Good news and bad news.
Bad news is that if you want to do this yourself, you will have to do some scripting. There are no tutorials as far as I know, the "documentation" is quite limited, and so for this reason, especially if you have zero programming experience from before, the learning curve is steep.
The good news is that what you want to do in itself is very easy. Sounds in fact like quite a good starting project for somebody who wants to learn to work with the SDK. Adding items, changing the world map, making new dialogues and toggling pvp is very easy to do and requires almost no scripting knowledge. Changing the death penalty as per questions 1 and 5 is probably the hardest tasks, but depending on exactly what you have in mind, it should also be pretty easy.
You sound very determined to make it happen. You already have the SDK I assume, so everything is set up. Do you definitely need a C++ / AngelScript programmer? Well, either you learn some very basic stuff for yourself, or you need somebody to do it for you. No way around that. But like I said, the stuff you're aiming for is not exactly rocket science. You just need some patience.
For the rest of the questions...
Adding and editing new towns
If you mean the maps themselves, you need to work with the mapper. Dunno if there are any good tutorials for that. To get started, you load maps with "~mapname", save maps with "^mapname" and make new maps with "*new". The rest you can probably figure out with google translate and just messing around with the maps.
If your question is refering to adding new locations on the worldmap, look for GenerateWorld.cfg and Locations.cfg in the server/maps folder. You first have to add a location in Locations.cfg, then in GenerateWorld.cfg you add the actual green circle on the worldmap.
Adding and editing /../ NPCs
To add critters on a map, you use the mapper (or spawn them with a script). If you want to change the statistics of a critter, you can go to server/proto/critters and look at the *.fopro files. Inside you can edit the default parameters such as the SPECIAL, hp, ac, and so on. To add new models with new art is a lot more involved.
Adding and editing /../ items
To add/alter items, go to server/proto/items. The *.fopro files specify new items, you should be able to figure out roughly what's going on by looking at those files.
Changing and adding new dialogue for the game
Have a look at this tutorial:
http://fodev.net/files/sdk/ArtOfDialogs.pdfExpanding the world size
Afaik, all you have to do is replace the image in server/maps. The colour specifies how fast you travel on the map - the brighter the faster. The map you actually see in game is client side, in client/data/art/intrface/wm.
Disable and Enable PVP in certain areas
You have to add a script to the maps where PvP is disabled. I haven't tested this, but if you want, you can try the following.
First make a new script (just a regular text file that you put in the scripts folder). Call it whatever you want - for example map_nopvp.fos. To register it, go to scripts.cfg and add somewhere the following line:
@ server map_nopvpThen in your file, copy paste the following:
#include "_macros.fos"
#include "mapdata_h.fos"
void map_init(Map& map, bool firstTime)
{
_MapSetMode(MAP_MODE_NO_PVP);
}Next you open up the map file where you want to disable pvp, and at the top, you see these two lines:
ScriptModule -
ScriptFunc -Replace it with:
ScriptModule map_nopvp
ScriptFunc map_init
This
should disable pvp on that map. Assuming it compiles in the first place. And assuming that you're using the 2238 sdk.
Changing the death penalty from full loot to something else (a custom penalty, not just removing item loss entirely)
/../
Making certain areas have different death penalties when you enter them and how to mark them on the map
Changing the death penalty is the hardest task. I won't walk you through the process, but if you want to try to figure it out for yourself, a good place to start looking would be replication.fos. In the script main.fos, look also at the function critter_dead - that one is called whenever a critter dies.
Do you know of any good places to find programmers and artists, including these forums?
How much does it pay?
Good luck with your project.
