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NYT on Game Mods
Bansuki writes "The New York Times has an article about the role of the modding communities in the games industry. It's a decent overview of the current state of modding though it focuses heavily on Epic Games and the Unreal engine. They spotlight the Unreal University program (an Unreal sponsored event giving classes to potential modders) and Red Orchestra (a highly ambitious mod of the Unreal Warfare engine). The article also mentions machinima as a type of mod with artistic potential and gives due credit to Id Software and Bioware for their work in making engines available to the community. But here's a glaring omission: Half-life and its wildly successful mods. Odd."
It's not really all that odd. The mainstream press isn't exactly tech savvy. Heck, mainstream press isn't exactly savvy in ANY field, and often relies upon press releases from outside bodies to figure out if something is worth pursuing as a story.
The Unreal guys probably got proactive about getting this story out there.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I've poked around a bit trying to find a way to generate DOOM PWADs using a script... but I can't see a way to build a map outside a level editor. It seems like there are two components necessary - a sector layout thingy and a binary space partition calculator.
At any rate, I've started a little project to generate DOOM levels via a Ruby script. And if it turns out this is already possible via other means, I'll shut the project down
The Army reading list
The games with wildly successful modification scenes are games that are commercially wildly successful, in general. The positive correlation is real.
It mystifies me that a game these days can possibly be shipped without a comprehensive editing tool. They're artificially limiting their games' lives and shooting their sales in the foot.
are a great addition to commercial games...
so long as there is a moderating system to sort the wheat from the chaff (to use a biblical metaphor)
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
has a clone under SDL... See the SDL home page for a link :-)
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
This link will let you in without the registration:
u its/04modd.html?ex=1071118800&en=579e6cf0a57082db& ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
:)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/technology/circ
Thanks google
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
I played lots of Quake2 mods, Action Quake2 being my favorite. Personally I didn't like the Half-Life net code when the game first came out but I heard that it got much better, but by that time I had dropped the game and moved on to something else.
Games with mods do seem to have a much longer life than non-mod games, look at Tribes, Unreal Tournament, Battlefield 1942, Neverwinter Nights (which LIVES off of the mod concept), heck, even games not designed to be modded (Silent Hunter 2) have had mods done by very creative and dedicated fans.
Allowing people to make their own maps is not enough, let them play with the engine, the graphics, the models, the scripting, it pleases the fans and makes them come back for a sequel. Its been proven lots of times, heck, people still play QUAKE1 because of the mods!
And NOT trying to start a PC vs. Console war, game mods are one of the most important features that keep the PC gamers coming for more and paying big bucks for hardware (well, compared to consoles that are sold at a loss).
On the other hand, mods (and in general, user-created content) are responsible for the metamorphosis of the computer games industry since the early 8-bit era to what it is today. No longer can you sell a hit game every 6 months , due to this extra content the average life of a good game has increased immensely, and thus, game companies now have to think carefully about their plans and development programs.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
... for BG2 has to be the best unofficial mod I've ever played - a huge effort by the team. It unbalanced the game somewhat, but it certainly made it different to run into an area you knew well only to be completely ambushed. Oh sh...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Perhaps the article was just focusing on the current generations of engines, so Unreal would be a good choice, now that it is getting yearly updates. I hope the vehicles in UT2k4 are going to be good...
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Mods like Counter-Strike are a boon to developers. Its like having people who work for free. I know that valve has taken CS under their wing now but there are many mods that keep games playable - with no work on the part of the developers. Imagine all the people who bought half-life so they could play counter-strike on the internet (or DoD or TF)? Originally CS was just a couple of nerds with some free time on their hands.. Not to mention that you can't make everyone happy.. mods let people take a great engine and make a game that is "boring" to them fun. Some people like CS, others prefer TF, some are into DoD.. I'm pretty sure that many of those people never bother to play multiplayer HL.
I find it a glaring oversight to see an article on PC game mods not even mention Half-Life, a game which has had a ridiculous shelf life powered almost solely by the bevy of mods released for it.
And no discussion of Half-Life would be complete without a discussion of Natural-Selection, a mod that turns HL into an FPRTS with marines fighting aliens and a focus on resource control (and now, with a level-based team FPS that's leagues beyond other mods dedicated solely to team FPS).
Contrary to popular belief I'm pretty sure that Valve took the Quake (not Q2) engine and redid something like 70-80% of the code.
:D
But it was Quake IIRC which was the first 3d shooter to actively support and encourage a modding community by releasing QuakeC.. I guess half-life's huge mod community is just an extention of that success.
Did anyone ever play the "TW Creeper" mod for the original Quake? As nice as the 1st person shooters have gotten - Counterstrike is so much more realistic and several orders of magnitude more impressive in terms of rendering graphics - I still haven't found more enjoyment in a multiplayer 1st person shooter than that old modded version of Quake. Sounds silly I guess ...
... is that the classic Quake/QuakeWorld engine really started the ball rolling for mods, and is/was responsible for some of the things we take for granted in these games, like CTF (Thanks Zoid and Threewave for helping me waste sooo much time playing - had a blast) and the original TeamFortress.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
The games with wildly successful modification scenes are games that are commercially wildly successful, in general. The positive correlation is real.
Being "commercially successful" means just that. That is sells many copies, it does not mean that people are actually playing the game out of the box .. Take Half Life for example and look at how many people are playing Un-MODed HalfLife today .. Not many .. The ONLY reason Valve is still selling HalfLife, is because of the MODs..
Therefore talking about a "positive correlation" is, mildly put, misleading.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
He's referring to the fact that HL is based on the Quake I engine, which Valve licensed from id. However, Valve rewrote some 70% of the code.
I seem to remember playing TF on Quake 1's engine. As a matter of fact, me and my college buddies worked with the people making TF. We exerimented on our own selves (being in a college dorm, we had a perfect environment) trying out weapns like the gib gun, and *I* even prototypes the sniper dot. It was an 'x' originally.
So there might be a TF for HL, but TF is and always shall be a Quake mod. After all, Quake was the first engine that was open to modding by average Joe.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
This is true. However, during development, Q2 was released and Valve was given an infusion of Q2 code. So the HL engine is mostly custom, with a fair amount of Q1 and some Q2 code.
I'm a big fan of Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942, seems as though the designers/coders have formed their own company headed by founder Frank Delise. This seems like a great way for mods to break into the gaming scene, release an amazing mod for free, then start a company, then PROFIT! (sorry..). I'm really looking forward to see what these guys are comming up with next.
The real question, though is when (if ever!) net access by consoles are going to allow widespread modding of console titles. I look forward to it, if it's even possible.
But here's a glaring omission: Half-life...
Simple, no linux support.
There have been lots of articles in the mainstream media about mods, but usually they end up talking almost exclusively about Half Life and Counterstrike. For once, I'm glad to see them not get mentioned. It is time for the online FPS gaming community to move on from those 5 year old games and mods. There is much better stuff out there to play now than Half Life & Counterstrike. I think the Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942 has a chance of becoming the "new" Counterstrike.
I don't know what it's like in the rest of the world but in Australia there are about four times as many Desert Combat servers as "Vanilla" BF servers, and they are always busier. (DC is, as you might guess, based on both recent Gulf Wars).
This is despite EA Games being very reluctant to support mods. Even the map editor promised shortly after the game was released only came out almost a year later and after a lot of complaining in the BF community. There is now a rudimentary SDK, but this is probably because the suits at EA saw the official expansion packs do comparatively badly and saw how well community made mods (epsecially DC and the Vietnam mod Eve of Destruction) were doing. You need a copy of the original game to play the mods, so reluctantly EA have started to co-operate.
Valve are probably the industry leader in terms of encouraging mods. This is an interesting business model, as it resembles OS while still allowing the games companies to sell licenses. If even EA are moving in that direction, then I think gaming is going to get very interesting (from both the players' and modders' point of view) in the next few years.
I've recently been sucked into the competitive gameplay world (where teams organize into divisions, leagues, etc, tournaments are held periodically for cash and prizes, and all that good stuff). As much as I used to chuckle at the thought of "pro gamers", it turns out that there can be just as much nuance to strategy and execution to appreciate in watching a multiplayer video game as there is in watching say a football game. At least to my mind.
One cool thing about mods is that they can be used to improve games to a point where they're suitable for competition. The ETpro mod by bani for the game Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory alters some aspects of gameplay to make it more suitable stopwatch competitions.
The other thing mods can do, and this is kinda neat, is actually add in features to accomodate game spectators. Again, using ETpro as an example, bani included some small changes to help shoutcasters quickly identify players and get stats during the match. A multiview feature was also added so that a spectator could watch the game from several different points of view with a Picture-in-Picture style setup.
In the future, I see mods stepping up to fill in the roles that the original game developers either couldn't think of or didn't want to address because the competition world wasn't their target audience. I can see a mod coming out that can not only handle broadcasting video of the match, but offers optional commentary via an mp3/ogg stream from a caster and presents information kind of in the same way FOX does for football games (current scores, tickers for other matches, league stats for players, etc).
Yeah. Mods are crucial if you want to let your users take your software places you'd never even thought of before.
Most of the time I need to get on and get my fix in a hurry. I know this sounds sad, and yes I'm addicted.....admitting is the first step towards recovery. - MK-Ultra (to Urban Terror regulars)
-- Probability does not dismiss possibility --
In comparison Half-life was a huge rewrite of the Quake I engine by a company that had licensed the code. If that's a mod then GTA:VC is a mod of Burnout 2, because they're both built on top of the Renderware graphics engine.
No, I don't buy that. By that argument, almost 50% of the games out there are just mods. Is Jedi Knight II just a Quake 3 mod? It uses the same engine. Same for most of the Star Trek games, Heavy Metal, etc. I don't think that just because a game uses a licenced engine, it can be referred to as a mod.
Technically, yes, it is a 'modificaton' of an existing game, but I believe the term 'mod' means something a little more specific. Can't mods use the original games' content (sounds, models, textures)? If you licence a game engine, I'm pretty sure that's all you get. The game engine and maybe the net & scripting code. Also, mods *require* the original game in order to work. I don't think owning Q3A is a requirement for playing JKII.
I'm probably just arguing semantics, but in my mind there's a big distinction between a mod and a licenced-engine game.
A big ommission is the barney Doom mod. The first mod I can remember seeing. It was for the original doom and changed the "small" demon at the end of the demo or first level into the vile purple fiend.
The story ignores the real base mods from the DOS era when the tools/source were not released and had t obe reverse engineered by users.
The Alens total conversion for Doom is still the best mod I've played.