Help with direction? Thread

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Help with direction? (Forums : Development Banter : Help with direction?)		Post Reply
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Raidforce Begginning Modder	Jul 17 2008, 3:51am Anchor
Raidforce Begginning Modder	I am interested in modding, quite a bit really, and can do art quite well...that's about it. I dont really know where to start with learning programming, modelling, etc. and I dont quite get all the information I need from the tutorials. One thing they don't mention is HOW to start. They bring up simplistic things like making rockets go slower in HL2, but they dont continue on with other How-to's that make trial and error the only viable, and only barely viable, option to learning. Can someone either get me on my way on starting out or tell me of some programming guides that have helped you on your way?
mflux Shadow Cat	Jul 17 2008, 8:55am Anchor
mflux Shadow Cat	I learned a lot of my programming concepts in Processing Processing.org Other thing to do is keep dabbling.. and read as much code as you can stuff down your throat. Keep poking and experimenting. Use an SVN system so you can restore your changes back to some point if you run into trouble, and if you don't know what SVN is I would google it and download Tortoise SVN... find yourself a free repository (google code). I would start off with the rocket tutorial, then move onto slightly harder and harder things. Have an idea in your head that you want to try and mod, then slowly work towards that. For example, one of my first "major" modifications after I learned how to mess with the engine was attempt to implement the double jump. It took me three weeks, and it still sucks, so we removed it from our mod. But, in doing so I learned a lot along the way on how the engine works. Modeling.. first get yourself a 3D modeling software (free if possible). There are literally a TON of tutorials out there. A book I highly recommend is Digital Character Animation by George Maestri: Amazon.com He teaches stuff in a non-software specific way so you'll have to be keen on using your own wits to translate what he's trying to teach, to how you do it in your software. It's usually pretty straightforward, and a quick google usually solves any lingering questions. His book covers so many aspects, including modeling concepts, rigging, weights, and a bit on animation. -- Project Berimbau - Third-person sword fighting game HL2 mod.
Raidforce Begginning Modder	Jul 17 2008, 3:47pm Anchor
Raidforce Begginning Modder	thanks, mflux. I do have an idea of what I want to eventually create, and I am hoping to do this completely by myself, so as to learn the most from it as I can. Luckily I can do art, animation, and have a decent knowledge of design (level design, GUI, etc.) so now I just need to know programming and modelling. I will look into that programming site you mentioned, and hopefully start getting some small things of my mod idea out of the way soon.
ambershee Nimbushfish Rawks	Jul 19 2008, 1:00pm Anchor
ambershee Nimbushfish Rawks	I learnt an awful lot about key programming concepts by writing simple console and gui applications in C# before moving onto bigger and badder things. There's a great book called "Programming in the Key of C#" that's easy to understand and get into.
Varsity Fine Nonsense	Jul 20 2008, 4:01am Anchor
Varsity Fine Nonsense	Yeah, console apps are the way to go. It's much easier to learn a language when all of the code was written by you and fits into a single screen.
Raidforce Begginning Modder	Jul 21 2008, 7:34pm Anchor
Raidforce Begginning Modder	lol, ya, maybe I will try that. On another note, does it seem like a decent idea to post my mod idea up on the ideas/concepts forum? I do want feedback, but I also don't want my idea being taken in any way. (I dont really trust that everyone will listen to the warning thread posted on that forum)
Gibberstein Generic Coder Type Thing	Jul 22 2008, 3:09am Anchor
Gibberstein Generic Coder Type Thing	You are safe. In all the time have been posting to this and other modding sites (almost ten years ) I haven't seen anyone see someones idea and then develop it behind their back. Its hard enough finding people who like an idea and want to work with you, so no-one will work on it without you -- "lets say Portal is a puzzle game, so its a rehash of Tetris" - Wraiyth points out the craziness of stereotyping games by their genre