Hardest Form of Modding?

[LavaLatte [.Fade]]

Seeing that I am [was?] strictly a PSA hacker, I guess that's all I can vouch for. Well, PSA, and what's involved in making a clean one.

Animation:
- The concept in itself is very simple...but very, very tedious. Days can be spent on only a handful of animations. The task is not inherently difficult, but the refinement and natural movement of the character is directly proportional to how much time you spend perfecting it. Not to mention matching the movements with the hitboxes coded for the character.

Code Work:
- I can account for over two years of learning PSA, from the first day of its release to retiring sometime in 2011. And with this "experience," I honestly believe it is the most difficult form of modding.

- Your first few months of PSA are spent experimenting. Learning how to code hitboxes, playing with graphics, changing subactions mid-move, it's like an introduction to CAD. It's incredibly fun when something goes your way.

- The next few months are spent learning how to fix bugs. Spotting that extra integer in your knockback parameter, finding your loop isn't functioning properly, realizing that there's some hidden coding you can't quite edit, and finding a way around it. Bug fixing is easily the most frustrating task involved in "PSA-ing", and can involve weeks of running around in circles trying to figure out exactly what went wrong.

- The rest of your PSA career is spent being inventive. You're learned and studied over a hundred different codes and the minute differences in using one over another. New codes are being discovered on a weekly basis, changing the realm of what hackers can achieve. How can I make this projectile curve? How can I make this string of moves connect properly? How can I make a fun, engaging, mechanically unique character without it being inherently broken?

- TL:DR PSA work requires an incredible amount of knowledge, dedication and experience to execute properly. It's what separates the good hacks from the legendary, timeless hacks. The sheer information pool required to be proficient blows all other forms of modding out of the hypothetical water. That's partly the reason why I fell in love with it 

Just my [very large] two cents.

- .Fade

[Chaoszard]

In my opinion the easiest thing to do is brstm.
But the most difficult thing to me is texturing as textures files show characters like if they are  "spare parts". Modified files need to be often checked to see if results are good. I have spent a lot of time to make my 1st texture (which i submitted recently).
I admit that PSA is very hard for someone who don't know anything into programming stuff, which is not my case.
Animating may look simple but it's not as Fade said. Good animations requires a lot of time.
I didn't try vertexes and stages editing.

So my top 3 of most difficult things to do is :
1-Texturing
2-Animating
3-PSA

[mnsg]

Model importing seems to be the most treacherous task to do, as BrawlBox is very picky with the .dae models that you try to import.

Vertex editing may also have its downsides, as altering the vertex points can have an impact on the animations, depending on what vertices have been altered.

[Kienamaru]

For me I am pretty much strictly PSA. I've tried animating, just small things really and I spent over 10 hours just getting Link to dual wield and hold his other sword naturally. Then the same day I finished someone else releases their own dual wielding Link and I just throw mine out. So without a doubt, animating is extremely difficult to master. In case of Brawl it's even harder because you don't want your animations to look too smooth or it won't fit in with the game, but if it ends up rough and choppy that also won't fit in. (unless you want a Wario type character)

I've tried texturing stages and that wasn't too difficult if you swap, but I could say differently for completely custom made textures. I'm not at all artistically talented enough to texture anything naturally, and a great texture has to start as a great idea. Even if your detail is astounding the colors have to go well together and the patterns need to make sense for the character or stage design that they're on.

PSA isn't too hard for me though I could only claim being at most an amateur at it. I understand the basics easily, and some of the other things like placing graphics on bones, but it is pretty time consuming. I spent a pretty long time altering a PSA just to get Link to have a specific type of Arrow. Then there were numerous bugs when messing with certain subactions that just makes fixing them all take longer than actually making the hacks.

So... for what I've tried the most difficult would be...

Animating
Texturing
PSA

[DrunkRussian]

Have to say Importing.Not so much doing it but getting it work the way you want. Out of all the different forms, its the only one that id say im not even somewhat good at.Animating is hard and takes awhile, but when you get it in game and it looks awsome its satisfying enough.PSA isnt really very hard, but troubleshooting is the single most annoying thing in this universe.  Vertexing is in the same boat as importing, but it doesnt take 2 weeks to do only for it not to work.Texturing is not hard at all but im not very artistic so i dont bother releasing textures.Only ever did one stage, and it was pretty simple.
So it would have to be
1.Importing
2.Vertexing
3.Animating
4.Texturing
5.PSA
6.Stages(not much experience though...)

[SSBCFan1996]

Texturing- Second to easiest of hacking                                                                                                                                                                   Animating- possibly hardest to the do                                                                                                                     Importing/ Rigging Beside Kirby hats it look quite   simple tearing models  out from other games                  PSA/Moveset second to the hardest but since I have been fund on learning how to do it I might figure how to do it easily                                                                                                                                                                Stages- Tbh  I have no idea since i've never done it before hence I'm not really fund  on it either                                SFX- one of favorite/easier one of them                           

[Eternal Yoshi]

Animation is easily the most time consuming and challenging of the ones listed here, with PSA being a close second. It takes time to make a decent animation, while getting decent at PSA becomes easier if you go to the OpenSA Wiki and update your .txt files with the data there as Toomai, the B-BR, and the PMBR post their finding on new events there.

For Example, the command that the Master Hand uses for Catch Collisions is also the one that Pikmin use for Catch Collisions, which is 060A0A00.

Keeping up to date with your. txt files makes PSA easier to get into than animations, and also takes less time as you eventually discover less ghetto and space saving solutions and methods.

http://opensa.dantarion.com/wiki/Events_(Brawl)/Group_I

Texturing and modeling take skill and time too, but not to the extent of animating.

Rigging is mostly time consuming than hard. You can save yourself hours by modifying the envelopes of bones before you pick individual vertices. There WILL be moments where you have models with special needs.

Brawlbox makes Music hacking sooo easy if you have a goods ear for keeping tempo when you loop.

The hardest form of modding that isn't there is easily .rel editing, which seems to be written in a form of PPC-ASM.

[Linkxp500]

Here goes my response.

Okay... I really don't have any experience in anything besides texturing (and not even terribly good at it).

BUT, from the tutorials of the creation of any character from a game in general, I can safely say animation is the most difficult to get right.  Now, I am more oriented towards programming, but I still don't think I'd have the patience to position each frame correctly.  This PSA thing is all new to me, but since it ties in with animating, it'd probably also be a bit difficult (aside from the scripts for the moveset).

Modelling isn't my strong suit, and I know I don't have the eye for detail or the steady hand to model a face properly.  I also have no experience in rigging, so I don't think I could utilize 3DS Max to rig for the life of me.

Like several others have said, stage hacking is a combination of different procedures.  But most of all, it's EXTREMELY hard to learn a new field when you have no prior knowledge of it.  Especially when hearing new terms that don't make immediate sense until it is explained.

This is my order (From hardest to easiest[I may not have much experience, but I have it nonetheless]):

1. Stage Hacking
2. Animating
3. PSAs
4. Modelling
5. Rigging
6. SFX

[SSBCFan1996]

As far as I know with my opinion animating for characters is the like the hardest thing to do espically when your trying to make dancing animation for like a character that does a breakdance like what Silentdo0m did with his Vegeta PSA that use to be his, which must of taking him 15 hours to complete, or even wait animation which probably take just as longer.