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[Nilocy]

Right, i want to try and mod for myself. See all these other mods makes me angry that i cant do it myself. so i've come to the conclusion that ill give it a blast. My biggest question is, is there any form of tutorial to help new people like me to start modding?

[MoonCabbage]

Dwarf Fortress Wiki has an entire section to modding. Its very useful to know what all those tags mean when modding things.

[InquisitiveIdiot]

... but as useful as it is, it doesn't give you a from-scratch HOWTO.

I'd suggest duplicating one of the creatures in raw/objects/creature_domestic.txt, just changing the name.  Your dwarves ought to be able to embark with your new creation, so you won't have to wait for one to show up.

Then, fiddle with a value or two and see if it works.  Repeat until you get the hang of it.  Try to make a firebreathing skeletal sheep.  Or a giant flying war llama.

Most of all, have fun.  It's now, just a little bit, *your* game.

[ November 30, 2007: Message edited by: InquisitiveIdiot ]

[Greiger]

Yea, not really a how to on modding. Its just kinda experimentation.  I learned how to by making a custom race and civ.  I copied and pasted the human entity defaults and creature defs.
 
The creature I had in my mind had wings and a tail, so I looked at a dragon. hmm, :2WINGS:TAIL:...lets try that in the body entry. Just plopped it in haphazardly.  And waddaya know, it worked.
Then I changed the U in the creatures symbol to a D, that worked too.  
I then decided I'd try one of the standalone tags, [CARNIVORE] I tried to get it in the exact spot that it was in the creature I took the tag from but couldn't get it perfectly placed so I was worried it wouldn't work...guess what? It did.
Thats when I learned that tag location doesn't really matter.

Then I started messing with entity tags, then weapons, then with body types(vanilla wings can grapple after all) then the language files(lost these to the z axis version switch), then when the z axis version came out I started doing some reactions, plants, and personalities.  All the while making small changes to and becoming more experienced with the previous things I learned to mod.

semi-helpful tips

• The wiki is your friend...I don't know if the modding tags are on the new wiki,(EDIT:they are) if not just look on the old wiki. 99% of them still work.
  
• You usually have to generate a new world after changing raws around. There are a few things that don't require a new world, but if in doubt, re-generate![/lame]
  
• If you delete a raw file completely it's a good idea to delete the matching file in \data\objects just in case.  I came up with a duplicate creature bug once by not doing this.
  

Sorry for the long post. Hope this helps.

EDIT:Realized theres an integrated bulleting system and I don't have to use my crummy fake one.

[ December 01, 2007: Message edited by: Greiger ]