Advice/Resources to Get Started With Creating Mods?

[Arrrchitects]

Google has been no help at all and is only providing links and guides to modding the Switch to run homebrew and not at all the info I'm looking for. I'm interested in actually learning to make mods/homebrew but have no idea where to start and, as stated, Google is proving absolutely worthless in pointing me in the right direction. I don't have any specific games I'm wanting to do necessarily but if an example helps then let's go with Rune Factory 5. I'm not asking to have my hand held through the entire process (although it will be a question fueled endeavor I'm sure) but any resources/tutorials/communities that have the information needed to get started would be awfully swell.

 

[FAST6191]

Mods and homebrew is quite a different activity with minimal overlap.
For homebrew you will probably be pointed at https://devkitpro.org/ as it has Switch options. Most likely to be coding in C and maybe some C++ for this one. There should be plenty of open source projects to look at in addition to the examples that provides. https://switchbrew.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page has some info on hardware as well.
There are not really any high level scripting languages I would want to point someone at right now outside of whatever exists within the various Linux and Android ports (on the older consoles we tend to see some nice high level languages and they get their own little community).

Mods, or ROM hacking to most when it is not on PC, is much the same whether you are dealing with something loaded from tape or the latest PC game. The Switch has a file system so you will have that to play with (anything on a cartridge older than the DS will probably be a big blob of code, no nice file names/sizes/extensions/directories).
Otherwise pull it apart, figure out the formats for the aspect you want to edit (will tend to be closer to the hardware, some abstract known format, something Nintendo provided or something more game focused than pure abstract), edit and go from there. If you want to edit what is taken care of with code then you get to learn a more complicated form of coding called assembly (which differs between CPU types, and the surrounding hardware for what it speaks to).
Switch emulation is not particularly good at this point so debugging might well have to be/be better served by hardware based methods (easy enough to add things in there and speak to it by network to your PC https://gbatemp.net/threads/atmospheres-gdb.602435/ is more for cheats but memory reading, breakpoints and such is debugging, learning to make cheats https://web.archive.org/web/20080309104350/http://etk.scener.org/?op=tutorial though Switch stuff has some quirks with memory locations, both helps in hacking by giving you a jumping off point and is a great way to learn things)

https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=Category:Game_Formats http://wiki.xentax.com/index.php/Game_File_Format_Central http://www.amnoid.de/gc/ https://gbatemp.net/threads/gbatemp-rom-hacking-documentation-project-new-2016-edition-out.73394/ is more for the GBA and DS but the principles are the same really. By similar token you might also like https://www.romhacking.net/start/
Not sure what we are pointing people at for fiddling with 3d formats -- you occasionally see plugins for Blender or other 3d modelling programs.

 

[Arrrchitects]

Mods and homebrew is quite a different activity with minimal overlap.
For homebrew you will probably be pointed at https://devkitpro.org/ as it has Switch options. Most likely to be coding in C and maybe some C++ for this one. There should be plenty of open source projects to look at in addition to the examples that provides. https://switchbrew.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page has some info on hardware as well.
There are not really any high level scripting languages I would want to point someone at right now outside of whatever exists within the various Linux and Android ports (on the older consoles we tend to see some nice high level languages and they get their own little community).

Mods, or ROM hacking to most when it is not on PC, is much the same whether you are dealing with something loaded from tape or the latest PC game. The Switch has a file system so you will have that to play with (anything on a cartridge older than the DS will probably be a big blob of code, no nice file names/sizes/extensions/directories).
Otherwise pull it apart, figure out the formats for the aspect you want to edit (will tend to be closer to the hardware, some abstract known format, something Nintendo provided or something more game focused than pure abstract), edit and go from there. If you want to edit what is taken care of with code then you get to learn a more complicated form of coding called assembly (which differs between CPU types, and the surrounding hardware for what it speaks to).
Switch emulation is not particularly good at this point so debugging might well have to be/be better served by hardware based methods (easy enough to add things in there and speak to it by network to your PC https://gbatemp.net/threads/atmospheres-gdb.602435/ is more for cheats but memory reading, breakpoints and such is debugging, learning to make cheats https://web.archive.org/web/20080309104350/http://etk.scener.org/?op=tutorial though Switch stuff has some quirks with memory locations, both helps in hacking by giving you a jumping off point and is a great way to learn things)

https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=Category:Game_Formats http://wiki.xentax.com/index.php/Game_File_Format_Central http://www.amnoid.de/gc/ https://gbatemp.net/threads/gbatemp-rom-hacking-documentation-project-new-2016-edition-out.73394/ is more for the GBA and DS but the principles are the same really. By similar token you might also like https://www.romhacking.net/start/
Not sure what we are pointing people at for fiddling with 3d formats -- you occasionally see plugins for Blender or other 3d modelling programs.

Thanks for this. Since posting the OP I had dumped the romfs of a few different games and been poking around a little bit but not having any sort of success or any actual real attempt yet aside from trying to open the dumped files. I'll definitely be checking out your links today at some point (assuming work isn't shit).