Dear modders, I would like to learn to do what you do...

[Deleted User]

And I want to know what the heck modders mean when they say this or that.

Any advice/tips on how to start learning? Thanks

WarChiefZeke

I just completed and released my first mod a couple of weeks ago.

My advice is to start by reading tutorials. Read more than one, top to bottom. There are a lot of good ones on this very forum. Then, do some testing. See if you can create your weapon or npc or other in-game. Just take it piece by piece and you can learn it quickly with minimal headaches

and i am sure the modders in this community as well as myself will be helpful in guiding you to understanding whatever you may be confused about or helping you to fix any issues you may have. they certainly were in my case.

good luck!

OlvynChuru

HalfCelestial said:

I want to know what the heck modders mean when they say this or that.

How about this: make a comment listing every term you've heard about that you're confused about, and people on this forum will try to explain what they mean.

[Deleted User]

OlvynChuru said:

HalfCelestial said:

I want to know what the heck modders mean when they say this or that.

How about this: make a comment listing every term you've heard about that you're confused about, and people on this forum will try to explain what they mean.

That would be extremely inefficient because I don't understand most of what they say. And it's not the proper way of learning anyway. I'm just asking for some pointers, from experienced people who could tell me what they think I should focus on or avoid in order to learn. I will begin to understand them once I learn how they do their thing.

That's all, I'm not asking them to do the thinking for me, just asking for a word of wisdom.

Ardanis

Play around with game resources in editor (NearInfinity or DLTCEP).
Refer to IESDP if something is unclear.
Take apart a few mods that do the same thing you want to try.

argent77

Fully agree. You have to get a basic understanding of game resources, how they are structured, and how they all play together. IESDP is probably the single most important source of information about resources formats, script commands, effect opcodes, and more. The WeiDU Readme is almost equally important as you will most certainly code your mod in WeiDU script to make it compatible with other mods.

Apart from that, I would also suggest to inspect other mods to get a feeling how to code your mod. The learning curve for WeiDU scripts is quite steep. The majority of time is probably spent with testing, testing and more testing though.

To make writing WeiDU scripts easier I would recommend to use an advanced text editor (e.g. Notepad++) together with a syntax highlighter (such as this one).