Teaching myself to Mod :

[Pikkulikka]

With Skyrim very close I figured I would really like to get into modding. Would modding Oblivion now help me once skyrim is released? Or should I just wait will they release the new Skyrim construction set?

 

 

Some tips where to start would be great. I am currently reading the CS Wiki.

[amycus]

Depends on what you mods, but from what I understand it's supposed to be fairly similar.

And even if it does change, if it is custom content like armor that you wish to be able to do in the future, you will still need to know how to use softwares like blender (or 3ds max and similar) and gimp (or photoshop)

 

EDIT: check out the tutorials on 3dtotal.com for how to learn the basics of said programs. That is, if it reallt is custom content you which to make later, and not solely quest/adventure mods that only make use of the vanilla items.

Edited July 14, 2011 by amycus

[Pikkulikka]

Depends on what you mods, but from what I understand it's supposed to be fairly similar.

And even if it does change, if it is custom content like armor that you wish to be able to do in the future, you will still need to know how to use softwares like blender (or 3ds max and similar) and gimp (or photoshop)

 

EDIT: check out the tutorials on 3dtotal.com for how to learn the basics of said programs. That is, if it reallt is custom content you which to make later, and not solely quest/adventure mods that only make use of the vanilla items.

I was more of an idea to create gameplay changes or improvments. Thanks for the tip tho :).

[NellSpeed]

I'd highly recommend TES Alliance's modding school forums-- they'll take you step by step through just about everything-- scripts, variables, quests, etc etc etc. For gameplay changes, you'll need to know that stuff... and god knows what all else!

 

Welcome to the wonderful world of modding!

 

(Hope you've got plenty of headache treatments on hand....)

[David Brasher]

The question is basically whether or not you have time on your hands and whether or not modding sounds fun. If both of those conditions are true, then you should start modding. Much of Morrowind modding transferred over to Oblivion in a slightly twisted fashion. It sounds like Fallout modding is much like Oblivion modding. It is my guess that Skyrim modding will be much like Oblivion modding. So there is a good chance that much of what you learn now would transfer over to Skyrim. Even if the new CS and game engine turn out to be totally different, a lot of the concepts, logic, and required mindsets would be the same, so that you would still be a better Skyrim modder because of the work you did now on Oblivion.

[Elestat]

If gameplay changes and improvements are your thing you should definitively begin by learning scripting. Scripting is perhaps the most difficult part of modding oblivion, but its also the most powerful tool, all the cool mods out there that do more than simply add a new armor, a weapon or a house use scripting to some degree.

 

Scripting is basically programming, not dissimilar to what real programmers do, so having some knowledge of other programming language really helps. If you are interested in scripting i recommend the CS wiki to figure out the basics and experimentation on your own to learn the rest. Learning scripting for oblivion has the advantage that even if the devs ditch OblivionScript (the language in which scripts for oblivion are written) the basic principles of programming are the same for all programming languages and should apply to anything they implement in skyrim.

 

And even if you later dont mod for skyrim you would have gained an insight into how programming is actually done, and could perhaps learn other programming languages that may be useful to you in real life (I recomend Visual Basic for beginners because its easy to grasp and you can do some cool and useful stuff in any office application like excel or access).