspiring mappers, showcasing a popular community suggestion, and more.

Welcome to SDG Support (Help Center)

Last month, we launched our new Unturned support site and help center, which can be found at support.smartlydressedgames.com. Not only does it contain a lot of helpful articles for common issues, but there is also a user-friendly way to file support tickets!

We are still adding (and improving!) our support articles, and we would like to continue expanding it with more official articles and guides to help with technical and player support issues. Many of these guides go more in-depth than we ever could over email.

If you have feedback on the support site, please feel free to let us know!

Mod Showcase: Simple Doors & Keys Mod

This month we are showcasing a simple, and incredibly useful, objects mod by biedaktokox!

Several curated maps, such as Elver or Arid, incorporate locked doors as part of their progression systems. If you’ve enjoyed those maps, you may have wanted to implement a similar system of locked doors on your own map! Creating your own custom maps can be a lot of fun, but learning to create objects—and utilizing NPC condition/reward logic to create features like locked doors—can be challenging.

biedaktokox’s Simple Doors & Keys Mod has you covered. Their mod adds several color-coded locked doors, each with a matching color-coded key (or keycard) to open them! The perfect mod for mappers looking to add special areas to their map, but don’t want players to just be able to walk in immediately.

Suggestion Showcase: Animatic’s UI Redesign

We love well-thought-out and high-effort suggestions, and it’s been a while since we’ve showcased a popular community-made suggestion for the game.

Recently, AnimaticFreak—with help from fellow players Dug, ToothyDeerryte, and Renaxon—posted an idea for a main menu UI redesign onto our official forums. We’ve linked one of their concept videos below, but there’s two more in the original suggestion post!

There were actually a few UI-related suggestions last year – although they’ve mostly been modding/plugin-feature requests. Currently, there’s no major UI changes planned until the UI Toolkit rewrite. (Unturned currently uses uGUI, but also maintains support for IMGUI.)

If we ever did a future menu revamp for the main menu specifically, there’s a lot of projects and games that would likely be a big inspiration for us. We do actually want to replace cosmetic icons with the work-in-progress cosmetic previews though, similar to the suggestion’s concept videos. Last year, the Stockpile was updated to use the new cosmetic previews and newer outfit previews!

Artwork Showcase

Revisions to the Server Hosting Rules

We recently revised the rules for hosting servers. These revisions merge a lot of the previous updates into the core rules themselves, rather than having them be a footnote (or header-note?) at the top of the page. We also better clarify on what is (or isn’t) allowed under the current rules.

It’s important to note that rules-wise: nothing has actually changed. These revisions are just meant to make the rules more understandable – not just for server hosts, but also for players.

Here’s a summary of the revisions: (1) we clarified what a “consumable microtransaction” is, (2) added a couple more examples, and (3) expanded on the monetized filter section to provide information about each individual option.

Answering Your Questions…

Q: Is there a way to wear two cosmetic glasses at the same time?
No—these items use the same cosmetic slot, so they cannot be used at the same time. There are some masks or hats that physically occupy a similar space despite not using the same slot. Consider mixing-and-matching with some of those instead.

Q: I’ve been enjoying A6 Polaris but how do I add the map to my server?
Add any Steam Workshop mod (including any curated map) to your server by adding the file ID to the server’s WorkshopDownloadConfig.json file. You can find any file ID in the URL for the mod’s Steam Workshop page. For example, A6 Polaris’ mod ID is 2898548949. We also maintain a list of file IDs for curated maps in our official documentation.

Q: When I last tried to play Carpat it had weird, buggy terrain! Is this going to be fixed?
Carpat received a small patch towards the end of last year, to fix terrain/materials issues.

Q: Help! Recently on the Russia map, I met this mega zombie with an eye above it. What is it?
That’s a boss from the curated Kuwait map. It sounds like you’re either playing on a multiplayer server with custom difficulty settings, or you’ve accidentally changed your single-player difficulty settings to allow for it to spawn on the Russia map.

Q: How do I report bugs on console?
You can send the console team your bug reports through their dedicated bug report form.

Send Us Your Questions!

Have questions? Is there something cool you think should be featured? You can reach me through my Twitter handle @MoltonMontro or via email. We also check our official community forums.