your-first-mod.md

Creating your first mod

Step 1: Setting up your environment

Before you start writing mods, you should ensure you have the following:

• A text editor. Notepad or Text Editor will be enough.

Tip

Using a text editor meant for writing code, like vscode or Kate(preinstalled on most linux distros) is a lot easier when writing and editing code. However, this isn't required.

Install PolyMod. Inside your mods folder, create a folder, e.g. example. If you have an IDE, open that folder with your IDE. Else, open the folder with file manager(or finder, or dolphin etc.)

Step 2: Writing the manifest

Create manifest.json and paste the following into it:

{
  "id" : "my_first_mod",
  "name": "My first mod",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "authors": ["your-name"],
  "dependencies": [
    {
      "id": "polytopia"
    }
  ]
}

Step 3: Creating a patch

Create patch.json and paste the following into it:

{
  "unitData" : {
    "warrior" : {
      "attack" : 100
    }
  }
}

This will make the warrior have a large attack value. For more information about GLD patching, see (gld.md)

Step 4: loading the mod

Start the game. Thats it! You should see your mod listed under the polymod hub.

Step 5: publishing your mod

Once you have finished your mod, you may want to bundle it into a single file for easier sharing. Here's how to do that:

1. zip the folder of the mod
2. rename the zipfile to example.polymod