I think it was a minor mistake to only mention one of the Elder Scrolls games. To mention Morrowind and leave out Oblivion which is still a steadily growing mod community with some of the most GORGEOUS third party mods seems like a missed point. I figured since you mentioned a part 1 and 2 of another game series, this part 3 and 4 of this one are on the same type of footing.
there is one game series for the flighsim community that has to be included: the thirdwire series (Strikefighters: project 1, Wings over Vietnam, Wings over Europe )
with many widely available mods you can turn the original game (windows 98 era) and turn it into something that kicks microsoft's CFS3 (and possibly CFS4 whenever that gets released) out the door and yells 'come back when you look decent!'
the best starting point is from Wings over Europe (and a concurrent WoV install is possible since they use the same engine and content subfolders) and then heading over to the CombatACE and Checksix forums where most of the modding for the series is centered.
another old but highly (read: completely redone by mods) game is Freespace 2, the source code project has turned the game (again a 95/98 era game) into something that looks like it was made recently.
and which dipstick ever thought 'Gordon' was a good hero's name? with nerd glasses? (yes I know he's a scientist)
well, he IS a goddamned genius from MIT with a PhD.
besides, the characterisation of the hero in HL isn't important - which is why he never speaks. game makes it as easy as possible for the player to project himself onto gordon - hence why he is so nondescript.
I thought the Battlefield games would be up there, some great mods on them. Also the C&C series had alot of mods which were great.
No surprices Half Life is there. The most famous mod of them all counter Strike. I remeber when that first came out and trying to download it at college onto floppies and then later 100MB zip drives. Oh yeah they were fun lan partys.
Originally Posted by DougEdey I personally think UT99 was one of the most modded games, so many map-packs, skins, add-ons were released that it was unbelievable.
I think the results would be quite different if we were to get the collective opinions of some mod communities..
Quote:
Originally Posted by Emon There's a very big difference between the most moddable games and the most modded.
I agree with this - TES and NWN may have been modded a lot by their respective communities in the sense that there was a vast amount of user-generated content produced for the games, but I wouldn't consider them in the top 5 of moddable games, considering that the majority of said content was extremely similar, sub-standard and limited by the "appeal-to-newbies" toolsets.
I've always felt that there's a trend in software whereby the more user-friendly a program is, the less powerful it is for an advanced user, and I think that rings true with the NWN toolset, and to a lesser extent the TES Construction Set.
They may be easy to work with and they make it so that just about anyone can build a map and create a few quests, but woe betide anyone who tries to do anything more complex than that, because the software is made too user-friendly.
In the TESCS, for example, magical effects can't be modified apart from base costs, power, etc, and new magical effects can't be created without the use of an external, 3rd-party (ie; made by modders) hook program or script extender.
The scripting function in the TESCS is a nice addition, but it's not very flexible or powerful - You can code basic quests or simple scripts that modify stats, add/remove spells, but it provides no control for more complex operations such as giving the player a new ability and adding it to the list of bindable actions in the game's own menus - All that has to be done through the script extenders made by modders, which, though it works, is a messy solution because it doesn't integrate smoothly with the game's own UI.
I know this all seems horribly ungrateful, because at least the NWN toolset and TESCS are better than nothing. Don't get me wrong, I love to see the developers encouraging the mod community, but I'd rather they provide the actual tools they used to make the game, than dumbed-down versions with an easier learning curve and limited capabilities to appeal to modding newbies, and then claim that their game is 'moddable'.
"What, we gave you a toolset, what more do you want? You're only a gamer, what would you know about modifying our game?"
Source code, tools for unpacking the game files, the developer's plugins for 3DS/Maya/Lightwave, IK skeletons for character models, texturemap templates..
All of the above would be nice, and not unreasonable or unrealistic for any developer who wants to support the mod community of their game.
Anyone remember Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption?
A 3D Diablo-alike with a plot, set in the World of Darkness Pen & Paper world, released sometime around 1999/2000.
The developers released an SDK for the game which included their original map-editor, the fully documented source code for the cutscenes, map events & spells; original Maya model files and an exporter plugin for the game's character models, 2 fully-playable example chronicles for multiplayer with source-code (including cut scenes and maps), an object template editor, instructions for editing all of the engine's proprietary filetypes..
THAT, to me, is a game which is moddable.
Sadly, Activision refused to release the game's core source code to the mod community despite numerous petitions, which hampered efforts to fix some of the game's more fundamental flaws and allow for the creation of TCs or whole new singleplayer campaigns.
Somebody else mentioned Far Cry already, but I think more needs to be said about it.
Crytek's own mod-community site for Far Cry & Crysis: Cry-Mod Modding Portal
Crytek employees post in the forums, commenting on mods and complimenting people's work, mods are given publicity by the site and tutorials are provided to aid modders in getting to grips with the tools and the engine.
Crytek provided the exact Sandbox editor that they used to make the game, not a cut-down user-friendly version - It's still a polished, well-made program, but it's also still flexible and powerful.
Additionally, they coded the majority of the game in human-readable ASCII Lua code, stored in basic text files in the game's packages, which makes it ridiculously easy to edit large portions of the game's coding with some basic knowledge........and yet, they didn't have to dumb it down, a la the NWN toolset.
If you've ever tried to make a new character model for NWN, you'll almost inevitably end up using a modder-created tool like NWMax, a hook program for gMax which 'exports' your model vertex-by-vertex, face-by-face in ASCII text, then compiles it into a binary model file from that text.
Kudos to the creators for integrating it so well with gMax and making the process reasonably simple, but it's not fast and the fact that the tool had to be made by the very people who need it, when the dev-team could simply have provided one seems ridiculous.
I'm surely not the only person who thinks it's a bit ridiculous for a dev-company to extoll their game as a modder's delight, then leave the mod community with no option but to program their own tools to work with the game's propietary files if they want to do more than make a typical "fetch me a loaf of bread" quest in a tileset map editor.
This probably makes me seem like an elitist with no time for newbie modders, but that's not the case.
I'd just rather see newbies learning to mod using the real tools and achieving real results, not another million house mods for morrowind or another million "kill the thoozle" quests for NWN.
So....to sum all of that up, I don't agree with NWN and TES being in the top 5 at all, but I definitely agree with the choices of HL and Quake, and though I probably wouldn't have thought of it myself initially, I agree with the inclusion of Max Payne too. :D
If anyone read all of that, then seriously, have a cookie.
I'm far too verbose at times.. :o
Oh and don't get me wrong, Brett - I liked your article, I just don't agree with all of your choices, and it's nothing personal. :)
Comments 1 to 25 of 58
ReplyI wish I still had the install CD. It was only a 25MB game too.
I like that you have quake on there though.
with many widely available mods you can turn the original game (windows 98 era) and turn it into something that kicks microsoft's CFS3 (and possibly CFS4 whenever that gets released) out the door and yells 'come back when you look decent!'
the best starting point is from Wings over Europe (and a concurrent WoV install is possible since they use the same engine and content subfolders) and then heading over to the CombatACE and Checksix forums where most of the modding for the series is centered.
another old but highly (read: completely redone by mods) game is Freespace 2, the source code project has turned the game (again a 95/98 era game) into something that looks like it was made recently.
i was wondering the same thing... it must be an inside joke...
Especially ChaosUT
Yes my so-called broadband is pathetic atm and downloading this same image 4- 5 times is irritating and I don't know what it's about.
and which dipstick ever thought 'Gordon' was a good hero's name? with nerd glasses? (yes I know he's a scientist)
Correct spelling would be "ado" :P
well, he IS a goddamned genius from MIT with a PhD.
besides, the characterisation of the hero in HL isn't important - which is why he never speaks. game makes it as easy as possible for the player to project himself onto gordon - hence why he is so nondescript.
Started playing CS from 0.5 or 0.6 when it was still very beta, but we played it over coax for weeks
The co-op mod was great aswell.......aah so were all the other great ones, there are so much of them.
Also, Gordon is a great name.
Ah, makes me want to play NWN again... (despite disliking the original games quest quite a bit...)
desert combat, eve of destruction, star wars mods, ...
that should have been in the top 5 imo
Even I was able to make some maps.
No surprices Half Life is there. The most famous mod of them all counter Strike. I remeber when that first came out and trying to download it at college onto floppies and then later 100MB zip drives. Oh yeah they were fun lan partys.
GOTYE :D
Nature out!
I agree with this - TES and NWN may have been modded a lot by their respective communities in the sense that there was a vast amount of user-generated content produced for the games, but I wouldn't consider them in the top 5 of moddable games, considering that the majority of said content was extremely similar, sub-standard and limited by the "appeal-to-newbies" toolsets.
I've always felt that there's a trend in software whereby the more user-friendly a program is, the less powerful it is for an advanced user, and I think that rings true with the NWN toolset, and to a lesser extent the TES Construction Set.
They may be easy to work with and they make it so that just about anyone can build a map and create a few quests, but woe betide anyone who tries to do anything more complex than that, because the software is made too user-friendly.
In the TESCS, for example, magical effects can't be modified apart from base costs, power, etc, and new magical effects can't be created without the use of an external, 3rd-party (ie; made by modders) hook program or script extender.
The scripting function in the TESCS is a nice addition, but it's not very flexible or powerful - You can code basic quests or simple scripts that modify stats, add/remove spells, but it provides no control for more complex operations such as giving the player a new ability and adding it to the list of bindable actions in the game's own menus - All that has to be done through the script extenders made by modders, which, though it works, is a messy solution because it doesn't integrate smoothly with the game's own UI.
I know this all seems horribly ungrateful, because at least the NWN toolset and TESCS are better than nothing. Don't get me wrong, I love to see the developers encouraging the mod community, but I'd rather they provide the actual tools they used to make the game, than dumbed-down versions with an easier learning curve and limited capabilities to appeal to modding newbies, and then claim that their game is 'moddable'.
"What, we gave you a toolset, what more do you want? You're only a gamer, what would you know about modifying our game?"
Source code, tools for unpacking the game files, the developer's plugins for 3DS/Maya/Lightwave, IK skeletons for character models, texturemap templates..
All of the above would be nice, and not unreasonable or unrealistic for any developer who wants to support the mod community of their game.
Anyone remember Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption?
A 3D Diablo-alike with a plot, set in the World of Darkness Pen & Paper world, released sometime around 1999/2000.
The developers released an SDK for the game which included their original map-editor, the fully documented source code for the cutscenes, map events & spells; original Maya model files and an exporter plugin for the game's character models, 2 fully-playable example chronicles for multiplayer with source-code (including cut scenes and maps), an object template editor, instructions for editing all of the engine's proprietary filetypes..
THAT, to me, is a game which is moddable.
Sadly, Activision refused to release the game's core source code to the mod community despite numerous petitions, which hampered efforts to fix some of the game's more fundamental flaws and allow for the creation of TCs or whole new singleplayer campaigns.
Somebody else mentioned Far Cry already, but I think more needs to be said about it.
Crytek's own mod-community site for Far Cry & Crysis:
Cry-Mod Modding Portal
Crytek employees post in the forums, commenting on mods and complimenting people's work, mods are given publicity by the site and tutorials are provided to aid modders in getting to grips with the tools and the engine.
Crytek provided the exact Sandbox editor that they used to make the game, not a cut-down user-friendly version - It's still a polished, well-made program, but it's also still flexible and powerful.
Additionally, they coded the majority of the game in human-readable ASCII Lua code, stored in basic text files in the game's packages, which makes it ridiculously easy to edit large portions of the game's coding with some basic knowledge........and yet, they didn't have to dumb it down, a la the NWN toolset.
If you've ever tried to make a new character model for NWN, you'll almost inevitably end up using a modder-created tool like NWMax, a hook program for gMax which 'exports' your model vertex-by-vertex, face-by-face in ASCII text, then compiles it into a binary model file from that text.
Kudos to the creators for integrating it so well with gMax and making the process reasonably simple, but it's not fast and the fact that the tool had to be made by the very people who need it, when the dev-team could simply have provided one seems ridiculous.
I'm surely not the only person who thinks it's a bit ridiculous for a dev-company to extoll their game as a modder's delight, then leave the mod community with no option but to program their own tools to work with the game's propietary files if they want to do more than make a typical "fetch me a loaf of bread" quest in a tileset map editor.
This probably makes me seem like an elitist with no time for newbie modders, but that's not the case.
I'd just rather see newbies learning to mod using the real tools and achieving real results, not another million house mods for morrowind or another million "kill the thoozle" quests for NWN.
So....to sum all of that up, I don't agree with NWN and TES being in the top 5 at all, but I definitely agree with the choices of HL and Quake, and though I probably wouldn't have thought of it myself initially, I agree with the inclusion of Max Payne too. :D
If anyone read all of that, then seriously, have a cookie.
I'm far too verbose at times.. :o
Oh and don't get me wrong, Brett - I liked your article, I just don't agree with all of your choices, and it's nothing personal. :)
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