game dev tycoon custom hardware

Okay, here’s my attempt at a blog post, written in the style you described, about modding custom hardware into Game Dev Tycoon:

Alright, so I’ve been messing around with Game Dev Tycoon again lately. Love that game, always have. But I got this itch, you know? I wanted to put my own hardware in there. Not just the stuff the game gives you. So I started poking around, seeing what I could do.

First thing I did was just browse the game files. I mean, that’s where everything is, right? It’s all gotta be stored somewhere. Found a bunch of XML files – those are pretty easy to read, even if you’re not a coding whiz. Just text, mostly. I opened a few up, started looking at how the existing consoles and stuff were defined.

It looked… doable. I mean, it wasn’t super simple, but it wasn’t rocket science either. Each piece of hardware had a name, some stats (like CPU, GPU, memory), a release date, a price… all that jazz. So, I figured, “Hey, why not try adding my own?”

I copied one of the existing hardware entries, pasted it into the same file, and started changing things. Gave it a goofy name – “The PotatoMasher 5000” – because why not? I bumped up some stats, made it super overpowered, just to see if it would even work. Changed the release date to something early, so I could test it right away.

The Messy Part

Now, this is where things got a little… messy. I saved the file, launched the game, and… nothing. Didn’t show up. Okay, no big deal, probably just messed something up. Checked the file again, made sure I didn’t accidentally delete a bracket or something. Tried again. Still nothing.

This went on for a while. I tried different things, different file locations (turns out there are a few places that look like they might be the right one), different combinations of stats… I even tried copying the whole dang file and just changing the name, thinking maybe there was some hidden ID somewhere.

I felt like I was losing it slowly with nothing to show for it!

Success! (Sort Of)

Finally, after what felt like a million tries, I figured it out. Turns out, there’s another file – a kind of “master list” – that tells the game which hardware files to actually use. I had to add a line to that file, pointing to my modified XML. It’s like an index, or some crap.

So, I added the line, saved everything, crossed my fingers, and launched the game again. And… THERE IT WAS! My glorious PotatoMasher 5000, ready to power the most amazing (and probably unbalanced) games ever made.

It was pretty awesome, I gotta admit. Seeing my own creation, even if it was just a bunch of text and numbers, actually in the game… that’s a cool feeling.

What I learned:

• Don’t be afraid to poke around in game files. You might break something, but you can usually fix it.
• XML files are your friend. They’re usually pretty easy to understand.
• Persistence is key. If it doesn’t work at first, keep trying! You may fail like I did dozens of times.
• There’s probably a better way to do this, but hey, I got it working!

So, yeah, that’s my story of how I crammed custom hardware into Game Dev Tycoon. It was a bit of a pain, but totally worth it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go design a game that requires 1000 teraflops of processing power… because I can.