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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."
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.
I guess Timothy doesn't read what Michael posts.
Here's the same article from a week ago. Get your act together, editors!
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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).
Note: The TF2 this article points to is TF2 (FOR QUAKE). You are referring to TFC2 which is an official release from Sierra.
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.
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.
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
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).