[Mega Request] Give me your thoughts!

[Tirpitz]

Hey guy's I've been playing Rimworld for a while now and A15 is my first patch using mods. Man does it address a lot of the problems with this game. I would like to request a few more mods and ask for peoples thoughts on them. I would really like to be able to do these myself but I have not even the slightest clue on how to do it.

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*Edit* Animal Armor - Animals are just to easy to kill and I find using them in combat is a guaranteed negative debuff on the animals bonded master. Being able to craft armor for them would be nice.
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Gloves and Shoes - Simple enough, currently the only thing that provides foot and hand protection is power armor yet the most common injury I see in my colonist are torn/bit/shot off fingers and toes. This is such a pain because missing just 1 toe or finger severely reduces the colonist ability to work and move.

Early Game Armor - I would really like to be able to craft armor early game on the smithing bench. Things like Bronze breast plates or Iron grieves.

Better Efficiency - Isn't it annoying how your Crafter/Tailor/Smith will switch from Tailoring to Forging to Smelting effectively delaying the finishing of any of those task? We need a mod that lets us set a priority on a production bench. Having only 4 different levels of priority is just not enough.

Bed Restraints, Straight Jackets and Sedatives - Dealing with broken wanderers angry prisoners and drug addicts can get so annoying. To be honest the easiest way to deal with prisoners is to just chop there legs off which can be a pain but with bed restraints just tie rowdy prisoners down to the bed. Now, they should have a chance of breaking out of it but it should be relatively low. Being able to craft sedatives would be such a luxury, instead of wasting medicine and potentially killing a wanderer because if you don't arrest them they are going to die from an infection is such a stupid risk. Being able to just poke a wanderer with a sedative and throw him in his room with a straight jacket would be great. Of course this would provide a negative debuff to make recruitment harder.

Better Medicine, Surgery and ORs - The amount of surgery failures is incredible and most of the time makes no sense at all. I've had skill 17 Doctors fail to implant a bionic ear in one of my colonist but instead somehow manage to cut off his leg. We need to be able to make a sterile room with an operating bed and life support machine late game to cut down on this bs. Also a skill requirement slider on surgery would be nice.

Weapon System Overhaul, Attachments and Better Cover - Man are some weapons just useless. Does anyone use miniguns? Most of the weapons are just utter trash I only ever really use survival rifles early game and Charge rifles late game with 1 or 2 snipers. There is no mid game because assault rifles and PDWs are practically just as common as Charge rifles and are no where near as good. I do remember seeing a mod called turrets where it actually gave miniguns a use by putting them on a Tripod and increasing their accuracy a little which was pretty nice. We need to be able to craft things like scopes, bipods, and suppressors to give an edge to our colonist over the enemy's. Also we need to be able to make better cover for our colonist to protect them better. Things like mantlets, Trenches and just basic walls with windows. Mantlets especially could be used for early game protecting from arrows and javelins. These all have there ups and downs. Example: Trenches could protect your body better but would leave your head, arms and torso when firing. Mantlets are just pieces of wood tied together so they could be destroyed easily and leave your colonist exposed and windows would be like trenches leaving your upper body exposed when firing but you could also do things like lob grenades through windows or maybe raiders will be able to vault through your windows.

Shields - Are you seriously telling me there are energy shields in this game but not simply wooden round shields? They could provide better protecting against arrows, javelins and melee attackers but sacrifice movement and attack speed for the protection.

Animal Traps and Hunting Zones - Being able to bait small and medium game into traps would be a really nice alternative to having to look around my map and manual select animals to be hunted because I don't want my colonist to attack a predator and get rekt. By hunting zones I mean a zone that I could place over my Farms to auto set a hunt command on the animal in it. Too many times has my pet chickens walked into my farm and get killed by a random cobra hiding in it.

Cloth Dye - Grey, grey everywhere.

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I know a lot of these things are already in mods but they are also grouped into things like the medieval mod which I don't want. Like I said before I really wish that I could mod this stuff in myself because I would but I just don't know how. I really believe all of these things would benefit Rimworld and make it a better game.
I know I have more ideas but I've spent about an hour writing this all out and forgotten some of them. I will keep it updated.

[Master Bucketsmith]

I think you'll find XML modding isn't that hard to do - once you know what's what.
If it's basically just adding or changing content, you should be able to do that with just XML files.
If you're looking to change behaviour behind/around a specific thing, it might involve C#.

I'd suggest downloading a mod that has something you like, and fish around the XML files to get an idea how it's built up.
You can attempt to put just that ThingDef in it's own XML file (don't forget the main ThingDefs tags as well!) and see if you can spawn it in with the DevMode in-game!

[Tirpitz]

I think you'll find XML modding isn't that hard to do - once you know what's what.
If it's basically just adding or changing content, you should be able to do that with just XML files.
If you're looking to change behaviour behind/around a specific thing, it might involve C#.

I'd suggest downloading a mod that has something you like, and fish around the XML files to get an idea how it's built up.
You can attempt to put just that ThingDef in it's own XML file (don't forget the main ThingDefs tags as well!) and see if you can spawn it in with the DevMode in-game!

Yeah I was thinking about trying to learn how to start modding just for this game. I really love the devs intentions with this game and I remember last year and how different it was but there are still a lot of flaws. I don't want you to have to spoon feed me but is there a dedicated thread for this on the forum? I'm pretty new here.

[Master Bucketsmith]

Only in some very obvious cases is 'spoon-feeding' even a thing.
Readers can't know WHY a question is asked, it might merely be for confirmation. Yelling that 'we should not spoon-feed by giving a complete answer' is short-sighted and only creates friction.

There's a whole dedicated subforum for help with modding;https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?board=14.0
Unfortunately, it seems a lot of sources (threads, wikis) are not really up-to-date, or they're not geared towards starting modders, or they're not complete enough.
I had to wrestle my way through a lot of scattered information to get started, but it is possible.
I've also tried the Slack, but mind you that it is an unofficial medium and therefore not officially supported/staff. It might or might not be a pleasant experience using it.
If I have the time, which I usually do, I'm open to answer questions and conversations through this thread, PM or other media(like Steam).

Is there a more specific question that you might have?

[Tirpitz]

How possible are these mods for an absolutely brand new beginner to modding to make? I imagine going into the XMLs and changing some accuracy stats wouldn't be to tuff but adding in a completely new concept like shoes would be a little more difficult because there is nothing to build off of.

[Master Bucketsmith]

Depending on your experience with related skills and ability to analyse, a good starting point for me was finding an older mod to update. Don't have to publish it, it's just for experience.
You get Notepad++ and split your view with on one side the mod, and on the other the A15 vanilla XML file.
Compare the differences and either test out different things or use the forum's search function to search for specific things - in the hope the topic was raised by someone else already. In my eyes it would be worthwhile to create a new thread about a subject if that isn't covered yet, so that we build a 'library of knowledge' on the help section, so to say. Others can pitch in with their findings or use that thread as a reference. Never mind the easy, vague answers some of the older, experienced modders sometimes give, expecting newcomers to know all this stuff as if it is nothing.

EDIT: I forgot; I'm willing to share my knowledge and experience as a beginning modder. I know what it's like. /EDIT

Here's some direct feedback on your OP topics:

• Making animal armour might be a mash-up of that mod that adds hauling bags for animals and vanilla/modded armour.
  I believe Shinzy's Aparello did have shoes at some point. You could ask them if you could look at the latest version of their mod that added footwear, so you can learn from it for your own mod.
  Gloves should be similar, just use a different body part.
• Early game armor is done in Medieval Times, so you should be able to look at that mod to see how they made it.
• I'm not sure what you mean exactly with 'better efficiency'. Could you elaborate?
• Making sedatives should be relatively easy. I'm thinking a copy of medicine, but strip anything out of it that isn't the sedation?
  I'm fairly sure I've seen at least one thread on the topic before, might have been someone's mod or attempt on it.
  Not sure on bed restraints and straight jackets.
• Better medicine and surgery has been handled by mods already.
• Combat Realism is a hot topic. It changes the combat system drastically, but 'official' development had been dropped and I've got no idea if anyone has taken over the mantle for it.
  There's quite a lot of mods out there that add defensive structures already. They're fairly easy to customise or make from scratch. They're all just a derivative of the base building/wall structure.
• Shields are covered in a few mods.
• Animal traps sounds like a good idea! Changing the hunting job from carelessly firing from way too far away to just checking up on traps! This would require C# modding though, I'm sure.
  The hunting zones also require C#, and sound like a good idea as well. Maybe someone already made something?
• Changing the colour of clothes has also been achieved by at least one mod.

Yes, I know you wrote that you already knew most of those things exist in mods in one way or another. I'm not writing this as a "go install mod X and Y" but as a "perhaps go have a look at the files for mod X and Y so you can try and puzzle your way through understanding how they did it".

On a side-note; adding all of that lower tech content is awesome, by my book. I find it odd that you can go from crashlanding and having nothing, to making simplistic stuff from natural resources and the little bit of more advanced materials you can find from crashlanding/just out in the wild - to then quite rapidly having a shitton of advanced objects all over the place.
From what I remember, the modpack called Superior Crafting did a REALLY good job at spreading out all of that tech. It really gave you a sense of progression, nothing felt just like a stopgap between the next better thing. From what a mate told me, it kept being taken down because some modders were against the base ideas of a modding community, like sharing, and wanted their work to be taken out promptly.

[Shinzy]

Shoes, socks, gloves etc are very very very very simple to make (I would have a mod up for plenty of those if I didn't constantly try to do so many other things aswell)

shoes or any other non visible apparel would work exactly in the same way as vanilla Pants do, you would just need to change the covered bodypart
(Medieval times actually does add atleast one set of boots and two sets of socks, so you could snoop at that)
OR alternatively you could wait till year 2060 when I've finally updated my mods!

[Raccoon]

I have an outdated Mod of Boots. If you want i bring him back.

[Tirpitz]

Depending on your experience with related skills and ability to analyse, a good starting point for me was finding an older mod to update. Don't have to publish it, it's just for experience.
You get Notepad++ and split your view with on one side the mod, and on the other the A15 vanilla XML file.
Compare the differences and either test out different things or use the forum's search function to search for specific things - in the hope the topic was raised by someone else already. In my eyes it would be worthwhile to create a new thread about a subject if that isn't covered yet, so that we build a 'library of knowledge' on the help section, so to say. Others can pitch in with their findings or use that thread as a reference. Never mind the easy, vague answers some of the older, experienced modders sometimes give, expecting newcomers to know all this stuff as if it is nothing.

EDIT: I forgot; I'm willing to share my knowledge and experience as a beginning modder. I know what it's like. /EDIT

Here's some direct feedback on your OP topics:

   
• Making animal armour might be a mash-up of that mod that adds hauling bags for animals and vanilla/modded armour.
  I believe Shinzy's Aparello did have shoes at some point. You could ask them if you could look at the latest version of their mod that added footwear, so you can learn from it for your own mod.
  Gloves should be similar, just use a different body part.
• Early game armor is done in Medieval Times, so you should be able to look at that mod to see how they made it.
• I'm not sure what you mean exactly with 'better efficiency'. Could you elaborate?
• Making sedatives should be relatively easy. I'm thinking a copy of medicine, but strip anything out of it that isn't the sedation?
  I'm fairly sure I've seen at least one thread on the topic before, might have been someone's mod or attempt on it.
  Not sure on bed restraints and straight jackets.
• Better medicine and surgery has been handled by mods already.
• Combat Realism is a hot topic. It changes the combat system drastically, but 'official' development had been dropped and I've got no idea if anyone has taken over the mantle for it.
  There's quite a lot of mods out there that add defensive structures already. They're fairly easy to customise or make from scratch. They're all just a derivative of the base building/wall structure.
• Shields are covered in a few mods.
• Animal traps sounds like a good idea! Changing the hunting job from carelessly firing from way too far away to just checking up on traps! This would require C# modding though, I'm sure.
  The hunting zones also require C#, and sound like a good idea as well. Maybe someone already made something?
• Changing the colour of clothes has also been achieved by at least one mod.

Yes, I know you wrote that you already knew most of those things exist in mods in one way or another. I'm not writing this as a "go install mod X and Y" but as a "perhaps go have a look at the files for mod X and Y so you can try and puzzle your way through understanding how they did it".

On a side-note; adding all of that lower tech content is awesome, by my book. I find it odd that you can go from crashlanding and having nothing, to making simplistic stuff from natural resources and the little bit of more advanced materials you can find from crashlanding/just out in the wild - to then quite rapidly having a shitton of advanced objects all over the place.
From what I remember, the modpack called Superior Crafting did a REALLY good job at spreading out all of that tech. It really gave you a sense of progression, nothing felt just like a stopgap between the next better thing. From what a mate told me, it kept being taken down because some modders were against the base ideas of a modding community, like sharing, and wanted their work to be taken out promptly.

Thank you for this, very helpful and yes I've always felt that there isn't enough early game tech to progress through. Like I said I haven't been around here long but from what I've seen medieval already has a lot of the stuff I want. I feel like there is a large community like me who wants just an improved version of vanilla and not a complete overhaul of it. Thanks for pointing out some of these mods to me I really need the help lol.

I have an outdated Mod of Boots. If you want i bring him back.

Heck yeah man.

Shoes, socks, gloves etc are very very very very simple to make (I would have a mod up for plenty of those if I didn't constantly try to do so many other things aswell)

shoes or any other non visible apparel would work exactly in the same way as vanilla Pants do, you would just need to change the covered bodypart
(Medieval times actually does add atleast one set of boots and two sets of socks, so you could snoop at that)
OR alternatively you could wait till year 2060 when I've finally updated my mods!

I'll check it out. In the mean time I'll be waiting for yours. :^)


Sidenote
No spoiler codes? Or am I just retarded?

[kaptain_kavern]

There's a whole dedicated subforum for help with modding;https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?board=14.0
Unfortunately, it seems a lot of sources (threads, wikis) are not really up-to-date, or they're not geared towards starting modders, or they're not complete enough.

Just to add to this.
When I start to read/learn about modding I mostly learned from outdated stuff on the wiki/forum, and for XML modding atleast, I find it is still a good idea to read them to learn. Worst case scenario : the tags used in the tutorial have changed between alphas, but the reasoning and the way you practically do the modding still remain the same and you will learn a lot about how it's done by reading (not so old) outdated tutorials.

And like others here, if I think I can help, I often reply to help threads.

Keep in mind that when you will actually start to fiddle a bit with the files things will be less theoretical. IMHO that's when you started to learn/understand the most. Reading codes from mods you know well helped me a lot too when starting (especially when the code was commented). Github is great for that.

Just keep up and hang on at start. Things will become clearer and clearer