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[Folrunge]

Hello there!

The time has come and I would like to strike the earth myself (i.e. create a mod). I have an ambition to create a small-scale mod that would help me in training my programming skills and I plan to have some fun in the process. Eventually I will attempt at creating my own game: a crude dungeon crawler set in ancient Mesopotamia, so I'm counting that the experience in modding DF would come in handy at some point (if not, I would consider it a great adventure)

My main coding environment is Linux and I would like to stick with it as much as possible. My coding experience is narrowed to front-end (JS mainly) and Java. I know that C language is required and am excited and willing to learn it, but I'm more or less a novice in this field.

To shorten this elf-like in length post, could anyone give me some useful tips on how to start and what would be essential in my working environment?

Thanks in advance and hail to Armok.

[IndigoFenix]

Modding DF isn't really like programming - it's basically just adding and removing tags to objects.  You can learn how by looking through the raw files and copying objects or modifying existing ones.

You can also write LUA scripts for DFhack, which is proper programming.

[scamtank]

I know that C language is required and

uh

by whose reckoning

[voliol]

The wiki modding guide http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Modding is essential, so is the pages for all the various tokens (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Token). If you ever don't get anything, the question threads here and the DF modding discord (https://discord.gg/9EUjNV) are handy for getting help.

Remember that there is probably some vanilla raws containing the parts you need for whatever you're making, so copy as much as you can. The wiki has all the raws for the creatures, as any specific creature raw can be pretty difficult to find by just searching through the many .txt files.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Some of these are already answered

Working Environment:
Any Text Editor Really, NPP is my personal Fav for this

Code Base:
Basically Custom DF only RAW TOKEN assembly created by Toady
DFHack is a 3rd party application, you can code with LUA in it using the Framework they created

I guess C or C++ is needed for the Game Itself, but we don't have access to the Source or anything to modify that'd use it.


My best bet if you want to improve your programming, through modding is to modify Minecraft using Forge, then you can work with their API hooks to do your own Java coding.

But if you still want to use DF modding as a Programming base, the best you can do is understand Class/Data Structures and Components. But those will only help you on a general coding level when faced with programming langs and design patterns this will not aid you.

[TomiTapio]

Any text editor that has "find this string in this folder tree", because it's very handy to "find all mentions of such-and-such material". I use ancient Crimson Editor.

I'd recommend against DFHack programming, too complex unless you've already done 50+ hours of DF RAWs modding.


I've made four unpublished Java games (LWJGL helper library for OpenGL, General MIDI sounds, later port to Android 4.4).
Try some Java game programming! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=844Q40XXKXc
https://youtu.be/7QDz81jMsF8

My blog post about my Villaganders game: https://tomitapio.deviantart.com/journal/Gamedev-Villaganders-village-sim-playable-alpha-556782811

[Folrunge]

Thanks! Your insight was clearly of higher resolution than mine. I will stick for now with modding DF and perhaps later will move on to something bigger.

[Eschar]

It's more like HTML than a programming language.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

If you're gonna say html, might as well just say it's closer to XML lol