How do you make "mods"?

First of all, what are mods? Second of all, how do you make mods? Thirdly, do you need a computer to handle mods?

"Mod" is short for "modification," and it's an alteration of the original game. In gaming in general, a mod can be as small as a change in the number of something required to fulfill a goal or as large as an entire new game, but for LDW games, mods are always simple changes in the game's appearance.

If you browse the Game Mods section of the forum, you can see a variety of different kinds of mods for LDW games, from new pots for the plants in Plant Tycoon to easier-to-find collectables for the Virtual Families games to making the Virtual Villagers Christmas-themed.



Making mods for other games can require quite a lot of know-how -- I've made mods for The Witcher that took a thousand hours to make -- but mods for LDW games are very simple and only need a simple image-editing program, like Photoshop or Gimp.



Almost all mods are made for computer games; modding games on other platforms ranges from horribly difficult to completely impossible. It's one of the reasons why I prefer computer games, because you can tweak those to your liking.

LDW games are small and simple enough that mods for LDW games are hosted here, in the Game Mods section of the LDW forum.

How did you change the bedroom from green to purple? I have been experimenting and getting no where near your results.

What image editor are you using to mod the files, Bethlham? With some programs it's a lot simpler than others, depending on the feature set.

GIMP on a Mac

Here's a tutorial for GIMP which should help. It's for Windows, by the look of it, but hopefully the Mac version should be similar. That site seems to have a series of other GIMP tutorials which you might find useful.

Thanks Arnie...that did help

Looking through the VF1 Mods forum, I saw these GIMP tutorials in PDF format - apparently there was a problem with accessing the original HTML tutorials by BayouBlonde but I was able to access them here so the link must have been mended. You might however find it easier to work from the PDF version - or not as the case may be.

Because VF2 rooms are empty of furniture (apart from the bathrooms) it should be rather simpler to make changes to rooms than in VF1 as you don't have to work around the furnishings.