In-game Slab-Browser is now in Beta

With the Symbiotes feature, we added the community mod browser. Today, we extend it to enable not only finding and importing slabs but also publishing them to the world directly from inside TaleSpire.

How to join the Beta

The guide explaining how to join the Beta is here: https://talespire.com/welcome-to-the-slab-browser-beta

Be sure to read the “Critical Warnings” section before joining the Beta.

Finding and spawning slabs

Simply open up the community mod browser, pick the slabs category, and click on any slab you like. There isn’t much there yet, but that will change pretty soon!

Publishing slabs

And the reason it’s going to change pretty soon is that it is now even easier to share your creations. All you need is an account with mod.io

In this one-minute video, you can see the whole process, from selecting the slab, publishing it, and finally controlling its visibility via the edit tool.

Please see the guide, as it has instructions on how to authenticate TaleSpire with our official repository so you can start uploading.

Another little addition

Also, in this Beta, you can now hover over entries in the mod browser to see a little more info. This hover pane is something we are trying out here but would like to use in more places (the unique creature panel feels like a great place to experiment).

And next, more modding!

We are very excited to be making slabs more accessible in TaleSpire. We expect the Beta to run for one week, at which point it will ship to everyone.

As with each new part of TaleSpire, this is a foundation. As of today, we only have the official slab repository browsable in-game. But making this has given us a clear view of what we need to do to let community slab sites hook in and be browsable in-game, too.

As we have just mentioned the community mod sites, it feels like a good time to state that we do not see our slab repository as any kind of replacement for the work that the folks at talestavern, talesbazaar, and others have done. We believe that community-run repositories are critical to the longevity of projects like TaleSpire, and, as outlined above, we want to make a specification so that anyone can make their mod repository browseable natively inside TaleSpire if they so choose.

Between HeroForge, Symbiotes, and slabs, we are ready to apply all this experience to our next big modding milestone: creature mods.

We hope you enjoy the Beta. We’ll see you in the bug reports!