Hi all,

I have used mods in many of the games I host and I love them.

It come to the point where I want to either create my own mod or make improvements to the current mods that are available (of course with the original creators permission)

However, I have never written a mod, know what kind of coding is used or what programming language is used. The last time I programmed anything was roughly 10 years ago using VB (Visual Basic).

Is there anyone out there than can help me learn? Any tutorials, what programming language is used, how do I test it etc. Any help on getting me started is appreciated.

Mods are programmed using LUA (http://www.lua.org/). If you know anything about object oriented programming you should have no trouble with that.

Fizzer made a tutorial on making mods, I suggest you start there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwVDv5PXyrg

Also, the wiki page: https://www.warzone.com/wiki/Mod_Developers_Guide

Testing and programming of mods is explained by Fizzer's vid and on the wiki.

Out of interest, what kind of mod where you thinking of making?

Edited 2/7/2021 21:58:07

Firstly I was thinking of making improvements to the Gift Gold Mod and the Gift Armies Mod.

Gift Gold: Adding in a notification so that if you are gifted gold then you would be notified the amount and whom it was from. Example: I gift 100 gold to Player A, when player A loads that game they get a pop up saying Player B has gifted you X gold. (Similar to the diplo mod when it says you are in war. Except this will say how much gold you got and who from)

Gift Armies: I see this mod as very unreliable. When you gift armies you choose where to gift from but you don't get to choose where your armies go. When you gift armies the mod simply just gives the armies to another player and randomly distributes them. It would be good if you could choose which territory your gifted armies went to.

If I could manage to do that then I can possibly start coming up with ideas of my own.

but you don't get to choose where your armies go

This is probably more a result of mod being limited, rather then a design choice. Since mods don't have a "click territory on the map" button to get a territory ID. What we can do, is give a list of all territories owned by a player for example. But scrolling such a list with potentially hundreds of options is also subpar. In short, this "pick territory on map" would be nice for several mods, but not really a good UI/UX way to have it.

Is there anyone out there than can help me learn? Any tutorials, what programming language is used, how do I test it etc. Any help on getting me started is appreciated.

I recommend joining discord and asking in programming for help if you have questions :) Other then that, the wiki mod guide is good too

Edited 2/8/2021 02:14:01

And even if choosing a territory was possible I think it woulf make the mod to op because you can use the mod to just airlift troops without the use of a card. (the troops can be gifted back in the desired spot). If you were to change this mod I think there should maybe be two different mods so the gamemaker has the option to make them be able to used as airlifts or with smaller cenarios with less lands they can be oerfectly used in their current form.

If mods knew whichterritoy was clicked, then ,they'd at least be able to interpret which territory was used. but still have to know what 'active mod' this.

if (territory.event == MOD) {
    // doStuff();
}

mods don't have a "click territory on the map" button to get a territory ID

Yes, that is a definitely lacking. The Reconnaissance card (or Bomb card, etc - 1 territory popup) & Airlift popup [2 territories] dialogs really do need to be made available for use with mods (or just a N-territory, as many as required customizable by the mod), to let mods customize the text that pops up and act on the territories selected.

Compare the smoothness of bombing a territory even on a huge map vs the clunky usage of Nuking a territory where a custom dialog of randomly sorted (probably sorted by appearance on the map in some manner but random to players) territories pops up and players must (A) know the full name of the territory they're nuking, (B) find it in the nasty list, (C) be careful not to mix it up with similarly spelled [or identically spelled! Some maps have this] territories.

Having a select popup for 1 and 1-to-1 should be enough for most mods, and the code for that is already in the engine (just needs a hook)

Make it so!