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."

Comments

It's not really all THAT odd...

[wrinkledshirt]

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.

Re:It's not really all THAT odd...

[TopShelf]

The point of the article isn't to list every significant modding community out there - heck, you could toss sports games into the mix as well. The story is that the relationship between game developers and players has changed significantly over the last few years. Whether one game is used as the example over another is trivial...

Re:It's not really all THAT odd...

[Torinaga-Sama]

"The Unreal guys probably got proactive about getting this story out there."

Hey, it worked for Valve, it can work for us.

I know Half-Life was the only game I ever bought more than once, as sick an fanboyish as that sounds to me now.

Re:It's not really all THAT odd...

[wrinkledshirt]

On that level, I sort of agree, but at the same time, that's like doing an article about increased consumption of fast food in society and leaving out McDonald's.

Building a mod inside a level editor...

[tcopeland]

...is great and all, but it'd be nifty if a level could be built using a script. Like this:

map = Map.new
level = Level.new(10,10)
level.add_sector(0,0,5,5)
level .set_spawn_point(2,2)
map.add(level)

Or something to that effect.

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 :-)

Re:Building a mod inside a level editor...

[Mohammed Al-Sahaf]

Take a look at WadC, a scripting language for building Doom levels, you filthy infidel.

Re:Building a mod inside a level editor...

[wideBlueSkies]

3D realms, provided a random level generator for Rise Of The Triad.

The utility came on the CD version of the game. It would work as advertised and generate random levels. Every now and then you'd get a good deathmatch level out of it.

So I would imagine that one could write an engine to generate a random level for any game. This would be a bit simpler probably for older 2 1/2 D games like Doom, ROTT and Descent, compared to full 3D engine games like the Quake and Unreal series. But definitely do-able I think.

wbs.

Re:Building a mod inside a level editor...

[Mohammed Al-Sahaf]

Its been done for Doom at least. SLIGE is a tool of the Zionist American pigs for generating random levels.

Re:Building a mod inside a level editor...

[pavon]

hehe, only on slashdot could Mohammed Al-Sahaf be considered informative.

It's not a coincidence

[Mukaikubo]

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.

Re:It's not a coincidence

[dolo666]

When I was interviewed by the New York Times about the mod I'm doing, I was shocked at how much of the interview was left out. So I'm doing a feature with MTV magazine about it, and forgive me if I'm having some faith. :)

My point is that the NYT doesn't know much about modding. They only know what they can see, and that's a wall of information. They don't have good resources for tapping into something like modding. Part of that is our fault, because there isn't a central information base for modding anymore, and there hasn't been since Slipgate Central was shut down. NYT wouldn't know what Allstar CTF was, and they would likely think that Zoid was a little toy.

But patiently, with time, maybe the rest of the world will get it, when it comes to mods. Until then, we have to make do and we have to try and keep working towards that connection.

user-created levels

[theMerovingian]

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)

The Baldur's gate engine

[Space cowboy]

has a clone under SDL... See the SDL home page for a link :-)

Simon.

Link so you don't have to register

[celerityfm]

This link will let you in without the registration:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/technology/circu its/04modd.html?ex=1071118800&en=579e6cf0a57082db& ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

Thanks google :)

Mods...

[Predathar]

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!

Game mods are the best card for PC games

[Walkiry]

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.

They should be thanking us!

[Terragen]

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.

Glaring Oversight

[Sage Gaspar]

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).

Speaking of Mods

[JSkills]

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 ...

What the article poster forgot...

[i.r.id10t]

... 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.

Re:Half-Life

[artemis67]

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.

Future of modding...

[hookedup]

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.

Competitive Gaming

[Marsala]

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.

Re:Half-Life

[vrai]

It's a modification of the Quake engine. How is that not a "mod"? Granted, it had financial backing and a nice pretty box, but a mod is a mod is a mod.

A mod is a modification of a commercial game that uses the original game engine. Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Desert Combat all use the original game engines but with new rule and graphic sets. They did not change the underlying game code. This is primarily because none of these mods were created by people with access to the engine code.

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.