Desire to create mods

[GGumby]

Hello everyone, ive been an active modder of ksp since .17 and with the latest and greatest updates adding all kinds of new stuff and modders working their hardest at making masterpieces; it leaves other mods unattended to. I feel like this might be a good place to get my feet wet as i have been mostly been handling code for a good majority of my gaming life. One problem, I dont know CPP or any C related code. That's not saying i wouldn't be unwilling to learn it. The mod that i want to personally fork is the Civilian population mod. I have my own opinions on how the mod chooses its balancing in career and I am confident that that is something simple that i can change as i have seen in some part files. on a more important note, i want to add compatibility with Eve, Duna, and Laythe space program by changing the way the code is handled when referring to the parent (starting) body. 

The First thing i want to do is update the game to work with the current version of ksp.

 

The second thing i want to do is "revive"? some GUI code.

To elaborate ive combed some of his source code and it looks like @rabidninjawombat had plans to implement a GUI. I feel ashamed by not being sure if he ever did because I started by running the mod in a unsupported version of the game. (Ill Update the thread today.)

 

The third objective is to add compatibility with Various starting locations in terms of varying SOI

right now he has the Experience awarded to kerbals by adding reports to their respective flight logs. This would, of course, offset any career mode you happen to be playing by giving the kerbal too much experience.

 

Any recommendations are welcome. I pray that i got this in the right thread.

Also, is this a good idea to get my feet wet with modding ksp and providing a goal to generate my own code? im kinda unsure.

 

Edited May 17, 2016 by GGumby

[FreeThinker]

As you apperently were already planning, I suggest you improve and exisitng, hopefully partialy still working mod. The reason is that KSP modding by defenition is hard (especialy UI), as it it hard to figure out what went wrong if you make a mistiake, which is inevitable. Second I would advice to take one step at the time. Instead of one big project, try to approach it as many mini problems, which you solve one at the time. Third. after you feel you have solved a significant number of mini problems, make WIP release, do this regulary as it allows other developers and players to take a look at your progress.

Edited May 17, 2016 by FreeThinker

[GGumby]

Thanks for the advice @FreeThinker! after i figure out whether or not he actually had a working gui, i'm going to begin the wonderful journey again of learning C#. Just for future reference, where would i go to find out whats changed specifically with the game so that way i can update the compatibility of my code with the game?

Still Loving Interstellar BTW, Keep up the good work!

Edit: I dont have the right version of the game since i ported to steam, darn.

Edited May 17, 2016 by GGumby