How to: Editing and making New Classes and Feats

In an effort to both help the team out, and learn how to do this for my own enjoyment, I am interested in learning how to write new classes/feats/spells, as well as altering existing ones.

Sadly, I have no real experience with this just yet, so I was hoping that someone in the know would be kind enough to point me in the right direction for what tools I need, and how to get started.

Being as I am a poor grad student, being pointed towards free resources would be preferable. Please also note that I am a grad student, so free thyme for learning these new skills may be sporadic and intermittent.

Thank you,

Orlitoq

Well, for the record I don't think we're in need of anyone else on the team, and don't really accept applications for membership.

That said, if you're wanting to learn how to make custom classes and the like just generally, then there are plenty of good tutorials around, particularly on the vault. Unfortunately http://www.nwn2scripting.com/, which is the site I used to learn, has apparently shutdown or at the very least gone offline. But there are plenty of other tutorials to be found with a bit of Googling. And if you know someone who can actually teach you, that is obviously the best method for learning.

As a little piece of advice though, in order to start scripting use the Toolset. It has an inbuilt library of all the functions you can use, which is incredibly useful when learning to script. Creating a script just involves going to the Script page to the left, and rightclicking to make a new script. From there, most tutorials will teach you the rest, but the ones I read often left out that little tidbit for some reason.

As for programs to use, a lot of the making of custom classes involves editing 2DAs. I'd recommend using a separate program for dealing with them, I use TlkEdit, but it probably doesn't matter much. Just find one that works, and you like using. Make sure that the editor you use can deal with ERFs/Haks and 2DAs though, as those are crucial. Most editors do, I think.

Bare in mind that learning all you need for this takes quite a bit of time and dedication, but if you're interested then the community could always use more people making custom content. :)

Thanks, that was the bump in the right direction I needed. Hopefully this thread might lead a few others in that direction too!

As for being a member of staff? Sorry if I ill conveyed my intent. My availability and schedule are far too intermittent for any real responsibility on my part. I never aspired to be staff on any server. My intent was to learn this on my own, but not to try and regularly provide any substantial content. If I ever happen to make something you needed, then you could look over it and either integrate it, or modify it to fit your own needs... Just like other stuff in the Vault.