Writer looking to help others make Awesome Mods.

I'm not a modder, but I love writing. If you're looking for names, descriptions, or skill ideas you can leave a post or send a message. My way of helping out an awesome modding community to my favorite game.

 

Without meaning any offense at all, just telling the truth -- we've got a ton of ideas, and not enough coders to implement them.

Take an hour or two and start hacking up some XML so you can code up your own ideas -- it's not difficult (I hadn't coded anything since some BASIC in high school when I started), and it's hella fun.

 

Pretty much what he said.
The way it is set up in DoD, and with all the information in the guide thread, it's not difficult to learn how to code. It might take some time to get used to various things that coders already do by habit, but the only thing that is really required to get good at modding is a functional brain.

Though if you get a solid idea, there's nothing stopping you from just fleshing it out on the forum and asking us to code it for you; most of us are busy with our own mods (or, in my case, with the community mod and what I do for a living, so much that I still haven't released any of my own mods yet), but if you ask nicely, it's almost certain that it will get done, because the users there like people who ask nicely.

 

I for one have dozens of ideas I would like to make into actual mods. And the writing is the easy part. But I spend so much time trying new mods and telling those modders what went wrong and what they can do to improve that I have never made a real mod at all.

If your idea is similar to the code someone uses for something, steal the code and use it as a template for your mod. Some people like FaxCelestis, Essence, Lccorp2, Ruigi, Null, Rarefied Horse Meat, J-factor, and r_b_bergstrom have already made practically every template you could imagine.

Those and the few big modders I am not remembering as I type this are the mod Deities. They have it all already. I have made a dozen or more suggestion threads like the "Drug Addict" mod suggestion, and some of the ideas were adopted by those people. (Not the skill in this case, but if I could make a balanced skill for it I bet I could convince them to add it to their mods.)

The biggest problem with suggestions is that half of the ideas not already implemented are simply not possible with the game as it is at this moment. Anyone can come up with a good idea, but it takes a practiced modder to realize in a moment that it is impossible without a rewrite of the game engine.

Keep the ideas coming. But remember that if you cannot write any of it, you will probably never be happy with it even if someone made it for you.

 

Get off your butt and make a mod. If you don't run into problems or go overly intricate, a skill mod with existing art takes a couple of hours to do for a first draft. I made my circus freak mod in one sitting, testing and fixing bugs included. All you need is inspiration and some good examples to copy from and change to suit you.

 

Just like with everything you do in life past the age of 18 -- find someone that's already succeeding at what you do, copy them, and if you find that you like what you're doing, find a way to do it better than they did.

 

I will get around to procrastination eventually...

Some of my mod ideas are a bit ...mature... and I am not so sure they would be welcomed.

For example, the Digglefeliac skillset... It involves Diggles and explains why there were bars behind you when you spawned in the dungeon. Society decided to get rid of you and give you what you wanted. You would get major boni against animals, and could summon Abomination Diggles that explode upon being hit. The fact that I spent this much time thinking about it is absurd. You would not believe some of the more provocative ideas I have had.

DoD is not always the most family friendly game, but some of my mods would make people beg the Gaslamp Games staff for a "Dislike" button...

The Godwin style jokes are the tame sort.

 

Or just do it together from the very beginning, curse loudly at your supposed inability to get it done, and then, after countless gallons of blood and sweat, take a look at the result of your first successful attempt and declare yourself to be the best.

Either way is fine in most cases, though Essence's idea is better for anything coding-related (and mine is probably for the one thing you definitely can't do alone).

I don't think GLG guys are the kind who listens to shouting people with frothing mouths. And that is the kind that would ask for the button you mentioned.

You have the right to make any mod you want (for as long as it's not openly insulting any group of people, regardless of whether it's generally tasteful or not), they have the right to ignore it if they don't like it. The fact that they forwent their right to rage around doesn't mean they can order you to forgo your right.

 

I think you are underestimating how upset some people can get over little things that match the theme in a humorous way, but would otherwise be offensive.

The Digglefeliac skills would each have a small chance to spawn a "Pedobear" that would attack you for "Stealing the little Digglets" or some such nonsense. Some would find the mere mention of the term offensive, despite the fact that in the context, no children are even mentioned, and they are Diggles with a life expectancy of days or weeks.

We play a game full past capacity of little jokes that are frequently meant to be taken one way, but a minor slip could make a person perceive it in an offensive way that it was never intended for.

Remember how people did *Exactly* as I said and jumped in line to berate me for mentioning nazis in another thread? What would they do if I mentioned that fucked up "pedobear" nonsense? Some people seem to be waiting for an excuse to get upset over some stupid little thing that effects no-one in any measurable way.

I was previously banned from using a forum years ago because they decided arbitrarily that my handle was a "Racial Slur". I was not consulted or asked to change it. I was banned forevermore. (As I have explained in the Introduction thread, my handle is just that. It has nothing to do with my race/creed/color or anything else that cannot be proven over the Internet.)

Luckily, Gaslamp Games is accepting of anyone who is not insulting. And the few times they were unsure what I meant, they asked me for a clarification. But some of my mods are still a bit of a stretch. And I doubt they want bad publicity.

 

That's funny. I've read your username at least a few hundred times and it's never occurred to me that the 'e' in 'negro' might be a long one. I read it as the color black in Spanish. Neh-gro. Totally took me like five minutes to figure out what racial slur they were talking about.

 

Pat yourself on the back for being colorblind Essence.

(I got the nickname from my brother while he was learning Latin. I wore mostly dark colors then and that is all it was about.)

 

When I was growing up I never got racism, just like I never got religion... *highly functional aspie says hello*. It hasn't really changed with the years either(well my views towards religion has, I've added nti after the a).

 

This thread took an unexpected turn.

 

Most threads go drastically off topic once I get involved. (Or at least that is how it seems to me.)

I guess that means I am a disruptive force despite my intentions. I play a Chaotic Neutral in most pen and paper RPGs. I am the guy who cannot be anticipated to do a specific thing, but can always be anticipated to mess up anything that was well ordered and civil.

When standing in line at a bank, I let elderly people cut in front of me and could not care less about the person behind me that hates that.

When someone talks on their cellular phone in a movie theater, I am one of the people likely to grab it and throw it and change seats before they find it. (You may be surprised how well this works. They cannot be certain you are guilty. Just deny it and say the person ran out while they were fetching their phone.)

I am the jerk who would triple park in the cripple spots as some clearly unfit person slowly tries to park their massive SUV in them. (And then drive away after they give up.)

I argue with elected officials in front of the press and ask them why they refuse to speak about it unless they are only pretending to know the subject matter?

In general, I am a jerk. I take some pride in that though. I am opinionated, argumentative, and generally unpleasant to be around. But in most cases, it is practice for the few times that arguing can actually help.

Changing subjects often and in unexpected ways helps to get a feel for the perception of others and decide how to win the inevitable arguments that life consists of. If a person cannot or will not change subjects at all, then they are being unreasonable in my never humble opinion. They are being hollow and selfish.

I have all these, and many more faults. And I can return to the subject at a whim too.

 

What you seem to be describing is actually more of a Chaotic Good alignment rather than Chaotic Neutral as the reasons you do the things you do tends to help others more than yourself (Bank line: have to wait longer. Cell Phone: You have to change seats but everyone else in the theater can enjoy the movie. Cripple Parking: You waste more gas, but you help preserve the parking spot for those that actually need it. Elected Officials: Making sure the pbulic is aware of what kind of person they may be electing, while potentially risking the ire of the official [not sure if it's also an arrestable offense]).

Anyways, back on topic, as was stated, the only way to ensure that your ideas come out how you want them is to code it yourself. I know where you might be coming from as I have some ideas I'd like to make but I can't tear myself away from games to actually impliment, nor am I even certain others would enjoy it dispite several other similar skills out there already. One of these days (I keep telling myself anyways), I'm going to sit down and do some coding, though.

 

I will never forget the moment in Boy Scouts when one of the guys launched off on a 32-minute tirade about how everyone he knew was Lawful Neutral. He wandered around and explained why everyone there was Lawful Neutral. Then he got to me, stopped, and said "...except Mike. You...you're Chaotic Good." I was so proud, I cried.

Since then, I've realized just how much of a pain in the ass Chaotic people are and how randomly doing things to 'shake the sheeple up a bit' is pretty douchey in the long run. So I suppose I'm Neutral Good now.

 

Ah, it wasn't making my items come out as I want, it was more for fleshing other people's ideas out if they wanted the help. I loathe coding with an almighty passion of a thousand burning moronic suns. I already do it for healing systems in other games. It's not fun for me and I hate debugging as well. If no one needs any help on a creative end, that's fine. I might still do it, just so people go, oh he's modder I can give him slightly more credit. Oh, well.

 

It has been my experience that if you hate coding and want to help those who can stand doing it, you should not be dissuaded from contributing the good ideas you have. Throw everything I said out the nearest window and make suggestions. People here tend to pay heed to good ideas. Who you are and what you have done matters very little. It the idea is good and can be done, someone will grab it and run with it.

Be a pain in the ass like Essence and I clearly are. Post well over 1k messages here in the forums in a few months. (And edit them each several times so no-one knows what you meant to say.) Tell DavidB1111 that the game is *Way* too easy and you have some ideas to mass summon CyberDemon-Diggles to make things more normal. (And do that purely to irritate him.)

(DavidB1111 is a nice person. I mess with him from time to time, but usually not by intent. He does go a bit ballistic when I say things are too easy right after he encountered an awful bug that nuked his character in a bad way though.)

Start threads telling people you discovered the secret to long healthy life is to drink your own urine and wear magnets on your ass. (Hope that they realize you are kidding.)

Just contribute in any meaningful way including but not limited to making joke threads and pretending to sell snake oil for DiggleBucks. And in time you will learn enough that you can help out in the awful coding junk too. But you need not if you really cannot stand it. Participating in mod threads and telling the modders that "X seemed underpowered when I used it" or "Y did not work and crashed once I tried it" will get you the most respect possible. Probably even more than writing your own code.

Be happy. You found a nice little forum full of mostly insane and chaotic yet good people.

 

Well that's rather cruel of a thing to do to an aspie. (Sorry for making anyone uncomfortable reading this, particularly if you have Asperger's, the assumption is that DavidB's reaction might relate to that, not to say that about the group in its entirety)

 

To clarify, I think anyone would go a bit ballistic after some horrible bug kills your character.

If he never said he had Asperger's Syndrome, I would certainly not be able to guess.

He and I had had some good arguments, and he wins about half of them. So he is doing well in any case.

But when a person reacts to my suggestions with shock that I could think that, I have this nagging impulse to see what they do when I push it well beyond reason into purely insane ideas. (CyberDemon-Diggles...)

I think the first time I encountered this was when DavidB1111 was saying the traps are too hard. I countered by saying I thought they were too easy and you usually survived even the awful traps. He clearly thought I was insane at that point. So I ran with it.

Note that DavidB1111 ran into a trap bug that should not have killed him, but did. I think it has been ully fixed since then, but I could be mistaken. Either way, I consider David a friend.