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Your take on mods?

Helioth

Scholar
Joined
Jan 30, 2006
Messages
155
Location
Berlin - Dystopia.
Mods are great, they give everyone the opportunity to entertain the masses, sort of like, hey, yes, CLOWNS !

No, quite seriously though, I think they are great, we just have to replace the fucking people making em.
 

roguefrog

Liturgist
Joined
Aug 6, 2003
Messages
545
Location
Tokyo, Japan
I would do mods if I had the time and know-how.

Anyway theres some insane fan created content out there to be had. Lets just say I got my moneys worth when I bought Total Annihilation, Half-life, and Thief.
 

kingcomrade

Kingcomrade
Edgy
Joined
Oct 16, 2005
Messages
26,884
Location
Cognitive Elite HQ
I once made a skin for Quake 3
icon_dance.gif


edit- Oh, I made a pretty extensive (but easy) mod for Doom 3, because that game as it came originally pissed me off. Especially the shotgun. Okay, I get that shotguns are somewhat inaccurate, but seriously, they aren't nearly THAT inaccurate. The one in the game shoots everything except what's in front of you.
 

LlamaGod

Cipher
Joined
Oct 21, 2004
Messages
3,095
Location
Yes
I modded for Morrowind :aiee:

I made a bad-ass cloak mod and SURPRISE, an armor fix mod.
 

Atrokkus

Erudite
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
3,089
Location
Borat's Fantasy Land
Modding... well, I did participate in that.
Did some translation work for TeamX. Worked on the New Vision mod for Fallout 2. Lots of fun. We had a good team, and the work went pretty smoothly for a non-commercial project. Plus, it's very good to know that a lot of peeps enjoyed our mod, even the ducklings and nomutants.

Also, a long while back, was fiddling with the WarCraft 3 campaign editor. I really like the way Blizzard makes their editors -- so very user-friendly, especially for those who are on bad terms with coding, like yours truely. That is, scripting is not enforced, it is recommended for the best results, but you could do a lot with simple triggers (which were not so simple, actually, but intuitive). Never done anything worth looking at... well, 'cept for a short movie that I made for our would-be-someday-release the-best-games-mix movie, if you know what I'm talking about. Had fun with directing the whole thing.

I did some work on developing the working conversation system in Warcraft3. ANd though it was very trigger-heavy (couldn't find a more elegant way, because i don't know the scripting), it pretty much worked. I'm pretty sure that with a bit more skills I could make a working dialog system, and that means that making a full-fledged RPG in War3 editor is possible.

Hm, there was a very interesting mod project for Warcraft 3 called "Dungeon Master Mod", if anyone remembers. That mod had SO much potential, but also some very striking flaws. The mod worked this way: through an external program a clean map (just the terrain) of your choosing was converted into DM-map. Two or more players connected, one was the DM, the other team - players. The dms had some power tools like creating monsters, any kind of doodads, events, even predefined quests. Most importantly, DM could "possess" any unit and effectively initiate dialog with the player. He would then type the message with a tag and it woudl be viewed to the player as a unit-produced transmission. There were some other cool things....

But one flaw ruined the whole fun: the DM had to create the whole world all by himself, in one playing session. That was just plain retarded and hardly possible at times. The players would have to wait until DM gets all props ready and all baddies spawned... that was ridiculous.
TOo bad I discovered the mod when it was quite abandoned already... I came up with a simple solution -- though i guess the creators considered that themselves -- that is, to tweak the program so that it would install mod not on the terrain maps-only, but terrain maps + placed units, monsters, props, items etc. You could create the world in the editor before palying, and then breathe life into it when the game is on. Would have been cool.


I liked several of the NWN mods, although I really hated the engine of the game for some reason.. the whole system. The potential is huge, though.


Anywyas, my take on mods is definately positive. It's a great way to start your way in game design. Made a great and popular NWN module? Add the reference of that to your resume and odds are your employers would really take notice of that -- hell they could have even played it before! I'm pretty sure lots of the folks that are currently ocupying some very prestigious positions in game development once started with a mod, and got noticed this way.

However, as any non-commercial project, mod projects are very hard to organize and push through. I know that because I'm basically doing a mod right now - the KOTOR translation project. It's very hard to keep the people working, keep the spark alive (damn I regret starting the damn project, becausethe time I sterted it i didn't know the game blew chunks so much.... but I can't stop now -- that would be a disgrace). It's especialy hard when you have A LOT of other, non-game related things to worry about in the real life out there. It's cool to start the projects at your middle-last years of school, when you don't have much to worry about and you got parents to back you up.
 

kingcomrade

Kingcomrade
Edgy
Joined
Oct 16, 2005
Messages
26,884
Location
Cognitive Elite HQ
Oh, you reminded me of a Starcraft map I made. After I first played Fallout, I was reminded of the post-apoc desert tileset for Starcraft, and I made up a map where you played as a single marine and you had to rebuild civilization or something like that. I lost the map way back when my harddrive crashed, and it wasn't incredibly complex, but it was pretty cool, in my own estimation.

It played more like one of the facility missions in Starcraft, but it had some fun stuff, like I had it set so that you could find new guns which would upgrade your damage and armor and stuff, used various Zerg units as mutants, and there were "quests" (mission objectives) that you could do. I swear, I spent way more time than I should've on that one map. I wish I still had it, some of you guys would probably enjoy it.
 

roguefrog

Liturgist
Joined
Aug 6, 2003
Messages
545
Location
Tokyo, Japan
Hmmm, I made about 5 missions with continuity for MechCommander Gold way the hell back. They were pretty cool from what I can remember. Now that I think about it, I screwed around with modding/content creation a lot more when I was still in grade school. Lots of free time.
 

Atrokkus

Erudite
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
3,089
Location
Borat's Fantasy Land
Oh, you reminded me of a Starcraft map I made. After I first played Fallout, I was reminded of the post-apoc desert tileset for Starcraft, and I made up a map where you played as a single marine and you had to rebuild civilization or something like that. I lost the map way back when my harddrive crashed, and it wasn't incredibly complex, but it was pretty cool, in my own estimation.
Oh yeah, the Starcraft days... Perhaps the most popular idea for a map for starcraft was the reamking of Starship troopers and, well, Diablo... ^_^ I tryed to do both. diablo was too hard to implement in sc, but ST and SC were, well, meant to be together.
I did the triggers, and my buddies helped with the concepts, and we were even recording the voiceovers! That was the funniest part... AND FUCK the map along with the sound-files was lost, either in some HD crash or somehow differently...

OH oh, and I also embarked upon making a Starcraft map based on Half-life's story! My holy slippers, I ACTUALLY HAVE IT ON MY HD!
You see, this project, NATURALLY, was not finished, barely started... but well, started - the first mission was complete and playable. The second episode was started well, but sank into oblivion pretty soon after (half-playable).
Okay, I uploaded the first mission HERE (by the way, pretty good free hosting, turboupload)
(warning: that was about 6-7 years ago, I was pretty young back then, so beware)

You'll have to pay me for the sequel though, Director's Cut, ya know?
 

kingcomrade

Kingcomrade
Edgy
Joined
Oct 16, 2005
Messages
26,884
Location
Cognitive Elite HQ
Hmm, I played for about five minutes before Starcraft overheated my computer (jesus christ, wtf is wrong with my system...), and all I saw was that it was in Russian and that the map was too big and filled with useless crap.
 

Atrokkus

Erudite
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
3,089
Location
Borat's Fantasy Land
HUH? Too bad I don't have starcraft installed... shit something's wrong with this crap, or with your starcraft!

In russian, eh? Damn, can't be... I remember writing the damn thing in english...

How did you see that it was filled with "useless crap"? HOW DARE YOU!
Did you open in editor or wut?
Russian shouldn't be a problem, there are no dialog choices, naturally...
 

HardCode

Erudite
Joined
Aug 23, 2005
Messages
1,138
Daigoji_Gai said:
To say that mod tools are simply a crutch of lousy developers misses the point and is naive.

You think so? MSFD himself has stated, to paraphrase, "If you don't like it, mod it [in]." when defending a retarded game design decision. You're full of shit.
 

kingcomrade

Kingcomrade
Edgy
Joined
Oct 16, 2005
Messages
26,884
Location
Cognitive Elite HQ
No, something is wrong with my computer. Older games make it overheat. I have no idea why. I can play resource-intensive modern games all day long, but Starcraft and Fallout and Civ2 and such cause my computer to overheat and shut off.

It is in Russian, or at least that's what I'm guessing, as I'm getting the same sort of

aaaiaa iiiaeaiee iaaaceiu
aaaiaa auoeil
iaaiaiaay eiaioniay iaaaeu
(only with diacrits on all of them)

crap that the Russian spambots post here. It does matter because I had having my game interrupted (as in control taken away) every 5 seconds with a bunch of text I can't read.
 

Atrokkus

Erudite
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
3,089
Location
Borat's Fantasy Land
It is in Russian, or at least that's what I'm guessing, as I'm getting the same sort of
Oh well, I guess I did this map in Russian.. well, makes sense -- at that time I was quite passive in the web, so my target audience were my friends here...

crap that the Russian spambots post here.
That ain't no crap, that's my NATIVE LANGUAGE!

It does matter because I had having my game interrupted (as in control taken away) every 5 seconds with a bunch of text I can't read.
Yeah, I used pause/transmissions. Not everywhere, just in some critical cutscenes, if memory serves...

Tell ya what, I'll upload the second episode -- although it's only half-done, it's more action, less dialogs, so you won't get interrupted and get enough action in your first 5 minutes or so. Did some fun shticks there.
Here: DOWNLOAD
 

Surlent

Liturgist
Joined
Jul 21, 2004
Messages
825
Modding is nice way to increase the game's life span. When the team or person behind is talented and patient enough to finish the mod, they can do some pretty decent stuff.
For example the fan expansion for thief2 shados of metal age, made by devoted fans adds lot of new content with voice acting and redone gui. It's pretty much on par with original game, but then they made it about 5 years or something like that.

I don't think devs use modding as excuse to slack off. Troika's games like toee and bl got some good mods, but not because they had editors to begin with modding, more because the games were released too early and had problems in the first place. Games like NWN still got reasonable amount of patching and expansions, because makers could afford to do that.
 

bryce777

Erudite
Joined
Feb 4, 2005
Messages
4,225
Location
In my country the system operates YOU
suibhne said:
My pet peeve with mods is the piss-poor writing that usually accompanies them. I know it's small-minded, but elementary-school spelling and grammar mistakes just blow a mod out of the water for me.

It's not just that modders seem to be merely half-literate, even when they're otherwise really creative. It's also that most mods don't seem to have dedicated writers, even when they have multiple volunteers working on other things. No decent quest mod should ever be released without having at least one person exercise tyrannical oversight over the writing.

Yeah, that is one of my biggest beefs. I have yet to see a mod with decent writing. The last days m&b mod has ok writing, but there is hardly any of it. Some of the others I tried were just intolerable.

Just like doing artwork, writing takes some actual talent and should be left to people with some talent....
 

bryce777

Erudite
Joined
Feb 4, 2005
Messages
4,225
Location
In my country the system operates YOU
kingcomrade said:
No, because you don't need a fancy phyics engine to make a rat not get stuck on a table or keep people from getting caught under the stairs or to have realistic falling speeds.
Uh, yes you do. If you have physics in your game you have a physics "engine" because someone has to write the code, it's pretty much self-evident. Unless physics just implement themselves?

ell, since you know nothing about physics, nothing about programming, and nothing about what an engine is, you should probably stop embarassing yourself and shut the fuck up for once. Especially considering I originally went to school for physics before switching to math and have been a programmer longer than you have been alive.
 

LlamaGod

Cipher
Joined
Oct 21, 2004
Messages
3,095
Location
Yes
Modding is nice way to increase the game's life span.

the problem is the games that are heavy for mod tools usually are made with a really shitty lifespan. So they increase, but they have to increase too much.
 

Solik

Scholar
Joined
Jan 24, 2006
Messages
377
Like anything else, some mods are great, many mods are worthless. The value of each is based on taste. Personally, I'm already using around 15 Oblivion mods. Some add depth, such as a requirement for eating / sleeping (which makes dungeon runs an often hectic race against the clock). Others fix some of the problems VD mentioned in his pseudo-review (interface size, levelled monster lists, levelled loot, arena, Kvatch). Of those, there's multiple different ones out there, suiting the tastes of players who want differing things out of a game. Then, of course, there's the graphical enhancements... and the Daggerfall music.
 

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