Install and run

Ironlark is in closed pre-alpha, so builds are not published openly yet. Ask in Discord for access; that is also where you say when something here is wrong.

Windows and Linux are both first-class. Ironlark is developed on Linux — the engine and the first-party mods are written and tested there. Where a command differs between the two, this site shows both.

When it breaks

It will, sometimes. We are iterating quickly and a pre-alpha build is a moving target.

The most common way this bites: the servers a build talks to are compiled into it. If we move a domain, an older build keeps trying the old one and simply fails to sign in or to reach anyone. Nothing you can configure fixes that — you need a newer build. So when something stops working that worked yesterday, ask for a current build before you debug anything else.

This gets better. Every part of it is a thing we intend to stop doing, and the list of ways a build can be wrong gets shorter as the platform settles. Until then, if you hit something, say so in Discord and we will help you as quickly as we can.

The launcher

The launcher is how you get the game and keep it current. It downloads a build, verifies it, signs you in, and starts the game as a host or a joining player.

By default it installs into .ironlark in your home directory, with the game and its content beneath it:

Windows

.ironlark\
  ironlark-game.exe
  assets\
    workshop\            installed content lives here
  config\
    server.toml        your instance's settings, if you write one
  logs\
    host.log
    client.log

Linux

.ironlark/
  ironlark-game
  assets/
    workshop/            installed content lives here
  config/
    server.toml        your instance's settings, if you write one
  logs/
    host.log
    client.log

You can point the launcher somewhere else. Everything on this site that says “beside the install” means this directory.

Log in

Hosting and joining both need an account: a session is addressed by the identity of whoever is hosting it, so there is no anonymous play. The launcher holds your credentials, and hands the game a session — the game itself never sees your password.

Then, depending on what you came for

To play with people: Run a server. There is no port to forward and no server to rent; you host from the game.

To build something: Your first mod. You will also need a Rust toolchain with the wasm32-wasip2 target:

rustup target add wasm32-wasip2

and the SDK, one line in your mod’s Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
ironlark = "0.1"

The host loads WebAssembly components and does not care what language wrote them, but Rust is the only toolchain this has been done in — Choosing a language is honest about why.

To author worlds: Maps. Blender, with glTF export.

Before you plan anything large

Read The boundary today. It is the list of things the engine cannot do yet, and it is much cheaper to read now than to discover halfway through a build.