Introduction to module: 1- What is a module?

Applying to version 0.5.11 upon releasing this post.

Modules, or Mods are popular amongst WOWS players. But many do not understand the nature of applying a mod to the game. This post elaborates the definition and content of a mod. First of all, any modifications to the original game files count as mods. Usually mods happen in xml files and swf and python archives (.py, .pyc, etc).

xml is usually a directive document. Each xml file contains a lot of blocks (with several exceptions). We would know what a xml is in charge of from its label.

Example:

dock.xml→Harbour

battle_stats.xml→Battle information

There are several types of swf files. For instance, font_all.swf facilitates in-game displaying of characters. NA and EU servers don’t support Chinese characters because there are no Chinese fonts incorporated in the swf file. Even if you copied a few Chinese words, you’d see white blocks anyway.

The most difficult part is surely the python archives, the most important game documents. Since most .pyc files are encrypted, they are often side-loaded instead of directly tampering core content. .py files however, can be written directly due to its unencrypted nature. Both are based on python infrastructure and requires knowledge of python language to comprehend. We’ll talk about them in later part of this series.