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[GreyGoldFish]

Hey there! I'm a fellow Dwarf Fortress addict, and so far I've mostly been a Fortress player, but recently I've taken an interest in modding the game, so I'm curious as to how you wonderful people started modding! I've read the modding guide on the wiki, and while I believe that I have a grasp on modding raws now, I saw that DFHack can be used to increase the modding capabilities of the game, but I'm not sure how.

Anyway, thank you for reading, and I wish you a lovely day/evening!

[Shonai_Dweller]

I decided to change siege triggers. This was back in 40.x when sieges were often getting lost, so the more encouragement the better. I realised how simple it was and slowly began adjusting little things (beards for humans, natural bow skills for elves, etc) until I had a nice set of raws that I wanted in every game. It's as simple as an advanced options menu.

Then that escalated into new races, playing with body parts and such and eventually a vague sense of lore regarding how my worlds work which I update and play each new version of the game with.

Mainly I'm intetested in making interesting balanced worlds rather than games in which fortress mode itself is nicely balanced (fortresses die in spectacular unfair ways in my worlds. Ha ha). Right now, necromancers aren't getting enough breathing space in 47.x because of my preference for very crowded worlds and Towers don't survive very long. Working on modifying my edits to find a nice balance again without having to generate even bigger worlds.

Dfhack I haven't got round to learning. For the simple reason that I haven't had to use it yet to achieve what I want to do. Lack of ambition? Perhaps...
I will learn it when I simply must have a certain function for my worlds and raw tweaking doesn't give me enough functionality. In the meantime it's kind of nice not to be tied to its release schedule and I can just update as Toady brings out new releases and see what happens.

Can't wait to throw my critters at Mythgen and see what it comes up with. 

[GreyGoldFish]

I decided to change siege triggers. This was back in 40.x when sieges were often getting lost, so the more encouragement the better. I realised how simple it was and slowly began adjusting little things (beards for humans, natural bow skills for elves, etc) until I had a nice set of raws that I wanted in every game. It's as simple as an advanced options menu.

Then that escalated into new races, playing with body parts and such and eventually a vague sense of lore regarding how my worlds work which I update and play each new version of the game with.

Mainly I'm intetested in making interesting balanced worlds rather than games in which fortress mode itself is nicely balanced (fortresses die in spectacular unfair ways in my worlds. Ha ha). Right now, necromancers aren't getting enough breathing space in 47.x because of my preference for very crowded worlds and Towers don't survive very long. Working on modifying my edits to find a nice balance again without having to generate even bigger worlds.

Dfhack I haven't got round to learning. For the simple reason that I haven't had to use it yet to achieve what I want to do. Lack of ambition? Perhaps...
I will learn it when I simply must have a certain function for my worlds and raw tweaking doesn't give me enough functionality. In the meantime it's kind of nice not to be tied to its release schedule and I can just update as Toady brings out new releases and see what happens.

Can't wait to throw my critters at Mythgen and see what it comes up with. 

I must say, that's quite glorious indeed! So from what I understand, you make the mods for yourself first and foremost?

Not depending on DFHack does sound nice, I simply don't know whether or not my current project is ambitious or not since I can't quite gauge its feasibility right now. What I do know is that after some research I can say with some amount of confidence that no one has made a mod like this before.

Cheers!

[IndigoFenix]

I started by adding creatures...just to see if I could.  After experimenting with minor tweaks to existing creatures, my first full-built creatures were mostly video game species, especially those that I thought would have interesting mechanics rather than just being slightly altered creatures.  Kirby was my first (a creature that could not be wounded, but could be killed by bludgeoning - mind you, this was before pulping was a thing, it's much more straightforward now), followed by Chain Chomps (a pet that could be butchered for iron but was hard to control) and Gohma (a megabeast that would be hard to fight unless hit in the eye).

Chain Chomps led to my Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom mod.  Importing cartoony and gimmicky Mario creatures into DF's realistic combat system, and making them function roughly like they did in the games from which they hailed, seemed like an intriguing challenge.  It went fairly well and is probably my most popular DF creation overall.

After discovering the flexibility of the interaction system, I used it to create a number of minor mods that would exploit this system, ranging from the Plump Helmet Man Overgrowth (farmable Plump Helmet Men that were edible, but had a devious hidden interaction-based AI and would rebel against your dwarves if their population grew too fast).  Sadly this kind of system is no longer as viable as it used to be because the AI's use of interactions is much less reliable.  Other experiments included a sphinx that would ask riddles and pretas, a body-hopping vampiric spirit that would be hard to chase down.

That's when I decided to build the gnomes for the old Masterwork DF, which would use DFHack.  I had never really used DFHack before and...well...I went a little mad with power.  DFHack can basically alter anything with its scripts, if you know how to program.  The automated factories and wild animal training was cool, but I think adding time machines into the game took things a little bit too far.

Then DF updated, and the hack scripts would no longer work.  I didn't feel like rebuilding everything, and that is why there are no gnomes in Masterwork anymore.  I stopped using DFHack after that.  Updates breaking things and installation complexities aside, there was just no challenge in it.

I continued building ROTMK, consolidated most of my weird experimental mods into the Mostly Mythical Monsters Modular Mod, and other than that mainly added less elaborate, more conservative modular mods like Undertale, Fortal Kombat, and Citadel of Ricks.

I don't mod much anymore, having mostly moved on to more solo projects, but I generally come back when DF updates to fix up my old mods and fool around with whatever new toys Toady's added to play with.

[TomiTapio]

Made a few small tweaks to Deon's "DF Complete" and the changes got included into Deon's releases.
Played more DF Genesis, found more things that need to be added, like types of leather, types of furniture wood, tougher bones on giant creatures, stone age weapons.

[ZM5]

Pretty much just started messing around with stuff when I was getting a tad bored with fighting the same enemies and playing the same races in adv mode over and over - also I noticed there wasn't a WC mod around so that also spurred me to start modding.

[Deon]

I took after Sean Mirrsen, he was the guy who I remember dearly making some mods back in 2008.
Also this is where it started:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=18512.0

Ah, nostalgia .

It also reminded me how I found Dwarf Fortress in the first place:
"Civilization forums", Cephalo's post:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-terrain-preferences.262124/

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Eric Blank]

I just started messing with making simple creatures. One of my first was taking the cow and giving it dragon fire breath. Which resulted in loads of !!FUN!!

I then started making new plants for dwarves to farm and a project to make all the cryptids listed on Wikipedia, which I never finished because I was busy in high school at the time.

[Enemy post]

Pretty much like everyone else. Started out making simple mods and gradually escalated.

I would add that I learned a lot by mixing together other people's mods.

[Fatace]

Mine all started because I wanted to have the other foreign weapons to be added to the Dwarf civs, when people on here told me about it and DF wiki's raw token info, I searched it up and changed it, but then I looked at it and thought "wait.. could I make my own weapon and add it to the civ, will it work?" After tinkering with it I got it to work. Since then, thanks to DF Modding forums and DF Wiki ive gotten used to modding, and what originally started to be just a mod I made for myself to enjoy, turned into a big mod. Tho there is still plenty for me to still learn after all ive done lol.

[Meph]

I had a crappy netbook with me and the fps tanked so bad, I started modding to make the game faster.

[voliol]

I encountered the wiki's modding tutorial, and ended up creating some really weird experimental creatures, as I read further into the article. First, a simple clay golem basically copied from the bronze colossus. As I learnt about colors, it became a play-doh golem, and editing creature materials tought me I could have the material be named play-doh as well. For the multiple-layer-tutorial, the "golem" was a monstrous abomination with onion skin, muscles bathing in a layer of insulating oil, and a diamond core. Because onions have layers.

I made some other peculiar monsters, but got more into it as I wanted to have newts in my game, and that lead to a whole thing. Other features, such as entities, I've really only played around with.