First modding project

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by rdonj

There are three things you need to have in order to mod dominions. A text editor, the modding .pdf in your dominions/docs folder, and edi's database. The last isn't strictly necessary, but should be considered as a must for anyone who wants to do modding, because it will make your life much easier. A text editor can be something as simple as notepad.

One minor point - the game expect UNIX style end-lines, so some of the information about formatting in the modding manual won't work with DOS/Windows style end-lines in the mod file. There are any number of alternative text editors out there that can change the whitespace characters easily.

I'd suggest Notepad++: http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

...but the alternatives are plentiful.

Second, once you get the experience of modifying out of the box units/features, you might want to get into creating new units/nations/etc. For that, you'll probably want a graphics editor that can handle .TGA files (the format the game uses.)

For Windows, I'd suggest either:

Paint.NET: http://paint.net/
or
Gimp: http://www.gimp.org/windows/

Of course, if you're not using Windows, you'll have a different set of options. :-)