Posted: 11 Mar 2007, 00:36
Just chiming in to give my two cents, as I also recently started to mod knowing nothing at all. Things I have learned:
() Some wiki articles or tutorials on the forum are very out of date, and some are new and accurate. Find out what people dabble in stuff like that (some of them have posted in this thread) and ask them in a thread, via PM or in TASclient which ones you should go by. I have only met very helpful and generous people here who will gladly take a minute or two to figure something out for you.
() Look at the source of other mods, and copy it. Start from a file that does something similar that you want to do, and edit it, instead of starting from scratch. It makes things a lot easier. Of course, if you only change little, you should give credit to the person who made it. Yes, even if they say it's not necessary.
() Gameplay > all. Your mod should work as a game. If you present a working game to people, they are much more willing to help you out with sound or modelling or debugging or whatever. The flesh of any game is how it plays, everything else is secondary. I'm not saying graphics aren't important (they are, very), but they are not as important as gameplay.
() Don't expect too much. In all probability, nobody will play your mod, and if they do, they will play it very seldom. Virtually all Spring players are here because of XTA or AA/BA. Mods like Expand and Exterminate, Star Wars TA, Nanoblobs, Gundam, and Final Frontier have had so much work put into them and are solid, large games, but still hardly anybody plays them. Put what you are doing in perspective.
() Try stuff out yourself. If everyone says one unit/strat is massively OP, then you should be able to win most of the time with it. So play ten games, and use it every time. If you win 8 because of it, you should probably nerf something. If you get countered half the time, the balance is probably fine.
() Make a small mod first. Don't envision a 5 tiered, genre-busting super-game first. Learn to use your tools first by making a small mod. As soon as that works, you have demonstrated to people that you are capable of pulling through with something, and they will be more willing to help you. And believe me, you will need lots of help.
I don't know if this helps, but these are the things I learned while learning. I still don't know how to model or script, though, so maybe you should take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.
() Some wiki articles or tutorials on the forum are very out of date, and some are new and accurate. Find out what people dabble in stuff like that (some of them have posted in this thread) and ask them in a thread, via PM or in TASclient which ones you should go by. I have only met very helpful and generous people here who will gladly take a minute or two to figure something out for you.
() Look at the source of other mods, and copy it. Start from a file that does something similar that you want to do, and edit it, instead of starting from scratch. It makes things a lot easier. Of course, if you only change little, you should give credit to the person who made it. Yes, even if they say it's not necessary.
() Gameplay > all. Your mod should work as a game. If you present a working game to people, they are much more willing to help you out with sound or modelling or debugging or whatever. The flesh of any game is how it plays, everything else is secondary. I'm not saying graphics aren't important (they are, very), but they are not as important as gameplay.
() Don't expect too much. In all probability, nobody will play your mod, and if they do, they will play it very seldom. Virtually all Spring players are here because of XTA or AA/BA. Mods like Expand and Exterminate, Star Wars TA, Nanoblobs, Gundam, and Final Frontier have had so much work put into them and are solid, large games, but still hardly anybody plays them. Put what you are doing in perspective.
() Try stuff out yourself. If everyone says one unit/strat is massively OP, then you should be able to win most of the time with it. So play ten games, and use it every time. If you win 8 because of it, you should probably nerf something. If you get countered half the time, the balance is probably fine.
() Make a small mod first. Don't envision a 5 tiered, genre-busting super-game first. Learn to use your tools first by making a small mod. As soon as that works, you have demonstrated to people that you are capable of pulling through with something, and they will be more willing to help you. And believe me, you will need lots of help.
I don't know if this helps, but these are the things I learned while learning. I still don't know how to model or script, though, so maybe you should take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.
I also never really said people should spend hours helping me, I just asked if someone could give me some kind of tutorial.