So I'm trying to get into Modding...

[Fidelias]

Okay, so I've always wanted to learn how to mod games and such. I took a few computer programming classes in high school, but it's been 3 years and I don't remember everything. Anyways, I don't have the money right now to go to college, so I wanted to try to learn what I could by myself.

So I figured that there's probably at least a few people here who could give me some advice, list some resources that they used, etc, that helped them learn how to make or mod games.

Consider me an idiot who doesn't know anything. I don't care if you recommend Programming For Dummies 101, but I'd appreciate the help.

Edit: Okay, so I want to get to the point where I could mod, but I might have to start at the very basics. Sorry if this doesn't seem too coherant.

Edit: Wow, thanks for the tips! I didn't think I'd get such useful information so quickly!

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

A lot of people suggest modding the Unreal Tournament engine first, since it's a bit more user friendly.

However, Valve did say they plan on releasing more user friendly tools for the Source Engine.

Try the Unreal Engine for now.

 

[Lacsapix]

Try making maps for portal/Garry's mod with Source SDK, there are a lot of tutorials on youtube.
Also Valve is planning to release modding tools for portal 2 after the game release.

Good Luck!

 

[loc978]

The difficulty of modding varies by the game. As the cell phone said, Unreal Tournament is a good place to start, if you're into making FPS mods. If you're looking to make maps for RTSes, Starcraft is a good place to start. If you want to make changes to a hybrid shooter/RPG, working within a story structure and an established sandbox game world map... Fallout 3 or New Vegas are a good place to start. All of the above have fairly powerful, easy-to-use editing software bundled with them.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Start simple.

Get Half Life 2, find a tutorial for 3D modeling in Softimage XSI, and put your very first custom model into the Source Engine with SourceSDK.

Next, try making a very simple map in which you must find an objective and kill a boss using SourceSDK Hammer.

 

[Fidelias]

Start simple.

Get Half Life 2, find a tutorial for 3D modeling in Softimage XSI, and put your very first custom model into the Source Engine with SourceSDK.

Next, try making a very simple map in which you must find an objective and kill a boss using SourceSDK Hammer.

Okay, wait. I installed Half Life 2 but I can't find where to go for the modding tools.

I also looked for a tutorial for 3D modeling in Softimage XSI, but it looks like I need Softimage XSI 1.0, which they are saying will cost me 2,000 something dollars. The whole point of this was to try to learn this stuff for cheap. I'm probably doing something wrong here.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Start simple.

Get Half Life 2, find a tutorial for 3D modeling in Softimage XSI, and put your very first custom model into the Source Engine with SourceSDK.

Next, try making a very simple map in which you must find an objective and kill a boss using SourceSDK Hammer.

Okay, wait. I installed Half Life 2 but I can't find where to go for the modding tools.

I also looked for a tutorial for 3D modeling in Softimage XSI, but it looks like I need Softimage XSI 1.0, which they are saying will cost me 2,000 something dollars. The whole point of this was to try to learn this stuff for cheap. I'm probably doing something wrong here.

Blender 3D is a free modeling program. If you follow the stuff on here [http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Blender] it should give you a good foothold.

SourceSDK is located in your Steam Library by clicking on the All Games pulldown and switching it to Tools.

 

[s0m3th1ng]

Hammer for source is pretty easy to get into. But then again, that's mapping, not really modding at all.

 

[Fidelias]

Start simple.

Get Half Life 2, find a tutorial for 3D modeling in Softimage XSI, and put your very first custom model into the Source Engine with SourceSDK.

Next, try making a very simple map in which you must find an objective and kill a boss using SourceSDK Hammer.

Okay, wait. I installed Half Life 2 but I can't find where to go for the modding tools.

I also looked for a tutorial for 3D modeling in Softimage XSI, but it looks like I need Softimage XSI 1.0, which they are saying will cost me 2,000 something dollars. The whole point of this was to try to learn this stuff for cheap. I'm probably doing something wrong here.

Blender 3D is a free modeling program. If you follow the stuff on here [http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Blender] it should give you a good foothold.

SourceSDK is located in your Steam Library by clicking on the All Games pulldown and switching it to Tools.

Okay, thanks!

 

[Chased]

Blender 3D is great for modeling and animation, but its game engine (at least I found) is difficult to use. It should be fine for making models and then importing them into another engine like Anarch said. I made a rough 3rd person FPS in Blender, I can look for the .blend to send it to you if you want.

There's also a large mod base for Oblivion, but you might want to hold out till Skyrim.