Doom, Windows 95, even Hytale itself: It seems like there’s nothing that modders can’t make Hytale run

Like a second breakfast on the borders of the Shire, you just know if that one successful game-in-a-game has been done, more will rapidly follow. Freshly launched Hytale has been hitting the news for all kinds of reasons, not least because one modder managed to get Doom to run inside the game. But that’s just been the tip of the iceberg as to what’s been done so far.

The success of getting Hytale to run Windows 95 (yes, an operating system) within the game was reported by our chums over at Tom’s Hardware, though it’s really iamcxv7 on X that deserves all the attention, not least because they got Hytale to run Hytale, as well as the OS-in-a-game mod, and even a classic version of Minecraft (which is pretty ironic, when you think about it).

If you’re wondering how any of this is possible, it’s all because Hytale’s developers, Hypixel Studios, have made the game’s server code eminently moddable. The game client itself can’t be modded (not yet, at least), but that doesn’t matter, as Hytale Modding says that it’s the servers that determine how the game and UI look.

Strictly speaking, the game isn’t running Doom, Windows 95, or…err…itself to make this happen. That code takes place externally, essentially by the server, with the client only handling the rendering of the viewed output and any controls. In the case of the Minecraft mod, the server running the game streamed its output into Hytale’s map system.

Whether that means you could have any application running in Hytale isn’t clear, but I guess that if you have fast enough servers, with plenty of bandwidth, you could theoretically stream the output into the game and use the player’s details within the server to then control the app. I’m not savvy enough to know this for sure, but I suspect that you could possibly get Crysis to pop up in Hytale.

The modding community at large is exceptionally talented at taking any new game and tweaking it into infinity (and beyond), but Hypixel Studio’s decision to fully support server modding goes a long way in making Hytale the current top choice for modders.

That means we certainly haven’t the last of what can be done with Hytale, and I reckon by the time it comes out of early access, there will be so many variants and tweaks you can do that it’ll be a surprise to see anyone playing it natively.

Given all the hassle that Hypixel Studio has gone through to bring Hytale to life, seeing modders have so much fun with its game must feel like a special kind of reward in itself.

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