Modding

Airport CEO is moddable in a lot of different ways. This article aims to quickly go over all the different options (along with where to find examples of them and where to get started making your own). For in-depth information, it is recommended that you ask a member of the community who can point you on your way.

A Note on Performance and Game Stability

Using mods in your airport is nearly always fine for performance and game functionality, but beware that certain mods can have downsides. There is a strict ~50 mod limit on how many mods you can have from the workshop, but this has workarounds (Having mods locally, using ACEO Tweaks or ACEO Custom Buildables). However, more of an issue than this is that all mods take up VRAM. Most computers do not have a lot of VRAM availability, especially older systems, so the game crashes when there are many big mods enabled. This puts a major cap on the amount of mods that one can use. Downloading the Performance CEO mod can help with this considerably! Otherwise, the only other warning with mods is that Code Based Mods may be somewhat unstable overall.

General Note on Mods

The entire modding community asks you to please keep in mind that mods are created by the community for free. People take time out of their busy schedules to create mods that we can all use, for little benefit other than satisfaction. Please be very kind and respectful to all modders and keep in mind the effort they have put into their mods. Thank you!

Business Modding

Business Modding is by far the most common type of modding done in Airport CEO. It consists of adding a new...

• Airline
• Aviation Fuel Supplier
• Deicing Fluid Supplier
• Catering Food Supplier
• Food/Shop Franchise
• Contractor
• (or) Bank

into the game. This is generally done with one or more JSON files and some texture files. It is an easy way to get businesses that you want to see at your airport to operate at your airport. It has built-in support by the developers, with a dedicated system.

Further Information

The vast majority of these mods are found on the Steam Workshop. A link to there can be found in the links section of the wiki main page. For information on mod creation, there is info on the Official Airport CEO website. However, it is recommended to get in touch with an existing modder when working on a mod, so posting about your interests either on the Aiport CEO Discord or Forum is generally a good idea. Links to all these places can be found on the wiki main page.

Template Modding

Template Modding is exactly what it seems: the creation of templates that can be shared and placed around people's airports to cut time on repetitive builds. These can be automatically uploaded from within the game via the UI when making templates, with no JSON or textures required. These are simple to make and have little depth beyond the creation of them.

Airport Logo Modding

Airport Logo Modding (not to be confused with Sticker Modding), is the creation of additional airport logos to choose from when starting a save file. It consists of making the usual JSON and texture file but is simpler than Business Modding. It is again recommended to talk to a member of the community before starting such a project. The same links apply as to Business Modding.

Shop Product Modding

Shop Product Modding is the creation of additional shop products to be displayed on shop shelves. The above section applies here as well, so more will not be explained.

Sticker Modding

Sticker Modding (not to be confused with Airport Logo Modding), is the creation of textures that can be dragged out and placed in the Airport CEO world. This is rather helpful when adding extra detail in the form of floor markings and taxiway markings, as are its most common uses. Stickers can be inserted into the game by putting a .png file into a specific folder in the game files (AppData > Local Low > Apoapsis Studios > Airport CEO > Stickers) to be loaded into the game.

Further Information

Mods of this type are available on the workshop (see wiki main page for links). However, they require the moving of files around after downloading. This is best explained by mod descriptions on the workshop, so see those for more info. If you are interested in adding some of your own Stickers to the game, add them to the above link. If you want to package them and upload them to the workshop then the information under Business Modding > Further Information on mod creation applies.

Code Based Modding

Once considered impossible by the community, Code Based Modding is a new but very powerful way of modding the game. It consists of using a framework to inject code into the game at runtime, allowing the modder to change pretty much anything about the game. However, it is extremely time intensive to develop such a mod and only a few are around. These can also be pretty unstable, so beware.

Further Information

The primary Code Based Mods are Airport CEO Tweaks, and Airport CEO Custom Buildables, which add new aircraft and turnaround realism/customizability and new items and floors (respectively). More information on all code-based mods can be found on the Airport CEO Forum (see wiki main page for link). Creating these takes a lot of skill, knowledge, and time, and might be against the EULA. To get started, express your interests on Discord or Forum, and a modder will get back to you at some point (Probably me Humoresque the writer of this entire article (and most of the modern wiki grumble grumble)). Really that's the only way to start...