Tips for beginners Thread

Hi,

As a beginner in modding, what are the tips for starting out?

I am a C++/Java programmer, and finding a project to start on is difficult, so I have a few questions about modding :

1). If I wanted to create a mod for the game, but cannot find the engine, is it possible to acquire the engine from that game's main files?
2). What skills should I focus on to become better experienced in modding? (aside from the roles of a modding team)
3). Are there any other languages beside C++, C# and Java I should also look into? (only just started C#)

Thanks

For game development Java is definitely going to be useful. Unity, Unreal Engine and possibly cry engine (but i'm not sure) all use a version of javascript but also support c# in some cases. Javascript is probably the quickest language to get started in as coming from any other language it takes about 20 minutes to learn the syntax of it.

However if you want to start modding its a different story.
Source is the engine with the most modable games (L4D2, Portal 2, TF2, HL2) at the moment to the most of my limited knowledge. Source runs on c++ so thats probably the best option for that. However other than that it simply depends on what game you want to mod.

Personally I skipped modding, at least for the moment due to the fact i'm working off a mac and went straight into unity. So far i've found Unity to be fairly flexible with its only main drawbacks being its lack of BSP brushes that source and Unreal both have. However i've found it relatively easy to get into and am currently using Unity to develop a procedural game to be announce next year on moddb.

Hope this helps
Hugo1005

hugo1005 wrote: For game development Javascript is definitely going to be useful. Unity, Unreal Engine and possibly cry engine (but i'm not sure) all use a version of javascript but also support c# in some cases. Javascript is probably the quickest language to get started in as coming from any other language it takes about 20 minutes to learn the syntax of it.

There are engines and games with open code for all languages. No point in poking around every language known to game devs.

1) If you can't find it, it's probbably not open for modding. You can still debug and patch games which lack hacking checks. But that's debugging+assembly skills you'd need.
2) Experienced at what? You can work with declarative text, XML, json files in addition to filesystem manipulation to mod games. Pick something, do something.
3) No. You need A language, which depends on what you want to mod/make, not all of them. Lua is the de facto logic language nowadays. Lotta open code for it.

since when does the unreal engine use javascript?

I believe it uses unreal script a version of javascript, the same way unity uses unity script.

ShinobiNFC wrote: since when does the unreal engine use javascript?

hugo1005 wrote: I believe it uses unreal script a version of javascript, the same way unity uses unity script.

It does not. Neither of that is correct. Whenever anyone wants to utter javascript they are often wrong and should hold their goddamnned hands in their pants.

But seriously, most people have no clue what a javascript is, both of you should take that into account whenever reading statements about it.

Edited by: somonels

Ok i correct my statement after looking at wikipedia, UScript, is very similar to Javascript and so is Unity Script. So my initial recommendation to learn javascript would still be reasonable javascript is still a good place to start considering it shares a lot of similarities with java and java shares a lot of similarities with c++, so it would appear like an ideal stepping stone to the more complex languages.

From my experience using UnityScript although it is different to Javascript, for someone who is coming from javascript the syntax isn't scary and its not really much of a jump which was really my whole reasoning behind it. For example I came to unity script from java and c++ and it took me about 30 mins to familiarise with and the rest is just learning the libraries.

Wikipedia wrote: Unlike Java, UnrealScript is case-insensitive, and does not have object wrappers for primitive types. Interfaces are only supported in Unreal Engine generation 3 and a few Unreal Engine 2 games. UnrealScript supportsoperator overloading, but not method overloading, except for optional parameters.

Edited by: hugo1005