Create

Nova Protocol supports data-driven mods. A mod can add campaigns, playable scenarios, ship sections, whole ships and skin styles, menu backdrops, story messages, objectives, enemies, and custom art or audio. The base campaign and portal mods use the same content system available to mod authors.

You need a text editor and a local copy of the repository. Start with one small scenario, play it, then publish it when it works.

Learn to mod

Follow this path in order:

1. Create your first scenario - edit the working Example Mod, follow one objective from setup to victory, and launch it from the Scenarios menu. This introduces events, filters, actions, and variables without requiring the full reference.
2. Publish a mod - turn finished content into a release, run the lint and loader checks, preview the portal, and make it installable by other players.
3. Open the modding reference - learn the complete format when you are ready to build larger maps, campaigns, custom ship parts, and more complex mission logic.

What can a mod contain?

• Campaigns group scenarios into an ordered story.
• Scenarios create playable maps and script them with events, filters, actions, objects, and variables.
• Ship sections add or replace hulls, thrusters, controllers, turrets, and torpedo bays.
• Ships and styles author whole hulls once, spawn them by id, and restyle the cladding they wear.
• Resources provide your own images, models, sounds, thumbnails, and skyboxes.

The Mod files page shows how those pieces fit into one folder and bundle.

Look it up

The modding reference is the exhaustive catalog:

• Mod files - folder, bundle, content files, resources, dependencies, and overlays.
• Campaign files - campaign fields and chapter order.
• Scenario files - scenario metadata and handler shape.
• Ship sections for mods - every section kind and field.
• Ships for mods - whole hulls authored once and spawned by id.
• Ship skin styles for mods - the look a hull's cladding wears.
• Base content catalog - reusable ids and dep://base/ assets.

Scenario scripting then branches into Events, Filters, Actions, Scenario objects, and Variables and expressions.

Extend the engine

The reference lists everything RON content can use. Adding a new event, filter, action, object kind, or section kind requires a game-code change. Contributors can start with the developer book.