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I must admit back in the day when I used to play more, I would just use a hex editor and hack the game for fun just to see what happens. I didn't even know there were entire modding communities around a certain game.

However I have gotten slightly into this field, namely with Duel of the Planeswalkers 2014 (basically magic the gathering intro game). With zero coding abilities even I sort of manage to create cards I wanted by copying code from a similar card, and with the fan mods I could create my own decks. I also play with mods from older Duel of the Planeswalkers (damn Wizards for not putting all formats and card types in the next version). Also from what I hear people are worried that the latest DoTP to be released in a few days have altered files, making it harder to mod.

So who among here uses game mods, creates their own mods, and which games and why? Which games would you like mods for?

I would personally also like mods for a few games I really got into, such as Kingdoms of Amalur and Divine Dragon Commander. But AFAIK they didn't have big modding communities, unlike say Skyrimm.

I use mods for Homeworld 2 and Sins of a Solar Empire (and it's various add ons) but that's about it. I also like to weak and adjust things in the mods I use, to make things feel better to me.

Oh, I also mod and tweak stuff in Stafleet Command 3, just so I can have a Sovereign class with the most badass weapons load possible.

I used to make mods because I had enough time, it was a lot of fun and I thought that it was great way to train for getting into the gaming industry.
I then worked for gaming companies and took part in creating stand alone games and found out that the games industry isn´t my piece of cake at all and actually a pretty boring job.
If I find the time I´d love to get into modding one day again, but at the moment it´s not possible.

We modded swoops and other vehicles into our Jedi Academy server. Was tons of fun. Tim used to create other types of custom "training" maps that had triggers to spawn NPCs for battling against players and/or other NPCs. My job was to deal with server mods (like ProMod) and make sure nothing exploded and I also made more than a few (amateurish) skins and also inserted custom voice-files for our Clan member skins. Didn't have the time or patience for modelling.

Lately, I've gone back to modding Skyrim. There's been more than a few mods updated to not suck. "Bloody facials" is a lot less buggy. Mod Configuration Manager is not pretty standard, which is a god send. Frostfall and other survival mods make the vanilla game a lot more interesting. I probably spend more time modding the game and dealing with bugs than playing it. I mess around in the Creation Kit a bit myself, but mainly to edit other people's work. Like say if I download an armor pack and I don't like the textures, want more variety, or like a model, but need it to be light armor instead or heavy (or vice versa). It's pretty easy to use, but I'm still a novice.

I'll mod anything that doesn't put up a fight, but I have no means of creating said mods.

By far the most modded games I've had were Fallout New Vegas/Fallout 3 and Skyrim, just for the ridiculous amount of quality content you could get. I've probably downloaded more megabites of mods for those three games than I've downloaded actual other games.

By far the game I spent the most time searching for mods for, without finding anything that didn't suck the ol' cucumber, was Star Wars: Republic Commando.

And the game for which I found that mods most significantly improved the base game was either Minecraft or Mount and Blade: Warband.

Lagmonster wrote:By far the most modded games I've had were Fallout New Vegas/Fallout 3 and Skyrim, just for the ridiculous amount of quality content you could get. I've probably downloaded more megabites of mods for those three games than I've downloaded actual other games.

Project Nevada alone made NV modding worth it. I wish I wasn't so burned out of Fallout as a setting and that Skyrim (especially the Northern parts) wasn't so damned comfy. I can load Skyrim to the brim with mods and still not be able to fix a lot of issues because the vanilla game is so bland. The overworld is pretty damned good, but the internal cells manage to be even more annoying than Fallout rusted metal and blasted concrete walls (does no one ever fix things after the apocalypse?). And the "cities...." Bleg.

But New Vegas was already an extremely varied game, the mods just build on that.

By far the game I spent the most time searching for mods for, without finding anything that didn't suck the ol' cucumber, was Star Wars: Republic Commando.

Ah man, I was so let-down when I found out that game wasn't co-op, but it's still one of my all-time favorite games. Also, never knowing what happened to Sev will probably irk me on my death-bed. Fucking Lucasarts.

Still, it probably had more mods than Fable 3 which had the dual problem of being released around the same time as Skyrim and was notoriously difficult to create mods for. That game sucked anyways, so nothing really lost.

I've played and modded to high heaven every elder scrolls game from Morrowind on. I've modded the heck out of most any game that will let me and enjoyed those crazy out there things like Forgotten Hope Secret Weapons which is a mod OF a mod for Battlefield 1942. It took the tweaks and changes of Forgotten Hope then adds onto them almost twice the content made by one crazy Japanese modder.

I've also modded myself but that was more to tweak things or experiment like say giving a Comet tank the speed of a Biplane aircraft. It was hilarious as friction capped your speed and trying to turn while going forward would flip you instantly and your control while moving was suspect to say the least but a 120mph tank is a 120mph tank.

One of the reasons I'm such a fan of Bethesda is because of the strength of their modding tools. I've made mods for Fallout 3, modified mods for Oblivion and Skyrim and downloaded mods for Fallout: New Vegas.

Apart from that series, I've also made mods for the X series, including one to correct what I felt was the criminally slow ship speeds in X3 - I literally doubled the speed of every ship, tripled the speed of every capital ship, and quadrupled the speed of every destroyer to make the game better.

I occasionally tinker with Crusader Kings 2 to make various tweaks I find fun. I made a Roman mod which adds a little more flavor to anyone attempting a resurgence of Roman culture or religion, though it's mostly been surpassed by more extensive mods in the community.

My friends and I are starting a new Grand CK Marathon soon, and I'm working on a mod which dismantles the Frankish kingdoms, Carolingian dynasty, and Viking hordes in 867 to make the 867 start a little more fun as a minor lord.

I'm a big fan of mods that let you add ridiculous features to games that would otherwise try and be super serious. Skyrim is a lot more entertaining when the dragons suddenly have the head of Macho Man Randy Savage along with a few of his signature phrases. Or you're suddenly being attacked by ponies instead of dragons.

My three phases of modding Bethesda open-world games:

Phase One: Improvement. GUI tweaks, inventory tweaks. "Unofficial patches", texture packs.

Phase Two: Expansion. Custom, but lore-friendly new areas, buildings, characters. Weapon and armour packs.

Phase Three: Degeneration. Unrealistic and highly offensive character models, tac-nuke handguns, all enemies replaced with Pokémon and xenomorphs.

I used to mod a lot with the HoI games.

It tended to be bugfixes, like when events give someone a lot of territory, there tended to be a few inexplicable gaps. Then if I got bored I'd change the probabilities of certain events, like the outbreak of the war.

One thing I like about modding DoTP is that you can create decks with magic cards which would cost $$$ in real life or the virtual online version. Naturally Wizards are not likely pleased with that since they want us to buy the real cards. However if it wasn't for DoTP, I most likely won't get any MTG products anyway. So they at least get $15 off me with the base package + DLC. Not sure how much sales they would "lose" from a newbie who just decides to mod it as opposed to buying the actual cards.

Bethseda games are nice to mod... but the major turn off is compatibility issues. On a whim I tried to get back into Skyrim but I have had to re-install the thing 5 times within 2 days already because a mod wrecked it. That said, the tools they offer are extremely good and make modding fairly easy. Not like other developers that intentionally gimp the ability to mod them.
The tons of mods for Skyrim, Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout have certainly added hundreds of hours to the playtime. I especially liked the Fallout 3 mod that let you build your own town. It was buggy as hell and broke heavily but it was fun when it worked.
Star Wars Empire At War was another game that was pretty friendly to mod. You could change the costs to build the ships and unit population caps so the game was more epic.

I pretty much look for mods as soon as I am thinking about getting a game because they can often fix things or add more depth the original game is lacking. Dayz started off as a mod to Arma 2 and managed to evolve into it's own game.

In my experience, Bethseda games easily trump everything else in the modding community they generate. I suppose the only real escalation for Bethseda to go any further would be to start a system where good mods can be sucked into the actual game as large collaborative DLCs rather than the piece-meal system which inevitably ends with conflicts. Something which the X developers did with the community mods.

Made a mod with some other dudes for Wargame: Red Dragon, because the backbone of the game is something really awesome but the way the economy is structured makes it too difficult to play in a fun way. Part of it was because it was going to be the last one of the series, so something awesome is going to be the best bet to make it last and be awesome. Also it was partially to convince them to make changes to the game economy by providing a positive example.

I've made various small mods over the years, and one big one for Space Empires V that completely changes the way the game is played. Not being able to mod would have severely increased my frustration at imbalances in certain games.

Lagmonster wrote:My three phases of modding Bethesda open-world games:

Phase One: Improvement. GUI tweaks, inventory tweaks. "Unofficial patches", texture packs.

Phase Two: Expansion. Custom, but lore-friendly new areas, buildings, characters. Weapon and armour packs.

Phase Three: Degeneration. Unrealistic and highly offensive character models, tac-nuke handguns, all enemies replaced with Pokémon and xenomorphs.

I just reached Phase Two with Immersive Armors and Weapons, etc in my current playthrough, but I feel that the slide into Phase Three is inevitable and at some point every modder will be sucked in.

I started off modding Space Empires IV back in the day while it was still cool. Than I skipped over and became an active part of the Civilization IV modding community. Mostly doing stuff for personal consumption though or small modules here and there. Just as I was about to try and get into the big mod teams everyone switched to CIV V. Been flip flopping through games since than looking for the next big thing.

I'm fairly conservative about modding, though I must say I enjoyed the HD mod for Thief Gold. I used a couple of minor fix mods for Dragon Age: Origins and used to play a lot of Warlock's Mod for Age of Wonders back in the day (over 10 years ago). Once I get around to playing Gothic 3, I'll use the community patch/mod.

Other than that, I use a number of mods with Dominions, which can be easily modded (static 2D sprites and a text editor are within anybody's capability). Even though I have a pretty thorough knowledge of most aspects of modding it (having written the modding manual), I don't actually mod the game myself, but there are a ton of nice mods, including a near complete set of Warhammer nations that many people enjoy. I use a few tweak ones mostly.

I mod games whose premise I enjoy, but whose implementation I find lacking. For instance, I first heavily used mods for Rome Total War, because it had an engine for tactical battles that in the vanilla game allowed cavalry to charge directly through prepared spearmen from the front and win.

For games that I have fewer issues with, like Hearts of Iron II, I don't care as much about mods.

The Dawn of War series were pretty fun with mods. Especially Dark Crusade. Lots of good times to be had there. Pretty hilarious when you build an Imperator Titan on one side of the map and it blows the bad guys completely off the other side of the map...

Only game I've ever modded myself is Dwarf Fortress. Started out with assorted minor balance tweaks, then moved on to something a bit more elaborate. Currently preparing to update it to the new version and hopefully nail the remaining bugs in v0.9.

Zaune wrote:Only game I've ever modded myself is Dwarf Fortress. Started out with assorted minor balance tweaks, then moved on to something a bit more elaborate. Currently preparing to update it to the new version and hopefully nail the remaining bugs in v0.9.

Wait, you are the guy that made that? Also, you like DF?

Speaking of modding DF. I my self have restricted my actions there to making the elves tamable, trainable and milkable. Might as well get some use out of them.

PS. If you don't want to use whole boulders of flint but still want to use flint why not just have an extra reaction that breaks it apart into how ever many pellets you want and than use these pellets? Something like the reaction that makes a stack of arrows out of a single piece of metal.

Yes, I am. And that's not a bad idea; I'll try it if the current approach doesn't pan out.

Though first I need to get my new rig built.

Zaune wrote:Yes, I am. And that's not a bad idea; I'll try it if the current approach doesn't pan out.

Though first I need to get my new rig built.

This said, have you considered how common or rare flint is as a stone? It's not something I usually watch out for as far as ores go so I don't know. But I foresee frustration if it's rare enough that players can't consistently count on being able to build firearms.