Modding Help Brand new to modding & want to add dialogue skipping, any tips?

So, I've never modded a game before, but the modding community here seems really nice and encouraging so I figured I'd give it a whirl! But I'm not entirely sure where to start, since most "simple mod" tutorials seem to be about inserting content and adding weapons n' such.

Basically, I find it really frustrating that I can't make the text advance any faster during cutscenes, like the one in the tutorial where the earth is attacked. I'm a fast reader, and being forced to linger on short lines is really boring and leads to me simply not paying attention... even though I am interested in the story. I don't want to make cutscenes go away, I just want to move on to the next line of dialogue when I press a button(like the space bar, for example).

I'm fairly handy/competent with computers and coding and pick it up fairly quickly, I just have trouble knowing where to look for information or what phrases to google(most of what I know is self-taught, so I don't really know... the terms for things. Also my self-taught knowledge is mostly "how to customize a webpage" or "fiddle around in the code of this website to display something covered up by the footer because it's REALLY poorly made" or even "how to make the little ball move up when you press the up button", so not much of it is especially geared towards video games).

TL;DR:
-I'd like to mod the game so pressing a button forces the cutscene dialogue to immediately move on to the next line
-I'm not entirely sure where to start
-Any tips or resources would be greatly appreciated!​

 

Start with the basics. Look up the modding ebook and go from there.

 

^That said, I don't think you can do something like that with cinematics. This is what the speech definition thingy looks like:

Code:

// ------------ eight radio message
     {
       "useCamera" : false,
       "startTime" : 57.5,
       "endTime" : 60,
       "drawables" : [
         {
           "image" : "/interface/chatbubbles/grandprotector.png:shock.<frame>"
         }
       ],
       "animationFrames" : 2,
       "text" : "You, Graduate! Take the Manipulator and run! Get to safety!",
       "textPosition" : {
         "position" : [34, 21],
         "vAnchor" : "top",
         "wrapWidth" : 218
       },
       "keyframes" : [
         {
           "timecode" : 0.0,
           "alpha" : 1.0,
           "zoom" : 1.0,
           "position" : [366.5, 50],
           "frame" : 0,
           "textPercentage" : 0
         },
         {
           "timecode" : 0.3,
           "textPercentage" : 0
         },
         {
           "timecode" : 1,
           "frame" : 10,
           "textPercentage" : 1
         }
       ]
     },

From that, at most I think you could reduce the time it takes for each dialog, but that seems painstaking as each subsequent key time will be changed