Krypton Construct was a mod for Tribes 2, a multiplayer team-based first person shooter game released in 2001.

In addition to truly awesome gameplay and groundbreaking connectivity features, the game was also incredibly extensible, giving players free access to the scripting language and map editing tools used to craft gameplay on top of the game’s engine.

A sizeable community of modders and scripters grew around the game along with a diverse set of tools and mods, many offering substantially different gameplay than the base game offered. Modders would share their creations with one another, along with tips, tutorials, and tools.

In addition to empowering me to create my own Tribes 2 mods, the community also provided me with resources to learn basic programming in a fun and rewarding setting.

Construction Mods

Many mods added the ability for players to summon and manipulate in-game objects. Creative players were able to use these features to create interesting structures and mechanisms. Eventually, mods began to focus more on creative gameplay, and an entire category of Construction Mods emerged.

With fairly advanced tools and a strong community, these mods provided the same type of creative experience that games like Garry’s Mod, Minecraft, and Roblox would popularize years later.

After playing many flavors of Construction Mod and thinking up a bunch of features I wanted for myself, I decided to write my own Construction Mod and called it “Krypton Construct”.

Krypton had a bunch of cool features - some original, and others inspired by other popular mods.

Notable Features

• A personal save system, allowing players to persist their creations across play sessions.
• Permission spheres that would prevent others from building or fighting in your area unless they were added to a list.
• A combat system that allowed players to opt-in to combat or stick to creative gameplay only.
• A bot that sat in the server and provided automated help to players and delivered warnings to those behaving inappropriately.
• Tools that allowed translation, rotation, and scaling of pieces by simply clicking and dragging.
• Proximity sensors that allowed players to trigger behaviors when a player enters the set range.

I made the source code for Krypton Construct available on GitHub here.

The engine powering Tribes 2 evolved into the Torque Game Engine and was eventually made available to game developers under a paid license. Years later the engine was open sourced and provided to all users for free.

Old Screenshots

A counting machine built by a player that leveraged the mod’s switches, teleports, and power system to increment a number counter.

A nearly real-time clock built by the same player.

An “Ol’ Kentucky Home” built by another player.

A combat arena built by a player.

A tower built by me.

A group of players exploring the boundaries of the infinite map to try to break the game.