We're building modkin — a tool to create custom mods for Total War games without touching any files manually.
Started this because modding Total War (other games to) is powerful but the barrier is huge — file formats, tools, game-specific quirks. Most players have ideas but never mod anything.
modkin lets you describe what you want and handles the formats.
After months of work we can share what v accomplished. Before any of this was possible, we had to build our own tooling from scratch. We know that units rn are not impressive, but its def getting closer then before! Existing tools were either Windows-only, required manual GUI interaction, or simply couldn't do what we needed. These weren't made manually. Every result in this post was generated by modkin from a text description.
What's solid and working in WH3 right now:
— New units with custom stats, added to any faction
— Texture modifications, also simple battle maps modifications
— Mesh swaps (new weapons, equipment), coloring every vanilla existing unit as user wants
— Animation borrowing across factions (Empire units performing Tomb Kings animations)
— Custom subfactions and races
Working but still rough:
— Vertex-level geometry changes (the horns in the screenshots — they're in-game but not production quality yet)
— Custom 3D model import (the creature — looks like what it is: early stage as u see, mf t poses in 90°)
Also:
— Shogun 2 (custom factions + new units already partially working)
— Custom colors, visuals on units.
Long-term goal:
Full custom unit pipeline — custom mesh, skeleton, cross-game asset transfer, custom map creator, buildings, whole campaign maps and mechanics. Long road, but that's where we're headed.
All TW games matter! Our target is all TW games, we started with WH3 obv because its the newest one and most "modable", and Shogun 2 bc of sentiment (my fav TW all time)
If you want to follow the build: Join our discord 😃 We ll drop more production pictures there! Also leave ur suggestion for what games would u wish we target!
If u wish to participate in free early access, sign up to our waitlist. Link is in our discord