Modding

Modding in Software Inc. is completely data driven. Software Inc. loads XML files found in the "Mods" folder of the root of the game when it launches.

A mod should be placed in its own folder in the "Mods" folder and can optionally contain each of the following folders: "Companies", "CompanyTypes", "Events", "NameGenerators", "Scenarios" and "SoftwareTypes".

The root of your mod can additionally include a Personalities.xml file to add new personalities to the game.

Software types

Software types are the types of software you can choose to develop in Software Inc. in the design document window. Software types can be added to the game by creating an XML file in the "SoftwareTypes" folder.

Tags

A software type XML file should contain the following tags:

SoftwareType	This is the root tag, which all tags should be a child to. If this tag has the attribute Override="True", all tags are optional and will override the content of a software type by the same name. You can use this to override some values of the built-in software types. Note that if you override the Features tag, you will delete all features from the software type.
Name	The name of the software as it will appear in dropdown lists, etc.
Delete	Optional tag which deletes the software type from the game, if it is set to TRUE
Category	How the field of the software will be referred to in articles, e.g. games are categorized as "Gaming"
Description	The contents of the tooltip that will appear when hovering over the software type in the dropdown menu in the design document window.
Unlock	Which year this software type will unlock, e.g. <Unlock>1995</Unlock>
Random	How much sales will vary. When a product is released, a random number is chosen and it is weighted using this number, and it will be multiplied for all sales. As an example, for games it is 0.5, since you can't count on good sales for a game, but for operating systems, it is 0, since they are generally in demand and necessary for a computer to work, so sales won't vary that much.
Popularity	How popular a software type is, which limits the maximum amount of income. Operating system have 1 and games have 0.8.
OSSpecific	Whether you need to choose an operating system for this software.
OneClient	Whether this software is for contract work. This does not currently work as expected, so you should probably avoid setting this to TRUE.
InHouse	Whether you can lock this software to your own company. This makes sense for game engines, but not for games for example.
NameGenerator	The name generator to use for simulated companies or for when the player clicks the name button in the design document.
Needs	All software types that this software type depends on, each need should be defined in a <Name> tag in the <Needs> tag. This will be deprecated at some point in the future and decided by feature dependencies instead.
Features	All features that this software can implement.

Example

<SoftwareType>
	<Name>Test Software</Name>
	<Description>This is part of a test mod. If you develop a perfect version, 50% of the population will want it, but 10% might randomly not want it.</Description>
	<Random>0.1</Random>
	<Popularity>0.5</Popularity>
	<OSSpecific>TRUE</OSSpecific>
	<OneClient>FALSE</OneClient>
	<InHouse>FALSE</InHouse>
	<Category>Test</Category>
	<NameGenerator>testgen</NameGenerator>
	<Needs>
		<Name>Visual Tool</Name>
	</Needs>
	<Features>
		<Feature Forced="TRUE">
			<Name>Test feat 1</Name>
			<Description>This feature will always be selected unless superseded by a feature with this as "From".</Description>
			<DevTime>2</DevTime>
			<Innovation>0</Innovation>
			<Usability>1</Usability>
			<Stability>1</Stability>
			<CodeArt>1</CodeArt>
			<Dependencies></Dependencies>
		</Feature>
		<Feature From="Test feat 1">
			<Name>Test feat 2</Name>
			<Description>This feature takes 6 months to make and has 4/6 Usability.</Description>
			<DevTime>6</DevTime>
			<Innovation>1</Innovation>
			<Usability>4</Usability>
			<Stability>1</Stability>
			<CodeArt>1</CodeArt>
			<Dependencies>
				<Dependency Software="Visual Tool">Image viewing</Dependency>
			</Dependencies>
		</Feature>
		<Feature>
			<Name>Test feat 3</Name>
			<Description>This feature takes just as many artists as programmers and offers no stability.</Description>
			<DevTime>5</DevTime>
			<Innovation>1</Innovation>
			<Usability>1</Usability>
			<Stability>0</Stability>
			<CodeArt>0.5</CodeArt>
			<Dependencies>
				<Dependency Software="Test Software">Test feat 2</Dependency>
			</Dependencies>
		</Feature>
	</Features>
</SoftwareType>

Features

Features are defined in the Feature tag of Software types. Optinally a base.xml file can be placed in the "SoftwareTypes" folder with feature definitions, which will then be added to all software. If the root tag of the base.xml file contains the attribute Override = "TRUE", it will remove any base features already defined, this would remove the built-in QA feature for example.

Tags

Feature	This is the root tag, which all tags should be a child to. If this tag has the attribute Forced = "TRUE", then this will be implemented by default and the player won't be able to un-tick it, unless it is superseded by another feature. If this tag has the From = "FeatureName" tag, the feature, "FeatureName", will supersede this feature and you can then build entire dependency trees like this.
Name	The name of the feature as it will appear in feature panel in the design document window
Category	An optional tag that controls which specialization a product belongs to. If it is omitted the feature will belong to the base skill level of a field, usually described as "General" in Software Inc. which is controlled by the employees main skill in a role. Otherwise the employees specialization skill will control how well, if at all, they work with this feature. This can be 2D, 3D, Network, etc. You can add new specializations to the game using this tag.
Description	The contents of the tooltip that will appear when hovering over the feature in the design document window.
Unlock	Which year this feature will unlock, e.g. <Unlock>1995</Unlock>. Specializations will unlock, when the first feature which uses it unlocks.
DevTime	How many months it takes to develop this feature
Innovation, Usability, Stability	These three tags are normalized, so you can put in any number. 3, 4 and 5 would result in 3/12, 4/12 and 5/12. Innovation controls how long the product will stay interesting to customers. Usability controls how well customers will like the product and in extension, your company. Stability controls bugs and how much skill your employees will gain from working on the feature.
CodeArt	The coding to art balancing of the feature. 1 will mean this feature only requires programmers whereas 0 will mean it only requires artists.
Dependencies	What features this feature depends on to be available, this can be features in the current product, features in other products or features in supported operating system. Note that opretaing system feature dependencies are taken as an intersection, so if a features relies on 3D in an operating system, ALL chosen operating systems must support 3D. A dependency should be defined as <Dependency Software="Operating System">3D</Dependency>

Name generators

The random name generator uses a tree like structure to generate random strings of words. Generators will be loaded from txt files located in the "NameGenerators" folder and their name will match their file names, minus ".txt". If you name a name generator the same thing as one of the built-in name generators, they will merge their nodes and words, you can use this to expand the words of a built-in name generator.

Example

Here is an example of how a name generator can be structured in the text file:

-start(base)
-base(base2,end,stop)
Hello
Hi
-base2(end,stop)
, you
-end(stop)
.

This would create a generator that can generate the strings:

1. Hello
2. Hi
3. Hello.
4. Hi.
5. Hello, you
6. Hi, you
7. Hello, you.
8. Hi, you.

It works by starting from the first node "start" (nodes are the ones with a hyphen in front of the name), it appends a random string from the list of strings below it (in this case there’s nothing to pick), it then picks a random node from the parenthesis of the current node (which can only be "base" in this case), and then it continues until it reaches the node stop. There is a limit to how far it will go, depending on how many nodes there are, to avoid an infinite loop.

Company types

Company types are the types of company that the game will simulate. If you don't define company types for your new software types, the software will not be released by the AI.

Tags

CompanyType	This is the root tag, which all tags should be a child to.
Specialization	The name/tag of the company type. If you pick a name of one of the built-in company types, you can override it. Note that this only works for Alpha 4.5+
Chance	There is a 25% chance of a company launching each month and it's type will be chosen randomly, based on this number weighted between other company types. In-game this is 15 for game companies and 2 for OS companies.
Types	The types of software this company will develop. It should have children "Type" tags with a Name = "SoftwareTypeName" attribute and a chance value between 0 and 1, e.g. <Type Name="Game">0.5</Type>. A random software type will be chosen randomly, but weighted based on this number. Afterwards this number will also decide whether the company actually decides to release the software. OS companies only have Operating System defined here, with a value of 0.1, which means they will only release operating systems, and there is a 90% chance they will decide against releasing it each month.

Scenarios

Nothing here yet

Events

Nothing here yet

Companies

Nothing here yet

Personalities

Nothing here yet