Coding plugins for fresh mod beginner?

[Capt. James T. Kirman]

Hi! I'm new here, and as an avid Kerbonaut and mod user (GameData, exceeding 4 GB and violating access since 0.20. #thestruggle), I've decided that I want to make my own mod. Thing is, I don't know where to start. I don't necessarily want to make parts, though that would be nice, I just want to make something more script based. The tutorials I've found seem to only talk about making parts.

Here's the thing: I'm already quite familiar with modeling, having used 3DS Max for about two years, the skills of which I'm sure I could transfer to Blender. The thing I have jack squat knowledge about is coding. I was really hoping I could get some experience in this by making a mod for a game. After playing KSP, I've chosen it for my first mod.

Again, I'm really hoping to get some useful experience in this. Any tips would be nice, any points in the right direction, any recommendations to which languages to learn, etc etc. Perhaps, as a starter project, you could teach me how to make a specific script/plugin, like say for instance a plugin that programs a rocket to burn in a certain direction. Like I said, anything to help get me started would be nice.

Edited October 23, 2014 by Capt. James T. Kirman

[jamespicone]

This thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/94638-New-Mod-Development-Links-Compilation has a bunch of very useful links in it. http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Creating_your_first_module in particular will probably be useful for you.

KSP mods are written using C#. There's only very limited documentation on the internals of the game, so I'm afraid you're going to have to do a lot of trial and error, asking people what things do, and looking through what classes and methods are exposed in the KSP assembly.

[Unit327]

A good place to start is reading the code of other mods and seeing how they work. You could even consider contributing to an existing mod rather than starting a new one.