Overview
This guide is for regular players (not server owners) looking to check out custom maps.
Download Mods
Please review this if the guide works, as all of us players need an easy-to-find guide for newcomers and it will be hidden unless we get good reviews!
Making this guide as the whole process takes roughly 1-2 minutes to download a mod and hop in, but I have seen many players get confused since it’s not straightforward and this will keep it short and simple. For community server owners, see Whiskey’s guide as this guide will just be instructions on how to find and play a mod.
NOTE NON-US PLAYERS: For this guide to work, you need to have a regular USA-style keyboard, or at least one that has the top left ` key to open the in-game console for coded commands. I am not aware if there is any solution around this since you cannot change this keybind, please post in comments if you know any alternate way.
From the main menu ingame, skip down to the section named “Mods” and select it. If you navigate there, the below page will open:
If you are looking for a specific mod, you will have to spell the FULL NAME exactly correct to find it. I recommend just browsing the mod pages (using A and D keys to scroll) For example, if I type “Fact”, no results will show, but if I type “Factory”, it will find my map.
Do not select any checkbox options. These selections will be unreliable, and may hide your intended map/mod you would like to download. Leave everything checked as is. Select the mod to open it’s page, then click “Subscribe.” This is the “download” button for a mod.
Upon clicking this, you will see a download progress bar on top of your screen. You can freely navigate menus as this downloads, but be aware that you may not be able to join a community server until that download prompt disappears (can join official map games fine). Download speed from the mod.io site will depend on your internet speed/other people on your network etc.
Once the server has downloaded the map, you are now ready to play it Offline, or may find it on an online community server. See next sections for how to do each.
Play Offline
If you want to play a custom map offline, make sure you first follow the previous guide and the download bar has completed for the map you want to play. If you aren’t sure it’s complete, just make sure there is no “Downloading” text box on your screen at the menu, and you are subscribed to the mod. Your subscribed mods will show in this page here under the mods section:
Once downloaded, browse back to the main menu. Select Local Play and choose any gamemode and map. For Local Play, the options are Checkpoint-based. Click Start in the bottom right and start a regular solo match.
Once loaded into the map, look on your keyboard for the `~ key, often left of the numbers row on the keyboard. Hit this key, and the below small command line will pop up on your screen:
Now you need the proper command to navigate to your map level. The command will change based on the name of the level, and the game mode you are trying to open. Before you can issue the command, you will need to find what the map maker’s gamemode name is, as they choose how to name the map’s game modes. Usually they follow a general format, but you will need to check their mod page on the mod.io website[insurgencysandstorm.mod.io] to see what the name is for EACH gamemode. For Checkpoint Security on Factory, for example, the gamemode (aka Scenario) name is “Scenario_Factory_Checkpoint_Security”, which you can find in the commands provided at this page[insurgencysandstorm.mod.io]. See underlined in yellow for examples of Scenario names (do not copy the quotes, just whats inside them):
Here is the general formula for what you will need to type (delete [brackets] & replace with your mod and gamemodes):
Open [MapName]?Scenario=[Gamemode name here]?Lighting=Day
Here is the above formula applied to Factory for Checkpoint Security, with lighting as Day. Can copy & paste below into command line, or type out the full command:
Open Factory?Scenario=Scenario_Factory_Checkpoint_Security?Lighting=Day
Make sure this is what is typed on your command line, no spaces or quotes. Enter and the map will now load Checkpoint on your custom map 🙂
IF IT DOES NOT OPEN: If you made any mistake in typing, the screen may turn black or say “error loading gamemode assets.” This means there is something not typed correct on your command, so check your command and try again, and the correct one will open the map.
Sometimes if you make a mistake above, you will be stuck at a blackscreen that will block your commands. If so, simply open your commandline (still works) and type “exit” to close the game, then restart the game.
Note that some maps are playable in other modes such as Night, but check first to make sure the map offers a playable Night mode, as their may be glitches if forcing an invalid mode.
Play Online
If you want to play on community servers, you will have to navigate to “Play” at the main menu, and then click “Community Servers” to the right of “Versus” and “Co-Op.”
Once you click, you will see a loading circle and some settings options on the far left. If possible, do not touch these buttons, as each click will “reset” your server browser search, which will take 30-60 seconds to load. Once they load, they will all pop on the screen at once like so:
This may take time, and if you cannot see any servers, there is a bug where you may need to click the top left search bar (do not type, just click). If the “click method” solves it, you will instantly see the above list show up. If instead you get 0 servers or stuck on a loading circle for longer than 120 seconds, restart the game and try again to properly refresh.
Once the list is populated, you can click the top columns to change how the list is sorted, such as by Map, Server name, Player Count, or Ping (the cell bars icon on the screenshot above).
Some servers will be locked by a password, others will be open to the public.
If you want to see what maps and/or mods are being used on a server, click on the server in the list to expand it. We can see from the below that this server has these maps (underlined in yellow) and these mods enabled (underlined in green). This is important because if you don’t have the maps downloaded/subscribed already, they will force you to wait at a blackscreen as you download ALL the missing mods/maps before the server lets you in. Always better to Subscribe first for as much as you can following the initial section in this guide. Sometimes you can’t see all the maps available on a server, so you will have to download some maps anyways even if you subscribe to the rest.
Note: Some of the green underlined items, known as game mutators, are actually mods from the developers, and are included in the base game and do not require a separate download, such as “Vampirism.”
With this selection expanded, click the server name again to join it. Any downloads will finish at a blackscreen first (may take awhile), and then the current level being played will load. Friends should be able to join your game from their Steam friends list if there are open slots. Make sure they try and download the maps ahead of time if their internet speeds are an issue.
You can favorite a server by hitting the bookmark icon with the server expanded, or to find it again just wait for the full list to populate, and type in the name in the top left corner (see that I searched “‘0lympus” to find the results in the above screenshot).
Unsubscribe from Mods / Delete Outdated Mod Files
To Unsubscribe from a mod, return to the Mods section from the main menu, and click the “Subscribed” tab at the top of the screen to see what you’re subscribed to. Click the button to Unsubscribe. However, you may notice that any mod updates will still download. In order to stop this and make the Unsubscribe work, exit the game and restart it.
Edit: Before I had a section here on how to remove old mod files. This is no longer an issue as any past versions of mods will be uninstalled automatically now, as well as unsubscribed mods