Creative Assembly has now unveiled and rolled out a new Total War Launcher, which supports the entirety of the franchise in a single hub. The new launcher’s online store and Mod Manager link directly to Steam; both the Store and Workshop pages for every game, DLC, and mod. The launcher has been given an overall redesign too.
Creative Assembly’s New Total War Launcher
The new Total War Launcher has been in the works for a while, but is now available to players in a Beta form. It has three sections. The first is the primary game menu, which lists all of the Total War titles. The second is the online Store area, while the third is the Mod Manager. The studio recommends that modders back up their mod descriptions from Steam before they update mods. This is because a current bug can cause mod descriptions to be deleted when you update a mod.
The game menu includes news and information about each Total War game, as well as launch options. The actual game content can be bought and downloaded in the store, along with all DLC and FLC. The launcher is integrated directly with Steam; the Store pages all link to the equivalent pages on the Steam Store. The Mod Manager is also linked with Steam, and allows users to see detailed information about downloaded mods. New features in this launcher include a filter system and the ability to activate or deactivate mods in groups or one by one. Each mod’s Steam Workshop page is linked directly to the launcher.
Of course, the new launcher is still in Beta form. As such, Creative Assembly is planning to launch patches fairly soon to address problems which are found. One of the bigger issues which they are already aware of and planning to address is a glitch which causes mod descriptions to delete Steam Workshop mod descriptions when updating a mod. They also plan to improve the drag-and-drop UI when re-ordering mods.
Users can give Creative Assembly feedback about the new Total War Launcher on a thread set up on the official forum.