Slashdot Mirror
Making Games Live Longer With Mods
rmohr02 writes: "Popular Science has an interesting article about people hacking games to get more replay value out of them. It mentions games like Quake and Doom which are still played due to the mods people distribute for them, and that the code for Doom's level editor was made free so hackers could use that code to get what they wanted. It also mentions that the next Team Fortress hack, Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms, will not be distributed for free."
There are some really neat experimental art mods for Quake 1.
Check them out at www.untitled-game.org/...
(Personally, I still play Quake 1 straight... a game doesn't stop being fun because newer games come out with flashier graphics!)
it was my impression that TF2 was a full blown game, not a mod.... and that it's a pipe dream.
When it's released, it'll be bundled with gravy trader.
Perhaps this was one reason for the success of Cavedog's excellent Total Annihilation RTS. The game itself was good, but it was also designed from the word go to allow the incorporation of new units, maps, etc. Cavedog made several available on their web site over the months after the launch, and released an add-on (Core Contingency) that included whole new types of unit and terrain.
Today, even after Cavedog are done, there are still enthusiasts out there working on quite ambitious extras, and this is something like four years after the game first hit the shelves, and when you apparently can't even buy it in the UK any more. (Anyone know a good way to get it in the UK, BTW? None of the usual shops lists it any longer, and there's nothing on UK E-bay.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'd pay 100 bucks per level for some new mariokart battle fields, and a little more for a complete circuit :-P *sigh* will the cube version never be released. Can anyone hack a game that was originally just for a gaming console? I see people doing dumb stuff like turning character sprites into vegetables and renaming the games junk like "super mario potato head".
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Maybe it is because it's not a mod. It is a completely new game. They just meant that their next project (the guys who did TF[1]) would not be free.
It also mentions that the next Team Fortress hack, Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms, will not be distributed for free.
Just replace "for free." with ", ever.". Pretty much the same thing,
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
Bear in mind that Counter Strike started life as an Half-Life mod. Now you can go buy it. The main difference between CS and TF2 in this respect is that TF2 seems destined to remain vapourware.
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
Popular Science really did their homework with this one, which is not unusual for them. (I used to subscribe.)
I found it scary the one of the ID software guys said people were using hooks in their software they didn't know existed. Either he doesn't know what he's talking about, or ID needs some code review. If the games really do have hooks like that they don't know about, that's all the more interesting.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
"When it's released"
We are optimic today aren't we?
^_^
UT has been relatively update free. 436 was just another mod. It would be nice to see some of the new maps that are being created make it to a release version. New features that allow for more function control sensitivity that traversed to severs in the form of mouse and keyboard settings for those of us who don't use joy sticks would r0x0r.
handybundler
Just what the subject says. When you think vapourware, think TF2 .. they've probably had to swtich 3 or 4 generations of game engines underneath it throughout the ages, if they are indeed still working on it ....
And for the record, TF is the greatest mod ever.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Hmmm...maybe this modding business DOES have some potential after all...
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
I hope some day the marketeers will get a clue that it's better to sell a million mods for $10 each than fifty thousand new games at $50 each.
The Half-Life engine the most used game in current online gaming due to one thing, the mods and especially CounterStrike.
Valve software has released many tools and the SDK for creating mods. One mod becomes extremly popular. Other people think they can make cool mods too. Some of them are successful (Day Of Defeat is EXCELLENT!) and then other people make mods. The mod community is huge. Even tho the engine is really outdated...
Also notice that the fact the engine is old actually helps the popularity since it works on almost any computer (including *nix'es under Wine whenever the native doesn't exist).
^_^
Turns out things things like that are a pretty good intro.
somehow I thing that not as many people would get into programming by tinkering with the macro language of your typical generic office suite, for example.
we need more of this kind of stuff.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I guess Timothy doesn't read what Michael posts.
Here's the same article from a week ago. Get your act together, editors!
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
For those of you who can stand a game that doesn't include the term "frame rate" in its specs, there's a very nice 'low profile' strategy game called Space Empires IV which doesn't require hacking to be modded. It's designed to be altered by the users with most of the game data in external text files. Check it out, and the community of modders it has accumulated, at www.shrapnelgames.com where you can download a demo.
Valve haven't actually been working on TF2 properly for as long as DNF has been in production over at 3D Realms.
Their excuse? They've written their own engine, from the ground up. And Steam, their content delivery system. And really helped their Half-Life mod community.
3D Realms excuse? Er... I don't think they have one. Been using the Unreal engine for pretty much the whole time (started with the Q2 engine). Must be terrible team management. What they have showed (at last years E3) wasn't even that impressive.
Let's go over the history of TF2. First it was supposed to be a mod for Quake 2, much like many of the sequels to Quake mods. Then, Valve made a deal with the guys who made TF, and TF2 was supposed to be a free-as-in-beer mod for Half-Life. Plans changed again, and it was turned into a commercially sold mod. Eventually, they changed their minds again, and decided to sell it as a separate game using the HL engine. However, several months through development, they decided to make a totally new engine for it.
Several months ago, I went onto the messageboards at the official TF2 website, and it seems like all development has stopped. It's a shame too; I still hoped it would be good vaporware (like Diablo 2 as opposed to Diakatana).
I think what they mean is that they used things other than the published API.
You can be sure SOMEONE knows about it.. it just may not be an official feature.
But is halflife the game to thank when it comes down to who made it possible? Nope, we still have doom in my book, the game that made everything possible. What made first person shooters and mulitlevel games the best thing since sliced bread? Doom. What gave everyone who had enough time and patience the ability to create their own game inside a game (know known as modding, back then known as wadding)? Doom again. What game set the presidence of how first person shooters would work? Doom.
Basically what I'm getting at is all these gamemakers made enough money off of their games that they wanted to help make it possible for those who had the time and dedication to elaborate on their work. I think everyone who codes, and especially open source, gets the greatest high when the work they've been working on is not only accepted in the OSS community, but when someone takes it and is so amazed with it that they want to take the time to learn it so that they can use it.
Does anyone else realize that halflife being as old as it is can still bring a top of the line machine to it's knees? This game was designed to be able to run on a p133 with 4 megs of video ram and 32 megs of system ram. I know that the mods have since made the game a little bit more in depth than the original, but I still find it funny.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/14/212324 3&mode=thread&tid=127
Myth: The Fallen Lords from the now defunct Bungie Software is still being played online five years after it came out. They took the server down, and another one was made by the fans. There are probably thousands of fan-made mods out there, with new ones still being made.
Old games don't die, they just get old.
doom was the best mod where you can kill barney!
Note: The TF2 this article points to is TF2 (FOR QUAKE). You are referring to TFC2 which is an official release from Sierra.
As near as I can find, this game is somewhat unique.
The publishers/owners gave up on it (I think Sony has it now?). They aren't interested. So.. the community cracked it, and put it up for download so they'd actually have people to play with. Unethical? Stealing? Remember, they bought it as a multiplayer game, and it's rather useless unless others have it, and if nobody sells it.. well..
Then, of course, came the total rewrite (which may or may not be as total as the author's claim.. I suspect not).
Now it's pretty much a game in it's own right. I would actually say that if sony were to sue them now and try to stop it, it would be morally wrong.
1) Locate a newly-posted article ;-) from a few weeks or months ago
2) Search Slashdot for a similar article about the same topic (or something vaguely similar
3) Find a 4- or 5-rated comment, change a few words around (i.e. "Bill Gates" -> "Microsoft CEO", "insightful" -> "interesting", etc.), and repost as your own! This technique has been proven to work time and time again, and it can be yours AT ABSOLUTELY NO COST!
N.B. - "No cost" does not include lawyer fees for plagairism/I.P. trials
erickrout.com
Actually, GPL (Grand Prix Legends) is/was such a success exactly because the game engine itself could not easily be modified. sure you can add graphics and new tracks, but the physics engine itself and the characteristics of the car are just about unhackable (engines can be swapped in to different chassis, but that's as far as it goes).
What this has lead to (combined with the amazing network code that Sierra wrote) is a very competitive online atmosphere even 4 years later. 180 degrees from counterstrike, there is no worrying about cheats or hacking..just VERY competitive racing. It probably helps that learning to drive the sim is overwhelming and won't appeal to your aver 12 year old.
Wheil the game has many add ons, new tracks and anlyzing tools written by third parties, the core engine hasn't been hacked and this is a big part of the success.
It is an interesting comparison to the usual story which is mod-able == successful.
As an interesting aside, check out www.racer.nl for an open source racing game made to be 100% mod-able (including totally customized vehicle creation with up to 10 wheels!).
Now I gotta go race (www.vroc.com)!
Onnel
What about Counter-Strike? They forgot to mention the mod that became the most popular game online, and eventually became a commercial product!
The only thing that is taking longer to develop then Remoero's POS Daikatana is TF2. TF2 will be released the day after the first Mars Mission.
It's odd how sometimes mods become more popular than the original games. Try playing Tribes 1. Dozens of Renegades servers. Dozens of Annihilation servers. Dozens of Ultra servers. Maybe one dozen base servers.
How many people play Counter-Strike each day? Compare that to how many people play vanilla Half-Life.
The best mods are those that aren't even recognizable as the original games. A great example is Thievery UT, which turns Unreal Tournament into a multi-player version of Thief: The Dark Project. (It's unfortunately Windows only, but the dev team has offered to share the code with those who want to port it...)
Unfortunately Sturgeon's Law applies to Mods... 90% of them are crud.
I remember seeing some kind of Starcraft conversion to make it look like Warcraft... Since Starcraft is past its peak I can't seem to find it anymore. Some of the character & building conversions looked pretty sweet.
I also enjoyed this article when it was posted a week ago.
"These people are just ingenious," says John Romero, co-creator of Doom and Quake. "They have figured out all the weird little bitty tricks in the code that we didn't even know about."
;-)) They aren't finding unknown API/function calls.
:-D
From what Romero said it looks like people have studied the code enough to learn how to use the _existing_ code in new ways. (Jedi code tricks, anyone
This isn't surprising. It usually takes a fresh-to-the-code mind to see new functionality because as a programmer you tend to view code as only applying to the problem you want solved. Also, modders spend more time with the code that the original programmers who probably have moved o to a new project.
All in all this is a Good Thing (tm). Hats off to those companies that make their old source code available/work with the mod community and to the people in the mod community who work hard at extending the life of the older games.
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
I actually had the privilege of working on and releasing TF 2.8 and 2.9 for QW (my brief and subtle brush with fame). I actually was given the sources for what was to become TF2 way back before Rob and John got hired by Valve. It was going to be a free Quake 2 mod at the time. It's a shame that the two TF guys at Valve didn't mention their pal Ian in the article, who AFAIK worked on it right there with them from the start.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Years ago I was busy with a binary editor looking at wolf3d files. With my decoding and other peoples encoding the 1st level editors were done. Then other people saw our work and decided they could do better. A race was on to figure out all we could. It was interesting that at the time there were some very nasty notes from developers at id complaining about our work and why we were doing it. One of these were from a man who has said "the computer is the game" but didn't understand why we had his great work under a microscope? At first there was fear in the comments, as if we were going to steal the secrets but then came the understanding that all good hackers understand. He had the gift for game coding and none of us could compete with that. We were happy to take ideas he built into code and rearange them. We could build complex levels that the game designers could never fully test. We were happy with that and it led to exploring other ideas that ended up in other games. When doom came out, it was clear that there was extra data in the files that the game wasn't using. I still wonder if that was there to help the people with the hex editors...
I'm not a hard code gamer and I would prefer to hack on some project over fraging some virtual bad guy however I do have a n64 and there were two games for it that were above the rest. The 1st was golden eye 007 and the other was perfect dark. These games are both from Rare but now that the N64 is dead, there will never be any more. I don't care so much about the levels progression or the story or the funky interlevel video but I would like more levels. Right now Rare claims their next release will perfect dark zero but it won't be out till 2004. I would buy a game cube today to play a new verson of that game but since there isn't a ginle other game for it, I think I'll pass. So far the PS2 seems to have the most games but most of them are centered around a game play I don't like (In a shooter game, I'll be happy waiting with the sniper rifle, I don't like timed things). I also don't like to see the character in 1st person shooter games. Its just something I've never been a fan of. The result is we have one company that made the 2 most popular games on the N64 and they have decided to shut down their company because they can't get their new tricks to work can can't teach a few creative people how to use their old level designer. They should have had at least 2 other games on the 007 engine and by now they could have kicked out 4 or 5 perfect dark levels. But they made other decisions. Funny that id decided to let other people play with their core and I wonder who is more likely to be here in 4 years, id or Rare.
People are still souping up their cars, and people still buy new hardware (and software, even!) to modify their computers! Wow, what a newsworthy article!
Another very MODable game, with some of the MODS better than the original game.
Shameless plug:
http://www.taldren.com
Remember, for every CD you purchase, you give the RIAA that much more power. RIAA = SCO = IP terrorists. Any questio
This was posted less than a month ago: The Mod Squad. 'Stuff that matters.'? I guess game mods are a vital nerd issue.
Hahahaha Gravy Trader. I bet everybody at PCG is wet over that one. :-)
I'm still holding out hope for the Coconut Monkey virtual sex simulator.
sedawkgrep
Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
Don't forget Matrix Games; they have taken several of the best strategy games of history and rewrote them to be playable on win32 platforms, with probably the best work done on Steel Panthers: World at War (SPWAW).
They took SSI's old code for Steel Panthers 3, and rewrote the game so it would run on win32, instead of just DOS. and then, they made it free (as in beer).
While not quite as much fun to me as the original (the re-write only does warfare circa 1938-1946), this has got to be one of the most re-playable games out there.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Thief the Dark Project was one of my favorite games (theif II also). These guys made a UT add-on that emulates the thief world on multiplayer and single player.
So it'll live beyond it's first release? The Mod Squad
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Microprose's Falcon4 is probably a perfeect example of this. Released in November, 1998, it still has a large and dedicated following (well, as large as hardcore flightsims' followings get).
Back in 1999, Hasbro/Microprose decided to drop Falcon4. However, before all of the developers were fired, the source code mysteriously ended up on the Internet.
A group which came to be known as Realism Patch Group (RPG) was releasing (free) patches to fix some of the realism issues in the original Falcon. At the same time, someone called eRazor had gotten his hands on the Falcon source code and was working on some of graphics issues. And simultaneously with this, an army of other developers were working on other aspects of the game. For instance, the eTeam took this F-16 only flightsim and added a Fly-Any-Plane patch, giving you the ability to fly any aircraft in the sim. Groups around the world immediately started working on accurate flight models for each aircraft and photo-realistic cockpits.
The two groups worked in parallel, releasing RPG and eRazor patches which more or less rewrote the sim. It was decided to create a Falcon4 Unified Team (f4ut). This group took all of the rewrites and data edits done by the eTeam and the RPG and combined them into series of Falcon4 SuperPaks. These patches/mods have completely transformed Falcon, and nearly made it into a completely new sim. The graphics engine was completely rewritten and is DirectX 8.1 compliant. Falcon supports anistropic filtering, antialiasing, etc. And the sim itself is one of the most realistic and engaging ever. It uses a dynamic "campaign-within-a-campaign" methodology to insure that play never repeats itself. Its literally a whole new ballgame.
In fact, the "unofficial" modding of Falcon has also snatched Falcon from the jaws of obsolescence. G2I Interactive has bought Falcon's IP and while allowing a last series of F4UT binary edits, will be coming out with Falcon5.
IMHO, this is the ultimate example of mods extending the life of a game or sim. And extending its playability. There are a number of active duty fighter pilots who are avid Falcon fans. That, IMHO is the ultimate compliment.
--Storm
I was very impressed with this game - sure as anyone can tell you it is no Diablo II. D2 is a more rounded game BUT with modifications that are available you can add so much more so easliy to DS. Even the GUI is now configuraable using a scripting language.
The company is creating its own mod tutorials and making the tools available for free. I am very impressed - almost
Oh yeah, and of course Microsoft does have some interest in it... so that may be a reason we haven't seen more on it here. A smart thing they did by buying an interest in Gas Powered Games back in 98.
http://www.packmule.org/
http://www.dungeonsiege.com/siegeu.shtml
http://www.dsnetguide.com/ - awesome rsource
I just boght the game a few days ago and I have spent too many late nights on it. The number of mods out there is staggering.
Team Fortress 2 is not a 'hack'; it's a new product that's been written from the ground up, developed by Valve themselves. It is not some amateur effort, and won't require Half-Life (unlike Team Fortress 1.5).
Strange that the article doesn't mention LucasArts attitude towards modding.
ID software was one of the first (perhaps THE first) company
to fully realise this, when Quake was released I was very impressed by it's hackability.
The result: it's still being played today.
Unfortunately there is such a thing as corperate lawyers, and they don't see how this kind of thing increases the lifespan of the product (and thus, revenue) all they chose to see is a copyright infringement.
Reverse-engineering games is a fun and positive thing.
It is just too sad that some companies fail to realise how the positive effects outweigh any negative effects.
Although modifying began among hard-core hackers, it's not illegal.
I was a little bothered when I read this sentence... even "hard-core" hacking isn't illegal in and of itself. I'm troubled by this continuing implication in mainstream media.
0x0D 0x0A
"It also mentions that the next Team Fortress hack, Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms, will not be distributed for free."
they forgot to mention then, that its going to be the most impressive thing since sliced cheese, itll do your laundry, take out the cat, & pick up milk while its out.
blah, TF2 has been on the drawing board for, what, 4 yrs?
I'm not calling you a liar.. obviously I don't/can't know.
It just struck me as odd that the game engine was SO much identical.
Which cool awesome features turned the game around? As far as I can tell the game is identical.
I've hacked Pong so that it used two balls instead of one, guaranteeing several more hours of fun for the whole family. W00T!
A mod being commercial is a serious impediment to its adoption by the critical mass of people.
May we never see th
A question for all those game programmers out there - are any game developers considering modular game visual engines so that they can be upgraded?
I often wonder about these MMORPG games like Ultima, Dark Ages of Camelot, EverQuest. These games are all still around, but the developers have a limited lifecycle intended for each, so while you can still play Ultima Online today, is it true that it's graphics quality and overall reality of its universe are far less advanced than the new MMORPGs like DAOC?
I ask these questions with the thought in mind that some day there may be an online game that is an identical copy of something like Tolkein's Middle Earth, or at least a gaming universe that is as limitless as a good hard-copy roleplaying game. Literally, you could be anything from a farmer to necromancer.
Will these games also be passed by in graphics by the Next Big Thing (tm)? Or will game engines become modular, with both a proprietary version and an open-source version, so that five years after the game comes out, or 15 years even, the game is far more playable and far more detailed, being up to the match of technologies like bio/quantum computing and printed circuits allowing displays to be the size of your wall and five times as detailed as today.
What are your thoughts on this?
Just over a week ago.
Incase anyone is interested (as I am) in "hacking" together mods, heres a great link for everything you could need to get started modding half life.
The Wavelength
They are in the process of reviving the site featuring other games than Half-Life.
Old Bungie's Marathon lives on as open source. It even has Linux & BeOS ports now.
IMNSHO, it had better game balance than Quake.
considering that America's Army is now out (and it's really quite good) i don't see what the point in trying to get TF2 out is at this point anyway.
TF2 did contribute one non-vaporous thing tho... the moving mouths when you speak through the mic in Counter-Strike. yeay!
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
posted before.
3 24 3&mode=thread&tid=127
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/14/212
werd to yo motha, muh nizzle.
YOU FAD BASTARd.
RiSpeKt Me AuTHoR1DY!
Although there were level editors and graphics modifiers for Wolf3D, IMO Doom is the game that brought modding to the masses.
The original Doom level editor was based on a Next cube, and the game itself was meant to be closed.
It was only after the efforts of hackers (in the proper sense of the word) that loading external WADs was introduced (in version 1.2 IIRC) - at least id realised what was going on and actively encouraged it.
Later came Dehacked - lots of things were hard coded into the EXE, but with a small DEH file you could change rates of fire, animation frames and add extra effects. No wonder that id made these things easier to change in Quake onwards - again kudos to them for realising that fans like open games.
At the last count, there were tens of thousands of extra wads, ranging from simple level replacements to total conversions where barely anything from Doom remains.
Thanks, id!
Jeez /., you guys already posted about this less then 2 weeks ago as yet another frontpage article ( http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/14/212324 3&mode=thread&tid=127 ). Why don't you guys put in some checks and balances in place so that an article gets read by 1) somebody with a high school graduation (lots of grammar mistakes lately), and 2) somebody that watches your own front page, so you don't do double posts like this. Get your act together /., there are millions of people that try to respect your news quality (though it gets harder every day)
LMAO yeah right that will last about 2 weeks before it is all over the place via p2p and server download sites. It has already been proved repeatedly that people won't pay for mods. Heck let them learn the hard way...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The slide presentation to STEAM strongly hints that Valve (part of the Vivendi juggernaut) is planning a move to pay-to-play model for online gaming similar to Everquest. I wasn't able to find the exact page again where I read this, but IIRC CS was expected to go all STEAM around the release of v1.6 or v1.7. There was also mention that suggested mod authors were going to have to pay money to Valve to write a mod. (I think it was around $1000. I really wish I could find the page again.) This would be truly discouraging turn of events for mod authors.
The reason I even noticed about this potential policy change was that I have spent the couple of years writing mods for HL myself and now am wondering if it's time to change engines. (The Ogre engine looks pretty darn good, but I don't think it has a networking support yet.)
There is one other reason to take note of STEAM is that it requires a broadband connection (Dialup and 128K ISDN need not apply. 384Kb/sec throughput is the minimum.) This means that if you don't use cable, you're screwed. This is quite a change from when you could play Q1/Q2 on a 28Kb modem. The interesting thing is that it's not the game itself that requires this bandwidth, but rather it's distributed file system of the steam DRM. Is this the wave of the future? Will gamers cry foul? Time will tell.
When all else fails, run.
by playing America's Army, you're basically telling them you think it was okay to spend $7 mil on a propaganda tool for minors. not everyone want to support that. nevertheless, point is moot as TF2 has been entirely vaporous for some time now.
...and dig role playing games, check out www.teambg.com they've been hacking & modding the Infinity Engine (Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale) for quite a while now & have come up with some pretty cool stuff.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Somebody discovered that raised sectors in Doom can be made invisible because of the rendering techniques in the game. Neat hack, I would say! You can see it in action in a few places in the official Doom2 expansion pack "Final Doom : The Plutonia Experiment", written by two fans, and published by the publisher of Doom. Another neat hack was making instantly jumping platforms. You just had them move "up" if you wanted them to move down, and vice versa :)
What Romero had in mind is that you could make more things work with the engine than the authors throught possible. It would be just like Turing saying: "Hey, I didn't know they'd make windows!", had he lived long enough to see what his abstract machine theory is being used for today...
You haven't the slightest clue about what you speak. The "TF2" that is being talked about is not a Quake mod, it is a game that Valve was supposed to release some time ago. There is no such thing as TFC2.
Mod parent down.
it was my impression that TF2 was a full blown game, not a mod....
Well, it certainly will blow. Haha.
Seriously, TF2 -- if it ever is released -- is going to suck so bad you'll be checking the box for John Romero's name. It's been in development for years (at the company whose only accomplishment in the last three years has been finding new ways to milk the now emaciated cash cow named Half Life). The team making it (the original Team Fortress team), despite having a brilliant and original idea for a game long ago, has demonstrated that they couldn't balance their way out of an already-balanced paper sack. Every TF patch intended to fix balance only managed to change the direction in which it was imbalanced, not the degree. The final version when they left to start TF2 was so bad, that there were only essentially two classes of any use.
TF2's is going to be significant in the same way Daikatana was -- only as a source of hilarious ridiculing reviews.
The enemies of Democracy are
How do you cheat in a racing "game?" Cornering-bot? Race scripting?
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
They forgot counter-strike, the best MOD for Value.
Is a somewhat popular practice. Usually its something as mundane as replacing Mario with a giant walking penis, but occasionally you'll see someone with a clue, or maybe someone who knows more japanese than you. Supposedly there's going to be a large announcement on the first site on the 23rd of july. Maybe they'll announce something cool like a Crystalis Improvement.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Grip and acceleration (either by more power, less weight or more grip).
This is why Neverwinter Nights seems like such a good idea. Instead of hacks, people make legit modules with tools they provide. And, of course, it's all based on D&D 3rd Edition, so the modules can fit in perfectly.
Are you Robin? Wow, cool, in my books, thats not a subtle brush with fame .. thats pure awesomeness. I still miss Q1 physics. :) TF grens were the best grens of all time. I've never been able to make people catch impending explosions with sure pure raw precision ever since TF, although I did spend 4 years with it ... ever seen the name Kraftboy around? I was a junkie, knew lots of folks ..
"Old man yells at systemd"
omg, the horror! the horror.
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
Stuff like that would easily be made server side, or concurrent with the client. It probably allready is. The hard things to verify in online games are the actions people take. After all the bugs and exploits have been secured it amounts to information and information theory, in my experience. Any data you send the user should be suspect. And thats where more popular games like Counter-Strike are living.
So far I've only heard of two good solutions: dummy terminals and ratings networks. But simply feeding the screen to the user is bandwidth intensive, high latency, and a poor use of existing hardware.
Your other option is to use a rating network to pair up people of similar skill. The idea is that to a poor player cheating is indistunguishable from a good player's actions, and that the best game is the one in which decisions always matter (i.e. losing 11 straight matches in a best of 20 off the bat isnt as exciting as a 10 to nine match. Theoretically cheaters would be matches up with experts who can perform similarly (consider the cheat a secret handicap) increasing the number of people who can compete with experts, and saving less skilled players the humiliation of utter defeat and cries of cheaters. Of course, this isn't a cure all; in addition to the hacks still being present and slow reaction time of any rating system, abuses to the ratings itself would also appear. Cheaters with a taste for game spoiling may choose to do poorly to lord over everyone on occasion. Even the best players may be bested by a lesser player using cheats, furthering the use of cheats.
The bottom line is that a computer makes a poor referee. A computer might be able to tell you exactly where to place the ball on the football field, but it can't make a call on something like offensive pass intereference. Either human policing or less twitch oriented games would be the most beneficial to the players.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Funny you should say this with respect to a 3D first-person shooter. They're one of the few cases where there was an undeniable, pressing need for better graphics -- reducing motion sickness.
Back in the Wolf3D days, I could barely play for half an hour before becoming ill. Quake was a little better. But it wasn't until the 3D accelerated FPS games that I could play such games non-stop (hooray for being able to blow a weekend on TFC).
by playing America's Army, you're basically telling them you think it was okay to spend $7 mil on a propaganda tool for minors.
What's wrong with that? Serving in the armed forces is an honorable profession. If a game can get more kids interested in thinking about joining the army and defending their country then so be it. They probably spend just as much on those "army of one" commercials. Besides, someone has to do it. I'd rather kids get interested and volunteer than have to resort to forced conscription to keep the ranks filled.
My son is playing Zelda: Ocarina of Time right now, and I'd love to see it hacked to anti-alias the textures better, if nothing else.
That's what N64 emulators are for. Get a good video card with TV-out, and a fast computer to go with it, and you can play Ocarina of Time like never before. I think one of the graphics plugins even supports Anisotropic filtering.
Learn more at Emulation64
Also, Can anyone hack a game that was originally just for a gaming console?
Yes, I think that is evidenced well enough by all the level-conversion mods that have popped up for Super Mario World, some quite good. You can get more info on these at Zophar's Domain
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
You know I hate to say it, because I'll likely get flamed, but meh.
6 .html
We got the magazine here a week ago, and my girlfriend even posted about it on her webcomic (albeit short), last week.
http://www.blue-comic.com/archives/2002071
Oh, and don't be afraid to visit...we could use the visitors *wink*.
- Josiah
if you dont like micromanagement in your rts, try the Myth series sometime. particularly Myth2. rts with just troops... you dont have to sit around making buildings all day.
HAH no I'm not Robin, check the link I provided. The name's "Gudlyf".
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Crank it up on the emulator, and it looks astounding at hi res. Just like Quake II or any other 3D game. It's all in the video card. Much better than TV.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
The Mod Squad 7/14/02
Mods: "Lifeblood of Gaming Industry"? 4/16/02
I never played Starcraft, though I've often though about buying it just to see how it compares. A lot of people seemed to be pro-SC and anti-TA or vice versa at the time of the games' releases, and given the comments around, I've always suspected I'd find SC frustrating after playing TA. I like to set up lots of orders when I first build units, and often leave them pretty much to their own thing after that. I also make extensive use of numbered groups of units in TA when controlling a battle. It sounds as though SC's control system isn't as flexible as TA's, which has always put me off. Then again, it's in the budget collection for under a tenner now, so what have I got to lose? :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
This is what happens when people are allowed
freedom to Mod from a games developer.
It's one thing to make a successful game but
it's another to make a really sucessful
game. To do that in my opinion you have use the Mod scene,
let people do what they want.
Every big online game pretty much is a mod
of something else because game making requires
creative ideas from a large pool of thought,
not just a team of programmers - sorry but trying to
think in terms of actual gameplay is somethink
not exactly condusive with munching C++ code.
This is why games today seem unoriginal;
because games dev are programmers. It's rare
for them to acknowledge marketing and not
neglect code, let alone the freedom vs sell.
If your making games you've got to make some
decisions as to how much freedom to give people
over your game - if you don't let them alter it
you lose out on the mod scene but at the same
time you trying to sell thething in the first
place? right? oh so you're not sure that's what
you're really doing?
Either way, got to strike a balance.
Some companies like Valve started off pretty
unhelpful to modders but after watching
CounterStike become the most sucessful game
on the planet... (hmm ok outside Asia?) they're
trying to cash in. Unfortunately unlike ID games
they haven't got a clue. ID games have released
source code and generally been helpful where as
the makers of UnrealT and Half-Life haven't.
It turns out that the 3D engines from ID games
are the basis for >80% of online gaming.
Quake1,2,3 engines, Half-life being based off
Q2. And Rtcw as well. Mods for UnrealT were
coming out really fast to start off with but now
we have a lot less freedom with it - the new
version of UT will be charge for, closed source
(fully closed source), probably Windows only
and any linux support didn't actually come from
the makers of UT - it came from loki.
Another example is MaxPayne. Great engine, good
new features to try but the Mod scene is
sssslow. Why? Because it hasn't been pirated?
Should they allow people to pirate and then
charge corporations who try to use it when it
then becomes big? The makers of MaxPayne
probably didn't value the mod scene and what
about online play with it? Either way they
probably aren't interested, stupid since
without a Mod scene and online play I for one
ain't interested.
ID Games I'm sure will be successful with the changing game climate so long as they continue to
be cooperative with independant modders and gaming
companies alike. It's possible that another company will overtake them by taking an RPG style online cooperation games or something different that isn't a 3D FPS (if it takes off like in Asia) but I hope they don't block us Mod makers out.
If I could program I'm sure I'd make original
stuff, but I can't. And I don't want to, I just
want you to let me Mod.
A blog I run for the wealth