The Designer is the modding and mission design interface inside Starship Horizons. The Designer is opened like a console from the station select screen. Once inside designer, GMs can edit or toggle modules from the Modules folder inside the Starship Horizons directory.

Modules contain game content. The Horizons module contains all of the base elements that are baked into the game. Here GMs can find the stock ships, missions, pedia entries, etc. By default, a Custom module is created on a new installation of Horizons. This will allow hosts to customize their DMX lighting and tweak the game in other ways.

The real power of Horizons can be realized by creating your own module, either as a child to the Horizons module or as a standalone root module. The former allows GMs to quickly add their own missions, lore, and expansions to the world of Horizons. The latter allows GMs to create their own world which is independent of the Horizons game content.

Once a module is created, designers can begin to add their content to the various module segments. For more information about this, read the other articles in the modding segment of this wiki.

To create a new mission in a module that is a child to the Horizons module, use the module's missions menu. From here GMs can set the ship, spawn point, objectives, objects, and more. As NPC objects are created, GMs can write interactive dialog and load the cargo hold of the vessels. Event logic makes it easy to change enemy behavior, cargo, location, and other parameters based on mission progress.

To create a mission in a new root-level module, first create the content to support the mission. At minimum you must create Maps, Models, Components, and Vessels. Then start writing your mission.

In either scenero GMs may want to edit the Commodities, Components, Pedias, and Vessels to expand gameplay.

A future feature will allow designers to connect missions together and in the form of campaigns. For more information about future features, consult the development roadmap.

A summary video of the designer functionality can be located here.