I purchased Demoracy 2 largely because I was interested in modding it - and modding it rather heavily. I have not started this yet (I’ve barely started playing!) but a few thoughts, mostly related to differences between the two versions of the game:
1: Is the modding forum for both games? Should it be split down to the two sepaerate versions, or is modding so similar between the two?
2: Whilst I do like the visual aspects of the latest version, I wonder if these may make it harder to mod? To fully achieve the desired effect of my intended mod, I would need to replace the cabinet, the voter images and even the background images on the main screen (where the national flag used to be in the original). I am glad to be able to include such flavour in my mods (assuming these aspects are moddable…) but I do fear it will reduce the amount of mods that become available, as it means more work for the modder.
3: Is it possible to change the seven categories of policy, maybe even reduce or increase the number? I can think of a few real world examples where one would want some different options, not to mention some fantasy variants (anybody want to run a nation from 1984, or a Dwarven kingdom?)
4: It seems a shame to lose the real countries - I had been looking forward to running my own country, to seeing how well the game’s Japan and USA tie in with the impressions I have got of them through my own experiences and media coverage, and to learning more about the politics of a few other nations. I trust some people will be eagerly modding a few of these soon! I’m curious, why the move away from real nations?
Hi thanks for your post, I’ll see how the modding posts go, and maybe split the mod forum.
Some things you mention are easily done, others not. New countries are easy, but different numbers of policy areas are currently hard coded.
I’m sure the recent 1.01 patch won’t be the last, an if there is good demand for certain functionality to be moddable, I’m all for changing some game code to accommodate that.
The real countries were a popular idea, but people often complained that certain aspects of ‘their’ country was wrong. It also meant that balancing it out so that the new added stats on car usage, Co2 etc would be very difficult to match the actual numbers of real world countries.
Theres nothing stopping someone adding those countries as modded ones, if they can arrange all the start-up situations properly.
Oh yeah, I guess they were mostly modding questions
Thinking about it, a bigger thing for me to mod would be the voter groups - but it’s probably best if I play around on a simple mod first, before begging for more complex things to be made moddable!
It is a shame that some people did not appreciate the real countries - I imagine that getting the data together for them and balancing things out must have been a lot of work for you.
you know phpbb 3 is almost gold (a couple days left). It has a built in subforum feature, so if you upgraded then you could just make the modding forums and such sub forums.
Since I’m having some ordering problems, I’d like to know if the demo is as moddable as and fully compatible with the full version? I’d like to start with my own ‘big’ mod as soon as I can…
Okay, that’s cool. Also, is it possible to introduce more simulation data? That is, you know, like GDP and Literacy Rate. I attempted to, but it didn’t seem to work.
I’m pretty sure it is, yes. The only thing you need to do is have an icon for any new values. and ensure they aren’t set to be HIDDEN, but should be easy.
Would I be right in thinking that you can’t actually fiddle with the spreadsheet documents? You have to create a ‘mod’ folder and so on? Basically do the old Democracy 1 rules apply to Democracy 2?
Well then I must be doing something wrong because I keep getting errors :s
Ah wait, I think I know what the problem is; every time I edit the csv, it becomes unreadable. I’ve been opening it with windows speadsheet, and I guess it’s a not good enough program…
