HalfSwordModdingResources

A collection of modding resources for Half Sword.

Engine

Half Sword Early Access (as of v0.6 released 31 Jan 2026) is built on Unreal Engine 5.4.4.

Half Sword Demo v0.4 or Playtest are built on Unreal Engine 5.4.4.

(The older versions like Demo v0.3 used to be on UE 5.1)

Save file editing

The save files are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\HalfSwordUE5\Saved\SaveGames (usually meaning C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME_HERE\AppData\Local\HalfSwordUE5\Saved\SaveGames) and the save file is GameProgress.sav. Make a copy of that.

The easiest to use is the uesave webpage https://trumank.github.io/uesave/ made by Truman Kilen. Load your GameProgress.sav file there, make changes (most of the variables are self-explanatory), download the edited save file, replace the local one with the new one. Again, make sure you have a good backup copy before all that.

Modding approaches

In general, at run time you can inject your code or modify/objects variables in memory, or modify game assets on disk.

For Half Sword, as it is based on Unreal Engine, all of that can be done with ready-made tools (e.g. hooking engines to place hooks over the game's functions, or entire modding frameworks like UE4SS).

Most code injection tools place a specially named DLL file (e.g. dwmapi.dll) with the tool's functionality in the game's directory right next to HalfSwordUE5-Win64-Shipping.exe and that library will be loaded by the operating system into the game process beacuse of that special name. Modifying assets on disk requires unpacking and re-packing them.

For an introduction to UE modding, take a look at this guide by Dmgvol: https://github.com/Dmgvol/UE_Modding

The rest of this document assumes that you are familiar with that, and can already do something to the game and are looking for exact hints for things you want to find/change.

Finding interesting objects in UE

Note that UE has its own object system that builds on top of C++ object system. Objects contain other objects as members. Some objects are arrays or other collections of objects that you have to access accordingly.

Maps (Early Access)

• Abyss
• Alley
• Cellar
• Forest ("Ambush")
• Hall ("EastTower)
• Slums
• Yard (same as in Playtest)
• "LordsHall" (final boss map)

Map (Demo v0.4)

• In the Gauntlet mode, the map class name is Arena_Cutting_Map_C
• In the Abyss mode, the map class name is Abyss_Map_Open_Intermediate_C Find the first instance of this object in memory and you get the current map.

GI_Settings

TBD

WorldSettings

This is a standard UE object that holds interesting settings like the game speed. Find the first instance of the WorldSettings class and you have it.

• The game speed is TimeDilation under WorldSettings (this is standard for most UE-based games)
  • If TimeDilation is 1.0, then it is normal speed
  • TimeDilation < 1.0, means speed is slower, 0.1 = 10x slower
  • TimeDilation > 1.0, means speed is faster, 10.0 = 10x faster
  • A good value is usually 0.1 ~ 5.0 or as you wish, as long as it does not crash.
• Various interesting physics engine properties are also under WorldSettings
  • bWorldGravitySet is the boolean flag to toggle gravity override if true
  • WorldGravityZ is the gravity force, standard is 980.0

Player character (Early Access)

TBD

Player character (Demo / Playtest)

• In the Gauntlet mode, the player character is a member of the map object named Player (Temp)
• In the Abyss mode, the player character is a member of the map object named Player Willie

Alternatively, you can find all instances of the Willie_BP_C class and then check which of those are controlled by the player (must be only one).

Character attributes

All these are members of the player object, which also apply to other NPCs as they are inherited from the same base class.

Only the game devs have a good idea what all these mean, but we can guess of course, as the names are pretty self-explanatory, but some variables/functions appear to do nothing, so try youself.

Attribute/stat	Where to find it	Comments
Health	Health	0.0-100.0, float
Consciousness	Consciousness	0.0-100.0, float
Stamina	Stamina	0.0-100.0, float
Tonus	All Body Tonus	0.0-100.0, float
Invulnerability status	Invulnerable	boolean, true if invulnerable, false if vulnerable
Team	Team Int	1-4, can be any integer number
Score	Score	Only in Abyss mode
Fallen?	Fallen	boolean
Character dead?	DED	boolean
Get Up Rate	Get Up Rate	float, usually 0.0-1.0 but can be more, how fast does the character get up from the ground
Regen Rate	Regen Rate	float, main health regeneration rate, above zero means regeneration is working
Running Speed Rate	Running Speed Rate	float, makes character run faster or slower
Walk Speed Rate	Walk Speed Rate Run	float, makes character walk faster or slower
Aiming speed	Walk Speed Rate Aim	float, makes character aim faster or slower
Muscle Power	Muscle Power	float, this seems to be the base modifier for character strength
Hand grip strength	R Grab Force Limit, L Grab Force Limit	float, maximum force when the hand grip breaks and releases
Hand rigidity	Hands Rigidity (Gauntlets)	float, makes the hands more or less rigid

On top of that, the character object has the following objects as members:

Attribute/stat	Where to find it	Comments
Controller object	Controller	UE Controller class, which is actually an instance of the UE PlayerController class for the player character, or AIController(AI_BP_C) class for NPCs
Mesh object	Mesh	UE Mesh class

The player object has the following functions that can be called on it:

Function name	Where to find it	Comments
Save loadout	Save Loadout	Used to work in Playtest only, before Demo v0.4, no idea what is the current state
Kill the character	Death	Triggers a simple death animation and kills the character
Explode Head	Explode Head	No longer works. Before Playtest, in Demo v0.3, it exploded the head and killed the character
Spill Guts	Spill Guts	No longer works. Before Playtest, in Demo v0.3, it exploded the stomach, spilling guts and killed the character
Snap Neck	Snap Neck	Since Demo v0.4, appears to break the neck of the character

NPCs spawned by the game

• In the Gauntlet mode:
  • the enemy NPCs are in an array which is member of the map object named Enemies
• In the Abyss mode:
  • the enemy NPCs are in an array which is member of the map object named Enemy Array
  • the boss is the Boss object under 'Current Boss Arena' under the map object.
    • the status of the boss is the Boss Alive variable under the map object.
  • any other NPCs spawned in a boss arena are inside Spawned Enemies array under 'Current Boss Arena' under the map object.

Assets

Assets can be explored with any asset viewing tool for UE 5, e.g. the latest version of FModel.

The assets have obvious paths like /Game/Assets/Weapons/, /Game/Assets/Armor/ and so on.

Spawning anything

Spawning the assets or NPCs in the mod can be done by calling UE's UWorld::SpawnActor() function and supplying the class and other parameters, e.g. location or FTransform (location+rotation+scale).

The assets must be loaded before they can be spawned.

Despawning

To despawn an object, call its K2_DestroyActor() method.