A Look At Successful Game Mods 287
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?
Homeworld 2 (Score:3, Informative)
TWCTF (Score:2, Informative)
TWCTF [twctf.org] 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 [geekcode.com] had something to do with it. KTHXBYE!
12 half empty pages WTF! Text follows (Score:5, Informative)
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
Eh? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:teh hell??? (Score:3, Informative)
Team Fortress was an early mod, but it came after Three Wave CTF which added the whole concept of Capture the Flag as a game type to the FPS dictionary, and was probably the most-played mod at least in the pre-Quakeworld era. TF owes a lot to the existence of TWCTF, though on the other hand TWCTF was a partial mod and TF was a "full conversion" mod, maybe the first truly popular one. Mentioning at least one of these would seem appropriate.
The ZDoom rickroll mod, of course! (Score:2, Informative)
ZDoom [zdoom.org] 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 [youtube.com]
Re:My favorite mod (Score:3, Informative)
This subgenera has a lot of potential, and has never been fully realized, but it has been tried before.
Urban Terror (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not even one Total Annihilation mod mentioned? (Score:2, Informative)
It has been the only source of entertainment (besides occasional bouts of fallout) that I've had for months. If you do go check it out, and you should, the Complete Annihilation mod is in my opinion one of the very best mods available. The technical and artistic ability of the main developers and contributors is awe inspiring. There is some more information on the trac page [caspring.org].
Re:My favorite mod (Score:2, Informative)
Look at Original Title (Score:2, Informative)
WiX (Score:2, Informative)
It was also the only MS program that came with the source. ;)
Would mentioning WiX [sourceforge.net] kill the joke?
Re:One of the first, but still the best... (Score:4, Informative)
Aliens TC (Score:3, Informative)
Aliens TC [doomwadstation.com] was one of the better ones for DOOM.
Some of my fav maps for SC & WC3 (Score:3, Informative)
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!
Re:Warcraft III (Score:3, Informative)
Agree: CS, DOD and NS deserved more attention! (Score:3, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org].
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. [wikipedia.org]
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 [wikipedia.org] or on Unknown Worlds homepage [unknownworlds.com] where you can also read about the progress on Natural Selection 2.
- Jesper