I will admit that I have never modded before, but I am working on a CS degree and I thought it might be fun to try to get into modding. When I answered no to the Official Modders Application question "Have you ever modded before?", there were no other questions. Are they looking for people that already know how to mod games? Will I hear back regardless if I am accepted or rejected? What is the best way to get started modding a game like PA?
You know, I never filled out the application because of that particular question. Maybe now I could count may experience modding PA Look at mods, especially actively maintained ones. Obviously most useful if you can find ones close to what you want. PA client modding is based on front-end web development, so all that applies. Find the debugger application; you may have to copy devtools into the game directories to make it work. Make a copy of the media folder and put it under source control. I excluded the binary files to cut down on size. Format the JSON first, especially if unit specs are of interest. Update the files with each release so you can look at diffs and track changes - many of them will break things you rely on. If you found the modders application, I'm assuming you've already seen the collected modding resources.
The modders application was made a long time ago, seemingly a neglected thing that may get used once the game is released. I think it's meant for when there's an uber storefront for mods, and people need a source of info on how to put paid mods on the uber store etc. Right now you need nothing except yourself to tinker with modding. There are many types of mod: Most mods available are made using javascript/html/css, to add/alter logic and ui elements client side Server mods can modify the json files (and maybe a few others) used by the server, so you can make units have different stats. There are many balance mods which do precisely that You can alter the models in the game (someone else will have to go into detail here) Shaders can be altered (GLSL language) Maybe some I'm forgetting. You can replace any file in media client side, so can do things like make your own unit icons All of the above can be combined into a single mod The best way to get started modding imo is look at some simple mods that do the sort of thing you're interested in. Install PAMM, then start and close PA (pamm should have found your pa and mod directories by now). Then go to the settings in pamm to find where pa is installed, and the mod directory is (there are two mod directories really, mods for client mods and server_mods for server mods). Then install a mod you're interested in and look at its files. Random tips: The game heavily uses the javascript knockout library, familiarising yourself with it is not required but very helpful for certain things The coherent (coherent is what uber uses to make the html5 ui talk to the backend) debugger is very good. Different things are split into different scenes (pages basically), you can query things while the game is running etc There's some guides on this subforum, I would have linked them but it's quicker to give an overview than search edit: I filled in that form just now. I think it was just a way to test how many people wanted to get into modding, but maybe communication has been going on (who knows).
Initially it was pitched as a means to work with the modding community pre release but it was dropped for that purpose without notice and unknown to us until we stumbled upon it via another conversation with the devs. At this point I imagine it's outdated to the point of uselessness, heck the application I filled out is. Mike
It seems to me, they thought releasing early server mods was risky at first. There are a lot of risks with them, bandwidth and servers which they are responsible for. They expressed this when they did released the update with server mods sent to the server per game. It seems to me, at first they decided it wouldn't be a good system to do it and would put it off until release or test it in house. Then, they decided it would be okay to test it openly in the community by making it a public feature. At least it seems to me. The application is in fact seemingly defunct though, and all the tools to make server mods are relatively open anyway, so *shrugs*
