I would strongly recommend starting and editing from a template, You can easily learn from it and understand how it works. Then start with something small, like a bomb or a weapon. Then when you feel confident enough to move on. Move on. Also, If you dont know how to do something yourself feel free to ask the community, Im sure we will be glad to help.

Hope this helps.

I got started by mucking about with variables on grenades.


Don't copy paste that ♥♥♥♥ into your posts. It's retarded beyond adequate articulation.

I myself started with respriting an actor and tweaking it's variables.

If you know how to sprite, make a resprite (and try to mkae it look good) or else just find a random thing you feel like spending time on and change variables till you think it's directly fun.

Like triggerdelay on a grenade, making it into a suicide grenade.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13394

Might wanna start there if ya want. Never read the tut but it might help

I just made a new gun, using the Wiki to start.
wrote my whole ini code at school on notebook paper, and then came whole, typed it up and started working on it. Helped me a ton

I started from making a gun from a tamplate but i would say that bunker systems is the easiest thing to do.

Devices, no question. They provide a solid grounding of .ini semi-competence for you to build upon with actors of all breeds, but from the start you'll want to work with devices.

What should be standard procedure for anyone wanting to learn to mod:

-Get a proper text editor, with syntax highlighting and auto-indentation at least.
-Learn how setting up a .rte works, including indexing and subindexing (basically how includefile is used and how paths are constructed). This both sandboxes the user (♥♥♥♥ up something in their own .rte won't ♥♥♥♥ up their vanilla data) and gives them some experience referencing, editing, and using multiple files.
-Splice a gun out of a vanilla module, along with it's gibs, full set of sprites, particles, everything. This increases the users comfort with how .ini looks and how to work with it. Even if they don't fully understand what each and every variable does, they'll grasp the idea of how things are structured (and the concept of a loading order), and get good at replacing paths and recognising errors.
-Start ♥♥♥♥ about with variables to figure out what they do in practice after reading through a proper, compiled list of variables and what they do in theory. The user should focus on HeldDevice specific variables, but by the end of this step they'll probably have had a laugh at making a digger-ubercannon or whatever and learn why we all discourage those mods being released, and have a good idea of how the device class behaves.
-Try making mashups of the Vanilla gun sprites and learn at least simple spriting. Make a few guns for fun and to get the hang of how everything works.
-Make an item of great polish (Maybe their favourite real-world gun, or something from a game they know, or something they made up) and release it into the wild (forums). Because it will likely not be really of great quality, the user will know where their weaknesses lie (we'll pick on them) and be able to work on that.
-repeat for a while until they've built a huge pack of items or are bored of just guns.
-move on to actors, or Lua, or both.

In a perfect world, perhaps.

For me, the easiest thing to mod are probably bunker modules (without any scripts in it), which doesn't include doors. Very, very easy. All you need is some code and three BMPs.

Thanks everyone for replying! I think I've formulated a good idea of what order I'll go in...

1. Devices
2. Actors
3. Bunker Modules
4. And then I'll go from there, and try to do all the other ones.

Thanks to 'mind' for posting the link, it's greatly appreciated =)