Absolute noobie modder needing help

[Pumble]

Hey guys. I've never even attempted to make a mod for rimworld before, all my previous experience has been modding dwarf fortress. I was wondering if anyone could give me some beginner tips and where to start, and what I'll need.
Also, how hard would it be to create a custom health condition? I want to make like a vampire type of disease, something that makes colonists not age but need to eat people and stuff lol. How hard would it be to do that?

[Nolan71]

I started on the wiki here.
This is a great introduction mod to make.
From my very limited experience here are my tips:

Get a good editor for XML. I use Sublime.
I highly recommend getting a decompiler like dnSpy. Use this to read the game's c# files to get a better understanding of your options. I got confused quickly, take notes to make it less confusing.
Don't set the standards of your first mod too high. Aim for small things at a time and slowly expand on them: v0.1: a gun, v0.2: a gun that shoots fire, v0.3: a fire gun that explodes when it breaks.... I think you get the idea.

What you suggest doesn't sound overly difficult, although I personally do not have any experience modifying that portion of the game. From what I understand, you would need to research Harmony.

Hope that helps!

[Kirby23590]

There a lot of good XML editors... I use Notepadd++

If you're planning on making on a disease or a weapon. It's not a bad start by copying the Core's code.

Also check out the Help Subforum's sticky posts... While i offer a little help from the other guy. I hope this info helps you as well...

[LWM]

Also, how hard would it be to create a custom health condition? I want to make like a vampire type of disease, something that makes colonists not age but need to eat people and stuff lol. How hard would it be to do that?

Definitely at least read thru the basic example in the wiki tutorial.  There's a good outline there for setting up, and a lot of good information in general.

I recommend starting with small bits and adding more and more as you get more comfortable with the system, but then, you probably knew that.

Maybe start by figuring out how diseases work in general - there are some mods out there that could give good starting points (common ailments comes to mind?)

You will probably need to use Harmony to achieve some of your goals (aging is probably hardcoded for example) - when you have specific questions, this forum is a great place to ask them.  This is another place where reading someone else's code can be really helpful - Avril's Common Sense, my Deep Storage, most of Mehni's mods, all use Harmony and are hopefully approachable.  The Harmony pages can sometimes be a bit difficult to follow, and I have found I still open up one of my old harmony patches when creating a new one...

I use emacs or vi for XML, depending on my mood; both have good xml modes.  But then, I also run Linux and am used to them

Sounds fun, good luck!

--LWM