Easy Third Person
A third-person camera mod for Subnautica 2. Runner-up ($650) in CurseForge's Subnautica 2 Modding Contest, with 3,000+ downloads.
What I did
- Designed and built a third-person camera mod for Subnautica 2 in C++ and Lua
- Reverse-engineered UE4SS to implement custom systems inside Subnautica 2's modding framework
- Added camera collision after playtesters saw the camera clip through walls
- Planned, built, and shipped on a contest deadline, placing 2nd internationally ($650 prize)
Problem
Playing Subnautica 2 in first person can feel claustrophobic.
Goal
Ease the first-person claustrophobia and offer a more dynamic camera, without making players edit files to configure it.
Iterations
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- Before
- The third-person camera could pass straight through walls.
- What we found
- Playtesters saw the camera clip through walls.
- What changed
- Added camera collision so the camera stays out of the geometry.
Result
Runner-up (2nd of the contest’s winners) in the CurseForge Subnautica 2 Modding Contest, with a $650 prize. 3,039 downloads as of 2026-10-07, and featured on CurseForge’s main page banner for multiple weeks.
Design
Easy Third Person adds a third-person camera to Subnautica 2. I made it to ease the claustrophobia of first person and to give players a more dynamic camera. In third person it removes the mask-outline UI. All settings live in the game’s normal settings menu, so players never edit Lua files.
“The Gold Mod”: lets players transform into any creature in the game, and grants special abilities for each form. I’m planning to expand this into something that ties into the core gameplay loop.
“Easy Third Person!”: adds a full third-person camera mode with a settings menu that integrates natively with the game’s existing UI. This is the one that made the top 10, and voting is open now!
Process
Playtesters saw the camera clip through walls, so I added camera collision.
Technical notes
The mod runs on UE4SS. The camera logic is written in Lua, and a small C++ DLL hooks the game’s settings menu (Dear ImGui). The source is on GitHub.
Outcome and lessons
Easy Third Person placed 2nd internationally in the CurseForge Subnautica 2 Modding Contest ($650) and was featured on CurseForge’s main banner for multiple weeks. It had 3,039 downloads as of 2026-10-07.
