A few questions about where to start...

[NovaDose 128]

So I've been searching around and absorbing what I can find but still have a few questions about getting into modding and things that I can mod.

 

1.)  Is there a good tutorial that would walk me through creating a mod, packaging it, and deploying it?  I've watched the one with editing the init.c and that helps but I'm looking to do more...  I've tinkered with some of the xml files as well to adjust spawn rates of zombies and gear so I'm hoping some of the things I want to change (specifically axe wear and fire/cooking times) are similar to that at least

2.)  The "more" I mentioned before:  I'd like to start by adjusting how quickly the fire axe, splitting axe, hatchet, etc (anything that can cut down a tree) deteriorates when chopping wood.  I've been de-pbo'ing several server files and I just cannot find where this would be adjusted at.

3.)  I'd also like to double how long a log burns for in a fire and cut in half how long it takes to cook food (specifically on a stick but halving the time it takes to cook using all methods would be great too).

4.)  Finally, and this is long term, I'd like to model a pocket watch (so if you know of a tutorial on modeling that'd be awesome), tie the watch to an action similar to how clicking with a compass opens the lid, then have the hands show the server time or, alternatively (and probably preferably at first), just have the time come up in a server message locally to the player.

 

Can anyone give me a little direction on these things?  I know I need to be self sufficient but some of this stuff (specifically 2 and 3) is probably very old hat to some of you folks here so rather than beating my head against a wall for the next two weeks trying to figure it out with trial and error I figured I would consult with the pros.  thanks for any help!

[tomtrustworthy 35]

Looking for any direction to get started. 

I'm assuming theres some tools on steam to download but I can't find anything about getting started making a mod. I see a lot about how to get a mod from steam or load a mod on your own server but thats all. 

[NovaDose 128]

11 minutes ago, tomtrustworthy said:

Looking for any direction to get started. 

I'm assuming theres some tools on steam to download but I can't find anything about getting started making a mod. I see a lot about how to get a mod from steam or load a mod on your own server but thats all. 

If you open steam then highlight "Library" you should see tools in that list.  There you can download the server files and the tools package.  Once you have those I'd also recommend downloading notepad++ to edit XML files in.  

I used this video to help get me going:  

There are a few other resources kicking around about how to do things like increase (or decrease) specific item spawns or increase (or decrease) the total number of zombies on the server (google is your friend for tracking down that info).

Right now I'm kind of in the same boat as you are though; I'd really like to find a video series on indepth mod creation with maybe a simple project that touches all the bases from start to finish.  I'd like to eventually get to that point and if I do I'll make a video series like this if there still isn't one.  But in the meantime I guess we are going the break/fix route for the time being.

[squeenie 0]

Modelling isn't really DayZ specific so you could follow any tutorial series and it would be applicable. Though it's up to you which program you use, I'm guessing most people use blender because it's free so I would start there. I would also recommend checking out ofp2's post here, it looks incredibly promising 

 

As for point 2, unless you have a lottttttt of free time to comb through all the scripts and find useful tidbits you'll have to wait until they release documentation or examples, whenever that may be (Hopefully soon but I'm not holding my breath).

 

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.