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A Look At Successful Game Mods
Parz writes "Mods have been an important part of gaming for well over 15 years. Not only have they provided plenty of additional free gaming to players, but they've acted as a launch pad for independent and amateur programmers to show off their skills to potential employers. This Gameplayer article highlights the programmers who are doing it best, and what mods have made biggest and most enjoyable impact on gaming. The article not only provides details for each game, but also links to the downloads, and is a great resource for those interesting in getting up-to-date with this exciting scene."
Obviously, this list will seem incomplete to anyone whose favorite mod was omitted. What mods contributed most to your enjoyment?
I think Warcraft III was the only game that I played where I never actually played the normal game. I always had some kind of mod like Tower D, or DoTa.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
I loved the PDS mod for Homeworld 2. Really enhanced the flight mechanics of some of the ships.
TWCTF for the original Quake is probably the best mod of all time. Not Counterstrike, or Team Fortress (lol sorry). Not only because the inventor of the Geek Code Block had something to do with it. KTHXBYE!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Was "PornDoom"
Yay
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
My favorite mod actually introduced me to a new gaming genre that no other developer has tried yet (or at least I think - please let me know if they did). For Operation Flashpoint, there was a Planet of War (I think) mod that basically turned the (multiplayer) game into a FPS with RTS aspects. You could build fences, buildings, more units, weapon caches, etc. Also being a city builder fan, I thought it was a really nice addition to have that strategy involved in a FPS.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
I played the original (not source) counter strike for countless hours! The source version was faithful to the original, almost exactly the same but with a couple of new guns and physics like ragdoll bodies and barrels moving with explosions! Fast frantic team based strategy shooter. Great.
like phosphorescent desert buttons singing one familiar song
...the Doom (or was it Wolfenstein?) mod that let you blast Barney into oblivion.
not even a mention of one of the original FPS mods. I am talking about Team Fortress for Quake. I think, (and people can/will correct me if I am wrong), that it was one of if not the first mod out there.
it is a shame to not have mentioned the mod that started it all.
seems to have misplaced his
The Unreal4Ever & ChaosUT mods for the Unreal series.
The TeamBG tools & mods for Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate, Torment, etc) I made a few mods for these games, you can still fine them at purveyors of fine Infinity Engine mods.
More mods than I can even recount for Morrowind & to a lesser extent Oblivion.
Anything that adds content that was cut from Knights of the Old Republic II (replaying it now)
My really cool space mines for GalCiv I :D
Neverwinter Nights. nuff said.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Way back in the annals of gaming history - the early nineties to be precise - an incredibly important game was released on the PC. That game was iD Software's now permanently immortalised Doom. We don't have to tell you about it, you already know, but depending on just how old you are and just how much you tinker with your games you might not realise Doom possessed one of the first heavily modded game engines.
By the time Doom was released people had already dabbled in modding on earlier games like Wolfenstien 3D and A Bard's Tale with such fervour that iD co-founder Tom Hall made one of his early goals with Doom to allow user created content to be designed with as much ease as possible. At release users could alter the graphics, levels, sounds and even core design of Doom by taking to its internal 'WAD' file format with an array of MS-DOS based tools creating new, funny and downright stupid content for the 'father-figure' FPS game. Enterprising folk created new maps, new themes or even comedic endeavours like 'Mock 2: The Speed of Stupid' - a bundle of Doom maps whose designs were intentionally bizarre, boring or downright freaky.
From early forays like this an unspoken partnership was born between developers and end users that has exploded into a fiery dynamic world of user created content that takes the games we know and love, and makes them better. Counter-Strike is a case in point; a mod that turned the alien infested Half-Life into a detailed tactical shooter. It became so damned popular it overshadowed the original game engine it was built on, like the student outshining the teacher. Counter-Strike - like other big names in the modding world - only served to fan the flames.
The advantages of modding are easily spotted; the consumer gets to purchase a new game that once conquered, can be re-played in a new setting with new content or environments, while old games have their shelf life extended considerably through modding teams pushing the engine further with their own imagination and ingenuity. For the developer, the trade-off of spending time bundling good tools to expose the inner workings of its games for the modding community begets better sales of the title thanks to the attractiveness of the extra content available. And happily nestled in the middle of all this are the modders themselves, who get unprecedented exposure online to sell their own skills by building on the foundations of commercially released games.
Developers now look to the modding community for fresh talent to scoop up into professional roles and some of the best in the business have risen through the ranks from a starting point of game mods. The one downside of this gigantic orgy of creativity and content is the admittedly haphazard quality. With a few freeware tools and a decent game engine any nut and their army of trained monkeys can create and release a mod onto the market, resulting in the good stuff hidden amongst great wads of less than shining work.
That's where we come in. Gameplayer has scoured the length and breadth of the internet to find you some of the most promising game mods for some of the best games, and we're going to take you through each one. Some are new, some are old, some are finished while others are still very much a work-in-progress, but each one is well worth a look if you're on the hunt to get the most out of your games. Read on, and have your browser ready to do some serious downloading but just remember - the modding scene is big, huge in fact, so what we're showing here is just a drop in the ocean.
First Person Shooter Mods
BFWoWMod (Battlefield 2)
Complete and utter insanity often breeds excellent results, and there's no denying whoever thought up the concept of combining Blizzard's rich fantasy World of Warcraft setting with the anti-tank tomfoolery of EA's Battlefield 2 was a few elves short of an enchanted forest. The mod is an almost complete conversion of the graphics, sounds and playable classes of Battlefield 2, allowing WoW fans to take up the mantle of
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
MOD UP! GOOD TROLL!
Flame. Sex. Obama == McCain, all the same. Don't vote.
Seriously, it is probably the most professionally done mod I've ever seen.
They took the buggy piece of crap that was vanilla Bloodlines and turned it into one of the most immersive role playing worlds I've ever seen.
You could argue that the dev team should have done this job, but I say that it's the end gameplay that counts, and this mod really delivers. Check it out.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
I know there is some kind of page click metric that people get paid on, but honestly, would it hurt to put a list on the first page so I don't have to try to click through a site that is probably already getting hammered.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
Nearly the first PC game that I played was Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. Apart from being immensly fun on local multiplayer (over a serial cable!), it was really easy to modify. IIRC, you just had to change a value in a human-readable text file to make a weapon fire a different projectile, or have a really short reload time. This, of course, meant that a huge number of mods were released. Although I didn't develop anything particularly advanced, it was fun to disguise myself as a crate and sneak up on my brother with a blaster modified to fire force lightning.
Now that I think about it, that's probably why I started programming and web development as a hobby.
No mention of Counter-Strike or Day of Defeat, in a collection of great mods, is shameful.
Also, the article doesn't mention Goldeneye: Source, which disappoints me. That mod has serious potential to scratch my Goldeneye itch.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
NoCD patches are incredibly useful.
I buy software. I don't abide most of the bullshit copy protection, though. I didn't carry a CD player in my laptop, I don't like the battery drain, and I don't like having to have the disk with me. NoCD patches made such games tolerable.
It states:
"This Gameplayer article highlights the programmers who are doing it best, and what mods have made biggest and most enjoyable impact on gaming."
The biggest impact on gaming when, in the last 6 months? Seriously most of those mods can't even begin to call themselves the best when compared to some of the originals done in Quake, Quake 2, Half-Life, etc.
My guess is the author is like 12 years old or something like that.
Played it before FOX pulled the plug on the Mod. http://baron.tri6.net/alien_credit.htm http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~nv91-gta/quake/
The freedom that Blizzard gave map creators for WC3 allowed some really cool mods. You could download a map that was a truly unique game within itself. My lan party group still grabs RPG maps for WC3 for us all to get together and do a little co-op dungeon crawling. Some of the mods made the game completely unrecognizable as WC3.
The only game I found unplayable without a mod is Temple of Elemental Evil. I started playing it and I had a really good start with a party that I liked and then found a small problem. The NPC's are rabid looters. The worst part is they would loot unique items they couldn't even use. I've got no problems w/ NPC's getting a piece of the action, but them taking items they couldn't use drove me crazy.
The final straw was the NPC druid I picked up looted a set of full plate mail. The mail was too heavy for her to carry so she was encumbered (and moved terribly slow). I got her back to the city and normally once you entered a store the NPC's would sell the loot they couldn't use. She refused to sell the item and couldn't get unencumbered. I looked online and found a mod that let you modify NPC's inventory like they were a true party member. Got the armor out of her inventory and proceeded to enjoy the rest of the game.
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They *hate* that.
The list only covered mods for current games and games that are hardly old. There was no mention of Counter-Strike, the mod that exploded and practically brought millions of gamers back to half-life. There was no mention of mods for games like Diablo or Diablo II. It mentioned Doom, but didn't explore any of the fantastic mods that arose. Not even similar games like Hexen or Duke Nukem. Lame list. Period.
ZDoom is an excellent Doom update, and, although I can't find the rickroll mod itself at the moment, check this video example out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aJjMOy-Ops
As for single-player Quake mods, Beyond Belief surpassed many of the original level designs.
Rome Total Realism (for Rome Total War) - still the best strategy game ever made.
sic transit gloria mundi
The reviewer is obviously too young or too obsessed with the present state of modding, since not even one of the many dozens of mods and thousands of units created by fans for Total Annihilation was mentioned. It's still being actively modded now, even though the game is over ten years old and has more recent "sequels".
Total Annihilation is very likely the most heavily modded game of all time, and it wasn't even mentioned? Pffft.
First game I ever modded was QBasic Gorillas. I found the variable that determined the blast radius of the bananas and increased it to ridiculous amounts, discovered that the game used colour-checking to do collision detection and gave the gorillas armoured helmets, found the palette entries and made the gorillas green, and composed my own song for the intro. That game was quite possibly the only good piece of software Microsoft ever produced.
For me Quake had some of the best mods ever. For Quake I there was Future vs. Fantasy, a great mod where you could play as different characters either from the future, or from the fantasy realm.
Quake II had a great one called Action Quake, which is somewhat similar in playing-style to counterstrike. But it had nice things like if you got hit in the leg, you'd bleed, and have trouble walking, until you applied a bandage. Thery were so much fun at the time!
They stayed a lot in my mind, though lately all I've been playing is DotA... :-)
That add one ads a lot of cool stuff to the game.
Playing ZeldaC had so many new puzzles and variations on the standard engine, it felt like playing Zelda for the first time.
It's a good demonstration of how versatile a solidly built game-engine can be.
I'm excited for the BF:WOW Mod, but seriously, it isn't even in open beta yet.
Desert Combat (Battlefield 1942) should get a nod.
The NetworkAddon for Sim City 4 RH adds a lot of stuff that should of been in the game.
I hope that CITIES XL does fully custom roads in it. As that is the biggest thing that sim city is missing.
It's clear that this list is a list of recent popular mods, rather than a list of the most successful and influential mods of all time, since pretty much every game listed is a rather current game, and that the submitter clearly didn't even read his own submitted article.
It even says it in the article itself:
Gameplayer has scoured the length and breadth of the internet to find you some of the most promising game mods for some of the best games, and weâ(TM)re going to take you through each one. Some are new, some are old, some are finished while others are still very much a work-in-progress
Leaving off mods like Counter Strike (hello, most played FPS ever), DotA (played more than vanilla War3), Team Fortress and Enemy Territory (both have real-game sequels), and TWCTF (which introduced CTF to FPSes) completely disqualifies it from being a serious list of the most influential mods of all time. I mean, the first mod listed, "BFWoWMod" for BF2, is still in beta.
This is akin to listing the "Most influential programmers of all time" and excluding Don Knuth while listing "that kid down the street that likes computers."
The article itself isn't half bad once you realize that it's the "Current Best Mods Available" and not "The Best Mods of All Time."
How could I say to men: "Speak louder, shout! For I am deaf!"? -Ludwig van Beethoven
I actually never played it without a mod, always played with mods like etpro, etpub and jaymod... i still play it today A LOT... 4 years and counting. :P)
Best team work fps ever (for me
I mean, really, Hidden? That mod is a joke. It's not fun, period. I'd rather play Source Forts, which isn't very fun once you get past the whole "oh I can build forts" aspect of it. Hell, I'd rather play the campfest that's Insurgency, which is loathesome to say the least. Eternal Silence would have been a better pick. And all I've done so far is list other mods I can't stand to play anymore for various different reasons.
Seriously, people who write these types of articles don't play a lot of mods, and that's why they're always a failure. They pick a few with a few concepts that sound neat, play them for a total of ten minutes, and then try to write some half-hearted attempt as something that resembles an "article". I'm not saying all of these mods are terrible, I haven't played most of them, but by picking Hidden: Source, it only shows that the author has probably skipped a large portion of the mods that are better, far far better. Either better int he innovation department, or better in the gameplay department, or both.
in the current climate i fear for the future of mods, games publishers are already trying to destroy the aspects they dont have control over, we have seen blizzard go after glider, sony's attempts to destroy the used game market and to a certain degree your actual ownership of the game you purchased (EA im looking at you). Its only a matter of time before extending the life of a game is akin to piracy.
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
Although they had a few Half-Life 2 metions in the article. They failed to mention the fact that Steam was made mainly for the purpose of creating and maintaining a MOD community for Half-Life.
Clearly the most enjoyable and addictive Quake 4 mod, now a standalone. Are you having a good semester? A little too good? Then fuck it up by playing Urt 12h/day.
Banimod > *
Hands down.
QED.
&c.
(\(\
(=_=) Bani!
(")")
Here is my list, by significance of impact.
1. Action Quake 2 - This mod inspired the game mechanics of Counterstrike, counterstrike used to be a community based mod, and was heavily influenced by action quake2 which put real life "feal" to dieing. IE you could die in a few hits and had to hide etc... TF would have been first except that action quake 2 spawned counterstrike.
2. Team Fortress
The mother of mods to prove that total conversion mods could take a mass amount of players from the core game. As mentioned earlier CTF was important, but TeamFortress actually changed how the game was played.
Note: I only have 2. These mods were good, they were the main mods that totally gripped the community at the time.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
AQ2 was a big one for me during Quake 2 server. I even hosted a server ("Ant's AQ2 Movie Set") on my friend's cable modem server until it got hacked. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
What about old school nintendo and game genie? My brother and I used to spend hours seeing what mods we could hack into games without them freezing up.
Later on there was also GameShark, I think that was for N64.
Hi All, If there is anyone who's still looking at the Quake mods (a game I still love for pure run and gun pleasure!), please check out Marcher Fortress. This was the best of the Quake mods that I've played. http://retroquake.planetquake.gamespy.com/blog/?p=270 It has a good length, some nasty new creatures, and is plenty difficult.
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
Don't know if DotA would be considered a mod or not, but it is such a heavily modified version of Warcraft III that I don't know what else to call it. Huge amounts of fun derived from that. And I didn't see Counterstrike mentioned, which I believe is the most successful mod of all time. Next to Windows Vista.
I looked through all these replies and didn't see garys mod! A mod that puts modding into the hands of everyday people! I've seen some of the most complex user created things using it, and some of the simplest too! I rather enjoyed it, even if it costs a bit of money.
WTF? I didn't RTFA because the link went to "1 of 12" pages. Again, WTF? You know, most computer mice these days have this thing called a "scroll" button. IF your mouse doesn't have scroll buttons, I think that most modern browsers have scroll bars on the side.
There is no need for 12 fucking pages.
No mention of Xtended for X3?
This what IMHO the BEST game mod ever. Of course, the boys/girls(?) ended up making BF2 if memory serves. I loved Desert Combat, but no one liked it when I was in the chopper and spawn camped.
I'd play this game now if I had time. 3
The article is loaded with phrases like 'our research indicates' and half the mods aren't even released. How can you decide what the best mods are if you've not even played them? Having ALFA (A Land Far Away) listed is amusing considering it was the laughing stock of the NWN community for years and despite its 'ambition' never did anything dozens of other persistent worlds hadn't already done.
hi guys, I just wanted to say that the original title was Mods that Matter in 2008. It just seems like a lot of the comments are specifically reacting to the work 'successful' which was not added by me in the submission and is a bit misleading. Also to the person who copy and pasted the whole article. That is a pretty big breach of copyright, you shoud probably remove it.
This list seems very... oriented towards new games. I am not an old school gamer, I started gaming about 98, and seriously in 02, but these mods seem very orientated towards new games. I was also expect mods that were amazing, that became a game, Team Fortress for example... Infact, Yeah, where the hell is Team Fortress?
Next time this list is compiled, I want it compiled by someone who has forgotten more than I know about gaming, has been and done it all.
*Wanders off muttering*
The modding communities for most rts games always seem to be great as many of the games mentioned are from that genre. My favorite has been the Shockwave mod for C&C Generals Zero Hour which made the game into what EA should have. It was very well done for the graphics too compared to most mods I've seen.
It was also the only MS program that came with the source. ;)
Would mentioning WiX kill the joke?
ALFA for NWN was a great idea - a set of persistent world servers making up the Forgotten Realms.
The implementation was crap. The servers were colossally laggy. The scripting was often horrible. The servers were frequently nice to look at but shockingly devoid of content, especially - thanks to that bad scripting - reasonably dynamic content.
Right here on slashdot you'll find comments from Adam Miller, who produced the best content for NWN and NWN2 -- Dreamcatcher, Dark Waters, Lute Hero. ALFA can't even hold a candle to this.
Even on the "persistent world" side, ALFA was always underpopulated... maybe 15-30 people playing across all their servers most times. More people are still playing City of Arabel now than ever really played ALFA. I looked the other night and it had 45 people on (and it is a single server).
gameplayer.au is a total shit site. There's no skill or insight there. The editor in chief doesn't even have basic writing skills.
The article seems like someone went on google the night before and tried to pick out whatever game mods came up first.
The author is truly an idiot considering that a few of those mods aren't even released yet. It's just complete bullshit written by a novice.
Here is a list of the greatest and most successful mods in no particular order
Counter-Strike. This is so fucking obvious.
Day of Defeat.
Team Fortress.
Desert Combat.
Q3 Rocket Arena.
sven-coop.
I'm sure I left out a ton of them. However, any list without these is just garbage.
They're using their grammar skills there.
That kept my brother and me occupied for a long time. Every few years we reinstall and go on a binge. Damn I loved sneaking up and knifing people.
Maybe it is time for another binge...
Oh the memories. That was such an amazing game and i never got tired of it till years after. To this day I think it is a much more fun and less complicated than EAs newer games.
DC was simply amazing and yep the devs did get to be part of the dev team of the newer games and contributed a lot.
It's got a malevolent, omnipotent zombie master that puts 1 vs all. Cuz honestly, there's just not enough zombie games..... ever
http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
BubbleMod was/is the single best mod I've ever had the pleasure of playing. It brought a certain extra amount of fun to an otherwise worn out HL. Eggplant, if you are out there, love ya man, some of the most fun I've ever had in gaming. I don't know how popular it ended up, but being involved in that community really rekindled my love for the FPS.
The "we have no clue but slashvertisments pay"-kind.
Slashdot is declining but still attracts roughly 8 million page views per day.
The article has 10 pages, each carries 5 banners.
Let's assume they are paid a very conservative $.50 USD per one thousand unique visitors for each of these banners.
Let's further assume slashdot drove 2 million unique's to the article.
Let's further assume those people, on average, clicked through 3 pages before they realized there is nothing to see.
That's a solid $15000 USD, under fairly pessimisic assumptions. They probably made closer to $30000 by the time you are reading this.
Aliens TC was one of the better ones for DOOM.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
A shitty name considered most of the technology in it is pilfered from unpaid sources and possibly stolen by garry, but still, it's great for what it is.
were Starship Trooper maps for SC
and the intensly complex maps people would make for WC3. I haven't played in years, but it was so much fun! People did really neet things like wagon races, and Peon fights!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
A mod for Unreal Tournament is what drove me to buy my first "gaming" rig. When I saw Infiltration being played and my friend explained it was made by other players using the unreal editor something resonated and I have been a mod fan ever since. Sadly, the unreal franchise has lost its credibility for supporting mods despite the success mods brought them Same with EA and the Battlefield series. A great mod revived the franchise yet they cripple real modders now from being able to do inventive, creative changes. The only champion for mods I suppose is Valve. I buy all my games from Valve now.
That was one of the best games I played during it's time. The story was awesome, the Multiplayer was fun. Multiplayer felt like tribes / tf / giants all scrambled together, and the single player had some of the best lines.
Including an old character who says he can't do something cause his balls are saggy!
I rofl'd in RL!
Neet jet pack mechanics, and a decent look for it's time.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
BF1942- DesertCombat and Eve of Destruction. I played with Action Battlefield and it was funny as hell doing jeep jumps and inverted bridge jumps.
Q2- Rocket Arena! Very competitive mod that was popular with gaming ladders.
RTCW (Return to Castle Wolfenstien) No mods there, unless the admin is on and decides to zero out the gravity, yeesh!
One server stands out from the other RTCW servers - Happy Penguin RTCW. They run only one map (Depot) and that's it, unless the admin is at console, then he'll switch it to radar which is decidedly bloody. The folks complain that Depot that it's one-sided. But it really is not, it's how each side is defended and the offensive tactics are handled. I've seen the allies litter the railcars with bodies if someone touches off a panzer just right. Then again in the tunnel, if it gets flooded from either side, it's like bowling with bazookas! You might get 4, or even 6 with a lucky shot if they bunch up. You get a wag with a flamethrower at a chokepoint with medic and a lieut backing him up, he'll be there all day long keeping them honest.
That is until someone gets a lucky shot off with a panzer....
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
It probably doesn't belong in a top 10 list (as others have mentioned, CS, Team Fortress, etc are more likely candidates), but my friends and I really love Mr. Pant's Excessive Overkill for Quake III, Elite Force, and all the Unreal Tournament games. The feature sets vary slightly from game to game, but the premise is always the same: Make every gun fire ridiculously fast and have everything explode. Rapid fire rocket launcher? Sure. Dual-wielding chain guns with explosive bullets? Why not? A sniper rifle that can blow up a tank? You got it.
Realism and balance went out the window with Excessive, and it did hurt the game at some points if you were trying to play deathmatch in close-quarters maps. However, in large, open team games I can't imagine any mod that has made the game more fun.
Defense in Starcraft is a close runner up. When we didn't have the time to invest in a full-blown starcraft game, a few defense maps that had us rapidly respawning units and trying to fend off hordes of CPU enemies could fill the time beautifully.
And of course, we should congratulate any co-op mod in any game ever. Thank you co-op mod developers for stepping up and putting in such an important mode that "professional" developers often don't bother with. The same goes for skirmish AI mod developers, who make comp stomps actually fun in RTSs with braindead, cheating AI.
I'll mention Zen of Sudoku for two reasons:
1. It's easily one of the most splendid sudoku versions on the market.
2. The creator (of Half-Life's Natural Selection fame) created it *specifically* to fund making more FPS mods.
That's win-win. I have a copy on every Steam client I run (and me dear old mum loves it too).
nuff said
Greetings, programs!
Not only does it surpass the original game in design, aesthetics, and replay value, but its community has been the most enjoyable that I've ever been a part of.
Check out the "Freespace 2 Source Code Project" and some of the available mods such as "The Babylon Project" (based on my favorite scifi show, "Babylon 5"):
http://scp.indiegames.us/
http://babylon.hard-light.net/
http://www.game-warden.com/bsg/
In my mind there are mods, and then there are total conversions. Mods alter aspects of the original game. A great example of this is Dawn of War. It's a really good RTS, but given the wealth of lore it was inevitable that the game would have to omit or modify a lot of material. The game also has strong mod support, and the number of mods designed to bring the game closer to lore, add more units, and so on is just absurd. On the other hand, Half-Life and Half-Life 2 are frequently host to total conversions, where people pretty much make their own games and just borrow the engine and some textures. I got Half-Life 1 for Christmas the year it was released. I really didn't feel the need to buy a new shooter for years after that thanks to the variety of mods available.
The common thread in both of the games I mentioned? They both released mod tools. In Dawn of War's case, there was even a menu in the game where you could choose which mod to start. I'm sure this has paid off for the developers. In Valve's case, they even hired some of the mod teams. I'm sure Counter-Strike alone kept Half-Life 1 selling years after it should have been forgotten. I know my family owned a second copy so my brother and I could play online together, something I don't think I'd bother with for the majority of the games I play.
"I do a grep for shit, bollocks, and tits before checking in code. I'm professional..." -RECURSIVE_META_JOKE, reddit.com
Lately I've been looking through the countless crap of source mods and stumbled upon a few gems:
Dystopia:
http://www.dystopia-game.com/
Black Mesa Source (not done yet):
http://www.blackmesasource.com/
It is shameful to leave out CS, DoD and TFC. I think another really important one was Red Orchestra: Combined Arms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Orchestra:_Combined_Arms). Originally, it was a mod for Unreal Tournament 2003. They won nVidia's Make Something Unreal mod contest many years ago.
No Chex Quest???
What about KQP (killer quake pack) and Aliens (some clever hackers got the aliens to run around on the walls and still have intelligent AI). These were huge in their day... perhaps I was the only one playing them :-(
.: 2+2 = PI SQRT(1+N)
Crotch shot. 'nuff said.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
"Obviously, this list will seem incomplete to anyone whose favorite mod was omitted. What mods contributed most to your enjoyment?"
The ones I create for myself. *looks around* Why do you ask?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Though it hasn't been developed further, as far as I can tell, in the last 4 years - the Heroes of Might & Magic III mod "Wake of the Gods" http://wakeofthegods.strategyplanet.gamespy.com/
really deserves a lot of credit. Not only does it extend the basic game play, but it *ADDS* a scripting language that the original didn't have in any form, allowing for even *MORE* expansion. Map and Campaign editors are almost a given these days - but this one dives deeper, making changes that would almost seem to require the original source code.
Seriously, how can this be called "The Best Game Mods"? As much as I hate it, Counter-Strike has to be one of the biggest and widely played mods (and now standalone game) of all time, and it doesn't even get a mention???
I could list countless other mods over the past 10+ years that make a lot of the vaporware in that article look like some 14 year-old kid just heard about modding and started making some screenshots.
Some of the big mods that should/could have been on that list if I were to write it:
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
Amen to that...before nocd patches were available, there were/are virtual drives.
And what about the Thief series? DromEd allows people to create their own missions/campaigns, and edit existing missions. After playing through the original game, you have the option to play dozens, even hundreds of fan missions.
What is understood, need not be discussed.
A game that not only allowed the modder to make new levels and scenery, but to also write dialogue and a story....
The game was so much more fun with a staff and some neat hand-to-hand action than it was with guns.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
I have over 290 PC games and I've only finished say 12 or so...
(just finished Orange box from start to finish - including Portal - That was Awesome!)
Now how am I going to play all these most excellent mods as well!?!?
Article was pretty lame - but anything that reminds me of the awesome mods out there is worth a look...
Of course it will take me a few weeks to calm down and forget again - stoopid internets!
An all-expense paid vacation in scenic Guantanamo Bay!
For an indeterminate time you'll enjoy the hospitality of our former navy base converted to a luxury resort. Entertainment will be provided for 24 hours a day whether you want it or not! Guided tours of the deluxe facility will be provided by highly skilled members of our "intelligence" corps. Activities include water sports, audio/visual entertainments and sleep deprivation. Your personal trainer will introduce you to our unique training regimen: a balanced blend of Pilates, Yoga and Triathalon training.
Our prize team will be around presently to explain the terms of the DMCA lottery and arrange your transportation.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Catch the Chicken was the first Quake mod I played. Very simple rules, silly premise, and lots of fun.
http://chicken.planetquake.gamespy.com/
The Dark Mod. http://www.mindplaces.com/darkmod/ It's easily the most professional mod I've seen, and does not get nearly the attention it deserves to.
And what about the modding community for Falcon 4.0? Their set of mods was so good and so complete that they were re-released in box form as Falcon 4.0 Allied Force. Also, the scripting community for X2 and X3 are fairly robust.
The second programmable video game system to use ROM cartridges was the RCA Studio II console (1976) which was based around RCA's 1802 "COSMAC" 8-bit CMOS microprocessor, 512 *bytes* of RAM, 256 *bytes* of ROM, and a 64x32 pixel video controller chip.
Around 1978 Rick Simpson started a tiny company named ARESCO and sold a ROM monitor program on a PROM chip for $5.00. It enabled users to build a cartridge for the Studio II, so it could be programmed in hexadecimal machine code. This was probably the first video game mod.
It was really cool to be able to write your own programs and games. Hobbyists traded programs--which had to be hand-entered--via a printed newsletter.
http://www.ping.be/~pin03341/kun/i14/p30.html
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=2&c=728
-bernieS
ST:A2 is very moddable and some great mods out there.
The Babylon 5 mod (Total Conversion) is class and special mention is deserving to Fleet Operations which does some amazing things with the A2 engine.
LeggoMyMyth was enjoyable. It was a Starcraft Lego mod for Myth. Need I say more?
Another fun mod was the Unreal Tournament based Marathon: Ressurection mod, which was hardly original, but a remake of the old MacOS 8 (or 7?) game Marathon, which was the first iteration on the Spartan class android (?) which you become quite familiar with in the Halo franchise.
Another favorite of mine is IFI-Doom, named after where I studied comp.sci and yes, it was fun because _we_made_it_. You would probably hate it.
Alice... Now does American McGee's Alice count as a mod? Probably not. It uses the QIIIArena engine, but that hardly counts as a Mod. But great fun it was nonetheless.
Any chance it has the greatest combat mode ever?
Distributed proteome folding @ WorldCommunityGrid.org
Team Slashdot - Members:#1 Run Time:#1 Points:#1 Results:#1
For those of us who play chess online, My favorite game mod was and is Crazyhouse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazyhouse
Simple and addictive. Restrict time to 3 minutes or less and you could play this game for several months before it gets old.
I always really liked the Aliens Total Conversion for DOOM.
I totally agree.
Counterstrike (pre-source), or CS, was the first community-driven mod that turned into a huge commercial success. Based on the original HalfLife 1 engine, the now classic war between Terrorists and Counter Terrorists ran smoothly on even an old 300 MHz Celeron with a 3DFX graphics card. In a way CS is "the mother of all 3D mods" (that is to say: the first serious mod for a 3D FPS). Read more on Wikipedia.
Day of Defeay (pre-source), or DOD, was very much like CS but was the first mod to bring deployable weapons and player-classes to the world of modding, in a WW2 setting. While not as successful as CS in total number of players, it was the first 3D FPS mod to achieve huge success in a relatively short period of time. Read more on Wikipedia.
Natural Selection (pre-source), or NS, is the first game to mix FPS and RTS gameplay, by allowing a "Commander" to order his "troops" (all other players on his team) around the map using an FPS-like interface - a concept many games has since copied. Set in a sci-fi horror world, Natural Selection tells the story of the good and friendly aliens with big sharp teeth vs. the evil-evil Space Marines with their big and nasty guns... To my knowledge it was also the first FPS mod to allow multiple "game modes". Having a rather advanced gameplay which demands a lot of cooperation from players, "combat maps" where introduced as a means of teaching new players the basic concepts of the game. Read more on Wikipedia or on Unknown Worlds homepage where you can also read about the progress on Natural Selection 2.
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Grand Theft Auto's "Hot Coffee"- every man's dream.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Just be careful of spyware on gamecopyworld. Apparently GCW is a huge well-known next of spyware and backdoor viruses. Scan everything you get there with the utmost scrutiny.
Seriously, how could the article omit Q1 CTF. Zoid's mod was hugely successful, and he was subsequently hired by id.
For the apple //e
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
A mod so complete, 20th Century Fox forced the developers to shut it down. Anybody remember the Aliens Total Conversion mod for Doom2? What about Beavis & Butthead Doom? Simpsons Doom?
There was no mention of Team Fortress for Quake and Half-Life which IMO gave rise to Counter-Strike.
This article completely sucked and was a waste of time, 12 pages of nothing.
I'd just like to give a shout out to Havlen for creating Endless Nights IV
If you ever just wanted to run 30th level characters till your hearts content, this is the place.
Throw fireballs until your fingertips burn off.
Use those artifacts until you grow weary of them.
Give your arcane archer a challenge.
I definitely spent 10 times more hours playing this module than all the official NWN campaigns combined.
Thanks! Havlen!
A "successful game mods" list with no mention of Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, or Rocket Arena?
Where's the quality control?
I often lament that proliferation of game consoles, since it seems likely that console games take the opportunities and tools for modding out of the hands of the gaming market.
I thought TFA was going to contain a list of some of the mods that have made the biggest and most enjoyable impact on gaming, but instead all I saw was the same stuff I see in my toilet after dropping my friends off at the pool. Seriously, the author who wrote this article, James Matson, must live under a rock in the middle of nowhere. There are several mods on the list that aren't even finished and most of the mods on that list just plain suck. Where is the list of mods that have made THE BIGGEST AND MOST ENJOYABLE IMPACT ON GAMING? Where are the Duke Nukem 3D and Quake II mods? What about Warcraft III? Team Fortress? What about total conversions? This article is a big letdown -- I was hoping to see some of the old mods I used to play and forgot about. Besides the painfully obvious fact that most mods on this list aren't worth mentioning, the author himself even admits that one of the mods might be crap:
Besides, it's the modified Crysis engine, even if it's crap it'll be very, very pretty crap. Did we just type that?
Crap is crap, no matter how pretty it is. I don't know about you guys, but I don't play with crap.
Someone else mentioned Hidden already, I'll add that the realism mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R, while cool, was about fifth on the list of mods for that game. Oblivion Lost 1 and 2 both destroy it, as does AMK, and even ABC Inferno is better, IMO. All of those mods introduce gameplay that does not exist in the original vanilla game, whereas the realism mod does not. It simply tweaks damage, etc. The realism mod is more one you would roll into the other, larger and much more interesting mods.
Going back a bit, at the same time Doom was being modded, Bungie had its Marathon series which were a blast, and the mods were awesome.
Additionally, the Myth series lives on today through mods, and many of them are simply brilliant.
I have been gaming my entire life. I played the original NES growing up, discovered MMOs in the form of MUDs in the early 1990s, and have subsequently played every game that ever got above an 8 rating in any credible gamer mag. But for the last two years of my life, I have been addicted to, and have played only, one game. This game is an HL2 mod called "Empires". Because it is a mod, the development team could do some pretty risky things, and have created a fascinating blend of first person shooter and real time strategy. It is simply the best, most engaging, hardest game I have ever played. Trailer on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zis1qmlHdtk Official site: http://www.empiresmod.com/