Workflow Best Practices
When creating mods for a video game using an editor, there are certain best practices that can help you create high-quality and functional mods. These best practices can make the mod creation process more efficient and effective, and help ensure that your mod is well-designed and easy to use.
Best Practices
| 1 | Understand the tools: Take the time to read through the Getting Started section of this user guide and familiarize yourself with the tools' capabilities before starting to create your mod. This can help you avoid common mistakes and create a mod that is optimized for the engine. |
| 2 | Save your mod frequently: Save your mod frequently to prevent data loss, make debugging easier, and make testing iterations easier. Remember it’s always easier to save regularly than it is to recreate lost work. |
| 3 | Test your mod frequently: Test your mod frequently to catch bugs and make sure everything is working as expected. |
| 4 | Optimize your mod for performance: As you develop your mod, optimize it for performance and efficiency. This can help ensure that your mod runs smoothly and doesn't have any performance issues. |
| 5 | Save time during development by using the build options in Build Wizard: When iterating on your mod the inclination is to build your map after every change. Not only does this take time, but in many cases it’s not necessary. The build options in Build Wizard allow you to make selections and simply compile the specific things you need to compile to test your changes. For additional information, see: |
| 6 | Use the grid while working on your creations: The World Editor in idStudio includes a grid that will help you align and scale entities and primitives. With the grid turned on, new brushes will snap to the grid automatically. |
| 7 | Use the Shadowcaster material on all unused faces of your map: Applying Shadowcaster to the unused faces of your map prevents the lightmap from being generated on these surfaces. Building a lightmap and shadows for unseen surfaces uses resources and adds extra build time with zero benefit. Shadowcaster material can be found in Asset Browser: material2/art/tile/common/shadow_caster |
| 8 | Save lighting changes for the end of your project: If you’re making changes to baked lights, you’ll need to bake them again to get them to show up. While the time to do this will vary depending on your hardware, it can be as slow as a couple days to complete. It is best to save lighting for the end. |