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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."
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!)
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
"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."
> TF2 will be released the day after the first Mars Mission.
I wouldn't bet on it...
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
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