Hi, needy request here, how would I go about modding this game to change other character's names? I've no experience so feel free to just say if it would be too complicated for me to do, I just wanted to see if I could before jumping in
It's possible, but do you have no experience with Renpy or no experience with coding?
In Pale Carnations, the character objects other than MC are defined with string literals for names, not variables. You could edit the names in the character definitions, which would change what name is shown in the name box. That half measure would be worse than nothing at all, because when characters refer to each other in the script, the names aren't interpolated variables either. So you could rename Veronica to "Jennifer Walters", and that name would show up when she spoke, but everyone would keep calling her Veronica.
The brute force solution to that: extract the script files, edit the character defs, then do a long, laborious series of finds and replaces for the names you're editing in all the script files. Replace All wouldn't work well, because the names show up in variable and label names within the script, so you'd probably want to be selective about what gets replaced. Then next update you'd have to do that again for the new script and merge with previous edits. That's not my jam, but I don't kink shame.
Alternatively, you could write a
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function to handle replacement in every 'say' statement. It's not terribly hard if you have coding experience, and if you don't, modding a pirated Renpy VN is a pretty nice way to pop your cherry. Low risk, low challenge, easily read language, looots of examples to follow.
Note: I've given no thought to what effect either of those solutions would have on the bio/stats screens either. Probably no worse effect than the name on the bio screen wouldn't match your edits, though.
