The Mod Squad

Devil's BSD writes "Popular Science has a new article in this month's issue about gaming mods. It contains a nice history of mods, touches on mods for the Big Three gaming systems today (as well as those for computer games), and a beginner's guide to mods. Interesting, but not much new for the l33t h4x0rs out there though."

Comments

Ahhh the days

[Kymermosst]

I remember doing my own (simple) DOOM mods. Then came Quake and I loved the mods, expecially CTF, even played semi-professionally for a little bit.

However, after hardware advanced too fast for me to be able to afford upgrades, I have pretty much left the gaming scene entirely.

It was damn fun, though.

Counterstrike

[prestomation]

When I hear the word "mod", the first thing I think of is Counter-Strike. If you don't know what that is, you should get out of that hole you've been living in! :) It's a tatical terrorist vs. counter-terrorist mod to Half-Life. A few months ago there we're about 13,000(yes, THOUSAND) active servers. Now there's only a few thousand, but it's more then any other mods I believe. It must be by chance that this story was posted right after I've been playing CS for the first time in a couple of months. http://www.counter-strike.net

Old game engines with mods impress me...

[antdude]

For example with Day of Defeat mod for Half-Life, HL is like a few years old and yet the mod is very popular. v3.0 beta just came out a few days ago and I am in awe with this mod.

Sure, the game engine uses outdated engine, but the fun is there. Now, if I could just play this awesome WWII mod in Linux (no Wine and stuff). :)

Re:Old game engines with mods impress me...

[_Sprocket_]

What amazes me is that people (myself included) still play the origional QuakeWorld Team Fortress (now days you HAVE to include "QuakeWorld" in the description as there's an entire generation who equate "Team Fortress" with Team Fortress Classic and know nothing else - damn kids). That alone shows the amazing draw to a good mod. If it wasn't for the easy modification of Quake, it would have burned through its cycle years ago - and computer games tend to have an amazingly short burn cycle.

Before someone says it - QWTF is dying. Yes. Its been dying for years now. Its like the classic Monty Python scene.

"I'm not dead yet!"

"Wait a minute. He says he's not dead yet."

"Well he will be in a minute."

QWTF is just about to the point where it goes "I feel happy!" and then meets with a sudden ending at the end of a club (some claim that such a clubbing was attempted by Carmak's releaseing Quake source code and the rampant cheating that followed). But right now - its not QUITE dead yet.

Day of Defeat mod is popular...

[antdude]

DoD Web site. I think it is gaining more players and to me, this mod is much funner.

Commerical developer support to the mod community

[H3XA]

The article is already /.ed so I need to ask.... was there any discussion about the support that devopers give to the mod community? I am not specifically talking about mapping and level designs but rather new game concepts adapted from the original.

Id Software seemed to start the mainstream trend with the Doom engine being easily adapted with the good folk that developed the right tools. Then Valve software came along and gave the fledging mod community a BIG helping hand to the point where they enter "partnerships" with the better and more popular mods (ie. CS of course). Even games like Morrowind and NWN ship with tools that say "Use Me !!!" to custom design or alter adventures. It almost seems expected of a developer to offer the extra incentive for what is probably the minority of users to keep the game "alive" until the next game by a developer is released... what with the 2-3 year development times now.

- HeXa

You Whipersnappers!

[JoeCommodore]

Alterations of a PC game are called "mods." Although modifying began among hard-core hackers,

I began a whole lot longer before that, Go back to the 70s/80s where people with their 'big three' home computers starting out by modifying BASIC from a tape program or type-in listing (Yep I remember giving the mansters in Cursor's Dungeon silly names and myself better recharge stats)

A Few years later as 8-bit computing progressed many pirates added extras to their 'cracked' games (which they called 'trainers' added such options as too many lives, indesctructible, level jump, etc.)

Next the designers themseleves were modding their own games before release, type in this combo or do that joystick move to get free lives, etc.

The article is old news to me.