How does one mod a game?

[TNTGODZZ]

Now the title may seem obvious, but excluding KSP what does one need to do? I mean the content for the mod needs to be made (eg: rocket parts in KSP) but in other games changing vital aspects such as mechanics without access to a developer tool set from my view seems, well, I don't even know. how does it happen? is it just hacked to the max and reversed engineered?

Any info would be appreciated

[Flymetothemun]

I'd recommend finding a forum or mod website for the game that you'd like to mod and asking the people there. There are numerous cases based on what the game is and how it works under the hood. There may even be third or first-party tools that are needed to mod the game or make modding easier. For example, I remember that installing mods in RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 was as easy as dropping a folder in the game files. However, to install Minecraft mods you must open up the java file and drop in the mods in a specific location. Furthermore, installing Just Cause 2 mods requires that a folder with a specific name be created in the game files and then a mod dropped in that folder. Once again, I'd recommend finding a forum/ mod website with a forum for the game that you'd like to mod and asking the people there, there are cases for every game and every game is different.

[Special Agent Sigvan]

I won't get into the specifics because I don't know the specifics.

If you want to install mods it varies depending on the game, many forums for said games (Steam forums even) have sections for the mod and mod development, you can ask there to get your answer for how to do it for that specific game.

Downloads vary, ModDB, Nexus are two great websites dedicated for mods, Mediafire works for free for folders, some mods (Some Mount & Blade: Warband mods had this system) have installers that will find your directory (Such as mod folder or [in KSP's case Game Data Folder] other folder), some games have in game systems to activate mods (DEFCON, Mount and Blade, Atom Zombie Smasher and some others).

Some games (Gratuitous Space Battles for examples) require you to add folders into other folders for new things, many games have things in place to prevent this (In GSB the player has to add races into the races folder, ships into the ships folder, bitmaps into the bitmaps folder, modules into the modules file, etc.).

To make or develop mods is daunting, but if you can code (Or read it) you can handle modding, Atom Zombie Smasher is a good place to start if you're new to coding (As I am) as it's just JavaScript with comments that will brief you on what each value will do, it's just a matter of changing values. It's also a great game.

I don't know the specifics of coding, or the specifics for the instances of modding (Such as in KSP you need to mod plugins and you need to mod parts), but the more complex the game, the more experience you'll need to mod it.

If you know the development platform (Like unity) you can skip a lot of the learning and just begin to add lines of code (Or edit them) to the game if you know how the game works, what you want to add and how you plan to go about doing it.

DEFCON has a bot API that is good for modding A.I. though not all systems will function the same, you just need to learn the basics of making an effective A.I. and making an enjoyable one, then mixing the two into a good A.I. to fight in your mod.

A lot of this is applicable to Game Design, but that is WAY beyond my pay grade.

Government cover-ups are way beyond my pay grade.

I disagree with the HECU Soldier on that one though

[Nuke]

first game i modded was probibly descent 2. it pretty much happened after i learned that there was a level editor. making levels was not enough, i had to edit robots and textures, and i quickly found tools to do so. in some cases you had to break out a hex editor and the descent file specs to get anything done. you couldn't do much with game logic though.

then quake came around and changed everything. you could edit everything. every bit of game logic was done in a scripting language (quake c) and code was made available to edit. droves of other modders created all kinds of tutorials for everything. after that gamers pretty much demanded modding features in all new games.

i modded other games, freespace 1 and 2, freelancer, ksp. each game varies in what you can and cant do, but its pretty much the same skill set no matter what you do. 9 times out of 10 tools will already exist for mod making. only time when you might not have those is when the game community is fairly new. i remember modding freespace back when the model converter was in a horrid state, you could add models but you had to hex edit them afterwords to make them usable. new tools came along to fix that though.

however if you get to the point where you can model, texture, and code, you might as well just make your own game.