I’m re-opening this topic. @DanielKlug and I have discussed it and even though we are not sure how we could allow modding we don’t want to exclude the possibility from the get go. Currently any modding attempts go clearly against our EULA though.
At this stage I would be most interested what types of mods people want to create.
Thanks you to get the time to give a clear answer to this.
I think the first part of modding would be replacing images/sound. Then surely people will try to add new console, add new lenght, etc…
Believe it or not, Modding in games actually increases the Longevity of the game itself, allowing more returning players to come back to this game and play it more, would it be wonderful to noticed that if there was a chart, that those who have modding support in their game are the top ranked ones like Skyrim, Oblivion, Arma, Civilization 4, Half-Life 1 & 2, Torchlight 1 & 2, Garry’s Mod (originally a mod before it become a standalone game), and many more!
The many things that people can make are countless of good (and bad) things for this game, if modding is supported in this game, I can expect people to make small things first before bigger overhauls and mechanics into the game, for example small things such as adding new research into the game by a small amount, improve the graphics are certain parts of the game, Add in more years into the game (30-35 years is too short for some, they instead add in 50-60 or 100 years, pretty much eternity mode).
Once the people recongized that this game has some mods, some people will decided to go bigger and make medium to huge sized mods, such as adding tons of research, allow new things into the game like an overhaul to MMO’s by making a new menu by itself, and add in different research abilities, improvement on servers and client sides, streaming clients, player vs player feature, basic crafting, advance crafting, diversity crafting features, player housing features, fort siege and constructions feature, and tons of things to add into the MMO part of the game, along with changing the business model of the games (free to play, buy 2 play, cash shops, microtransactions, subscription model, etc). Add in new music into the game to make the game more entertaining or for fan-fare stuff. Many unique things that can be possible to add in this game as long as the developers in this game allows it by giving us the tools we need to make it happen.
Modding really helped other Strategy- Sim games as Civilization or Movies for example, The Movies, which probably is the best example given it’s a sim as GDT.
Okay, so i had a quick look at it and tried something very simple: Adding a new 2D Graphics Step inbetween V2 and V3 and making it available from the beginning, so you can add it to your very first engine. Just as a test. However, as soon as i actually add it to the list of possible graphics, the game crashes and i get an error. And i can’t seem to find any reason why.
So did anyone actually successfully add anything yet, because all i wanna actually do is add something to the late game so i have stuff to research again.
well opeing this back up was a good move imho if this would have stayed closed that would have just been well stupid. lol
I think, the most important mod (other than balancing) would be extra game length. 30 years is far to short.
For me modding is a wonderful thing because it makes players able to choose how they want the game to be. So, no more “shitty updates” or “the game miss this” problem, as everyone can easily add for instance a “longer game” mod or a bunch of new consoles.
Except that, i will just say that i agree with all the things that Darkedone02 said.
The downfall of mod, is the inability of the developer to give any support for modded games, since you’ll have a different game than the one tested.
Meaning, if a mod get popular, but corrupt the save, the user will complain to the developers of the game instead of the one of the mod.
Well, i agree, but we already show on the wiki(http://gamedevtycoon.wikia.com/wiki/Modding) that changing the savegame directory is easy, so modded versions could just use a different savegame.
Doesn’t change anything 
The save used by the modded game will still be corrupted.
I think, before trying to hack the game, we would need some kind of API or anything to do mod that will clearly state that the error is caused by a mod and not by the game itself.
It’s clearly not for now, since they is a lot to fix and to polish in the game, but that would be great.
But what is the problem if a save file, different than the one from the original game, is corrupted ?
I mean, it’s always been like that with mods… If you mod your games, your saves are corrupted and you are the only one you can blame. It’s like that on Minecraft, on Elder Scrolls, on every game with a save function. If users can’t see that, they just have to use only the original game. And if they persist to use mods, it will just mean that the advantages overcome the inconvenients. Of course, they will always be some people to complain to the devs about mods bugs. But, hey, once again, it’s the same thing everywhere.
Concerning the debug api, i don’t think it’s possible to see if a bug happens because of a mod or if it’s in the base game. Well, of course, you can put indicators in the mod functions, but it will not state all errors caused by the mod. The only thing to do is simply test if the bug happens in the base game. If not, it was caused by a mod.
(Sorry again if you can’t understand me well…)
It’s completely possible if the dev load the mod themselve as it’s the case in Bukkit (Minecraft).
All I say, people are stupid, that something you learn when you have to deal with support … they don’t read and complain directly. That why I say the game need a “fail-safe” against these people. To be sure, whatever happen they will complain to the right person (because, hell, people love complaining).
"It’s completely possible if the dev load the mod themselve as it’s the case in Bukkit (Minecraft)."
Yeah, of course, but i don’t think this is possible without redoing a good part of the game.
Concerning the fail-safe, well, a button “Report bug” on the game menu, when you click on it you can post a message to report a bug, but if you’re game is detected as non original(with md5 hash or version number, or anything, i don’t know), your post isn’t marked as “base game” bug.
I’ll look at the code and see if I can implement my own modding support. If it works out well I can send it to the DEVs to see if they want to include it or modify it.
Yes, I like the game the much. 
Having looked at what is there I can see it would take some considerable restructuring of the code layout.
I originally thought a well structured XML document could contain the levels, settings, Base64 encoded images and changeable\additional Javascript (any javascript can dynamically be executed using the “eval” function) would be a great solution. But I got to thinking how the devs would want to protect their IP as much as possible so I figured most logic, javascript, balancing, settings, etc., etc. could be moved to a SQLLite database (using node-webkit-sqllite3) which would contain everything except for the essential engine and code to handle the database loading (small amount of code, just “eval” around the rest.) Currently some dev’s compile some of their javascript using the V8 snapshot. This causes the javascript to run approx. 30% slower and must be done for each platform. Using the database idea this would not be the case (and SQLLite is very fast.)
At that point an interface could be created that the developer (or users) could use to tweak settings, balancing, functionality, etc.and have it encrypted (SQLLite has this built-in if you want to make use of it.) They could then have a mod either loaded from within the same database or in a separate one(s).
Anyways, a lot of ideas to play with. I have it in my mind how it could easily be achieved but I wouldn’t bog down this forum with those details.
If I were to make a suggestion to the devs for a future dev environment I would recommend Haxe + NME. Moving to Haxe from Javascript\Java\C# is relatively easy. The benefits to Haxe is it translates itself to many languages (Javascript, Java, PHP, C#, C++, etc.) and compiles to many platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, Blackberry, iOS, Flash, HTML 5.) NME’s role is to make this all possible for game development. It is 100% free and Open Source. You can also get an awesome IDE for it for free called FlashDevelop.
An elegant modding solution would allow tiny mods that change or add little things, all the way up to big conversion mods - adding new graphic elements, new research projects and game elements, changing topic/genre interaction, adding topics or genres. That sort of thing. However, when not done from the get-go, allowing it to be done in a modular way (such as using a DB, like SQLite) means refactoring a lot of code.
if it is sqlite you can just expand game without big issues if there is a three principle if not then should come up with other solutions.
Id love to get some modds to the game. Iv been going on for hundreds of years now, and my income is just exploding into many many many billons, when i create a game now i get atleast 200billion from the game. I have done everything and only have one achiv left to go. This gets booring and i made it in 3 days. So i started over just becouse i had nothing more to do. So modding this would be awesome. Im pretty sure om not alone with have reaching that point in the game.