Asking for a rundown on all steps to create a Mod for Baldur's Gate EE

KhaosBhaalspawn

I think it would be a cool idea to add more Wild Surges to the game. It doesn't sound too complicated, should be highly compatibility with other mods and hasn't been done before (as far as i can see). I want my mod to be available for BGEE1, BGEE2 and BGEET version 2.5/2.6 while interferring with as little as possible. Ideally it would even be featured on common mod setup tools.

Of course the problem is that i'm a total newbie with no idea where to begin so i would appreciate any help and directions you people can throw at me. Starting at what software modders use, where to find good examples of simple mods, where to find the wild surge tables and how to ideally expand them and everything else that could come to mind.

Thanks in advance!

jmerry

The first thing to look for is how the system you're trying to alter actually works. Which usually means poking around in Near Infinity.
If you do that with wild surges in mind ... there's a file wildmag.2DA. That looks promising. Open it up, and it's just a text table. Some header stuff, then the actual content. Each row has three entries; a number counting from 1 to 100, a SPELL column, and a STRREF column. SPELL, with entries like SPWM102, is the spell that gets cast instead of what you were trying to do. STRREF, with entries like 315, points to the text that runs in the log window when that surge happens - in that case, "Wild color changes" in English.

We're already looking at something complicated enough to require the full suite of tools. If you're making new wild surges and want your mod to play well with others, you need to add text to the game (which means coding in WeiDU is practically required), and you need to add spells to the game (which will need your modder prefix so they don't conflict with stuff other people did).

And frankly, that's a lot of tutorial to go through. Go find somewhere that already has tutorial content, like this series of videos.

But wait. That 2DA isn't the whole story. Some of the rows have entries of * in the SPELL column. They go to surges like "roll four more times" and "no save" and "spell cast normally". Most of those do stuff, but there isn't an associated spell. Those are handled differently, and I suspect they're hardcoded. I suspect the d100 roll is also hardcoded, and changing the number of possible surges won't work.
So that scales the possibilities back. Given the level of hardcoding involved, there's only so much you can do. Replace existing wild surges with new effects, yes. Add more wild surges, no. Alter any of the "meta" surges that don't just cast something specific instead of your spell, also no.

GraionDilach

What jmerry says is correct - https://gibberlings3.github.io/iesdp/files/2da/2da_bgee/wildmag.htm

This IESDP includes a lot of technical information about files, file formats and what they might be used for. Alongside WeiDU's own documentation, it is handy to have bookmarked around.