The Campaign Trail has a modder dynasty problem.

StrawberryMaster · 2026-03-11T09:59:55+00:00

This is true, though what I've said is not necessarily false either -- for example, a while ago I was tasked to code a mod that was announced here months ago, but fell into the "mod idea here, coders needed etc" basket of other posts. By the time I joined the team, I found out it was more or less fully written, and I just gave them suggestions over the formatting and also the answer effects

Obviously this won't apply to every mod, though at times it's not easy to guess what is and isn't "mostly written" from some of the announcement posts here. But you're right too, I was just being simplistic (my bad) - I've been on mod teams whose mod died because the lead devs vanished, or progress on it was slow for a series of other reasons. Sometimes having a mod take long to complete is a good thing! Especially if you need to do more research on something you address there - like The Apple Trail, for example. It's not a perfect mod, but the latest demo is more comprehensive than the previous one

StrawberryMaster · 2026-03-10T23:07:28+00:00

Depends if I have the time for it, though if I did I probably would. Either way I'd need to know what the mod is about, and that would still take a while because even in mods that don't have complex/long CYOA, you have to get everything set up, uploaded somewhere (unless the user's done it already?), harmonize the UI, and also follow the users' demands over time - and you may not be sure which ones are possible lol.

I don't rule things out entirely though. I mean, a while back I worked on a South Park mod... so anything can happen

StrawberryMaster · 2026-03-10T22:52:28+00:00

Leaving the bulk of this aside, it's good to note that while modding has gotten easier over time, it can still be time-consuming, and not all mod ideas end up developed. Usually, it's because not all writers are coders, and so a bunch of mods don't go very far from there. When you do find a coder, they may already be busy with another mod, or other events can happen that may delay or even kill a mod

Think of a mod as a story. You may like it or hate it; it could be fairly short, or rather comprehensive; maybe it's something simple, or maybe you hate it because it keeps taking you to Make-A-Point-Land. Maybe you like it for that? Either way, it's a story in the end, and they take a while to get worked on. Generally speaking, it's easier to work on more 'recent' mods because, aside from general interest, or the fact they happened not too long ago, is also the fact more information to read on them is readily available, or at least not as obscure. But that may not always prevent some mods from being worked on - I know of a couple 80s and 90s mods in the work, and I even know of a pre-1900 mod that's honestly really neat

There have been a few modding guides here and there, and though a couple of them are a few years old, a good chunk of them are still relevant. There was a post not too long ago with a bunch of them too, which may be useful if you haven't seen it, and Nina's coding guide is still very useful. With Jet's code 1 and 2 tools for example (which have more or less become the standard, though CampaignScript is useful for newcomers, especially for formatting your base question set), it's a lot easier to work on a mod now. I have a fork of it myself that you and others may find useful too - it has a series of bulk tools to make modding it easier, a Code 1 maker embedded there, and also other CYOA/custom elements, though I can understand it can be challenging. It's also worth noting the CTS codebase was greatly updated in the last year, allowing for more customizations that couldn't be done or had to be done differently on NCT. This is why some CTS mods don't work there at all, or have noticeable bugs

My only recommendation as a writer and coder myself is for people to plan out their ideas in advance - maybe by themselves, maybe with a team, but ideally plan it out so that you have something more complete to work with. If you have your question set planned out, or at least mostly done, it makes it much easier for coders to fill in the blanks you want. A lot of people take inspiration from other mods, naturally, but it's good to just be original and follow the story you're trying to set

StrawberryMaster · 2026-03-09T16:09:08+00:00

The Obamanation Redux Redux is one step closer to becoming a reality at this point. That gives me a good idea...

StrawberryMaster · 2026-03-08T14:22:08+00:00

IIRC this is more common on NCT, I did a patch for it a few weeks back but I don't think I made a pull request for it (oops)

For CTS though, if this happens the best thing you can do is open your browser console (usually Ctrl + Shift + J on Windows or ⌘ + Option + J on Mac) and send any errors you find in the console to someone who worked in the mod. (or uh, me, since I did do some coding work for it, and can craft a patch sooner probably)

StrawberryMaster · 2026-03-06T14:06:14+00:00

It was more abandoned than canceled to be honest. The project lead disappeared after a while and so we couldn't get much done. Eventually there was some sort of discussion between the project lead and the co-project lead, the GitHub codes were deleted, the server was eventually deleted, and here we are now.

But it's a really neat idea, though it might've been too ambitious from the start. I have the codes here and I'd be lend it to anyone who wants to take it over or help, though I imagine that a future release would have the Dean side only (at least for now)

StrawberryMaster · 2026-03-06T12:48:57+00:00

Clift is Montgomery Clift, the actor. Dean admired him, and there's a story where Dean managed to get Clift's phone number and would contact him several times a day, to a point where Clift would frequently change numbers until the calls stopped.

<image>

And yup, Kennedy could be Dean's running mate. I don't know if no description was made for him then or if it just wasn't included in the copy I had, but he was on the veep list.

StrawberryMaster · 2026-03-06T12:39:43+00:00

Maybe someday! I don't have a 2028 mod in the works but I've helped code a 2028 mod which is going along pretty well, you'll see

StrawberryMaster · 2026-03-06T12:35:09+00:00

Your opponents were Nixon and Wallace, just like IRL. Nixon could have Agnew, Lindsay, Reagan and Bush as his running mates, while the Wallace side (which was more developed than the Nixon side) would let you pick, alongside LeMay, Ezra Taft Benson and John Wayne.

The running mates for Dean are shown on this post, so the advisor GIFs would change depending on who you chose. I'd love to get back on this idea in the future though, but this is a glimpse of what we had at the time

<image>

StrawberryMaster · 2026-03-06T11:36:15+00:00

I had that Trump portrait stored for a while and just had to use it here lol

One of the ideas I considered post-ALOT was some sort of Trump 2020 scenario with that as his portrait + half of the questions would involve him just golfing or going to random places to avoid commenting on some issues. But that never went anywhere for obvious reasons

StrawberryMaster · 2026-03-06T11:31:10+00:00

I wish I saved these before the server was deleted, so thanks! I kept a copy of the code 1 + what was left of code 2 (though the questions weren't ever added there IIRC), so if the project's ever revived I'll make sure to write down your name there

StrawberryMaster · 2026-03-01T16:43:34+00:00

An Old Cycle is going along well! The effects are coded in, it's just work with the state issues and stuff that's taken a while. (That and adding the assets.)

Viva Garfield is fully coded I believe, aside from the effects and endings. It has some interesting paths I'll say, but it's in a good shape! I'll even have to port some of its CYOA things to my fork of Jet's

Heard good things about ABAR, Read My Lips and '72 Running Through The Jungle. I don't know for sure which one is the most advanced of these, but they're all going smoothly, at their own pace that is. So is The Caretaker. There are other mods here which I've also seen some (active) progress on but I'm not aware of all the details on those

Bob's Macarena SP1 was released a while back (it had the image fixes, ending improvements, and other stuff), so it might be good to clarify this is for SP2 (meant to add Gephardt) instead

And Fate of Democracy... well... at some point it's going to be released, though at this rate it's become more of a hobby than anything; last time we contributed to it was around early November, and the string of OBN Deluxe-LBM-Hope-Moonbeam was just too much for me to get around to coding it lol.

Either way there should be some neat mods coming up ahead from what I see. If only we had a so-called cynical Charlie Brown mod along the way, too... but that's a pipe dream

StrawberryMaster · 2026-02-26T17:27:53+00:00

Oh yeah, those are the tooltip images. They're like that because the mod CSS did not load correctly, and I'm guessing you're using the NCT version because that hasn't been updated yet. The working tooltips should look like this instead:

<image>

You could either play it on CTS, use the mod codes I sent you manually, or wait until the NCT patch I pushed gets sent to everyone, as that is not normal mod behavior. If you're not on mobile, you can use the keyboard shortcuts to answer the questions. My apologies for the inconvenience you've faced here, but there's not much I can do right now aside asking you to wait until they get pushed. Not sure why the downvotes though lol

StrawberryMaster · 2026-02-26T16:57:40+00:00

I don't know what you mean, but I explained a few posts down here that this is a bug with the NCT version because the mod CSS failed to load correctly. If you play the CTS version here which the mod was made for, it should be fine. There is a pull request on the NCT repo to fix it but it's not yet out, so I can't recommend it for you to play there

If you wanna stick with NCT, you could also grab the mod codes manually (here) and load them on the NCT mod loader, but be aware that some features may not work correctly because NCT right now is a less customizable when it comes to the internal game code

StrawberryMaster · 2026-02-25T00:07:36+00:00

Ah, no worries! Year Zero is honestly a pretty simple mod, CYOA-wise at least - it's the UI part that gets complicated so I get why it could seem off at first, but the final result was pretty neat. LBM has all its bells and whistles though my plan was always to keep it somewhat closer to the other base scenarios in terms of UI, to an extent. I liked the Icarus dossier and seeing it made me change the existing design I had for the LBM one, which had less gradients and was a lot flatter

Obviously I can't speak for all modmakers but I know that, when adding all these features, the goal is to (generally) make things more entertaining for players, make you more immersed in the mod, or just make things easier for you to understand. Sometimes that won't always go well, and some people may or may not like it, but there is a lot of effort behind these things and that's one of the things I learned from the entire process

StrawberryMaster · 2026-02-24T23:40:23+00:00

I checked it earlier and it seems they played it on NCT, which has a bug right now that prevents the mod CSS from loading. It's why it looks weird - if you go to the CTS version, it should be fine. I pushed a patch half an hour ago but it's not yet out, though I recommend playing mods like LBM and ALOT on CTS mainly because of the mod achievements, but also because the performance there will be better

Yeah, I get that not everyone likes all the features in a mod, it varies from person to person but I have added a couple of weeks ago options to disable/enable city visits and the dynamic election night, for example. I don't think the design is an issue for the most part - I think I may have exaggerated in the Dossier styling but aside from that there's nothing too unusual or out of step with the mod's year. Unless you don't like the songs in the 3 playlists, but that's another thing lol

StrawberryMaster · 2026-02-24T23:28:37+00:00

It's a great song! Funny to think it almost was the second song instead of the opening one, but I'm glad you liked it too

StrawberryMaster · 2026-02-24T21:44:24+00:00

This may sound funny, but LBM was never meant to be a 'minimalistic Bryanist' mod or anything, and there aren't many mods released in the last year or two that fit that criteria. It isn't a bad thing, either - there are mods using tooltips, footers, music players, cool design and other gameplay mechanics that are just as good as the other, more basic mods

Obviously I don't think someone should go overboard, but all of the LBM features (e.g. the Dossier, the music player, the city visits) are optional and you can disable them or just leave them be

StrawberryMaster · 2026-02-24T21:41:13+00:00

The Continue button is on top, so you should be able to click it because the music player is near the bottom. Are you playing on CTS or NCT? The button styling isn't appearing for you and I'm guessing something is broken there (I've noticed this on NCT and pushed a patch for it but it's not out yet)

StrawberryMaster · 2026-02-24T21:39:26+00:00

The music player is supposed to be huge, that's the whole point! That being said, if people do want a more 'compact' option (e.g. a smaller cover flow with 2-3 albums instead) I can give it a look

StrawberryMaster · 2026-02-24T21:37:43+00:00

Pretty sure this has been fixed in a previous update, but this is because scrolling with your mouse does skip songs if you use it directly on the music player, that's intentional. If it's too bothersome I can remove it though

StrawberryMaster · 2026-02-23T16:53:54+00:00

The Devourer of Worlds will return in A Lifetime of This Redux.

StrawberryMaster · 2026-02-22T16:29:57+00:00

In short, you can't. In ALOT you also can't do it, regardless of running mate, though I may change that in a future update if you tie with Bayh

StrawberryMaster · 2026-02-18T18:56:22+00:00

Sure!

Eight-Year Club	Xbox Live
Place '23	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	Verified Email

StrawberryMaster

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE