I've never made mods in my life. I've looked up tutorials everywhere I could find them, but there's a lot of information that I just can't find (I've been looking for a few days now) which makes any progress impossible. The only step-by-step tutorials I could find are YEARS old and either don't tell me key things I have to do or tell me to edit the pre-existing example they have... which I can't open (yes, I downloaded Tiled. I get this error when trying to open the example mission) I'm just trying to learn the basics and get started, but the useful information is just too difficult to come by. I checked the unofficial modding guide, which doesn't talk about Quest/Dungeon mods (oh boy guess what I'm looking to make), and I've checked other YouTube videos... which only talk about how to use Tiled to make the maps but not exporting them so that Starbound can use them.
If you are just learning, you shouldn't be using Tiled, since you wouldn't even know how to get what you made into the game. Start here instead: http://community.playstarbound.com/resources/unofficial-modding-ebook-2-0.2930/
I agree with the Lazarus. Start simple like weapons and armor. Or other simple items. The version of Tiled you are using matters a lot too.
The latest version of tiled hasnt given me any problems. Is there something specific that makes it not advised for use with Starbound modding?
I've seen a lot of different post where people mention that you should use a specific version of Tiled. I cannot remember the reason though
I definitely wouldn't recommend working with Tiled as your first experience. Rather, it's best that you start simple, like figuring out how to make clothes/armor, weapons, items like consumables or throwables. Figure out how to make .patch files and learn how they modify vanilla assets, learn how to pick out errors from your Starbound.log and then how to fix them. My best advice is to go unpack the vanilla game's assets, and start reverse-engineering things while looking at guides. Reverse-engineer the vanilla assets. Reverse-engineer simple mods. Crack things open with Notepad++ (or with an art program with layers) and see how they work.
so, to assist, as i just started using tiled myself, and am learning the ins and outs of whats needed, i have in fact encountered that error. I generally got it when the map i opened couldn't find the tile-set files, either packed or unpacked. You can find a PAK file... unpacker in the forums here. One mistake i initially made was leaving it named unpacked. Change it to packed also, as that is what the files are trying to point to. My experience at least. Also, have both the recommended version and the latest version installed of Tiled, prefer the latest. no issues found there.
Yes, I've followed the flashlight tutorial among others. I'm looking to make an actual questline mod. I'm not looking to edit items, as I've been through those tutorials. I've PAK'd and unPAK'd the assets already.
Yeah, I understand the need for learning the basics. I know that starting an entire questline mod from nothing is a MASSIVE undertaking for anyone, let alone someone with as little experience as I. At the very least, I want to see that I even CAN add maps, structures, etc. Seeing that one of my tools (a rather critical one) won't even WORK down the line is rather discouraging. You especially can tell from how basic my 'dungeon' is that virtually its entirety is just to test a few concepts within it before anything crazy.
Oh! Now that I'm pinged back here-- I wouldn't recommend using a newer version of Tiled. Try one of the 0.16 releases instead: those are a lot friendlier to Starbound stuff, I've found.
The best thing to do is just start tinkering. Look at how the vanilla game does it, then repurpose that to make your stuff work. There will rarely be a tutorial specifically for what you want. The latest version works just fine. Is there something specific about 0.16?
If I recall correctly, files made with newer version of Tiled is (was?) missing the property parameter, so it could cause issues when loaded for Starbound. I was informed that this issue was fixed recently, but I'm not sure if it was latest version of Tiled or Starbound 1.3 that fixed the issue. Haven't tried out Tiled newest version.
What? I use version 1.0.2 and it works perfectly fine. I have only used treasurepools, npcs, and location stuff, so I may be missing something on what your saying here.
The issue was before Tiled reached version 1 and before Starbound was updated to 1.3. There was a post somewhere here that explains in brief about it - unfortunately I didn't bookmark it and can't find in my post history either. Last time I used Tiled was in April. I haven't touched Tiled since then, and then SB 1.3 happened so did Tiled version 1. So I don't know if the issue is fixed by Tiled version 1 or by SB 1.3...
