Quid Pro Quo

[Guest]

Alright, so, this is a bit strange, but I'm looking for someone to teach/help me learn (I thought to differentiate the two as, in my most humble of opinions, they're very much two different things) how to mod for Crusader Kings 2. I was able to glean a few things off the ol' internet, but all the guides seemed to follow the idea that I already had some experience with modding, which I do not. Now, I'm not so brazen as to think that there are a steady stream of people eager to share with me this knowledge purely from the goodness of their own hearts, so I'd be more than willing to lend my abilities as a writer to supplement their work (related or otherwise to the teaching). So, any interested parties feel free to contact with me or, failing that, anyone with a link to a solid guide as how to do it would be appreciated. 

[whateverdontcare]

I can provide the free advice that I learned modding from looking at other people's mods and making minor modifications that slowly got more and more significant.

[Guest]

I would very much appreciate that, I've been a long time lurker, and over the years I've gotten ideas, but the ideas are useless without the ability to do something with them.

[whateverdontcare]

5 hours ago, Specter121 said:

I would very much appreciate that, I've been a long time lurker, and over the years I've gotten ideas, but the ideas are useless without the ability to do something with them.

I mean, my advice is that I learned from looking at other people's mods or the game's files. Like, I want to change a trait so I look at the files and find the code saying "martial = 3" or whatever and change it to "martial = 5" or even "stewardship = 5". A lot of it is pretty easy to figure out, so you can start from there and then you'll be able to understand the advanced guides online eventually. I'm just recommending you do this in case nobody accepts the offer.

[lockeslylcrit]

1. Download Notepad++. Seriously, go do it. I cant ever imagine modding without it.

2. Learn your boolean operators. These play a huge part in modding. If you have any prior knowledge of programming, electrical engineering, or such, this will be second nature to you.

3. Learn the scopes. This may seem daunting, but it gets easier as time goes on and you're churning out event chains.

4. Bookmark the wiki and look at the bottom box for all the places you need to reference. Of high importance: Scripting, Decisions, Events, Conditions, Commands, Scopes.

5. Reverse engineer a mod and/or vanilla files. Look through the code and find how they do it and why. The more you look at the code, the easier you'll be able to understand it.

6. Start small. Don't overextend yourself by starting on a grandiose mod. Start with something simple like adding in new traits, or modifying existing events.

7. Be patient. You will have to restart the game every time you make a change just to see if it works. Modding is definitely not for the impatient.

8. Download and learn to use the Validator. This will save you hours of headaches trying to find that one bracket you forgot to add.

9. Do not be afraid to ask questions you may have in the Quick Questions thread.