Anno 1800 Python API Prober

A simple python script to reverse-engineer the Anno 1800 python API.

It allows you to change the debugger.pyfile while the game is running and write debugging info to the debug.log file.

Install

• Install the Anno 1800 Mod Loader https://github.com/xforce/anno1800-mod-loader
• Also checkout the Spice it up Mod collection to get some working samples of mods. https://www.nexusmods.com/anno1800/mods/5?tab=description
• Copy the [DEBUG] API PROBER directory from the src to your Anno 1800 mod directory (See Anno 1800 Mod Loader for instructions. Usually you create a mod directory at C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\games\Anno 1800
• Then edit [DEBUG] API PROBER/Prober/start_script.py" line 5 self.src_path = "C:/code/anno1800_modding/src", set the src_path to the directory, where the debugger.py file is.

How to use

The mod binds the "I" key to send all loaded python-modules to the debugger.py script (start_script.py does that).

You can freely edit the debugger.py script while the game is running, the start_script.py is loaded during the game startup though.

ANNO 1800 Python API

It seems Anno 1800 is using a Python API internally. The resourceful brains behind Anno 1800 Mod Loader found a way to tap onto this API.

PYTHON_API.md contains some of my limited insights.

More useful info

quickbms

quickbms allows you to extract the game data containers (Data0.rda, ..., Patch1.rda) found in Ubisoft Game Launcher\games\Anno 1800\maindata.

• Download quickbms and the Anno5 script from http://aluigi.altervista.org/quickbms.htm

Find an overview of the data-structure here : https://anno1800.fandom.com/wiki/Modding

assets.xml

Once extracted from Data0.rda, find ths asset.xml at <data extracted from Data0>\config\export\main\asset

read_assets.py

src/read_asset.py is a simple parser for the assets.xml that generates a list of all products. (asset_list.py)

open Anno 1800 console

Anno 1800 has an in-game console where you can access the Python API. In the python script execute dir()['console'].toggleVisibility() or console.toggleVisibility()