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Your first data pack

In this tutorial you make a small pack called Pub Legends: two county-circuit players who are each other’s rival, a pub that sponsors players on the bottom tiers, and a sharper finisher at the top of the game. You need a text editor and about ten minutes.

The finished pack is a download on the example packs page if you would rather start from it.

1. Make the folder#

On Windows, start the game and open Mods → Open mods folder. Make a folder in it called pub-legends. By the end it will hold five files:

Folder and file names matter: the game reads each kind of content from its own place. data/players/ is a folder, so any .json file in it is read; data/sponsors.json is a single file. The content types page lists every place.

2. Say who the pack is: mod.json#

Every pack has a mod.json at the top of its folder:

{
  "id": "acme.pub-legends",
  "name": "Pub Legends",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "gameVersion": ">=0.50.15",
  "authors": ["Acme"],
  "description": "Two pub legends for the county circuit, a sponsor of their own, and a sharper Dani Okafor."
}

• id is the pack’s id: lower-case letters, digits, dashes and dots. Start it with a name of your own (acme here) so it cannot clash with someone else’s.
• version is yours to raise when you change the pack (1.0.0, 1.1.0, …).
• gameVersion says which versions of the game the pack is for. >=0.50.15 means this one and later.

Every field is in the mod.json reference.

3. Add two players#

Create data/players/legends.json. A content file is a JSON list of records:

[
  {
    "id": "acme.pub-legends.player.big-dave",
    "firstName": "Dave",
    "lastName": "Hollins",
    "nickname": "Big Dave",
    "nationality": "ENG",
    "born": "1979-03-14",
    "gender": "m",
    "hand": "R",
    "tier": 5,
    "colour": "#c0392b",
    "attributes": {
      "scoring": 64, "finishing": 58, "checkoutKnowledge": 70, "consistency": 55,
      "tempoControl": 60, "bullAccuracy": 52, "composure": 66, "resilience": 72,
      "crowdHandling": 80, "concentration": 57, "stamina": 50, "fitness": 45, "eyesight": 61
    },
    "hidden": { "potential": 68, "ambition": 55, "professionalism": 48 },
    "personality": { "media": "showman", "temperament": "steady" },
    "rivalIds": ["acme.pub-legends.player.shona-reid"],
    "bio": "Thirty years at the Red Lion. Still the man to beat on a Thursday."
  },
  {
    "id": "acme.pub-legends.player.shona-reid",
    "firstName": "Shona",
    "lastName": "Reid",
    "nickname": "The Lighthouse",
    "nationality": "SCO",
    "born": "1996-08-02",
    "gender": "f",
    "hand": "L",
    "tier": 5,
    "colour": "#2e86c1",
    "attributes": {
      "scoring": 61, "finishing": 66, "checkoutKnowledge": 63, "consistency": 64,
      "tempoControl": 58, "bullAccuracy": 60, "composure": 62, "resilience": 59,
      "crowdHandling": 55, "concentration": 67, "stamina": 63, "fitness": 70, "eyesight": 72
    },
    "hidden": { "potential": 82, "ambition": 78, "professionalism": 74 },
    "personality": { "media": "humble", "temperament": "volatile" },
    "rivalIds": ["acme.pub-legends.player.big-dave"],
    "bio": "Came south from Fraserburgh with a left arm nobody could read."
  }
]

• Every new record’s id starts with your pack’s id and a dot: acme.pub-legends.player.big-dave. The part after that is up to you; player. just keeps things tidy.
• tier is the level a player plays at, from 1 (the World Series) to 5 (the county circuit).
• Attributes run from 0 to 100. A county player sits in the 50s and 60s; the best in the world are in the 90s.
• rivalIds names other players by their ids. Here each names the other.
• nationality is a three-letter nation code: ENG, SCO, WAL, NED and the rest are in nations.

The players reference has every field: portraits, walk-on music, a favourite double, the season their Tour Card runs to, and more.

4. Add a sponsor with a logo#

Put a square picture at assets/sponsors/red-lion.png (256 by 256 pixels is plenty), then create data/sponsors.json:

[
  {
    "id": "acme.pub-legends.sponsor.red-lion",
    "name": "The Red Lion",
    "category": "local",
    "tierMin": 4,
    "tierMax": 5,
    "baseValue": 1500,
    "seasons": [1, 2],
    "targets": [{ "kind": "seasonAverage", "value": 70 }],
    "colour": "#a93226",
    "logo": "assets/sponsors/red-lion.png"
  }
]

• tierMin and tierMax say which players it will offer deals to: here, tiers 4 and 5.
• baseValue is what a deal is worth per season, in the game’s currency; seasons is how long a deal runs, here one or two seasons.
• targets are what the sponsor asks for: here, a season average of 70.
• logo is a path inside your pack, with forward slashes. Pictures can be WebP, PNG or JPEG. See Images, sound and models.

5. Change a player of the base game#

You could copy a whole base game record into your pack with the same id, and your copy would replace it. When you only want to change a field or two, a patch is better: it keeps the rest of the record, so your pack keeps working when the base game updates that player. Create data/patches/core.patch.json:

[
  {
    "target": "player:core.player.dani-okafor",
    "patch": { "nickname": "The Quicksilver Kid", "attributes": { "finishing": 95 } }
  }
]

• target is the kind of record (player), a colon and its id.
• patch holds only what changes. Objects merge field by field, so attributes here changes finishing and keeps every other attribute. A list in a patch replaces the whole list, and null removes a field.

To find ids, open the base game’s own pack: on Windows it is the DartsPlayerSimulator_Data\StreamingAssets\core folder where the game is installed. It is the best reference there is. Read it, but do not change it: your pack does that.

6. Load it#

1. In the game, open Mods and press Reload mods.
2. Pub Legends appears with its contents: 2 players, 1 sponsor, 1 patch. If something is wrong, the pack shows Not loaded and its details list each problem with the file, the line and the field.
3. Start a new career. Packs reach new careers; a career already under way keeps the data it began with.
4. Look up Big Dave and Shona Reid in the rankings, and the new nickname on Dani Okafor’s profile. With a career on the bottom tiers, The Red Lion is among the sponsors who may make you an offer.

When it does not load#

An error in any file stops the whole pack from loading, so a pack is never half there. A warning (a picture that cannot be read, a record that replaces someone else’s) lets it load. The commonest mistakes:

If the pack loads but your records are not there, check the folder and file names against the content types page: a file in the wrong place, such as data/player/ for data/players/, is not read at all.

For autocomplete and checking while you type, set up your editor with the game’s schemas: see Editor set-up.

7. Share it#

Zip the pub-legends folder. Anyone can install it from Mods → Import a mod on Windows, or Data packs → Import a data pack on a phone. See Install, test and share.

Where next#

• How data packs work: ids, replacing and patching, load order, and what careers see.
• Calendar and entry rules to give your players events to play in, and Tours and the Tour Card for a tour of their own.
• Stories to give them a storyline.
• The field reference for everything else.