Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

ModDB Mod of the Year Winners Chosen

Posted by Zonk on from the gogo-indie-gaming dept.

TheRealFritz writes "It's that time of year again and ModDB has released the winners of their annual Mod of the Year contest. Gamers who like to go beyond their initial investment have chosen their favorites for 2006: Point of Existence and Project Reality according to ModDB's Mod of the Year competition. The contest took in over 80,000 votes and narrowed the field from 4,000 mods to the Top 5 released and unreleased mods, as well as a handful of genre awards and the Editor's Choice awards. Perhaps it is ironic that the two top mods of 2006 are both for the Battlefield 2 platform, which has been abandoned by its developer and is notoriously buggy and difficult to mod. Despite these problems, both mods went on to beat out mods from the ever popular Half-Life 2 platform. The much better maintained Source engine is represented with the winners of the third through fifth places: Goldeneye: Source, The Hidden: Source and Minerva."

24 comments

  1. hmm by Loconut1389 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Call me old fashioned, but when I hear Mod of the year, I think music. Am I the only one who has MOD inexorably connected with music?

    1. Re:hmm by FlameSnyper · · Score: 2, Funny

      Probably.

    2. Re:hmm by Rakshasa+Taisab · · Score: 1

      Actually, when I see MOD I think of modular arithmetic.

      Don't go claiming ownership of words, lest someone else decides to return the favor.

      --
      - These characters were randomly selected.
    3. Re:hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eh? What? I can't hear you. And get off my lawn, you whipper snapper!

    4. Re:hmm by srodden · · Score: 1

      Yeah you're old :) I remember .mod files from the Amiga days of my youth but TBH when I saw the headline I clicked expecting some neato case mods and was rather disappointed with the FPS junk!

      Bring on the CaseModoftheYear compo!

      --
      Why can't we let people believe whatever they like? It's not like a little religion has ever hurt anyone.
  2. From one with karma to burn by Travoltus · · Score: 1

    A certified fan of Andrew "Necros" Sega (of Five Musicians) in the hizzouse. Nobody could throw down a joint like him, and nobody ever will. His mods were masterpieces. Some of Necros' music made it into video games, like Unreal (the original) Tournament.

    The music mod community was the worse for his departure. There has never been an artist of his magnitude since.

    The music industry benefitted greatly from his efforts in the group "The Alpha Conspiracy".

    --
    --- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
    1. Re:From one with karma to burn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would you mind posting a URL to a picture of your certificate?

    2. Re:From one with karma to burn by pwroberts · · Score: 1

      A certified fan of Andrew "Necros" Sega (of Five Musicians) in the hizzouse. [...] The music industry benefitted greatly from his efforts in the group "The Alpha Conspiracy".

      I read this and just had to listen to FM-RIFF.S3M again. Coincidentally, 'Aura' by The Alpha Conspiracy has been in the car CD player for the last week or so :-)

      For anyone wondering what we're yabbering about:

      Selection of modules by Necros (use MODPlug Player on Windows)
      The Alpha Conspiracy

      We're sooo going to get modded 'Offtopic' for this little aside. But it's all about the sceeene!

  3. Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul by Travoltus · · Score: 1

    I'm surprised that Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul didn't make Mod of the Year.

    What it did to improve the already stellar TES IV: Oblivion was utterly phenomenal.

    --
    --- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
    1. Re:Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm surprised that Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul didn't make Mod of the Year.
      It would have helped if it had a Mod DB profile, so that people could have voted for it - you could always create one yourself. Oblivion is a listed game.

      Conversely, two big Half-Life based mods, and one Unreal-engined standalone game, appear to have disqualified themselves from actually winning anything this year. Yep, Garry's Mod, Natural Selection and Red Orchestra - all previous winners of the competition, and all gone commercial in one form or another. Good for them - and more importantly, it makes room for young upstarts like me!

      Although I did hear that explanation on their games radio show thing they had online - which in a demonstration of its levels of accuracy claimed I was called Adam Smith, and was French. Both incorrect. So who knows. Maybe MINERVA actually is deserving of a fifth place... ;-)

      (I'd like to thank my agent, my family, blah blah blah blah *sob* blah blah blah *cheer* blah blah blah ad nauseam...)
      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
    2. Re:Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul by samwh · · Score: 1

      Agreed. I can't imagine playing Oblivion without it.

    3. Re:Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul by Kattspya · · Score: 1

      Minerva kicks ass. Hurry up and get the third part out please think of the children.

    4. Re:Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul by lolocaust · · Score: 1

      Hey Adam, big fan of your mapping design.

      --
      Why does my post history abruptly stop? I want to laugh at the stupid things I posted as a kid.
  4. I play the "Top Mod", Point of Existance 2 by Kagura · · Score: 1

    I was playing Point of Existance 2, the #1 mod of the year, no less than five minutes ago. It's an incredible mod, every map is new, and it fixes nearly everything that was wrong with just plain ol' vanilla Battlefield 2. I wouldn't be playing BF2 anymore if it weren't for this mod.

    If you want to play on a populated server with mature adults who keep positive control of their server with a whole lot of personal integrity, check out the server at http://www.game-monitor.com/GameServer/64.34.165.1 34:16567/TacticalGamer.com_-_PoE2_-_62_Open_Slots. html. It's always full in the US evenings after dinnertime.

    I play as USARMY JeonJiHyeon, so if you see me there give me a holler. Point of Existance 2 is absolutely a great reason to pick up your old BF2 box and start playing again. I hope to find you there!

  5. Here's a theory.. by QuantumG · · Score: 1

    maybe people write mods because they love the game/engine they are modding.. and so the only thing one has to do to get good open source games is to provide a competitive engine in a timely manner. Yes, only.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:Here's a theory.. by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      Another important bit is popularity of the platform. In fact it's probably more important than the quality of the platform itself. Most modders want their mod to be played so a lot of them pick a platform that's already popular. Usually those platforms are games where the base content is already highly popular. Source is hardly perfect, in fact I'd say it's worse than many other engines but it comes with two very popular games (HL2, CS:S) and that means almost everybody has it.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    2. Re:Here's a theory.. by Pxtl · · Score: 1

      Well, a lot of modders are having fun with DarkPlaces and the other various Quake-derivatives opened by Id. Witness Alien Arena, Nexuiz, WarSow, Tremulous, OpenArena, just to name a few. Most of them are a little dated, but they all look solid. The (from-scratch) Sauerbraten OSS engine is shaping up pretty sexy, but it's only technologically impressive features are it's shaders and it's mapping topology - everything else is Quake2-era tech.

  6. Minerva was good... by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

    Actually, I liked "Something Else" a lot better. She had a lot more personality in that one.

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  7. Correction by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

    Actually, I liked the original, Someplace Else, a lot better. (Minerva is a sequel to Something Else; Minerva seems to be distributed as a full mod, whereas Something Else was pretty much just a map for the original Half-Life.)

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  8. Here's a theory..The lite side. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Source is hardly perfect, in fact I'd say it's worse than many other engines but it comes with two very popular games (HL2, CS:S) and that means almost everybody has it."

    The engine still does facial animation and lighting better than most engines though.

  9. Jun Ji-hyun is so beautiful... by DawnArdent · · Score: 1

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jun_Ji-hyun
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Sassy_Girl

  10. Aww by pissedoffamerican · · Score: 1

    I voted for SMOD:Tactical for HL2. Bummer.

  11. Wrong direction for your logic by BeanBunny · · Score: 1

    I suppose you were being intentionally simplistic, but I think you're missing an important point. To quote the summary:

    Perhaps it is ironic that the two top mods of 2006 are both for the Battlefield 2 platform, which has been abandoned by its developer and is notoriously buggy and difficult to mod.

    This is not to say that HL:2 was a bad game - far from it. And there were many fine mods for it, and for the Source Engine in general. But as one poster commented above, certain mods "fix everything that is wrong with BF2." There's an idea at the core of BF2 (the game, not the crappy engine) that grabs many people in a certain way. Not only is the game addictive, despite its faults, but it opens your eyes to new possibilities for gameplay and scenarios that you had always wanted to see materialize.

    Something like "This is awesome! Although, I'd love to see it as a scenario-based game with a complex and believable storyline," [Point of Existence] or "I love this game! The only thing that is missing is realistic ballistics and British accents!" [Project Reality]