Slashdot Mirror
Mods: "Lifeblood of Gaming Industry"?
Jadsky writes "Salon is is running a story about how modifications to games are now the lifeblood of the industry. It cites "Day of Defeat", an add-on to Half-Life, and proceeds to give an analysis of the history and current work on game mods. It also mentions Castle Smurfenstein and the Doom Construction Kit, which many of us played with before there was z-space."
Its NO FUN
hence the reason we all want to modify our PCs some how
--sig fault--
...and of course some minor others life TF, TFC and Counter-Strike for Half-Life
perlgolf: the only place where shorter is better
Neverwinter Nights, baby! Yeah!
so where are the Tuxracer mods to support that?
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
Let people play *with* the game as well as *in* the game. And you still make money. If only other software companies would learn this lesson.
I still think that Team Fortress Classic is one of the best mods ever done for halflife. It was the reason I bought halflife... I enjoyed playing TFC so much. I never played the single-player version of halflife... but the mod motivated me to make the purchase.
I remember playing a Wolfenstien3d mod that replaced most of the Nazis with Barney. I found it around 1993, but it had probably been around much longer. There was a lengthy story in which Barney incited the children of the world to revolt and kill anyone over 13. It came with a DOS-based text editor that "glided" text onto the page (scrolling was very smooth.) It was a really cool story, and I've been looking for that text editor for the past few years, but have been unable to find it...
I remember playing "Barney-stein" with the Beavis and Butthead guards and loving every minute of it!
Sinepaw.org: Grape Winos
1. Figure out that gaming be popular.
2. Pick som aspect of it that you neva heard before but every other dude already new about.
3. Talk some $hit about about said aspect and try to make out like it is the main focus or some shit.
Man, when are ya'll gonna stop postin articles by that fool Wagner James Au. That dude don't know nothin about gamin and ain't never gonnna know nothin about gamin. $hit, with a name like Wagner, he probably ain't even got no game fo his self. If I want to read about politics or get some liberal perspective on $hit I read Salon. If I wanna read about gamin, that's the last place I wanna hear somebody's opinion.
Na'am sayin?
A game programmer friend of mine gave me a preview of Natural Selection and I am blown away by the amount of flexability that can be added to the half life engine. Charlie added a particle system for some smoke and dripping water effects. He made it more strategy-oriented by letting one player enter a control room where he can oversee operations and give resources and orders to the other players....
It's a beautiful thing.
-Jim
Celebrate Excellence!
The Quake3 mods are far superior to the inept Half-Life mods which use (as the article states, the Half-Life engine, which, in turn uses the Q1 engine)
/.'ers are interested in Quake3 mods, I recommend www.urbanterror.net; similar to CheaterStrike, er, CounterStrike, but it's based off the Q3 engine, thusly, a far better experience. Note the screenshots of volumetric smoke and water with the lazer scopes. Very cool.
If fellow
~[e]Nosferatu aka :
We dance to all the wrong songs.
--Refused.
I think a perfect example of how vital mods are to a game is to look at Halo on the Xbox. I've been playing it for months, but it's starting to feel a little long in the tooth. Being accustomed to games like Unreal Tourney and Quake I/II/III, where there are literally thousands of add-on maps, characters, etc. online for the taking, I'm used to adding stuff to my games, keeping them forever fresh.
Since Halo isn't (officially) online yet, there's no way to add mods or functionality. My use of Halo has started to taper off, while I still play Unreal Tourney pretty regularly. Not bad for a game I've had for over 2 years.
The reason that mods are now the lifeblood of the game industry is that almost nobody in the game industry is coming up with new ideas or are allowed to by publishers. They just rehash the same game with slight gameplay changes. At least with mods some creative people who do it for the love of an idea rather than marketing value get to make games that are actually good.
Castle Smurfenstein? They did NOT have a castle. Gargamel had something close to a castle but those goddamn commie smurfs would never have a castle
MOH is just like this one. But MOH is a more slower pace then anyother halflife mod. I cant wait to try this one out though. One thing lacking in MOH is the weapsons.
I bought Quake 3 when it hit the shelves not because I thought it was good (indeed, as a game itself it is incredibly weak), but because I knew that Carmack and crew were bound to learn from the previous Quake experiences (Action Quake was one of the best games ever, but was a mod) and they'd make it versatile, and that they did. Now I'm a big fan of Urban Terror and it has made my Q3 purchase absolutely worthwhile.
The saddest thing though is that mod workers are usually compensated by accolades alone: Urban Terror, as an example, represents an unbelievable amount of work and talent, yet while id is pulling in $50 from every player, The Urban Terror crew is pulling in nothing.
Thank God. I'm bored of playing Quake.
But I don't think that that's the same as saying that they are the lifeblood of the industry. They do increase sales of some titles, but mods also mean that you don't have to buy more titles because the one game you purchased turns into more games, magically, and for free! Eventually it starts looking dated, and you start looking around for the next pretty engine with some cool mods, it gains weight (the mass of subscribers, though engines do submit to a bloating process over time) and the cycle begins anew, as one might say if one was feeling wanky that day.
Basically, I bought half-life about when it came out. I played a lot of it. Then I played counterstrike, in the days before it was known as cheaterstrike; Before every asshole had an aimbot and transparent wall drivers - before the transparency drivers even existed. Now that it's been overrun by cheaters, I play Tactical Ops. I lost my HL CD key, and I don't even care.
So now I'll be able to pretty much just play games on UT for a while... If I want an entertaining special forces tactical game, I play TO, and there's a bunch of other mods. Of course, nothing has been modded as imaginatively as Quake1, but who plays that any more? Besides me. But the point is, I won't bother to buy another FPS until the new ver of UT comes out... whatever they decided to call it. Is that healthy lifeblood, or just stagnation?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
SlashDot Mod
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate proponents of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge were dealt a blow Monday as their last-ditch attempts to gather enough votes for passage through a deal aimed at luring steel state senators fell apart.
"It's quite dead," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, of the proposed deal, making it almost certain that drilling for oil in the refuge would not pass the Senate.
They allow a third party programmer to use some creativity and produce a whole new game out of another one.
In other news, Counter-Strike for Half-Life is probably the most popular mod for any game at this time.
Unreal Tournament is a three year old game that is still very popular because of mods. Specifically in capture the flag mode (CTF), which was really an after thought for the game.
The player/developer community work together solving CTF problems (spawn killing mods), creating new ways to play the game (CTF relics that enhance your character abilities) and making it more fun (StrangeLove Rockets you can fly around a board).
Check out this site www.planetunreal.com. The bottom left side of the navigation has about 25 different sites dedicated to mods. Many of them CTF related.
Great independant CTF servers like www.unrealmafia.com and www.stealthdp.com contribute to the mod community. They give mods developers feedback and a place to test new ideas. Many of the mod developer s post regularly to the forums of these sites asking for feedback or ideas. Check out the mod forums of both CTF servers.
They treat us MOD developers (like Day of Defeat) VERY well, giving us resources, channels to communicate with each other (and them), tools, plus PR.
:^)
If you've ever read the Clue Train Manifesto, I think you might agree with me that they follow some of the Cluetrain Rules. Open things up, allow players and developers to talk, etc. How many game companies run mail lists where their own coders get involved with discussions with mod developers? If you didn't look at the 900 pound gorilla behind them, you'd swear it's open source or something
What skills are useful? Any good books?
Do you just download an SDK or what?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
PC games have the right audience for them, tweakers, hackers, people who share mods.
It's hard to distribute mods on consoles, and most console players would rather just sit down and play
So, maybe a better characterisation would be: "Mods are the lifeblood of some portion of a minority segment of the gaming industry". But I guess that doesn't make such a good headline.
This is something that Ambrosia Software figured out a long time ago. They have produced some of the best Mac [the phantom ducks his head to avoid rotton tomatoes] games of all time. Some of the games that they have put out are truely amazing, such as Maelstrom (a really good Asteroids clone), the Escape Velocity Trilogy, and Ferazal's Wand (sp?). However, what has made their games truely wonderful is the ability to midify them. Escape Velocity Override was a great game, but you could only play it through a few times before everything had been done. But, there was the Frozen Heart plug, Femme Fatale, and several other complete replacements that forced me to pay for that little bit of shareware. And Ambrosia has been allowing users to modify their games for a very long time -- it seems to me that Maelstrom was one of the first, in the early 90s.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Isn't the most popular multiplayer game (Counter-Strike) a mod ?
At the of the end of day everything is a mod of something, there are _very_ few original ideas in gaming.
Hey, let's pick an editorial quote out of an online magazine and mock it disdainfully. Because, here at Slashdot, no stupid editorial quotes have ever been uttered by our staff.
Ever.
I wonder if it would be a good idea to create a full fledged game engine, level editors, creature/player editors, texture editors, etc. in a package and sell it as nothing more than a mod kit with no other purpose. You could GPL the source code, but remember that the GPL does allow you to sell your software. For most game engines, I don't think I'll care to look at their source code.
I think that this would be quite profitable.
The kit could come with some examples, and lots of reading material. If a person wanted to create an RPG, there could be a meta-language used to create the vocabulary needed to describe the world, and the interactions between characters and creatures.
Hey, id, Valve, or whoever else, are you listening?
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Besides the usual awful AppleSoft BASIC hacks, my earliest (and fondest) memories of game tinkering were with Pinball Construction Set's awesome built-in editor. IIRC, it was the first game to ship with out-of-the-box modding support. EA was way ahead of its time, one might say...
Bill Budge is my hero.
y
Have they totally forgotten that counterstrike was a mod of its own? Holy shit, Day of Defeat is a dwarf compared to the popularity of CS.
I've been playing it for months, but it's starting to feel a little long in the tooth.
Don't nobody at Bungie care if you get bored of a game after many months. They businesses, and they in business to SELL games, not support them.
You know you woulda bought that game anyway and you know you gonna buy the next one when it comes out too, cause it was tight when you got it and you already got a few good months outta playin it. That's all they was sellin right there. A game that would keep you instrested until the next new $hit come out. Ain't no money in helping your customers re-use the same played out $hit foreva.
Na'am sayin?
i don't think they get it.... bloody americans
It would seem to me that other companies should be getting a clue just by watching other companies enjoy success as a direct result of mods. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Is there something intrinsically wrong with the system that other companies are so stuck in the cost/revenue/profit cycle they can't/won't step out for a minute and realize that they would be better off sharing development with players?
I would like to propose a user-driven move for all software to be more like this but my faith in our ability to do such is waning...
Liora
Damn! Not only do you want to copy someone else's idea, but need someone else to tell you how? No wonder you ain't makin yo OWN games. $hit, its probably lazy fools like you that's responsible for the lack of quality new ideas fo games these days. Ain't got no ideas AND ain't got no skills, and talkin about makin games!?
Na'am sayin?
They did too. La..la..lalalala..la..lalalala! ACHTUNG!
Was accomplished with a hex editor on Jordan Mechner's "Karateka" for the Apple II. We started by changing the starting credits, so "By Jordan Mechner" became "by [insert your name here]". We were 11 at the time, and that was exciting.
Then we discovered ehere in the disks were the sprites, and started to change them by trial and error. Not an ounce of artistic ability, too. So, we ended up with even crappier sprites. But "we made them".
Ah, the memories...
Day of Da Feet.... Is that a mod for Day Of The Tentacle ?
That, IMHO, CounterStrike is STILL selling copies of Half-Life, while the game itself is getting pretty old. This is a proven case where a mod was more popular than the origional game.
The even made a box edition because it was selling so well.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
It's a great piece of work.
;-)
The best WW2 game I know. That includes realism in the first place. That's the key. Sounds, models, movements, weapons, how weapons work etc.
Personaly, that's the only online game I play.
Now, as for lifeblood...
You know, from the developer point of view, the mod is created for particular game as a hobby of course, but you want your mod to be playable on as many computers as possible.
And Half-Life exists on very many computers. It was game of the year by all accounts, and sometimes even for more than one year.
And then Counter-Strike came (which is popular due to the same reason - popularity of base game). And even more people bought the game.
Half-Life is 3 years old now. And it's not the same as it was. High-quality models, voicecomm and netcode fixes really transformed the base game. And mods take advantage of it.
Actualy, HL it coming very close to what TF2 was supposed to be. Will we see TF2 as a mod for HL?
The only problem is that it only supports 32 players.
In the end, I (the consumer) win. Mods are free. Woohoo. I bought HL to play CS. Valve releases new patch with voicecomm. Free. I fed up with CS and switched to DoD. Free. Then they release new version (2.0), totaly new gameplay (and much better too). Free.
Anybody else remember the Doom II Aliens total conversion?
A friend of mine had found it, played it through, and told a bunch of us to set aside our Saturday afternoon for it. He was the computer attendant in one of the school's least popular labs and he told us he'd lock all four of us in while we played this game undisturbed. We were to bring headphones.
With the lights off, and the headphones in our ears (no music), it was very easy to immerse ourselves in the Alien world we saw in the movies. We had precisely one rule: No respawning.
I didn't find it extremely replayable, most of the enjoyment was based on having absolutely no way of knowing what would happen next. I was a decent Doom II player, but I didn't have a good familiarity with the maps -- I was roasted on maps that everyone else knew. This time was different, none of us knew the maps. It was the first time I played a co-operative game and had it actually work. And work it did! Looking like the dorks you see in the movies, we physically jumped back when some of those creatures came at us.
I still tip my hat off to those copyright infringing guys. You are truly talented.
Is Counter-Strike...
I don't like that mod, but I can say for it's sake that's it's one of the only reasons HL still lives and people make more mods for it. CS is the most popular game online, hands down.
After CS became so popular or while, Valve spent time helping others make mods and like a magic circle, everyone jumped on the wagon and made alot of mods..
Also, the fact HL is good for low end computers so people with P2 450 and Voodoo3 can still play it great and not like the MUCH more advanced Q3 engine which is only good for average computers and above.
http://www.lik-sang.com/catalog/news.php?artc=2552
Not a mod, per say, but this kind of amateur development is important, too.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
About 6 months ago I bought Red Faction for the sole purpose of modifying it. My team chose this platform because the type of mod we wanted to produced would benefit greatly from the engine's GeoMod technology. To make a long story short, the games creators to my knowledge have never published any means to create mods beyond simple deathmatch variants. What my team had planned was quite an in-depth total conversion so we were forced to scrap the project. We're hoping the next engine from id, Valve, et. al will contain dynamic terrain so we can pick it up again, or that Red Factions creators will come to their senses.
Some of us were adding *emphasis* to our /email/ long before HTML was thought of. Typing habits are hard to break. Besides, typing * is a lot quicker than typing <b> and doesn't have the same catastrophic effect if you forget to close the tags.
--
E_NOSIG
/shameless plug 1
:)
if you liked Action Quake 2, and the Quake 3 engine, try www.reactionquake3.com
it's a direct port of AQ2 to Q3
and yes, it's one I'm working on
/shameless plug 0
The most popular multiplayer game is not Counterstrike, but Starcraft. If you trust the Battle.net statistics, there are hundreds of thousands of starcraft players online on the weekends. Very impressive for a 4-5 year old game. Counterstrike by comparison has about 40K users at any given time.
Give the audience the engine for graphics and menus, etc..., and what do they have left to deal with?
Game Design
So you have people that can ignore the months of engine building a tweaking, but, instead, spend those months on plot, balancing, and gameplay.
Like DeusEx? That's nothing more than a heavy UT mod.
But I don't think this is necessarily a good thing. Now the gaming industry can't do what its done for years. They (meaning the publishers, ie - EA) always want a copy of the latest hit, for example, everyone wanted a "Doom" clone. This evolved to using the same system with a twist, like Doom with a plot where the plot isn't to kill things, but to sneak around (Thief).
Now, they can't do that, cause some kids will do that, and release it for free.
So, for the gaming industry to survive, they need to really innovate games, make them mod'able, and hope for the best. This is quite a new turn.
It'll either kill the industry, or we'll see some majorly different games in a year or two....
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I wonder if I'll get a response, but I played MegaTF for 4 years in college (ending 2001).
Know what? It's based on the Quake1 engine. But it's a heck of a mod and the community kept it lively. Gameplay is king over graphics. Even 33.6'ers could join in and still participate in matches without fear of being owned by LPB's.
God I miss that game. Sadly, after 6-7 years of development, someone discovered bunnyhopping and ruined it. Perhaps one day I'll return...
------
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It is all the mods to the mod that has made it one of the largest Counter-Strike communities in the world!
Some people have use the 3d engines and level editors to create cheap/fast 3d movies. Different players act as the movie camera.
u dio360/show102701.html
http://www.illclan.com/
http://www.wnyc.org/st
If it wasn't for Americans, he would have said, "You want chips with that, gov?" instead.
Licenses are the lifeblood of the gaming industry.
Mods are bloody cool, but
a) You don't get them on consoles, and console games make up the majority of games sales.
b) They do add value to a game, but for the majority of games with modding ability, the reality is that only a small community of dedicated players actually make/use them.
point b) is a good thing,as it means that the minority who are modding are actually concentrating on a small set of games, rather than being spread around between many games.
The only game I can think of that has resulted in a measureably large increase in sales due to mods is Half-Life, as a result of Counter-Strike and TeamFortress. I suppose you could also say MS Flight Simulator is another example, but really - there aren't many. Quake (I, II, III etc...) have probably been helped by mods, but I don't think their sales have been driven by mods in the same way Half-Life's has.
2 games series, mechwarrior & quake.
Back in the days of 1996 you had two large communities. Quake and Mechwarrior. There were leagues for both, there were active online players of both.
One you could expand (Quake) and one you couldn't (Mechwarrior)
Quake community grew and grew and as the game changed and became more advanced so did those doing the mods, maps, and skins. They spawned Weapons Factory, Rocket Areana, Ubran Terror.. countless maps, and even more numerous skins. The code was open, the architectire was open(.pk3).We got statistical tracking, we got cross referencing those stats. Other game developers caught on and we got RTCW, MOH, DoD, and the one i'm hooked on..Kedi Knight 2: Outcast. Open game, active community.
Now take a look at the Mech community, that was around at the same time. Everyone was in a clan, a huge percent of players were involved in leagues. The game wasn't open but the mechs were(a text file). That spawned mech editors, NAIS(mercs), cheat detectors, and mech organizers( i have 500 varients). That was it tho..untill Microsoft stepped in. Mechwarrior today has had all the "sim" like features stripped out of it, skins are difficult to make(they provide no blanks). There are 0 mods, there are 0 apps, it keeps log files in some non standard format...but uploads stats IN BINARY! to microsoft tracking servers(hacking would be against DCMA).
so 2 genres, 2 communities starting at about the same time. Its pretty easy to see that its not "if you build it they will come" but rather "IF YOU LET THEM build it THEMSELVES, they'll come running!"
thirsty*i^2
"Ya I finished that last week, it just doesn't work"
DOD isn't the best example that Salon could have chosen. I've been playing since the very first beta version two years ago, and if anything DOD should be held as an example of what NOT to do.
o wthread . hp?s=&threadid=17975
First off, anyone playing the game can tell you that the maps are extraordinary! The details, and the sounds are just out of this world. Plus unlike deathmatch 3D shooters, DOD enforces heavy teamplay... which is amazing. There's nothing like a "pick-up" game of 8 on 8 with people who are literally scattered all over the world... working as a team!
But, as a project, DOD has a lot to be desired. A few months back 2.0 was released and it was a disaster. The ONLY feedback to the developer group was provided by a single message board. And it could not handle the FLOODING of posts asking questions and complaining about bugs and such. They actually had to change their registration setting, denying all applicants who registered with an HTML email address (hotmail, yahoo), because they were getting tons of juvenille "this sucks" posts! The board was SWAMPED with irate players.
Of course DOD handled it like a bunch of complete business novices. There solution was to ignore the flood as in this post here:
http://forums.dayofdefeatmod.com/forums/sh
my favorite quote was:
See, we are so confident our settings are close to perfect because we had so many people who tested Beta 2 initially say "wow, this is hard, this isn't good", then come back 2 weeks later and say "man, this is incredible, I'm use to the realism now".
So instead of "the customer is always right" like you would find with a project that makes money, you get this arrogance that just distances the player from the developer.
Not to mention that the message boards are completely filled with more juvenille "yes men" that don't give the developers honest feedback... then the DOD team uses these familiar players for beta testing which makes matters worse. The DOD team, (if in appearances only) seems now to be the most out of touch mod team out there. This Salon article isn't going to help much.
My observances are that there are less and less servers hosting DOD games... and the servers that used to be hard to get into (always full) are playing now with spots open all the time. If these are indications that DOD is losing popularity, then I would bet it's because the DOD team didn't handle the 2.0 release constructively.
And that is something that happens quite a bit with ANY homespun freeware... gaming or otherwise.
(The Salon article really handled the other mods well though...kudos)
Ok, maybe I don't have a clue at all, but I'm wondering what is the difference between a mod (say Counter Strike) and a game for which the makers used an engine from another company (say the Quake II or Quake III engine). I mean, it looks to me that Half Life, which is based on the Quake II engine, can be considered as a mod of Quake II, albeit a very total conversion mod.
I understand that companies which use licensed engines probably modify the engine to suit their needs, which is impossible in mods, but I feel the border between a licensed-engine game and an advanced mod is being smudged. Since an engine license cost a load of money, is the difference merely financial (i.e. mods are not for sale, licensed-engine games can be sold)?
"Can't wait for that inevitable TF mod for Jedi Knight II."
You mean Quake 3 with lightsabers?
I've played JK:2 for about 30 mins. I went back to trying to beat the Hitman columbia missions.
Licensing the engine costs money. Modding does not.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
There has to be something said about a mod so popular that it invites so many attempts to cheat at it. On top of that independents who develop their own programs to stop said cheating.
The first mod by the creator of CS I played was the navy seals mod for quake. Not only did it feature semi-realistic weapons(The m203 was pure joy), but also weapon reloading and some redone enemies that were much tougher than the original quake stock. It had laser scopes, grenades, fire selection, and the m203 with the under the barrel grendade launcher.
It wasn't till half-life that I saw alot of these innovations added to a commercial game. While playing through counter-strike I still think of the retrofitted quake grunts.
Half-life also still stands out against quake 2 & 3 for the story driven levels. Too many quake levels (even single player quake 2) felt like more attention was paid to what the engine could do than what was fun( The multiple spinning circles outside the blackhole generator). You know what happends when you concentrate on showing what your engine can do, the Xen levels.
Not to say I haven't played good quake mods, the Predator mod for quake 2 was excellent before it was shutdown. Nothing, however, gets my pulse still going like a good counter-strike game. While the cheaters are bad, and those who accuse you of cheating because you killed them are worse, it is still worth it when you play the perfect round.
I'm very suprised that Garage Games was not mentioned in the article.
They allow you to buy the source code to the engine that powered Tribes 2 for $100.
Not only that, but they have released a project called Realm Wars. This is a game that the community contributes to. If you bought the source code, then you can contribute source code. If not, you can still download the demo, and contribute SCRIPTS, artwork, models and more.
It will be extremely interesting to see how this pans out.
(as long as I don't get any UE errors)
Man, I just blew $140 on 4 game boxes. Out of the set of:
:P
Hitman: Codename 47
Baldur's Gate 1 (yes, go for the eyes)
Jedi Knight 2
"Action pack" (3 games, bought it for the first Solid Snake PC game)
I only play Hitman and the Solid Snake one a week later. The doom-iness of JK2 almost made me sick! Can't believe I dropped $50 on it!
People will pay money to play the same game, provided that the game engine is better. Since every game engine has its own inherent limitations, the drive in commercial game development will most likely be to develop good games on top of good engines.
Of course, there are cases like Deus Ex (and many other games that borrow their predecessors' engines), but a game engine only remains viable for so long. The Half-Life engine, for instance, has been pushed to its limit, and it's unlikely that there will be any more hugely successful half-life mods. People will inevitably want to move on to things like the upcoming Doom 3 engine.
I must admit I always found unreal tournament a bit boring. However I've been hooked for months already on a modification for it: strikeforce. Without that modification (and many others), unreal tournament wouldn't have survived long on my harddisk. Strikeforce is an absolutely brilliant mod. Great maps, great gameplay.
I had the same with the original unreal. Single player was fun while it lasted. After that I kept the game around to play the mods.
Jilles
I'm surprised no one has mentioned, but Civ2 is easily one of the MOST modded games ever. Six/seven years after the game was released, and after numerous clones/sequels, the game is still going strong (hell, I still play it on weekends).
The reason it was modded so often was that Microprose made all the data files open (hmm, almost Open Source, in a way). While the engine was still closed, players could edit plaintext files to control it's behavior, as well as that of the units. The graphics files, for units, terrain, cities, even leaders, were simple GIF's that could be easily modified. Later, Microprose even added a rudimentary macro language for scenario builders.
I have seen many truly remarkable Civ2 mods. Some people overhauled the ENTIRE game, replacing everything. Forget scenario editors, this goes way beyond.
~Chazzf
No statement is true, not even this one.
You know, one of the reasons I've always liked PC games better than console games is the ability to get mods, updated rosters, etc., through the Internet.
I mean, would anyone still be buying Half-life if we didn't want it to play CS and DoD?
I wonder if, once we can have Linux on our PS2's, we'll see mods for GTA3 and the like.
Does anyone know if it's possible to release mods for console games?
One of the big Advantages of Counter-Strike is that it is still playable on old hardware. P233 with no 3d accelleration? Fine - it'll still run!
Sure, the engine (A Quake I/II mix) is quite old now, but the creators of CS have done an amazing job with it. The sheer quality of the textures and lighting is amazing. To be honest, from the looks of the screenshots, UT looks like it has a higher polycount, but I don't think the overall impression looks all that much better.
Anyway, graphics can only count for so much. CS is great fun to play (I can't speak for UT, not having played it...), and CS is the most popular online game ever. I remember being amazed when I first tried Counter-Strike that there were over 20,000 CS servers out there. I don't think any other game has come close. CS is *BIG*.
Some early examples from the Apple II:
*Eamon: A text adventuring system in which you were given the tools to create your own adventures.
*Lode Runner: Early platformer that came with a map-editing tool.
* Bill Budge's Pinball Construction Set
* Night Mission Pinball: Had pages and pages of values that you could tweak to customize game play.
Call me an old timer but i actually like to play these RPG's in single player mode with a mission based strategy and enjoy the scenery along the way , yet all these *mods* wether its Castle Wolfenstein or MOHAA [insert fav rpg] all seem to cater for multiplayer only, which seem to involve running frantically round an enviroment blasting anything that moves, making these RPG's all essentially Quake 3, which seems strange that everyone wants to mod their fave rpg into another quake clone ?!
Does anyone make mods for single players? ie: new missions,stories etc or are these "lifeblood" mods only cater for turning RPG's into multiplayer online quake clones ?
Odd. I always thought the lifeblood of the game industry was that orange stuff that drips from the slice of pizza at 2:30 AM.
On the web, if you go for the few remaining gaming news sites, it is easy think that mods are the center of the universe. But then you look at where the serious action is in gaming:
1. Big console titles like GTA3, MGS2, FFX, Halo.
2. Monster PC titles like The Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon. The Sims has sold over 6.5 million copies.
then you get a different feeling. Are mods interesting and important? Yes. But lets not get carried away. In reality the communities surrounding games like Half-Life and Unreal tend to be self-serving and isolated, with notable exceptions (gotta mention Counterstrike). You just don't find all that much innovation in mods for, say, Unreal. Now, sure, the mod community will argue otherwise, but that's what I meant by "isolated."
I love how they forget to mention that Apogee was, originally, strongly AGAINST mods. True old-timers will remember that Apogee sent cease-and-desists to Wolf3D modders, and completely ignored everyone's arguments (including Id's) that the mods were increasing the already-incredible popularity of the game. (however, Apogee was also largely ignored in this issue, and they were at least bright enough to NOT try to sue their most loyal customers)
Shame, really, since Wolf3D had some brilliant bugs in the engine that you could exploit if you found them. Like being able to make walk-thru walls.
If it wasn't for TFC, I wouldn't be playing Half-Life. Mods really do make games better.
Regarding Wolf3D:
It wasn't the very first first-person game-- that title belongs to "Ultima Underworld" (1992), released a few months earlier from Looking Glass Studios....
Catacomb Abyss came out in December, 1991. Dig those EGA graphics!
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
... mods for 2D games! Go to www.teambg.com for all of you Infinity Engine modding needs.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
the xbox is/was suppsoed to be a standalone CONSOLE, not a pc. i for one do not want to see ANYBODY use online connectivity for getting "new features" (read bug fixes) itll just turn into a pc, then people will stop buying it.
aside from publisher demands (where games arent finished yet are demanded by publishers who want their quick buck) the fact that most console games are well polished are because they arent thought of with "patches" in mind.
Right now, mods come after games, basically just using their engines, then modding everything but the core engine itself.
An upcoming title, Legends just may be the next step in the evolution of gaming. Basically a mod that just skips the first step of buying a different game just to get the engine.
The game is based off the tribes 2 engine, and will be released for free. People can modify it however they want and contribute to the project in any matter they see fit.
Will be interesting to see how their experiment goes. Could revolutionize online gaming, and change the way mods are developed forever, or it could fail miserably and accomplish little.
Making mods for games.
would like to point out one such talent who did the Tribes RPG mod. Which is a wonderful mod.
http://www.planettribes.com/rpg/downloads/
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
then The Sims would keep coming out with new "upgrades" or "add ons" every few months ...
...
...
then Pokemon would keep having new "versions" every few months so you would keep getting new ones
then AD&D would have kept coming out with new Books and Campaigns every few months since the dawn of gaming time
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Tribes 2 is another one of those games that's pulled this off nicely. There's dozens of mods, and the game was made for those in mind (too bad Dynamix went out).
Anyhow, one of the mods, base++ apparently is going to become the official competition mod for T2. There's a new release coming out (Tribes Fast Attack?) but I can't seem to find the link I had earlier with more info....
Thank you very much.
I took a class in C++.
Lets see if it's any use tackling this stuff.
Jesus! I've seen more patting on the back lately for mod makers, and frankly, it's making me sick. With Microsoft talking about paying modders for their work, I think many people don't understand what will happen when all this money and fame goes to a modders head.
:)
Alien Doom. Now there was a mod...
though ZanZan is really f*cking cool for a Doom mod!
It's been a long time.
It would be interesting if Valve could incorporate some kind of "pay for play" system into Steam like MP3.com does. Steam is the medium you use to distribute your mod/game/etc. The more you get played, the more they pay you - just like MP3.com's Payback for Playback system. Suddenly MOD creators and creators of more extensive single player creations such as Neil Manke could actually become the Bassic of the gaming industry.
[Wolfenstein 3D] wasn't the very first first- person game-- that title belongs to "Ultima Underworld" (1992)
I remember Wizardry had a first person perspective, even if it wasn't fluid motion. That was maybe 10 years prior to either W3D or UU.
khl
You think Blizzard doesn't just care about money? Blizzard is owned by Vivendi Universal and I can guarantee you they only care about money. I run the boycottblizzard.org site.
Take a look at Torque - it's basically the V12 engine from Tribes 2 with all the Tribes 2 Intellectual Property pulled out. What's left is a nice, fairly good engine. Here's the cool part:
If you want to just do modding, you don't have to BUY Torque, instead, just download the demo. The also have all sorts of community boards for ya to look at and interact with each other for questions. Pretty nice.
If you suddenly decide you want to write a commercial game with it, or, you need the source code - no problem. License the engine. For $100, and a distribution agreement for commercial sales. Not TOO bad.
There is a built-in terrain editor, world editor, etc - however, no actually map-building tools for interior locations. But, you can use Quark or WorldCraft (er... guess that's Valve's Hammersomethingorother now) to do that work.
I licensed the Torque engine to do Trajectory, and so far it's been wonderful. C++'ish scripting language built in, plus having the source for some further modifications that I can't do in scriptin is great.
Go check 'em out at Garage Games and download the demo or the RealmWars demo to check it out. Or, heck, play Tribes 2 a bit, and you know what to potentially expect ;-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
blizzard did this with starcraft. they had a huge map creating community, and iirc there was even a blizzard approved 3rd party expansion (it was basically just additional singleplayer maps that people had created, but it was fun).
the one thing they wont do this with though is diablo2... they make too much money off of a few new mobs, a few new levels, a few tilesets stolen from starcraft and then selling it as an "expansion pack"...
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
People always seem to forget Abuse (1995, Crack Dot Com, www.abuse2.com) when they discuss 'moddable' game engines.
When Abuse came out, to my knowledge, there were no other games with a built-in script interpreter. All of the game's AI routines were done in LISP, all easily editable by anyone who knew LISP (granted: most people don't know LISP), and the game engine has an integrated level editor. But this game came out a full year before Quake 1, and still never gets mentioned in these discussions. Hell, they even had a $1000 level creation contest when the game came out.
Truly a shame, because it's a great game, and the engine was way ahead of its time.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
The game still hogs hard drive space though, me and my friends still play it because of the Babylon Project mod. As is well documented, the official Babylon 5 game; "Into The Fire" was shaping up to be a very cool game until it got bounced from distributer to distributer and finally pulled (a real shame as seen as they got Joe Straczynski to write the script and all the cast in to film it, but hey ho :-( ).
This mod captures the feel of the series very well, sure it is rough around the edges, but small complaints against actually having a game based, IMHO on the most intelligent Sci-Fi show for quite a while.
Credit must be given to Volition for providing the mission mod as standard with the game as well, again it is good to see a company with the foresight to provide extra value with their products, many a stupid mission has been created with that tool! It certainly makes another space shooter based on a certain franchise look very poor indeed
"...and on the seventh day we wrapped." JMS 4:22 May 5, 1997
I remember playing it on Linux. I also remember there were some really entertaining mods to change at least the sound effects to some from Star Wars and Star Trek. It was really amusing, and a beautiful game to boot. If I dig around, I think I might still be able to find it somewhere.
It's at http://web.archive.org/web/19991012141834/http://h ome.earthlink.net/~bcbull/dotb.htm
Isn't it great how archive.org keeps stuff around just for situations like this???
Navy Seals: Covert Operations is the best Q3 mod out there right now, IMNSHOBIK. It's more realistic than the cartoony Urban Terror (or, god forbid, CS), and also more fun. Not to mention it's the only mod I've seen where teamwork consistantly spontaneously appears.
Once a couple problems get taken care of (speed whores, for example), it will be a masterfull game.
The enemies of Democracy are
This game was my first introduction to serious modifications. Absolutely everything could be modded. Weapons, skins, maps, sounds, text, you name it. It made the game *much* more enjoyable over an extended period of time, and eventually Red Storm even released (unsupported) an exporter to work with 3D StudioMax, so you could make your own models or maps from scratch!!
If I had known anything about 3D Studio, I would have made a map that was my actual mid-town neighborhood at the time, and then given it to all my friends to play. I always thought that would be incredibly fun, and surreal as well!
Always wanted to shoot a grenade launcher or light machine gun off my balcony...
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
...then you need to play Infiltration for Unreal Tournament. The Infiltration team does some of the best work I've seen, but they try to keep themselves a bit "lower key" than some of the higher profile mods (such as Strike Force). There tend to be less interviews, and less media coverage, but I think this is a good thing. This mod is not for everyone...
Don't jump into Infiltration, unless you know what you're doing. The mod tries to mimic real life as closely as possible... if you don't spend the time to learn how to play you will not enjoy it. But if you take the time you will thank yourself later (and you will wonder why you ever thought CounterStrike was entertaining). If you're like me and you try CounterStrike after you tried Infiltration, it will be hard to understand what people get so worked up about.
If you enjoy Infiltration, I recommend supporting the team by purchasing an Infiltration CD, which will be available when version 2.87 is released.
Freedom Force is just itching to be modded. You can download their proffesional model/skin viewer, skin relatively easily and quite a few models have already been made.
It's only weeks old and has *hundreds* of skins, many made before it even came out.
The only thing that'll make it awesome is co-operative multiplayer.
And they are seriously talking about that too.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
Snipers who kill you in 0.1 second suck.
B8ING.
Mods?
Screw them, I've always seen myself as more of a rocker.
Also, I was never a fan of their big coats and silly little scooters.
Think about it, you can sell X number of copies of your game due to your cheesy graphics and story (*cough* QUAKE *cough*) and then sell 2x more to die hard gamers who will download a free TC and replace your crappy creative work with stuff done by someone else. Basically you get paid for your engine, and somebody else donates the creative work for "cred". Not a bad scam. Maybe the TC folks get paid too, big friggin deal. Still, it's entirely reasonable given that game engines have separated the engine from the creative content for so long, to allow parallel development of the storyline and graphics from the rendering engine, combat system, etc.
That was an interesting, yet insightful post. However, I think that you could have been modded up had you stuck to the tried and tested formaula of offending minorities and Katz-bashing.
http://www.gamespy.com/stats/
counter-strike wins.
--
xxacto@azdd.com
Quick guide to modding UT:
o u can also use Maya, but you'll have to work out how to make stuff work for yourself since my tutorials don't include it yet.
.chm file floating around the net somewhere. Subclass built-in classes and modify stuff.
What do you want to hack today?
For UnrealEd (the level editor/general editor) you need Windows, unless WINE has improved a lot since last time I tried it; for UCC (the command-line compiler) Windows helps, but Linux + WINE is sufficient (although you'll need to use the Windows executable "ucc.exe" via WINE, the native Linux executable "ucc" is broken). I don't know about UCC on Macs; they certainly don't have UnrealEd.
Maps (levels): get stacks of RAM, run System\UnrealEd.exe, do a web search for UnrealEd for more information
Skins: paint images in Paint Shop Pro, The GIMP or Photoshop, import to UT with UT Skin Maker, UnrealEd or UCC (the Unrealscript command-line compiler), use online communities like www.planetunreal.com/identitycrisis/ to get feedback.
Models: get Milkshape 3D (shareware) or 3D Studio Max and follow the (unofficial, user-made) tutorials here: http://www.pseudorandom.co.uk/paradox/ams/sdk/
Y
Again, asking on forums like the ones for www.planetunreal.com/identitycrisis/ is A Good Thing.
I've written a mod called Advanced Model Support which fixes a few bugs and makes it easier to get models in-game.
Code: Learn some Unrealscript; it's similar to Java, and there's info on Epic's site (unreal.epicgames.com) and a fairly comprehensive
Big mods: get a team together and do all of the above.
-- Psychic_313
Moderator, Identity Crisis
Author of Advanced Model Support
Valve filed chapter 11 earlier this month. Does anyone know the details?