Modding

Furniture Modding is a separate page

Material Modding is a separate page

Code Modding is a separate page

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.

Debugging console

As of alpha 10.1.5, the debugging console is enabled by binding the console key at the bottom of the key binding menu in the options window.

Debugging console in Alpha 9

The debugging console can be enabled by using the "-debugconsole" launch parameter. This can be accomplished in Steam by setting it as a launch option for the game, in Windows by making a shortcut to the game and appending the parameter to the end of the path or otherwise launching the game from a terminal/commandline but adding -debugconsole to the end.

The console can be opened in-game by using the Home button, which you can rebind in the options window.

In-game content

These are zip files of the software types, company types, name generators and personality types currently in the game:

Alpha 8.6.1 data - 23 KB

Alpha 9.7.6 data - 35 KB

Alpha 10.1.4 data - 23 KB

Alpha 11.1.1 data - 22 KB

Alpha 8 changes

Needs are no longer needed, but will be inferred from feature dependencies.

Feature dependencies should no longer be in a separate tag, and you can completely omit the "Dependencies" tag from features without dependencies.

You can now have multiple SoftwareCategory tags for features, to limit them to more than one software category, with individual unlock dates, use "0" for no unlock date.

Example:

<Feature Vital="TRUE">
	<Name>Multitasking</Name>
	<Category>System</Category>
	<Description>Let your users pretend they can multitask by having several applications open at any one time.</Description>
	<DevTime>6</DevTime>
	<Innovation>1</Innovation>
	<Usability>1</Usability>
	<Stability>0</Stability>
	<CodeArt>1</CodeArt>
	<SoftwareCategory Category="Computer">0</SoftwareCategory>
	<SoftwareCategory Category="Console">2000</SoftwareCategory>
	<SoftwareCategory Category="Phone">2000</SoftwareCategory>
	<Dependency Software="Operating System">Multithreading</Dependency>
	<Dependency Software="Operating System">Example</Dependency>
</Feature>

Alpha 10 changes

Scenarios have been deprecated and will be ignored by the game.

The IdealPrice tag has been added to SoftwareTypes to control the ideal price of a software category. This can be specified on a SoftwareType or SoftwareCategory level. If not specified, the game will use the old pricing system.

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"
Categories	The categories for the software type. Can be omitted.
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. Computer operating systems have 1 and Role Playing Games have 0.6. (Ignored if software type has categories defined)
Retention	How long people will use the product, should be between 0 and 1, not including 1. Computer operating systems have 0.9 and Role Playing Games have 0.7. (Ignored if software type has categories defined)
Iterative	How likely AI companies are to develop sequels for this type of software, between 0 and 1. (Ignored if software type has categories defined)
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. (Will be used for all software categories which don't have one defined)
OSLimit	If this software is OSSpecific, you can use this tag to limit the software to a specific operating system category.
IdealPrice	Optional. What the AI should aim to price 100% quality software as. This price will also be used as suggestion for the player, but can be overriden by current market trends. The price will be scaled by the current most complex possible version of a software type, so the price doesn't change much throughout the game, but removing features will lower the price.
Features	All features that this software can implement.

Example

<SoftwareType>
	<Name>Test Software</Name>
	<Category>Testing</Category>
	<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>
	<Categories>
		<Category Name="Test category">
			<Description>This is a test category</Description>
			<Popularity>0.5</Popularity>
			<Retention>0.5</Retention>
			<TimeScale>1</TimeScale>
			<Iterative>0.75</Iterative>
			<NameGenerator>testgen</NameGenerator>
		</Category>
	</Categories>
	<OSSpecific>TRUE</OSSpecific>
	<OneClient>FALSE</OneClient>
	<InHouse>FALSE</InHouse>
	<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>
		</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>
			<Dependency Software="Visual Tool">Image viewing</Dependency>
		</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>
			<Dependency Software="Test Software">Test feat 2</Dependency>
			<SoftwareCategory Category="Test category">1983</SoftwareCategory>
		</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.

Attributes

From	Use this attribute to specify which other feature this feature supersedes. You can create a tree in this fashion where the features are mutually exclusive. An example could be how 24-bit audio supersedes 8-bit. All dependent features are also backwards compatible in this way. If you select 24-bit audio, all features depending on 8-bit will still work.
Forced	Whether this feature is selected by default, the player won't be able to un-tick it, unless it is superseded by another feature. Each piece of software should have at least one forced feature, which will define a lower limit for development time.
Vital	Whether this feature is seen as vital in the market. If a feature is vital, software which does not have it implemented upon release will be considered lower quality by consumers, e.g. the 3D feature for operating systems is vital, since you wouldn't expect an operating system to not have it after it has been invented and used.
Research	This marks a feature as patentable, its royalty percent will be based around its vital status and development time compared to other researchable features in the same software type. The research attribute should specify which feature this features is part of. Researchable features must have an unlock date and other features in the same software type can not depend on it.

Tags

Feature	This is the root tag, which all tags should be a child to. Add any attribute explained above to this tag.
Name	The name of the feature as it will appear in feature panel in the design document window
Category	A tag that controls which specialization a product belongs to. 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 by simply writing whatever you want.
ArtCategory	You can use this optional tag if you want the art part of a feature to belong to a different category than the code part. This is not relevant if your CodeArt ratio (details below) is equal to 0 or 1.
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, and 0.5 means a little bit of both.
Server	How many mbps this feature will need per active user. It is scaled with time using the formula 1+log10(year-1969). MMO uses 0.002, which would be around 5 gbps at any given time for a 1 million user game in 2010, which might change in the future.
Dependency	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 operating 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>. You can have multiple of these tags per feature
SoftwareCategory	Optional tag that limits the feature to a certain software category of its parent software type. You need to specificy an unlock year here, which will override the other unlock tag. You can set the unlock year to 0 to not have an unlock date. You can add multiple of these tags per feature.

Software categories

Software categories are defined in the Categories tag of the software type XML file. Categories enable software specialization, e.g. OS/Console/Phone Operating systems. It is completely optional and a "Default" category will be used in case it is omitted from the software definition.

Tags

Category Name="X"	This is the root tag, which all tags should be a child to. Use the name attribute to give the category a name.
Description	What will be shown when hovering over the category in the design document
Unlock	Which year this software category will unlock, e.g. <Unlock>1995</Unlock>
Popularity	How popular a software category is, which limits the maximum amount of income. Computer operating systems have 1 and Role Playing Games have 0.6.
TimeScale	How long it will take to make a product in this category compared to the base software type, should be between 0 and 1.
Retention	How long people will use the product, should be between 0 and 1, not including 1. Computer operating systems have 0.9 and Role Playing Games have 0.7.
IdealPrice	Optional, overrides software type ideal price. What the AI should aim to price 100% quality software as. This price will also be used as suggestion for the player, but can be overriden by current market trends. The price will be scaled by the current most complex possible version of a software category, so the price doesn't change much throughout the game, but removing features will lower the price.
Iterative	How likely AI companies are to develop sequels for this type of software.
NameGenerator	The name generator to use for simulated companies or for when the player clicks the name button in the design document.

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.

Writing [REPLACE] as the first line will replace an existing name generator from the game, based on it's file name.

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.

Removing companies

You can remove AI company types by adding a "delete.xml" file in the CompanyTypes folder, which includes a root tag containing a tags with the company types you want to remove, eg.

<CompanyTypes>
	<Type>Web CMS</Type>
	<Type>Financial CMS</Type>
	<Type>Workflow CMS</Type>
</CompanyTypes>

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+
Force	Whether a company of this type should be created on the first day and be forced to launch software on the first day. It is currently only used to launch a Computer Operating System on day one: <Force>Operating System,Computer</Force>. Just omit the tag if you don't need it.
PerYear	The chance of a company of this type being founded every year. All company types in Software Inc. has this set to 0.2, as it seems to work pretty well.
Min	The minimum amount of companies of this type there has to be on the market at any given point in time. 1 for computer OS, 2 for games.
Max	The maximum amount of companies of this type there has to be on the market at any given point in time. 3 for computer OS, 6 for games.
Types	The types of products the company will release and how much effort they take. 1 means they can only work one product of that software type at any given time, 0.25 means they would be able to work on 4 of it at a time. Currently this is set to 1 for all company types in Software Inc. as going lower seems to spam the market. You can define a category for each type, otherwise a random will be chosen from the categories available from the software type.
NameGen	Optional name generator to use, will use "Company" by default. Only available in alpha 9.7+

Examples

<CompanyType>
	<Specialization>Tools</Specialization>
	<PerYear>0.2</PerYear>
	<Min>1</Min>
	<Max>4</Max>
	<Types>
		<Type Software="Audio Tool">1</Type>
		<Type Software="Visual Tool">1</Type>
		<Type Software="Antivirus">1</Type>
	</Types>
</CompanyType>

<CompanyType>
	<Specialization>Computer Operating Systems</Specialization>
	<Force>Operating System,Computer</Force>
	<PerYear>0.2</PerYear>
	<Min>1</Min>
	<Max>3</Max>
	<Types>
		<Type Software="Operating System" Category="Computer">1</Type>
	</Types>
</CompanyType>

Scenarios (Deprecated)

Scenarios can define the start conditions, goals and events in-game. A scenario type XML file should contain the following tags:

Tag name	Description	Example
Scenario	This is the root tag, which all tags should be a child to.
Name	The name of the scenario as shown in the game.
Money	The available amounts of money at the game start.	<Money><Amount>1000</Amount><Amount>20000</Amount></Money>
Goals	Goals define the "win" condition(s). There can be multiple goals, each defined its own Goal tag. Each goal can also have multiple conditions, separated by commas. Conditions are defined by their name followed by an argument. The only goals available at the moment are Money and Date.	<Goals><Goal>Money 200000,Date 6-1980</Goal><Goal>Money 2000000,Date 4-1988</Goal></Goals>
Years	The available start years at the start of a new game.	<Years><Year>1976</Year><Year>1988</Year></Years>
Events	Events are defined separately in the "Events" Folder. You can leave the tag empty to ignore it.	<Events><Event>Test</Event><Event>Test2</Event></Events>
Simulation	Whether the competition should be simulated. Relevant if you want the competition to be entirely controlled by your own events.	<Simulation>TRUE</Simulation>
Trees(Optional)	Whether to place trees in the world	<Trees>TRUE</Trees>
MinFloor(Optional)	The lowest floor the player can build on, between -1 and 9	<MinFloor>0</MinFloor>
MaxFloor(Optional)	The lowest floor the player can build on, between 0 and 10	<MaxFloor>4</MaxFloor>
CanExpand(Optional)	Whether the player can buy more plot.	<CanExpand>FALSE</CanExpand>
ForceEnvironment(Optional)	Whether the player should be forced to play in a specific environment. Between 0 and 3, for forest, city, tundra and desert.	<ForceEnvironment>0</ForceEnvironment>
StartingArea(Optional)	What the players starting plot should be. Defined as x,y,width,height. Will be clamped to match game limits.	<StartingArea>9,128,32,32</StartingArea>

Example of a "scenario" file:

<Scenario>
	<Name>Test scenario</Name>
	<Money>
		<Amount>500</Amount>
		<Amount>1000</Amount>
	</Money>
	<Goals>
		<Goal>Money 1337,Date 5-1995</Goal>
		<Goal>Money 1000000,Date 5-2012</Goal>
	</Goals>
	<Years>
		<Year>1980</Year>
		<Year>1985</Year>
                <Year>2023</Year>
	</Years>
	<Events>
		<Event>Test</Event>
	</Events>
	<Simulation>TRUE</Simulation>
</Scenario>

Events

Nothing here yet

Companies

Nothing here yet

Personalities

Personalities control employee traits(Leadership, aptitude and diligence) an inter office relationships. All employees have exactly 2 personality traits. All personalities will be merged with the pre-existing personalities in the game.

Tags

PersonalityGraph	This is the root tag, which all tags should be a child to. If the mod has more than 2 new personalities, you can add Replace="true" to this tag, to replace the base personalities of the game.
Personalities	This tag should contain the list of personalities
Incompatibilities	This tag should contain a list of personalities which cannot be mixed when picking employee personality.

Personalities and incompatibilities

Personality tags include:

Personality	This is the root tag, which all tags should be a child to.
Name	The personality's name as it appears in the game.
WorkLearn (Replaces Aptitude)	Between -1 and 1, where -1 is hard working and 1 is easy learner.
Social (Replaces Leadership	Between -1 and 1, where -1 is independent and 1 is social.
LazyStress (Replaces Diligence	Between -1 and 1, where -1 is lazy and 1 is stressed.
Relationships	This tag should contain a list how people with this personality feels about another personality, between -1 for bad and 1 for great. You only need to define this one-way, so if you already have a relationship with Stubborn defined for Short-tempered, you shouldn't also define it other way around. You can define relationships with personalities already in the game.

The Incompatibilities should contain a list of Incompatible tags, each with two Personality tags naming the two personalities which cannot exist in the same person.

Example

<PersonalityGraph>
	<Personalities>
		<Personality>
			<Name>TestPersonlity</Name>
			<Aptitude>1</Aptitude>
			<Leadership>-1</Leadership>
			<Diligence>0.3</Diligence>
			<Relationships>
				<Relation Name = "Extrovert">-0.5</Relation>
				<Relation Name = "TestPersonlity 2">1</Relation>
			</Relationships>
		</Personality>
		<Personality>
			<Name>TestPersonlity 2</Name>
			<Aptitude>-0.5</Aptitude>
			<Leadership>0</Leadership>
			<Diligence>0.25</Diligence>
			<Relationships>
			</Relationships>
		</Personality>
	</Personalities>
	<Incompatibilities>
		<Incompatible>
			<Personality>TestPersonlity</Personality>
			<Personality>TestPersonlity 2</Personality>
		</Incompatible>
	</Incompatibilities>
</PersonalityGraph>