My question is:
- Is there any desire for yet another modding guide?
- Video or text?
- Hosting ideas that aren't youtube?
As for me, the only real reason I have to make a guide at all is because it was so hard for me to figure out how to make my mods initially I want to save others from that pain. And all the videos I can find about modding are these hour+ ramblefests that could be 5 minutes if they actually understood how to teach.
But when you get right down to it, I know that, going forward, I won't support my mods once I 'complete' them. That's why I made the source code and all files available without license. So anyone could pick them up and make them work. So, to me, the guide is more about me wanting to be able to leave without regrets or feeling bad that I didn't make things as easy as I could have for people who like my ideas.
Thoughts?
As for a rough outline of how I'd structure it (one video for each item):
- What is the simplest possible mod. Doesn't add any items, doesn't change anything, just shows up in the mod list to show the bare minimum. 30 seconds probably.
- Explain the basic 'type' structures in the game: Entities, Items, Recipes, and Technologies. Show how they relate to each other. Show how you can make a technology unlock your item, and how your item can create your entity on the game world, and how recipes work, etc.
- Intro to data.raw, where to get it, what it is, why it matters.
- Factorio Prototype reference on the website. Showing how to use it and Data.raw to determine what properties *can* be changed about an entity/recipe/tech/etc. I will mention that additional manipulation is possible via scripting, but that's a much, much more advanced topic.
- How to create settings for your mod & Localization. How to set default values, read player-set values, give the entries names, handle translations, etc.
- A series of videos showing how I create/update a mod. Start with something simple, like https://mods.factorio.com/mod/EnhancedGridEnergyStores (literally just a reskin + parameter tweak to accumulators)
- A series of videos covering more complex mods, like https://mods.factorio.com/mod/NuclearRebalance (lots of internal math, some settings), or https://mods.factorio.com/mod/AssemblerUPSGrade (runtime scripting, LOTS of internal logic, event handling).
- Probably around the time I get to this point I would also make a dedicated video, during the complex mod series, covering how to do basic runtime scripting. Event handling mostly, why you might want to use it, what it can do, show the API, etc. More like an overview, because trying to cover scripting is like trying to explain the Bible in a 4 minute video.
