Mod (computer gaming)

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Mod or modification is a term generally applied to computer games, especially first-person shooters, RPGs and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer, and can be entirely new games in themselves. They can include new items, weapons, characters, enemies, models, modes, textures, levels, story lines, music, and game modes. They also usually take place in unique locations. They can be single-player or multiplayer. Mods that add new content to the underlying game are often called partial conversions, while mods that create an entirely new game are called total conversions. Games running on a PC are often designed with change in mind, and this consequently allows modern computer games to be modified by gamers without much difficulty. These mods can add extra replay value and interest. The Internet provides an inexpensive medium to promote and distribute mods, and they have become an increasingly important factor in the commercial success of some games. Developers such as id Software, Valve Software, Bethesda Softworks, Crytek, Relic Entertainment and Epic Games provide extensive tools and documentation to assist mod makers, leveraging the potential success brought in by a popular mod like Counter-Strike. Mods can significantly outshine and/or continue the success of the original game even when it is dated. Playing a mod might even become more common than playing the unmodified original. In those cases, players might have to clarify that they are referring to the unmodified game when talking about playing a game. In some cases the term vanilla is used make this distinction, "vanilla Battlefield 1942", for example, refers to the original, unmodified game. For vanilla games, prefix "v" or "V" is commonly used together with acronymed game title, eg. VQ3 stands for "vanilla Quake 3". It should also be noted that some people point to games such as Doom and Quake as having pioneered the current mod scene. One particular mod, Counter-Strike, originated from a Quake mod called Navy Seals featuring real-world weapons and headshots, also from the same developer. As early as the 1980s, computer game mods have also been used for the sole purpose of creating art, as opposed to an actual game. This can include recording in-game footage into a movie, as well as attempting to reproduce real-life areas inside a game with no regard for gameplay value. See artistic computer game modification, machinima#Precedent and demoscene.

Partial conversion

The term partial conversion is used to describe a type of modification that changes only part of the underlying game. Many computer games allow their players to edit how certain functions of the game works, such as weapons, sounds, enemy behaviour and levels. Editing some of these elements while leaving the better part of the original game intact is usually referred to as a partial conversion. An example would be changing a conventional deathmatch game to behave like a capture the flag game. This could include new levels (maps) containing two bases, new 3D models for the flag and editing of game code to understand how the flag is supposed to work. But the rest of the game world remains the same as the original game. An example of a partial conversion would be a map pack that retains all of the weapons and enemies of the original game but a series of new maps.

Total conversion

A total conversion is a mod of an existing game that (usually) replaces almost all of the artistic assets in the original game, and sometimes core aspects of gameplay, in some cases creating a game in a completely different genre from the original. In some cases, the goal of a group that sets out to create a total conversion is to sell their end product, which necessitates the need to replace the original content to avoid copyright infringement. A few total conversions have managed to become stand-alone games. Since most total conversions only share the engine in common with the original game, if the engine becomes Free Software, the total conversion can be playable without having to own the original game. A few examples of these include the Tremulous mod for Quake III Arena, a trio of mods for Command & Conquer Renegade, Red Alert: Apocalypse Rising, Red Alert: A Path Beyond, and C&C Reborn, Battle For Dune; the D-Day: Normandy mod for Quake II, and Counter-Strike for Half-Life. Counter-Strike is notable as it has far exceeded the popularity of the original game. Team Fortress, one of the most popular mods ever, was originally a Quake total conversion. It has been so popular that a sequel, Team Fortress 2, has been developed.

Development

A great many mods do not progress very far and are abandoned without ever having a public release. One of the most famous vaporware mods was Star Wars Quake, which was never released despite six years of development. Some are very limited and just include some gameplay changes or even a different loading screen, while others are total conversions and can modify content and gameplay extensively. A few mods become very popular and convert themselves into distinct games, with the rights getting bought and turning into an official modification. A group of mod developers may join together to form a mod team. An example is Team Reaction, one of the most prolific mod teams to date, most notably known for QPong and Jailbreak. Mods are made for many first person shooters, most notably the series based on Quake, Doom, Tribes, Unreal Tournament, and Half-Life. Real time strategy games such as Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Total Annihilation, Rise of Nations and the Command & Conquer series also have many mods. Among popular mods, none is more well known than the Half-Life multiplayer mod Counter-Strike, which was released shortly after the original game, and upwards of 1 million games per day are hosted on dedicated servers. Counter-Strike is probably the best example of a modification that turns into a retail game. Mods in general are required to be non-commercial (free) when they include any parts from another mod, or the main game, which by their nature they always do. Some mods become open source as well.

Tools

Mod making tools are a variety of construction sets for creating mods for a game. An early mod making tool was the Bard's Tale Construction Set, released in 1991, which allowed users to create game designs in that series. Much more successful among early mod making tools was the 1992 Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures from Strategic Simulations, Inc., which allowed users to construct games based on the game world that was launched with the Pool of Radiance game. Later mod making tools include The Elder Scrolls Construction Set which shipped with Morrowind, the Aurora toolset which was included with Neverwinter Nights and the Obsidian tool set for Neverwinter Nights 2, and the Valve Hammer Editor which is used to create maps for Half-Life and its sequel, Half-Life 2. There are also free content delivery tools available that make playing mods easier. They help manage downloads, updates and setting up the mods so that non-technical people can play. Examples include Steam (content delivery) for Half life 2 mods and CrosuS which works for the Half Life series, Unreal Tournament, Doom, Quake, Zero Hour, and Battlefield 2 mods.

Mod-Friendliness of Games

The potential for end-user change in game varies greatly, though it can have little correlation on the number and quality of mods made for a game. For instance the Creatures 2 computer game executable was essentially an interpreter for the in-game scripting language, and could potentially have allowed almost any 2D game to be built upon its basis. Other games, such as The Sims, will allow modification to certain aspects, such as adding new items and clothes, but not others, such as altering a character's skills or occupation. In general the most modification-friendly games will define gameplay variables in text or other non proprietary format files (for instance in the Civilization series one could alter the movement rate along roads and many other factors), and have graphics of a standard format such as bitmaps. Civilization 4 is the most open of all, letting the user make entire scenarios and whole new sets of rules through Python. Publishers can also determine mod-friendliness in the way important source files are available (some programs collect their source material into large proprietary archives, while others make the files available in folders). Games have varying support from their publishers for modifications, but often require expensive professional software to make. One such example is Homeworld 2, which requires the industrial-strength program Maya to build new in-game objects. However, there is a free version available of Maya and other advanced modeling software. There are also free and even open source modeling programs that can be used as well. For advanced mods such as Desert Combat, that are total conversions, complicated modeling and texturing software is required to make original content. Advanced mods can rival the complexity and work of making the original game content (short of the engine itself), rendering the differences in ease of modding small in comparison to the total amount of work required. Having an engine that is for example easy to import models to, is of little help when doing research, modeling, and making a photo-realistic texture for a game item. As a result, other game characteristics such as its popularity and capabilities have a dominating effect on if mods are created for the game by users. A game that allows 'modding' can also be called 'moddable'. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as well as its predecessor The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind are highly moddable, because the editor is available to download off the internet. Daggerfall was much less moddable, but some people released their own modifications nevertheless. Supreme Commander set out to be the 'most customisable game ever' and as such included a mod manager which allowed for 'modular modding' - having several mods on at once.

Portability issues

For cross-platform games, mods written for the Windows version have not always been compatible with the Mac OS X and/or Linux ports of the game. In large part, this is due to the publisher's concern with prioritizing the porting of the primary game itself, when allocating resources for fixing the porting of mod-specific functions may not be cost-effective for the relatively smaller market share of alternate platforms. For example Battlefield 1942, ported by Aspyr for Mac OS X had file access issues specific to mods until the 1.61D patch. Unreal Tournament 2004 does not have a working community mods menu for the Mac OS X version, and until the 3369 patch had graphics incompatibilities with several mods such as Red Orchestra and Metaball. In addition, mods which are compiled into platform-specific libraries, such as those of Doom 3, are often only built for the Windows platform, leading to a lack of cross-platform compatibility even when the underlying game is highly portable. In the same line of reasoning, mod development tools are often available only on the Windows platform -id Software's Doom 3 Radiant tool and Epic Games' UnrealEd being the most notable examples. Mod teams which lack either the resources or know-how to develop their mods for alternate platforms sometimes outsource their code and art assets to individuals or groups who are able to port the mod. Some mod teams such as the ones for Forgotten Hope and Red Orchestra have hired Mac-specific coders and have even purchased Mac hardware for testing purposes. The mod team which developed Last Man Standing Coop performed an in-house port of their mod, but encouraged someone else to create a Mac installation/launching utility. The mod specialist site for Macs, Macologist, has created GUI launchers and installers for many UT2004 mods, as well as solving cross-platform conversion issues for mods for other games.

Unexpected consequences of modding

In January 2005, it was reported that in The Sims 2 modifications that changed item and game behaviour were unexpectedly being transferred to other players through the official website's exchange feature, leading to changed game behaviour without advance warning.^[1]

Example modifiable games

Games with official modification tools

The Elder Scrolls

For the PC versions of both The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Bethesda Softworks included a tool (or provided it online, in Oblivion's case) called The Elder Scrolls Construction Set, which allows users to freely modify game content in game.

Half-Life and Half-Life 2

Main article: List of Half-Life mods

See also: List of Half-Life 2 mods

Mods for the Half-Life games range from simple changes to total conversions that feature extensive game engine modifications, due in part to the remarkable flexibility of the games engines. Many mods have significantly different gameplay and features beyond thematic changes. Perhaps the most well-known commercial modification of all time was built on the GoldSRC engine of Half-Life - Counter-Strike, picked up and published by Valve Software. Half-Life 2, unlike its predecessor, uses the Source Engine, which has also been used to make a large number of modifications.

Counter-Strike

An example of a well-known total conversion is Counter-Strike, which is based on the Half-Life engine (which is essentially a rewrite of the original engine for Quake). Half-Life is a linear, single-player and multiplayer first-person shooter with some puzzle solving, where you take the place of a character named Gordon Freeman. A scientific complex developing experimental teleportation technology is under attack by aliens, and the weapons used to destroy them vary between real-world and experimental. In contrast, Counter-Strike is a round-based, multiplayer-only game, based on realistic incidents between Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists. Gameplay is centralised around goals of disarming bombs or rescuing hostages, and all weaponry is modeled on existing arms —including design, use, and sound effects. One of the only visible similarities that Counter-Strike has in common with Half-Life, besides their shared genre, is that Counter-Strike uses the Half-Life engine.

Dark Forces and Jedi Knight series

The Dark Forces and Jedi Knight series have also been highly modded. Jedi Knight editing was done with the third-party level editor JED and the share-ware (now free-ware) JKEdit. Numerous Single-player and Multi-player mods were released including the skin and saber pack Big Fluffy Pack and Single-player mission pack Dark Emperor. Over 3000 other modifications were released through The Massassi Temple.

Marathon

Main article: Marathon total conversions

Bungie Studios released its development tools Forge (map editor) and Anvil (physics, shapes, and sounds editor) along with the Marathon: Infinity in 1996. These are still core tools of the Aleph One mod community, even though they were built for Mac OS and Mac OS X will not run them natively and cannot be run on Windows at all. Development of new mods has slowed since its hey-day in the late 1990s, but some total conversions still receive quite a bit of play.

Relic Developers Network

The Relic Developers Network is a free resource created by Relic Entertainment for developers modding their games^[2]. Supported games include Homeworld 2. Official modding toolsets can be downloaded by registering and logging into the site.

SimCity 4

Despite the fact that SimCity 4 was released in 2003, there is still a very active community making various mods for this city simulation. A lot of users have experimented with the game's data files, and have come up with various methods of improving the behaviour of commuters in the game.^[3] The release of the Building Architect Tool by Maxis^[4] allows users to create their own buildings in a free 3D modelling program, and export them to the game with the Lot Editor.

The Sims 2

The Sims 2 allows users to import custom contents using EA provided tools such as The Sims 2 Bodyshop and The Sims 2 Homecrafter Plus. Third-party programs such as SimPE, Color Enabler Package (CEP) and The Mesh Tool enable modification to game object meshes and game behaviours. There are hundreds of fan websites offering custom content such as re-coloured or re-meshed objects.

Games using Unreal Engine

The Unreal Engine is a game engine used by many commercially released games. It also allows users to modify such games with relative ease. Examples include the following:

Unreal Tournament

In the Unreal engine, smaller changes such as changing the variables for physics, movement, or weapon qualities are sometimes implemented as mutators which can be selected in the administrator menu. The game allows multiple mutators to be active at the same time. Mutators not considered mods include those that provide anti-cheater, map voting, and lag-free (client-side hit computation) functions.

Unreal Tournament 2004

Many total conversions exist for Unreal Tournament 2004; Alien Swarm and Red Orchestra for example.

Deus Ex

Main article: Deus Ex mods Deus Ex is a unique game in terms of the development of its modding community, as the majority of the game's popular mods were released roughly 18 months after the initial release of the game. A further surge in modding activity occurred in 2004, following the release of the sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War. A number of large-scale mods are still in production stages, including at least one total conversion, numerous partial conversions, asset modifiers, and an attempt to recreate the game in its entirety as a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004.

Games using Quake III Engine

The id Tech 3 or Quake III engine is a game engine used by many commercially released games. Examples of commercial id Tech 3 games include the following:

Call of Duty

Call of Duty is a first person shooter based in WWII Europe Theater. Example full conversion mods are SWAT, Heat of Battle, Breaking50 and Revolt. The Call Of Duty game files are saved in zip files with the .pk3 file extension. They can be easily accessed with programs such as WinRAR, or Pakscape. Inside the zip, the game files are archived into folders, such as xmodel, maps, and textures.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a first person shooter computer game published by Activision and released on November 20, 2001. The single player game was developed by Gray Matter Interactive and Nerve Software developed its multiplayer mode. Id Software, the creators of the original game entitled Wolfenstein 3D, oversaw the development of the game and were credited as executive producers. The multiplayer side, developed by Nerve Software eventually became the most popular part of the game, and it grandfathered in many features that online multiplayer FPSs have today. Splash Damage, an independently-owned game developer in London, England, and one of the leading Shooter developers in Europe, created some of the maps for the GOTY edition. There are many different versions of "Wolf". The original release, version 1.0, came in a game box featuring a book-like flap. The Game of the Year Edition (2002 - v.1.3) came with the original Wolfenstein 3D, game demos, and several new multiplayer maps (including "Ice", "Tram", "Keep" and "Trenchtoast"). The Collector's Edition (2003 - v.1.33) came a in metal case and was packaged with promotional materials, including a poster and fabric patch. The Platinum Edition (2004 - v.1.41) included Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, a stand-alone expansion, and Wolfenstein 3D.

Freeware Games

In 2005 the id Tech 3 engine source code was released under the GPL^[5], allowing it to be freely modified and distributed as long as the modified source code was made available as well. It's important to note that the actual Quake 3 game data files are not included in the license, which means that mod designers have to make their own game data files from scratch to go with their game. Examples of free to download games using the id Tech 3 engine are Tremulous and World of Padman.

Games with third-party modification tools

Age of Empires 3

See also: Age of Empires 3

Since the series had a lot of fans, specially from the past game in the franchise, the third instalation of the series was very unexpected, with a lot of fans turn down by the series. But a team of modders changed the game to a Napoleonic Wars Theme, and ten a wave of teams decide to make their own mods like Age of Crusades, set in the middle east religius struggle.

Battlefield series

See also: List of Battlefield 1942 mods

Since its release in 2002, Battlefield 1942 has spawned a large number of modifications, especially total conversions. Examples include Desert Combat (which, for a long period, gained the distinction of being more played than the original multiplayer game), Point of Existence and Project Reality.

Command & Conquer: Generals and the Battle for Middle Earth series

The Generals game engine, known as SAGE. There are many projects based around modding with this engine (which is also used for both Battle for Middle Earth games, and C&C 3). Mods for Generals are made using the Renegade modding tool called RenX, created by Westwood Studios before it merged with EALA. Both the original game and its expansion, Zero Hour, shipped with a level editing tool called World Builder. While it is mainly used to create of maps and missions, for modders it is more useful because it allows editing the in-game AI. EA also recently released a Battle for Middle Earth II SDK which is compatible with the Generals/Zero Hour engine. Some of the popular mods for this game range from total conversions such as Cold War Crisis to add-on mods like ShockWave; and for Battle for Middle Earth 2 RJ-Rotwk and SEE (Special Extended Edition).

Doom and Doom II

Main article: Doom WAD Mods for Doom and Doom II that add or modify game content are often referred to as WADs due to using the WAD file format. The idgames archive contains over 10,000 WADs created from 1994 to present. There also exist several Doom source ports which significantly modify the Doom engine to add support for new modes of gameplay.

Doom 3

Although Doom 3's capabilities as a mod platform were somewhat overlooked as a result of the release of Half-Life 2 and its associated development tools, there are a few mods for the game worth noting. Last Man Standing Coop is a mod which adds cooperative multiplayer to the Doom 3 and Resurrection of Evil campaign maps, in addition to a custom game-type which re-creates the gameplay of Doom and Doom II.

Grand Theft Auto Series

Two examples of game modifications in GTA:Vice City: 2004 Jaguar XJ8 and 1994 Jaguar XJ6. Real-life makes and models are not included in the game but can be created and added by modders.

PC version GTA III based game engines, including Vice City and San Andreas, are flexible enough that the modders can put highly detailed cars, detailed characters and larger maps (depending on PC computer and video cards). Others make zombies, bigfoot, and alien space craft. The mods range from replacing vehicles, character and buildings to a total conversion.

Halo

There are many different mods for the Halo CE, Halo PC, and Halo Trial games. Almost all of these are made by third-party programs such as Halo Map Tools (HMT), Halo Hacker Tools (HHT) and Sparkedit.

Postal² series

In Postal², mods come in the form of weapon additions and a 'sewing' of the regular week day (regular Postal² or Share the Pain version) missions with the "Apocalypse Weekend" expansion pack; however, recently (11/2006) a total conversion was completed called "Eternal Damnation" that has a different lead character, weapons, and a darker survival-horror story line (rather than the warped, cheesy humor associated with the Postal Dude). So much attention to detail was taken to E.D. -- along with proper approval by Postal² creators, Running with Scissors -- that it is now included along with the two regular (Monday through Sunday) missions in a box set, along with the original Postal. In keeping with their word, the creators of E.D. (Resurrection Studios) offer the mod as a free download (and still do as of 4/2007). Additionally, like most first person shooters, Postal² has had custom maps created by fans of the game.

Thief series

In Thief, mods come in the form of 'fan missions'. There are over 500 fan missions currently available. Most fan missions are original in design in regards to layout of a town, the landscape, buildings, interiors, the placement of characters and items and storyline. Many include objects, characters, music and special effects that are original with the fan mission authors. A typical fan mission will take up to four hours to play to fulfil the mission objectives, and they are usually replayable at higher difficulty settings. Thief: The Dark Project (1998) has about 100 fan missions available. Thief Gold (an updated version of the first) has about 40 fan missions available. Thief II: The Metal Age (2000) has over 380 fan missions available. After the release of the third game - Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004), an editor was released and already a number of fan missions have been created for that game as well.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, and for a short time, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 had a significant amount of mods and modding tools available. The mods included texture mods for skaters, boards, and levels, as well as trick and level hacks. Popular modding tools included a Hoverboard hack, soundtrack editors, and RePKR for the all.pkr file that held texture, level, sound, and trick data for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. Some of these mods and modding tools can still be found at Planet Tony Hawk.

World of Warcraft

The biggest and most well known MMORPG on the market has an extremely huge mod community to go along with its enormous user base. There are many types of World of Warcraft mods that have been created to help enchance the game like raid mods, combat mods and auction mods. All of them benefits the player in some way, either by giving them addition info or making a mundane task easier through macros. Two of the most popular mods include Atlas Mod which is an in-game instance map browser and Titan Panel, which creates a horizontal bar and can be customized with useful game data. Most mods need to be updated when World of Warcraft puts out a new patch, so popular mods see changes at least every couple of months. Sites such as WoW Interface and Warcraft mods carry frequently updated mods for user downloads. World of Warcraft mods usually have to be manually installed. Blizzard Entertainment who created World of Warcraft, does not create any first-party mods for their game, but they give support and tools to third-party mod makers.

Freelancer

Freelancer was released by Microsoft in 2003, as a sequel to the popular space sim Starlancer. Players almost immediately realized that the format of the game files provided them a great deal of freedom in modifying the game. Since that time a substantial modding community has developed, creating not only the mods themselves but also writing specialized software to assist their efforts, as well as plug-ins for popular development tools such as Milkshape and 3Ds Max. Most Freelancer mods are partial mods and add or modify some of the ships and systems. There are also a few total conversions. The most notable of these are , and Freeworlds, both of which convert Freelancer into a Star Wars environment.

Nude patches

One of the most common mods is a nude patch, also known as a nude skin. This is a software patch designed to modify software, usually a game to allow the user or gamer to see the character in the nude. The first such patch was designed for Duke Nukem 3D. Lara Croft, the voluptuous heroine of the Tomb Raider series, was the one to popularize, or promote, the nude patch. Such patches are almost never authorized by the software's maker and are usually created as mods by players and distributed over the internet. There is at least one website that specializes in this area, as well as the sites created specifically for the mod. Nude patches are available for many games that have female characters and are moddable, including The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Lineage 2, Max Payne 2, Half Life 2, World of Warcraft, The Sims, No One Lives Forever, No One Lives Forever 2 and Grand Theft Auto.

Foxed

Some total conversions and mods based on copyrighted franchises, like Star Wars or Alien, caused their owners to take a harsh stance towards modders. The particular aggressiveness of 20th Century Fox in sending cease and desist mails to mod projects inspired a new verb: being foxed.^[6] Some strictly non-commercial mods appear to be tolerated, for example the Star Wars mods Galactic Conquest for Battlefield 1942, Warlords for Homeworld 2, and Troopers for Unreal Tournament 2004 (Troopers was later given the rights to continue production of their mod). It appears to be dependent both on the direction of the modification (does it use official characters in a story or cause conflicts with canon information, rather than merely taking place in a pre-established universe) and on the company that owns the IP—Fox's notoriety for a zero-tolerance policy against modifications based on their IP is where the term foxed originated.^[7]

Modders

The term 'modder' is sometimes used to refer to a person who creates a mod. The latter is especially true in cases where someone in a multi-player game is using a mod to give them an unfair advantage. Examples might include an auto-targeting modification in a shooting game or a mod which allows the player to move faster than others. Such mods are generally considered cheating, especially if the match is ranked or will affect the statistics of the players disadvantaged. Using a mod to cheat is now considered as “Hacking”^{[dubious – ]}. However some mods can have an effect on all of the players in a multiplayer game. Such mods give every player the same increase ability and/or extra item(s) and therefore is sometimes not considered cheating, although it is possible that only the modder would use the changes especially if the changes are subtle.

See also

• ROM hacking
• Modding
• Level editor
• Adventure Construction Set, one of the earliest games for which user-created content was widely made and distributed.

References