Something About Modding (Poll Inside)

Wall of text incoming, so be prepared to read 'cause there isn't a TL;DR Alright, now to business:
I've been playing .Drive since the pre-race update, back when there was not much of a community, basically just RoR immigrants. Modding wasn't huge back then, but that's really changed. There are many talented modders out there, but some just don't do it. There are also people who want to mod, but can't without help from the seniors (like me). I want to go over a *few* things that I think would really improve the modding experience, quality, and number.
Part 1. Help for new modders
First and foremost, there needs to be more resources. Sure, the wiki is great but when was the last time that thing was updated? It isn't very clear in some areas and is has a very steep learning curve. I feel it would do us all a great favor if the wiki was uodated, more clear, and had more info. (Modeling, troubleshooting, updating after game update, etc.)
Another idea that ties in with the one above is a mod support for people who haven't modded yet and would like to learn how. Live sessions over a streaming service (YouTube, citrix, etc.) would greatly help people new to modding.
A final idea for helping new modders would be official tools. I understand these take time and resources, but an official jbeam exporter/quick tool to change the jbeam in game/etc. This probably won't happen, but it's possible.
Part 2. Motivation for creating/updating mods
I personally have a ton of time and want to mod, I just don't know how. I can learn and have the resources (dual monitors FTW), but am not motivated to do it. Motivation like the Kickstarter style thing @tdev came up with would be greatly appreciated by the modders. People to cheer you on might not sound big, but can really help someone out.
My final point is that updating mods is boring and sudden. When an update comes out, people are counting on you to update the mod fast, so it puts a lot of pressure on you. Early access to changes that could affect the mod and how to address them would be helpful and reduce the downtime of the mod. Help and/or a quick modding changelog would be nice.
I hope you take this into consideration, and thank you for your time

Dang, this took almost an hour to plan and type on a phone :/

 

I 100% agree on the resources available. I am currently trying to build a couple of vehicles and I have all the knowledge I could ever need about building the physics structure from RoR back in the day... its just learning the new JBeam format ends up screwing me over all the time. I could practically spew out a .truck file purely from memory by the time Beam came along... Now I am basically starting from scratch and learning all over again. Most things are very familiar, but my biggest problem always ends up being on how to set up the hierarchy of parts on the part list. That always gets me every time.

 

I would love to see more information on the wiki, it is lacking in many areas, and is the first place to look for information. Some work on the BNE would be nice too, or a whole new tool, since it is buggy at times and also not very good on formatting (for example adding 6 decimal places to something with only 1 or 2 after saving) or dealing with errors. The devs have stated that the wiki will take more of a priority as development stabilises and the game is closer to full release, as that allows them more time to focus on documenting things for the wiki without the risk of it being completely changed after an update.

 

There is lot of information in Wiki, but it is not very easy to digest format, especially for new guys and gals it would be more beneficial to have step by step guides with lot of pictures, or some videos, but even videos can be bit hard to get.

Also there needs to be most common things that will go wrong and how to solve them part in instructions.

I just did small absolute beginner tutorial to content creation and I can tell you it is last time I will do anything using board provided possibilities, I can only imagine Wiki being even more horrible to use, so I will use Powerpoint and export out slides from that or something, now if PP XML or open XML would be possible to import into wiki I might do a lot pages there, but I'm not going to spent 30-50% of the time it took making tutorial fighting with clumsy interface.

I think that I can't be alone with it, if making pages would be as easy as making slides in PP, there probably would be a lot more information available in Wiki.

Bit same goes with content, when creating model, texture or simple car part jbeam file is not so hard, there is this part of the modding where you have to get thing into game and that sometimes can be more of work than creating that part and sometimes doing exactly like in instructions is not delivering results, without any indication of why, if it would be possible to streamline that, it might help with more content being created, I have probably spent more time trying to figure out why something does not work even it should, than what time actually was needed to make all the stuff.

I think improving information and methods on those areas would be most beneficial.

 

As soon as I move in on Saturday, it will be my top priority to learn how to mod effectively, and once that's accomplished, to update the wiki. With dual monitors and more time than the average being, it should be possible