redarrow141

Join Date 08/2012

+17

HOW TO: Modding the parties

Note to admin: as requested before, a sub forum would be good for modding, if this happens could you move my topics into the sub forum for ease of access to prospective modders.

This is part 2 of my modding tutorials. This is about changing the parties in the game, so that you can edit the parties to introduce a new party as a replacement to the current parties.

DISCLAIMER: Before the tutorial starts, I recommend that you backup any files you are about to edit, your changing parts of the game, and you should be aware that this is not the intended use of the xml files in the game folders, I take no responsibility, and (although I can't speak for them) Stardock can not be blamed for damage you do to, including but not limited to, your save files, your program files and any other aspect of your computer.

Changing the name and colour of a party is fun, and changing the logo can look cool, but be aware that you won't be able to play online with your modified files unless the person you play against has EXACTLY the same edited files as you. The game will allow you to play modded games online as long as both participants have the files.

So here we go.

Changing the Names of the parties

First very simple modification we can make to the parties is to change the name of the parties in the files, this can be quite fun, whether you are introducing a replacement party (libertarian for republican for example) or beginning a total conversion mod like I have begun for the United kingdom (with plans for Australia, Japan and France ready to go also).

The one limitation we have at the moment is the limit of 2 active parties and 1 passive party. by default these are Democrat, Republican and Independent.

We will edit one of these parties in this tutorial.

To begin, you need to open the first file, This will be found in your program files of the game.

Default 64bit windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\The Political Machine 2012\Data\English\Scenarios

Default 32bit windows: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\The Political Machine 2012\Data\English\Scenarios

In this folder you will find a single file: USAModern.PM2ScenarioXML

You need to open this file using Notepad (or notepad++) in order to edit it. To do this, right click and [...open with] and select notepad.

This is the layout of the democrat party, that you should see:

Code: xml
<Party ID="Left">
 <PartyName>Democrat</PartyName>
 <PartyNamePlural>Democrats</PartyNamePlural>
 <PartyImage>Democrats.png</PartyImage>
 <PartyColor COLOR="Red">10</PartyColor>
 <PartyColor COLOR="Green">10</PartyColor>
 <PartyColor COLOR="Blue">255</PartyColor>
 </Party>

You should not edit the party ID, this will cause problems in the game.

you can edit anything else within a > and a <

here is an example of a party called the Redarrow141 party

Code: xml
<Party ID="Left">
<PartyName>Redarrow141</PartyName>
<PartyNamePlural>Redarrows</PartyNamePlural>
<PartyImage>Redarrow.png</PartyImage>
<PartyColor COLOR="Red">10</PartyColor>
<PartyColor COLOR="Green">10</PartyColor>
<PartyColor COLOR="Blue">255</PartyColor>
</Party>

what will this do?

The first line <PartyName> changes the name of the party that will be displayed in game

the second line <PartyNamePlural> will change the name that is displayed as a plural

the third line is a party logo. For this to work, you need to put a picture with the same name in this folder:

64bit = [C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\The Political Machine 2012\Gfx\Logos]

32bit = [C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\The Political Machine 2012\Gfx\Logos]

So in my example I have a file called Redarrow.png in that folder.

This logo will then be displayed in game instead of the default democrat/republican logo.

the second bit of the XML format, <PartyColor> section, is the colour which your party is, and states will go when you win. For this you will need the RGB codes for the colour. This can be found easily online or using the colour pallet in windows paint program.

defaults are Blue:

Code: xml
<PartyColor COLOR="Red">10</PartyColor>
<PartyColor COLOR="Green">10</PartyColor>
<PartyColor COLOR="Blue">255</PartyColor>
</Party>

and Red:

Code: xml
<PartyColor COLOR="Red">255</PartyColor>
 <PartyColor COLOR="Green">10</PartyColor>
 <PartyColor COLOR="Blue">10</PartyColor>

Side note: I apologise for the spelling of a few words, I am from England, and we spell things the proper way such as Colour instead of Color.

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Zubaz

Changing the Party Views

If you've changed the party name, you don't necessarily want the views of the party to be the same as the party you replaced. For example, replacing the republican party with the Libertarian party, they do not have the same views as each other. So lets have a look at what we can edit for this.

First things first, we need to find the correct file to edit in the folders.

this file is located in your steam folder, similar to above:

64bit default: [C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\The Political Machine 2012\Data\English\Maps\USA]

32bit default: [C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\The Political Machine 2012\Data\English\Maps\USA]

You will see a lot of files in here, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE SHOULD YOU EDIT THESE FILES AT THIS LEVEL, WE WILL SAVE EDITING THE MAP USING THESE FILES IN A LATER TUTORIAL, THIS IS A MORE COMPLICATED THING AND CAN CAUSE A LOT OF CRASHES IF YOU DO IT WRONG.

The only file that we are interested in at this moment is the file called: MainIssues.PM2issuesXML

In a very similar way to before, you need to open this file using Notepad or Notepad++, using the open with method.

Once the file is open, you will get hit by a wall of complicated text.

If you look at the first indented section, there is a header called <Tag>CHRISTIANNATION</Tag>

this is the beginning of the first issue, in this you are able to edit the importance of the issue to your party.

to do this you need to remember which party you edited, if you edited the democrats you are looking at LEFT and if you edited the republicans you are looking at RIGHT. I will show examples for both as we go along.

This is the first section we need to worry about:

Code: xml
<Default_Party_Importance PartyID="Left">5</Default_Party_Importance>
 <Default_Party_Position PartyID="Left">-4</Default_Party_Position>
 <Default_Party_Importance PartyID="Right">5</Default_Party_Importance>
 <Default_Party_Position PartyID="Right">6</Default_Party_Position>

If you edited the Democrats, its the PartyID="Left" bits that you need to pay attention to. For the republicans you need to look at PartyID="Right".

the first one:

<Default_Party_Importance PartyID="Left">5</Default_Party_Importance>

<Default_Party_Importance PartyID="Right">5</Default_Party_Importance>

determines how much of an important issue this is to the party, this determines how much prospective voters from your party are affected by speeches and ads about the topic. This is part of the little thumbs up section when choosing a speech. However, I haven't tried changing these values, as I haven't yet found the need; so for now I recommend you leaving these files at their default values.

The second value is the important one, it is the default position of your given party, you can see for example that the "Right"(republicans) are at 6, saying that they see it as important, and "Left"(democrats) say that its -4, so they are against this particular issue, this is the stat that you need to change.

I recommend that you don't edit the files within the <tag> for each state, you can do so, but it takes a long time to get a balance of views without giving too much of an advantage to one party or the other.

if you scroll down you will see the next issue, (military I think), and you can do the same for this, by changing the values under the party default posistion: (<Default_Party_Position PartyID="Right">?</Default_Party_Position>). This can then be done to all the issues, as you scroll down through the folder.

Soon to come will come a tutorial on changing the issues themselves, however if you look at this file, its quite clear how you do that

Happy modding

(Part 3 coming soon)

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Fantastic! I can't wait for the unique modding subforum.

This is an old take on modding, kind of reminds me of the old wrestling game forums where you built a character by the numbers. This is great and the only thing I would ask from Stardock is a simple mod manager so to make this simpler without having to move files around to make sure the game selects the correct file you want it to...but that just might overcomplicate things, in fact. Thanks for another tutorial!

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I have actually put together a quick program in VB.net that enables you to edit the information directly, and also contains a mod manager, so that people can do things such as download a replacement democrat and a replacement republican party separately, without it overwriting the other party as well. The only thing I Ask of stardock is to add the drop down menu for scenarios from 2008 edition, so that I can add new scenarios rather than replace the existing game information.

Check out my newest one, on editing the Issues

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Hey redarrow,

Do you know if there is any way to activate the Independent party? I would like to be able to edit that so I can make Libertarians, Democrats, and Republicans. Thanks in advance!

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