We have already seen mods that make Half-Life playable without VR: We have already seen mods that make Alyx playable without VR, but until now mods for this game were made without official Valve tools Valve has added Steam Workshop support and released a series of mods: Steam Workshop support has been added to Alyx and a set of working mod tools has been released. This update adds native Linux support for Alyx using the Vulkan API.

Valve has a history of providing extensive modding support for its games, and Alyx appears to be no exception. The editor tool suite includes:

Modders can use these tools to tinker with various parts of Half-Life: they can tinker with various parts of Alyx or, as Valve suggests, do something more extensive: [5 You can:

"Want to build your own VR physics sandbox or giant Rube Goldberg machine, design a new battle with 12 combined soldiers at once? How about building the world's longest multi-tool puzzle or imagining a new district in City 17? Crack open your own tools and make it happen!" .

The tool is currently in beta, and Valve will continue to update it "in the coming weeks," with sample maps that, according to Valve, "illustrate how we authored the in-game enemy encounters and showcase some of the new features of Half-Life" and other things to play around with There are many: tile meshes, static cables, dynamic cables, texture hotspotting, etc.

If you just want to play with mods, keep an eye on the Workshop page. I bet some cool stuff will show up eventually, but it may be hard to top "A bunch of cinderblocks." Awesome.