Game Modding

Ares

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One of Crys' posts about Minecraft modding reminded me of a topic I wanted to raise.

What are some of the best games because of modding?

I will throw out Mount and Blade... the vanilla game is kinda boring after an hour or 2, but the mods make it like you bought a hundred games.

The Total War series has always had a strong modding community, but the games are not built to allow the easiest modding.

Warcraft III has survived like 20 years because of modding.

Sometimes it makes you wonder, when you come across a full overhaul mod of a game to turn it into LOTR or something else and you find out it was done by 1 or 2 people.... is there any merit to monetizing game modding? Will mods become DLC you have to pay for?
 
Monsieur Tirets

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skyrim was pretty fun to mod. the game itself was pretty much same old same old as far as the bethesda formula, but it was fun and revamping the graphics with upgraded textures and an emb as well as reworking the character models added to the game.
 
Ares

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Monsieur Tirets said:
skyrim was pretty fun to mod. the game itself was pretty much same old same old as far as the bethesda formula, but it was fun and revamping the graphics with upgraded textures and an emb as well as reworking the character models added to the game.
Click to expand...

Yeah but you have to of played a game before that was fun mostly for the mods people came up with... IMO Warcraft III was like that, all the multiplayer mods they created.

I always wonder why developers make games hard to mod.... modding communities extend your customer base and longevity of your game.
 
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I remember Star Wars Jedi Academy became way more fun once I discovered mods
 

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I never played the Long War mod for XCOM, but it got very good reviews.
 
Crystallas

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So for the longest time, game modding was considered making mods for a game. Now it's just a matter of dropping files or installing the mods (which back in the day was considered unofficial expansion of the game.) But you would still be playing a modified version of the game, because that is a loose term in general.

How are the terms sorted today between creating mods and just installing something you found on the internet? Not nitpicking, genuinely curious. Actually, I doubt the classifications are sorted yet, but would love to hear opinions.
 
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The first time I ever modded a game was for Skyrim. I added a couple mods that made it look very nice... and then I went overboard and added like 20+ more mods, and I ended up breaking the game. Got frustrated and never played it again.
 
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Started with Jill of the Jungle, Wolf3D and NFS(first one).
I spent maybe two years of free time modding GTA (the original top-down 3D(yes, they were still 3D) GTA game). That's how I learned code reverse engineering other than hex edits and decompiles. Wish I fully understood licensing then, I would have released all my mods as GNU/copylefts. Instead, all the mirrors that hosted mods are pretty much gone and a lot of weaker double-work happened instead. Good era for PC gaming and modding, bad era for preservation and progression of mods. So bad, things like the original Half-life beta mods that were once every-fucking-where are near impossible to get a hold of. SiN fan patches and Interstate76 stable fanmod are also long gone.

Oh, and config/ini hacking. That's always a blast. In C&C Tiberian Sun original. Found an animated stone(probably animated because it fell from some cliff in whatever expedition), replaced an infantryman with the sprite designation for the stone. So when you start a campaign, I just built one stone, and it just cleared out the whole map on its own like perfect AI, while the computer AI didn't know how to fight back, so they just stayed put and died. The most OP cheat/hack I have ever seen still to this day. Just one stone, and poof, the whole map won in less than a minute.

And Rollercoaster Tycoon 2. I used to hack the shit out of that game. The cheats let you get over some of the physics limits, but memory edits, a rebuilt config, and a fast computer(needed, those sim games would swallow resources like no other when a lot of stuff was going on), and wham, you had rollercoasters that traveled faster than the speed of light. Game crashed a lot, but something was oddly satisfying when you have numbers roll off the side of the screen and a pathways full of vomit.
 
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botfly10

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Ares said:
Yeah but you have to of played a game before that was fun mostly for the mods people came up with... IMO Warcraft III was like that, all the multiplayer mods they created.

I always wonder why developers make games hard to mod.... modding communities extend your customer base and longevity of your game.
Click to expand...

Devs usually use the excuse that its a pain in the ass to build and maintain a toolset through the life (patch) cycle of a game. Not sure how true that is.
 
Monsieur Tirets

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i havent modded many games, only skyrim and the mass effect games, and nothing gameplay related, just improved visuals.

and crys, as far as terms go, it seems "modding" is the act of installing or applying mods, whereas a "modder" is one who actually creates mods.
 
Ares

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Crystallas said:
So for the longest time, game modding was considered making mods for a game. Now it's just a matter of dropping files or installing the mods (which back in the day was considered unofficial expansion of the game.) But you would still be playing a modified version of the game, because that is a loose term in general.

How are the terms sorted today between creating mods and just installing something you found on the internet? Not nitpicking, genuinely curious. Actually, I doubt the classifications are sorted yet, but would love to hear opinions.
Click to expand...

When I think of modding I think of people creating the modifications.... if you are just applying someone else's modifications you are just installing mods.

Modding = creating new textures, new scripting, new writing/story, new models, new AI behavior, etc.... at least in my mind.
 
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botfly10 said:
Devs usually use the excuse that its a pain in the ass to build and maintain a toolset through the life (patch) cycle of a game. Not sure how true that is.
Click to expand...

I think it depends on how they build a game.... for instance Total War games have always been something people want to mod, but have a hard time of it because they need access to underlying components of the game that they want to mod and Total War devs use custom everything last I checked and that meant modders needed tools to get into the underlying things they wanted to mod or reorganize or tune.

Mount and Blade at its' foundation seems made to mod... getting at all the components is easy and creating a whole different version is as simple as copying the Native folder, renaming it, and modifying the content inside as you see fit and you can launch that folder instead of the Native game from a dropdown in the launch menu.

Some games you need mod management utilities to do such a thing.

I just wonder what you get out of building a game where getting at the underlying components to mod them is difficult.

Like what would you be protecting? Are you writing scripting so unique and great if people see it they could ruin you? Are you creating models/textures/maps that are fundamentally constructed so different and better that they need to be kept secret? Or are you just stuck in your custom way of doing things and don't feel like changing?

If I was building a game from scratch, one of my foundations would be making it moddable, making every effort to allow the community to make their own content and expand my game so that more people would play it and enjoy it and buy it.... more people talking about it, more people interested... keep it going for years rather than a few months of interest when people play it and then get bored with it.

Seems to me making a game open to modding just opens up the lifespan and profit it can make for you long term.
 
Ares

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Crystallas said:
Started with Jill of the Jungle, Wolf3D and NFS(first one).
I spent maybe two years of free time modding GTA (the original top-down 3D(yes, they were still 3D) GTA game). That's how I learned code reverse engineering other than hex edits and decompiles. Wish I fully understood licensing then, I would have released all my mods as GNU/copylefts. Instead, all the mirrors that hosted mods are pretty much gone and a lot of weaker double-work happened instead. Good era for PC gaming and modding, bad era for preservation and progression of mods. So bad, things like the original Half-life beta mods that were once every-fucking-where are near impossible to get a hold of. SiN fan patches and Interstate76 stable fanmod are also long gone.

Oh, and config/ini hacking. That's always a blast. In C&C Tiberian Sun original. Found an animated stone(probably animated because it fell from some cliff in whatever expedition), replaced an infantryman with the sprite designation for the stone. So when you start a campaign, I just built one stone, and it just cleared out the whole map on its own like perfect AI, while the computer AI didn't know how to fight back, so they just stayed put and died. The most OP cheat/hack I have ever seen still to this day. Just one stone, and poof, the whole map won in less than a minute.

And Rollercoaster Tycoon 2. I used to hack the shit out of that game. The cheats let you get over some of the physics limits, but memory edits, a rebuilt config, and a fast computer(needed, those sim games would swallow resources like no other when a lot of stuff was going on), and wham, you had rollercoasters that traveled faster than the speed of light. Game crashed a lot, but something was oddly satisfying when you have numbers roll off the side of the screen and a pathways full of vomit.
Click to expand...

You are mod terrorist, sir.
 
Crystallas

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Ares said:
You are mod terrorist, sir.
Click to expand...

Yay, is that a steam achievement?

No really, other than what I mentioned, I haven't created game shit in 15 years. Other than maybe Wine patches, but those take next to no time.
 
Ares

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Crystallas said:
Yay, is that a steam achievement?

No really, other than what I mentioned, I haven't created game shit in 15 years. Other than maybe Wine patches, but those take next to no time.
Click to expand...

Lol it should be a Steam achievement.

I hope you know that was a Desperado joke from a while back.
 
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