Question for forum 'Old Hands': Is there a Most Common New Modder Mistakes thread?

[DarkScythe]

Hmm. I'll have to test that, then. I had thought that mipmaps was what allowed the images to scale in size. If that's not true, then I'll have to test it without mipmaps and see what happens.

 

[AW Arcaeca]

Bumping this thread because we're not supposed to post in the other one...

I think the "What you should do when you need to start a thread asking for help" section should be expanded. As it is, we practically have to hit people on the head and tell them not to post in subsections, so that could stand to stand out more. I think we could also add some instruction on basically this:

4. Do not - I repeat, DO NOT - post walls of code if you expect us to get anywhere anytime soon trying to review your code. If you want to keep it readable, wrap your code in

 blocks[/B] - that is, [.CODE] before your code and [./CODE] afterwards, without the periods. If you're posting in advanced mode, highlight the code and press the button with the number sign/hashtag/pund/whatever else you call it.
[B]If the code is particularly long, also wrap the code, in a similar manner as [CODE] blocks, in [SPOILER] blocks.[/B]

We might as well also throw in some these to quotes by whoward69, for their incredible usefulness in instructing newcomers:

[QUOTE="whoward69"]Trying to guess what you may or may not have done based on your descriptions is nigh on impossible. Please zip your mod (the one in the MODS sub-directory, not the ModBuddy project) and attach it to your post so we can read the actual files. [/QUOTE]
[QUOTE="whoward69"]A SINGLE error in the XML file will invalidate the ENTIRE file, so you MUST look at the complete file and not just a single bit of it.[/QUOTE]
I don't quite remember what threads these are from, but they're useful nonetheless.

 

[LeeS]

Bumping this thread because we're not supposed to post in the other one...

I think the "What you should do when you need to start a thread asking for help" section should be expanded. As it is, we practically have to hit people on the head and tell them not to post in subsections, so that could stand to stand out more. I think we could also add some instruction on basically this:

4. Do not - I repeat, DO NOT - post walls of code if you expect us to get anywhere anytime soon trying to review your code. If you want to keep it readable, wrap your code in

 blocks[/B] - that is, [.CODE] before your code and [./CODE] afterwards, without the periods. If you're posting in advanced mode, highlight the code and press the button with the number sign/hashtag/pund/whatever else you call it.
[B]If the code is particularly long, also wrap the code, in a similar manner as [CODE] blocks, in [SPOILER] blocks.[/B]

We might as well also throw in some these to quotes by whoward69, for their incredible usefulness in instructing newcomers:



I don't quite remember what threads these are from, but they're useful nonetheless.[/QUOTE]
Well, as I said at the top, it'll be going thru revisions and re-workings. I'll look at re-working that "what to include when starting a new thread" section to include some or all of that in some form.

I didn't manage to get as much as I was thinking I could last week of the basic writing because, well, real life, and, well, reasons.

 

[ThorHammerz]

Should also include some stuff (syntax/spelling errors) with regards to using SQL and LUA, as well as not following instructions step-by-step when attempting to compile the base/unaltered .DLL for the first time.

 

[AW Arcaeca]

Er.... I don't think most beginning modders are going to jump right into SQL, Lua or DLL modding right away; they seem to have enough trouble with XML as it is.