Mod Menu

One window in the garage for the settings of the mods that use it.

Mod Menu is built for Gameface, the interface layer World of Tanks moved to. The old Flash menu could not be moved across to it, because the two share no language, no runtime and no drawing model, so the window, the controls and the layout engine behind them were written from scratch for this one.

What was carried over, deliberately, is the API. Mods speak to this window in exactly the vocabulary they already knew, so a mod written years ago opens here without a line changed.

What you get

• The mods that use it keep their options in one place, reachable from a button in the garage, rather than each hiding a panel of its own
• Search across those mods, an A to Z index for long lists, and tabs inside a mod that has many settings
• Apply without closing, a list of what you changed before you commit it, and undo
• The window's own look is yours: language, font, text size, panel size, accent color, background color, how the options are divided into columns, transparency, where it sits on a wide screen, and the key that opens it
• 25 languages

Installing

1. Download the latest aslain.modmenu_<version>.wotmod from Releases
2. Put it in World_of_Tanks/mods/<game version>/
3. Remove any older copy of the file from that folder first, or the game loads both

Mod Menu needs the OpenWG Gameface loader, version 1.1.6 or newer, which most mod packs already install. Without it the menu says so in python.log and no window opens.

Using it

The guide walks through the window: opening it, finding a mod, what Apply and Cancel do, and every setting in the panel that shapes the window itself.

Writing a mod for it

The API guide walks through the paths most mods take, the full reference lists every builder and every method, and the examples are four small mods you can copy: one with two options, one with every control type, one showing tabs, groups and conditions, and one marking options as new.

The short version:

# ask for this menu first, then whatever else provides the API
from gui.aslainMenu import g_modsSettingsApi, templates

template = {'modDisplayName': 'My Mod', 'column1': [
    templates.createCheckbox('Enabled', 'enabled', True),
], 'column2': []}

settings = g_modsSettingsApi.setModTemplate('my.mod', template, onSettingsChanged)

Reporting a problem

Open an issue and attach python.log from World_of_Tanks/. Say which game version and which mods you had installed. A screenshot of what went wrong saves a round of questions.

License

The source in this repository, meaning the documentation, the API definitions and the examples, is under the MIT license. Copy the examples and build on them freely.

The mod itself ships only as the built aslain.modmenu_<version>.wotmod attached to each release. Passing that file on unchanged is allowed, so a mod pack may include it. Its source is not in this repository and is not under the MIT license, which covers only what is published here as source.

Credits

The window is new code: the layout, the controls and everything that draws them were written for this engine. Behind it sits the Python side, which grew out of my own earlier work rather than starting over. What this owes to other people is worth naming precisely.

izeberg defined the API in the first place, for the original mods settings window. The vocabulary a mod speaks here is the one he chose. Keeping to it was a decision, not an inheritance: the window could have asked mods to learn something new, and instead it implements his interface so that nobody has to.

Aslain built the enhanced Flash edition on that foundation, and it is where most of what this window offers was designed first: tabs, color choices, hotkeys, live updates, images, conditions between controls, and the translation system. Part of the Python here is that work carried forward and extended. The window is not: Flash and Gameface share no runtime, no language and no drawing model, so every control had to be built again from nothing against a different set of limits.

poliroid wrote the mods list that many mods register themselves with. This window does not use it and has a button and a list of its own. What it does is honour his: a mod registered with his API is shown here as well, and where his package is not installed this one answers in its place, so those mods keep working either way.

With both installed you get one button rather than two. Everything reachable from his is reachable from this one, so a second button beside it would open a second list of the same mods, and two buttons that look alike and do the same thing is how a player ends up not knowing which one is theirs. His button is hidden, not disabled: his list, his entries and everything registered with him carry on working, and nothing of his is patched to do it. To keep both on screen, put this in mods/configs/aslainMenu.json:

{
  "hideModsListButton": false
}

If the file is already there, add the key inside the braces it already has.

Turning the log back on

A release keeps one line in game.log saying which version is running, and otherwise speaks only when something goes wrong. If you are reporting a problem, or writing a mod and want to see what the window makes of it, add:

{
  "debug": true
}

to the same file and restart the game. That brings back where the button was placed and measured, which values a mod seeded, how the window resolved its colors, what the frontend reported, the notes about images that did not fit their column, and the size and shape of the game's surface when the window opens and whenever it changes. It is the same file the menu never writes to, so the key stays where you put it.

CHAMPi tested this window while it was being built and shaped a fair part of it. A good number of the features here began as his suggestions, and several others took the form they did because he pushed back on the first attempt.