Assetto Corsa Competizione Won't "Support" Modding

[Paul Jeffrey]

Kunos Simulazioni reveal more on the moddability of the upcoming Assetto Corsa Competizione, and it probably won't make for happy reading for some...

With a brand new game engine in the form of Unreal 4 alongside what is a reasonable short development timeframe until Early Access release, Kunos Simulazioni have confirmed that the new title will not follow in the footsteps of the original Assetto Corsa and support modding right from the very beginning, no doubt leaving many content creators disappointed to miss out on the opportunities afforded by the greatly improved graphics engine in ACC.

Although not officially supported, the possibility does remain however for talented community members to work out how to bring content to the game, as has been proven by some hardy souls over in the original Project CARS - it just means that tools and ease of access to modders will not the as it was in the first AC title.

Understandable given what Kunos have to go through to get the game to market later this year, but no doubt a blow to those players who enjoy sampling what the community have to offer. You can check out the full Kunos statement below, taken from a recent FAQ article on the 505Games website...

Assetto Corsa’s structure was designed from the beginning to be moddable. Being developed with UE4, AC Competizione processes data and assets through a completely different structure and file format. Therefore, the game will not be compatible with mod contents created for Assetto Corsa. Also, our team does not have enough experience with UE4 to tackle both the development a brand-new game and the challenges of supporting an open platform in the time frame available for this project.

We are fully aware of the importance of modding and its contribution to the success of Assetto Corsa. It’s a great way for new talents to emerge, for the community to “suggest” new directions and/or simply to make a product richer. It is not a coincidence that some of the best community members are now contributing with us to the evolution of the software.

However, for ACC this element will have to be put in stand-by mode for a series of reasons. The most important one is that we have given ourselves an enormous task of rebuilding, once again our software from (almost) scratch. In a world where pretty much, every product you see on the market in simracing is an evolution of games that have been on the market 10-15 years ago, our approach is to get a big axe and reset things to (almost) zero before starting with a new project. ACC is no exception.

In this case the task is rendered more complex by the fact that we are using, for the first time a third party engine that we did not design ourselves and the truth is, given the amount of time we have available to deliver ACC to the public, we have more than enough on our hands trying to figure out how to use the engine effectively to also think about how to make the platform moddable.

As you can imagine, this has been source of endless discussions in the last year and half as every decision comes with pros and cons, there is going to be pain no matter what your final call will be. It goes without saying that we believe we made the right call even if that means losing the huge benefits of a moddable platform.

We know this might not cover everything, but over time we will continue to answer your most frequently asked questions! Once again, we want to thank our community for the outpour of support you’ve shown us since our announcement last week. We absolutely cannot wait to tell you more about Assetto Corsa Competizione in the near future!

Assetto Corsa Competizione should be available on Steam Early Access Summer 2018.

Check out the Assetto Corsa Competizione here at RaceDepartment for the latest news and discussions regarding this exciting upcoming sim. We intend to host some quality League and Club Racing events as well as hosting some great community created mods (we hope!). Join in the discussion today.

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Do you think modders will find a way to mod ACC? Will the lack of official modding support hurt the game in the long run, or do you think it a sensible approach by Kunos given the new technology in use? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Will Mazeo]

As long as they dont put barriers to modding like RaceRoom people will find a way

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

As long as they dont put barriers to modding like RaceRoom people will find a way

My bet? First mod appears within 1 month of go live

As you say, folks will find a way, especially with the talent we have in this community

 

[CC]

Quite understandable with a new engine that has a lot of unkowns,
these things take quite a bit of working out,
would be cool if they could at least provide a FMOD SDK,
because without this 1 thing its almost impossible to add audio.

 

[FeltHat]

My bet? First mod appears within 1 month of go live

As you say, folks will find a way, especially with the talent we have in this community

my bet is 3 days (well, still winthin one month)

 

[Kurupt CDN]

I fully respect the hard work of the modding community which brings more content to titles.........but in all honesty, I prefer the simplicity of official content when it comes to online leagues and play.

People are always gonna bitch, whether it's not moddable or the game doesn't supply enough in-game content.

Which in AC case is an understandable argument since AC only has 19 licensed tracks and ACC will only have 12.....both of which could get stale pretty fast without the addition of mods.

 

[CC]

My bet? First mod appears within 1 month of go live

As you say, folks will find a way, especially with the talent we have in this community

Project cars has quite a few car mods also, but they all use ingame audio, simply because of FMOD,
Kunos provide SDK tools for cars and tracks and also FMOD SDK tools to save the audio,
this is why the older mods in AC do not work because kunos changed the FMOD features,
so in ACC although yes we could in theory get to the files and add cars and physics,
without the FMOD SDK its impossible to add audio thats why the files are called .bank

 

[Carlitox]

BGT might not be as aggressive towards copyright as FOM, but given that this is an official product, this didn't surprise me. But knowing Kunos they won't actively block mods like the F1 series or R3E. At most it'd be a bit hard, like DiRT Rally.
Still very excited about this. And, though early, the minimum requirements they gave sound really promising.

 

[Giovaneveterano]

I'm a strong supporter of mods in games.
History teaches that the most long-lived videogames are moddable in most of their parts, if not entirely. AC is not an exception.
Said that, I understand the approach from Kunos and I can't wait to try the new game at Misano!

 

[A3DR]

No modding support = just another racing title. Long live AC (until AC2 maybe someday!)

 

[Filip Carlén]

As expected. For me modding is a plus, not a must, so I will probably play the **** out of this anyways (assuming that the game it self is good )

 

[Craig Dunkley]

Well I sincerely hope the "modders" will find a way and want to find a way, we have been lucky enough to have had some superb mods for AC ever since its release....many many thanks to all you modders

 

[CC]

Well I sincerely hope the "modders" will find a way and want to find a way, we have been lucky enough to have some superb mods for AC ever since its release.

I imagine everything except custom car audio will be possible specially with some time, we will still see tracks and apps and skins and everything of that nature,
but I doubt we will see unique cars with custom audio anytime soon.

 

[racechicken]

and my bet is...kunos goes the codemasters way with a long term franchise to make money. Not bad for kunos to make money each and every year but bad for the Assetto Fans who waiting for a real AC2

 

[Shaun Clarke]

I have been speaking to Kunos, as these guys are so helpful and I can not only see the reason, but totally understand it as well, coming from Modding myself. I did ask what could I study in advance, but as they are learning, they could not suggest, just wait and see.

Good thing is, they are not using the UE physics engine but adapting the Kunos Physics engine to work with that UE engine so how I read.

So its a wait and see

Shaun

 

[delpinsky]

Read here what a track modder said few hours before Marco Massarutto words in a live radio broadcast about ACC:

With regards ACC we would like to keep on modding tracks if kunos makes it possible for acc.. i have done a little work with ue4 in the past for some work related VR projects. so i'm sort of familiar with the engine. in theory (if modding is open) tracks can be converted with some glorious results graphically

we will see... if this does happen the way we want it - i would like to do series related track packs. IMSA for example and usa tracks

 

[CC]

Read here what a track modder said few hours before Marco Massarutto words in a live radio broadcast about ACC:

With regards ACC we would like to keep on modding tracks if kunos makes it possible for acc.. i have done a little work with ue4 in the past for some work related VR projects. so i'm sort of familiar with the engine. in theory (if modding is open) tracks can be converted with some glorious results graphically

we will see... if this does happen the way we want it - i would like to do series related track packs. IMSA for example and usa tracks

Yes and I would like to import our cars also and your point been ?
I mean every modder thinks the same thing lol

 

[Neilski]

Note that when Stefano posted much the same text on the AC forum, he also made this remark at the end:

So to recap, there will be no action from our side regarding modding, both in the direction of promoting nor offering any kind of forum support for it as in the opposite direction, we have no intent to stop it from happening if some smart guy figure out how to do it.

Quite encouraging, I'd say.
And yes, I imagine mods will happen at some point.

 

[delpinsky]

@chargingcar
I think for fans is always nice to hear some words from modders, don't you think?

And related to ACC, from the Community FAQ Blog:

What is going to happen to Assetto Corsa now you’re working on Competizione?
The game will not receive further updates now (It has now been 7 years since AC development started and 4 years from its 1.0 release) Our entire team is now focused on AC Competizione.

 

[Loki92]

great news a i m happy!