General Modder's Guide for Newbies

[KoolHndLuke]

For those of us that have skulked around in the technical support sections for various games here, one big obstacle in helping people with their games is that we don't know how much they know. To remedy this- I thought that a general modding guide might help some newbies so that they are more familiar with basic modding concepts (much in the spirit of the Wasteland Survival Guide, lol).

 

 What I'd like to do first with this thread is just get tips from all of us that have been doing this awhile and would like to share in one place that's easily accessible for all. What I plan to do- eventually- is to take all the tips and outline them here in the O.P. for quick and easy reference.

 

In a way I suppose we would all be helping ourselves by doing this because I'm pretty fucking sure none of us likes explaining very basic modding practices in detail before we can even address the specific game or mod problem being asked about.

 

Let me stress that there is no timeline on this- quite honestly because most of us have forgotten almost as much as we've learned and we need time to remember. Not only that, certain practices may have changed over the years due to updates and such. So for now, it's more just a placeholder until I can figure out what information needs to be included and how to organize it. Thank you.

 

Section 1; Buying and Installing A Game (that you intend to mod)

 

Section 2; Mod Managers

 

Section 3; Choosing Mods

 

Section 4; Downloading and Installing Mods

 

Section 5; Load Order and Conflicts

 

Section 6; Patches

 

 

Edited March 17, 2023 by KoolHndLuke

[KoolHndLuke]

#1 General Rule of modding, you ask? READ EVERYTHING that you can. Then read it again because I fucking guarantee you will have to later anyway. Can't count how many times I've fucked up a mod installation because I missed something important in the mod description or installation guide. I'd venture to guess that about 95% of people's problems with mods are user error. 

 

 

Edited March 17, 2023 by KoolHndLuke

[Gukahn]

#2 For the love of fuck, google.. 99% of all Questions got answered a million times.. Must have answered one and the same question 30 times by now.. Even the nicest people get salty after that. (one of the reasons I stopped to answer support as often as I used to.)

And yes, Google sends you very often straight to a few threads and I guarantee you at least 7 out of 10 times, you'll find the answer in the second or third Link

[Alessia Wellington]

Considering how few actually bother to read ANY guide, this thread's quite pointless.

[Yinkle]

Nice idea in theory, but like @Alessia Wellington said, if folk don't read mod descriptions then they are unlikely to bother reading this either. A good plan might be to just say "READ MOD DESCRIPTIONS & USE GOOGLE" in a crazy font and be done with it...

[KoolHndLuke]

25 minutes ago, Alessia Wellington said:

Considering how few actually bother to read ANY guide, this thread's quite pointless.

"Of course, if the reader (modder) can't be bothered to understand something as important as a guide on how to mod their game(s), then what can we do, huh?" 

 

 

Edited March 17, 2023 by KoolHndLuke

[KoolHndLuke]

45 minutes ago, Yinkle said:

folk don't read mod descriptions then they are unlikely to bother reading this either

You think it's more a language barrier or just laziness? I mean I had to learn proper terms when looking for or talking about game specific info.- which I suspect we all did.

[Alessia Wellington]

2 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

You think it's more a language barrier or just laziness?

 

I'd say both. Complaining is much easier than reading/learning stuff.

[KoolHndLuke]

4 minutes ago, Alessia Wellington said:

 

I'd say both. Complaining is much easier than reading/learning stuff.

Acknowledged. I'll still work on it some and wait for more feedback. Hopefully a few newbies themselves may give an account. Wouldn't hurt if a mod or two gave their opinion as well.

[Yinkle]

2 hours ago, KoolHndLuke said:

Acknowledged. I'll still work on it some and wait for more feedback. Hopefully a few newbies themselves may give an account. Wouldn't hurt if a mod or two gave their opinion as well.

The language barrier thing is a huge issue, it's hard enough for an English native "newbie" learning how to mod, so maybe some kind of translation tool could be of some use.

[Decèdere]

11 hours ago, Yinkle said:

Nice idea in theory, but like @Alessia Wellington said, if folk don't read mod descriptions then they are unlikely to bother reading this either. A good plan might be to just say "READ MOD DESCRIPTIONS & USE GOOGLE" in a crazy font and be done with it...

Maybe skip the crazy font though or people won't read even that. So many mod pages are filled with tons of crazy font, multicolored text, different size text, and it's just hard to follow. I get by skipping to the "requirements" and "installations" section, that is when I kind find them through all the shit.