Help getting into modding

[katateochi]

Hey guys, I'm looking to start making KSP mods and wanted to ask you all for some help in getting setup and any tips/tricks you have.
I'm a programmer, but it's been a long long time since I touched C or did development work in windows, but I'm setting myself up with Visual Studio (installing currently).  The type of mod I'm looking to make probably won't add any parts, but I'm interested in messing with contracts, kerbals and craft files.

So first, documentation; is this the only set of docs - http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Category:Community_API_Documentation ?
or are there some other resources?

I'm kinda late to the party with mod making, so I feel I missed out of being part of the community while it figured things out (you've figured things out now, right?).
Things like best practices, what common libraries are needed/recommended, how to do common things. ie how do you setup having an icon in the stock toolbar and define an action when it's clicked, how do you create a UI panel. Those must be a standard things to do, where's the best place to find out how to do things like that?

What I want to do initially is be able to get the current list of contracts and be able to create a new custom contract and add it to the list of active contracts. I can't see anything about interacting with contracts in the above docs.  I want to be able to change tourism contracts so any info on how to work with the contract system would be helpful. 

Thanks!

[Speeding Mullet]

@nightingale seems to be a contract configuration expert, and I know @inigma has also been doing some contract work.

Check this thread out
 

Best luck!

SM

[inigma]

I never did a mod until cc. Check out GAP in my sig to see what you can do with cc.

[wasml]

The sticky links at the top of addon development have some good links to information. The Mod Development Links Compilation has a long list of tutorials and other info.

As far as documentation - the source code provided with mod's and the auto complete (in VS) are the only two sources that I'm aware of.

[nightingale]

The documentation of the C# API is somewhat lacking - what you've linked to is what we've got, but they don't see a whole lot of maintenance (it's a lot of work).  The best way how to figure out how to do something is to look at how others have done it.  If you go to the Contract Configurator GitHub you can see lots and lots of examples (including a toolbar icon and GUI screens), although there are many ways to do many things.

In terms of contract modding, definitely give Contract Configurator a whirl.  There no coding necessary, although the fact that it has an expression language and C# extensibility means that you can find yourself doing more coding that you expected if you want to make something complex (but far, far less coding that doing the same thing from scratch, I assure you).

Good luck!

[katateochi]

Thanks guys!

Contract configurator looks like it might do quite a lot of what I want.