modding

I’m new to this and don’t understand how to add stuff to my game through modding, could anyone explain this to me please? :slight_smile:

Howdy Howdy Maria3, and Welcome to the Forums :slight_smile:

There are 4 things you need to know to mod the game files:

  1. BACKUP FILES before changing them. This can save you some major headaches.

  2. Easily moddable and, arguably, the more important game files are .CSV and .TXT files in the game folder.

  3. (This is personal preference but) when editing the files you can use Excel or Notepad or any another CSV (comma separated values) program to edit the game files. I’ve had mixed outcomes when using Excel as it sometimes breaks things by adding “” everywhere, however Excel 2010 is working for me these days. An easy test to see if your Excel works is to install the game, open one of the CSV files, save it, close it, then try running the game again. If the game doesn’t load you know your Excel won’t work, but if it does load then you’ll be fine using it :stuck_out_tongue:

  4. When you completely break the game, and it will happen, reinstalling the game will fix your problems (and, as you’ll always have backups of your modded files, you can easily add them back in, right? Right!)

  5. Changing LOTS of things before testing makes figuring out what’s caused the game to break (debugging) much harder. Change something, then test, until you’re confident you know what you’re doing.

The CSV and TXT files can be found in the game installation folder. On my computer it’s the “E:\Games[b]Kudos 2\data[/b]” and “E:\Games[b]Kudos 2\data\simulation[/b]” directories. Basically everything you’ll likely want is in the “simulation” folder, however the config.txt and strings.ini files (in the “data” folder) are also fun to play with :slight_smile:

There’s far too much stuff to go into specifics about but:

  • opening a CSV file shows the column headings across the top and the values under it. In this format every line is a different entry and has no bearing on the lines above/below it. So if you want to change the price of an item, or the amount of money you get from your job, or how quickly weight is gained you can do so by just changing the appropriate entry;
  • if you want to add a new entry to a file just follow the format of a previous entry (copy and paste works, just make sure the GUID is different. The Global Unique IDentifier can’t be the same as any other entry);
  • most things can be added quite easily (townnames, crossword questions), some are a bit more tricky (jobs, social or solo events, etc), and some require a lot more work (restaurants, purchasable items);
  • avoid using special characters like #@&^%$ and avoid using double quotes (") unless other entries in the file are using them as CSV files use these to work out where the values/columns are. Single quotes (’) are fine;
  • don’t be afraid to break everything; and,
  • BACKUP FILES!

If you look around the forums you’ll find lots of posts by people going through lots of specific sections in more detail. My favourite files to mod were the “social_events.csv” and “solo_activities.csv”

And if you feel so inclined you can install my mod which is a collection of all the other mods in the forum plus a lot of new stuff :slight_smile: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4556

SomeGuyInABikini, will be around later for tea and crumpets… and Pepsi

P.S. Once you’ve had a play around I’m happy to answer more specific questions you think of