Tribes: Ascend to make way for user-made maps

Tribes: Ascend hasn't had its spacewings clipped yet, despite developer Hi-Rez Studios claiming no major updates would drop for at least the next six months while it finishes SMITE. CEO Todd Harris said Hi-Rez has plans to add custom map support to the free-to-play shooter.

"The one thing we're going to be working on next is a path for users to basically add their own maps," Hi-Rez CEO Todd Harris told RPS. "We just feel like it's at a good point to have users maintain it. We feel that it's a complete experience, and we want to give users the tools to add their own maps – versus, say, us adding more guns that wouldn't benefit [the experience]."

Unfortunately, Harris didn't say when these custom maps would land on the verdant slopes of Tribes: Ascend. "There's actually some community work toward an SDK that's been started, and I expect more details from us in the next month. It's not anything that has a date yet or a full feature set, but that's the only real feature that we have in the works – aside from some small bug fixes."

Tribes: Ascend made its debut back in April 2012 and amassed 1.2 million downloads in little over its first month of availability. A GOTY version, which includes all unlocks, was introduced earlier this year for $30.