favorite game to mod outside of Doom?

[BBQgiraffe]

what's your favorite game to mod outside of Doom? I personally like to mod People Playground

[Vic Vos]

I tinker around in TES3 Construction Set and Fallout New Vegas's GECK sometimes.

[Doomkid]

Super Mario World is as easy to mod as Doom. It’s basically the side scroller equivalent of a perfect canvas to work with creatively, the way Doom is to classic FPS.

 

I’ve never modded it myself (yet), but Mario 64 has a very lively modding scene too. In fact, all of the NES, SNES and N64 Mario games seem to have a fair share of mods!

 

(is it obvious Doom and Mario have been my two favourite series since I was knee high to a pissant?)

[Endless]

I dont mod, sadly, but some of my favorite Modding communities are from Command and Conquer and The Elder Scrolls. I dont know if they are complicated, but they sure have a very active modding community.

[ReaperAA]

Outside of Doom engine games, definitely the Command and Conquer series. The older games of that franchise (particularly Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2) are very easy to mod (roughly as easy as DECORATE modding in Zdoom) as they are modded using .ini files that can be opened and edited with notepad.

 

Rules.ini is the main file but there are also other files like AI.ini, Art.ini, Sounds.ini etc. I even made a mod for Tiberian sun some years ago.

Edited June 29, 2020 by ReaperAA

[seed]

The HL and Elder Scrolls games, there's a ton of content out there for those games, some better, some crap, but modding both is easy which is how their modding scene is still around, similar to Doom.

 

Although I haven't touched an ES game in years since I am really fed up with the load order and mod conflicts bullshit. It is a very time consuming and frustrating job to troubleshoot this, and sometimes it comes with very mixed results - no success at all, I mean.

[Dexiaz]

Max Payne 2 & Freelancer

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Starbound for the sheer fact it can SOMEHOW take over 12 pages of mods and STILL work! (Seriously that game is an absolute tank when it comes to mods XD).

 

TES V:Skyrim is another one I love to mod since I can be a pony that runs around a village, dabbin' on them stormcloak fanboiz and chilllin' with Jarl Ballin', casting weird spells from my hands cause Skyrim.

[MFG38]

I actually haven't dabbled in much modding outside Doom, except for a few (failed) experiments with Starcarft 1/2. I do want to try Unreal modding in particular, perhaps also Quake.

[Doom_Dude]

I've dabbled in making maps for Quake, Quake II, Half-Life, Hexen (still in progress 1, 2 and 3), Hexen II (screen 1, 2, 3 and 4) Heretic, Heretic II (screen 1, 2 and 3). I also made a Balmora house mod and splash screen mod and I think I was working on a ruined tomb at one point for Morrowind. I made an Ayleid ruin and a Imperial Fort in Oblivion. Then in Skyrim I made a fortress. I made a gold colored player skin for Fakk II. I made a couple test chambers for Portal 2, which are on Steam of course. I made a texture pack for Minecraft (screen 1, 2 and 3) that I'm still working on. The majority of all that stuff is half-done, unfinished, and in some cases lost. The Hexen II stuff is gone for sure. Still working on a Hexen map and a Heretic episode.

 

I don't know what my favorite is for modding outside of Doom. I really enjoy making textures, so maybe it's Minecraft of all things. If I liked brush work more id say Quake / Quake 2. The Elder Scrolls can be fun to make things for, but putting together a ruin / fort / Imperial outhouse is limited by set pieces and some stuff just doesn't fit unless you jam in something to fix the seams... it can be fun but tedious as well. They need to come up with a tool that makes the seams weld together or something more flexible.

 

3 hours ago, seed said:

The HL and Elder Scrolls games, there's a ton of content out there for those games, some better, some crap, but modding both is easy which is how their modding scene is still around, similar to Doom.

 

Although I haven't touched an ES game in years since I am really fed up with the load order and mod conflicts bullshit. It is a very time consuming and frustrating job to troubleshoot this, and sometimes it comes with very mixed results - no success at all, I mean.

 

That is certainly a big pain. I don't know how many times I restarted a Bethesda game and there's mod conflicts, outdated mods or you're returning after not playing in a year and you have the game saying there's missing content / do you want to continue anyways. Sometimes you can't fucking remember if you were using a script extender or what and you go ahead with the load and your character is standing in the woods with no armor on, your cool sword is missing and it's like you were mugged and don't remember. So you run around the woods, half naked for a minute and then give up and go do something else.. lol Then, like you say there's the mod conflicts and random crashes....

Edited June 29, 2020 by Doom_Dude

[yakfak]

I've made levels for DROD: King Dugan's Dungeon, which is a really clever turn-based puzzle game. haven't released em though, my creations (as ever) are pretty much the opposite of what the community seems to value lol

 

like everyone else I have messed around with Morrowind's construction kit. the main problem is that it has no extra assets; all you can *construct* is endless variations of what the game already has - npc characters and items and dungeons and whatnot. it's not like Doom where everyone who grabs a level editor can find their own niche because the game is deliberately formal and clunky and it's hard to get action gameplay out of it unless you are over-levelled beyond the typical constraints of the system. There's joy to be had in creating a fleshed-out npc character with well-written dialogue responses to in-game topics people are liable to click on but, again, people are usually not downloading mods which add single characters to the game - they want quests and expanded graphics and player houses and all that. the stuff I wanna make always puts me out of sorts with the community at large

 

edit: i'm also sitting on hoards of self-designed cards for games like Magic: The Gathering and On the Edge, along with some solo variants with no competition involved.

[DSC]

6 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Super Mario World is as easy to mod as Doom. It’s basically the side scroller equivalent of a perfect canvas to work with creatively, the way Doom is to classic FPS.

 

I’ve never modded it myself (yet), but Mario 64 has a very lively modding scene too. In fact, all of the NES, SNES and N64 Mario games seem to have a fair share of mods!

 

(is it obvious Doom and Mario have been my two favourite series since I was knee high to a pissant?)

I've played quite some SMW ROM Hacks lately, and they are very impressive: for a game that wasn't supposed to be able to be further modified like Doom was with its editors, the community has made a lot of mindblowing stuff out of it. For example, JUMP1/2, now thats something you must check out if you want to see what the game's capable of. Who knows, perhaps I even might take a look at how you make a hack in the future.

[Doomkid]

If you decide to, just remember that Lunar Magic is the Doom Builder of Super Mario World!

[Dragonsbrethren]

I loved making custom GoldenEye missions, but really hated mapping for the game. As long as someone gave me a map, I could make a cool, authentic Rare-style mission in it.

 

Always liked dabbling with the Mega Man NES games (any of them), Castlevania, Super Mario Bros. 3, and the original Final Fantasy. These games all had excellent editors when I was first getting into ROM hacking, versus other games that were either very underdocumented, very convoluted to edit, or just too difficult to make good edits to.

[NeedHealth]

Over ten years I made a map for a game similar to elastomania and published it. Someone reviewed it and said it was too easy.

Edited June 29, 2020 by NeedHealth

[mrthejoshmon]

The only game I ever modded (as in made an actual mod/map) outside of Doom is Half-Life 2, you are never going to see what I made as long as I can hide it from the eyes of human kind.

 

In terms of installing mods, love me that crispy Fallout New Vegas mods, modified the game to be a tough as nails, debilitating, enemy infested hell scape where every battle is a tooth and nail scrap just to survive.

 

Fuck Bikini mods, I wanna have a bad time.

[Tony_Danza_the_boss]

GTA V for sure. It definitely takes a little longer than most games to get the mods up and running and compatible, but the amount of stuff you can add to that game and just screw around with in the world is awesome.

[JadingTsunami]

Seconding @ReaperAA's comment on the C&C series. Also, now that the source code to the originals (C&C and RA1) is available, there are many more possibilities for mods. To give an example of the potential for modding in RA2, there are a lot of positive reviews for Mental Omega, although I haven't played it myself it does look interesting.

 

For anyone interested in video game source code, I do recommend checking out the C&C series source release. I found it (in my opinion) well-commented and it had clear structure.

 

 

[FractalBeast]

Following @ReaperAA and @JadingTsunami, the C&C games. Though, I haven't modded in AGES, but I spend years on messing with the second generation of C&C games, Tiberian Sun/Firestorm and Red Alert 2/Yuri's Revenge. It never got anywhere, because I dreamed too big and would need hex editing to get things going the way I wanted. Then came the ARES .dll injections for Yuri's Revenge, but by then my interests in modding C&C had waned.

 

I still have a lot of untested tactical/strategy concepts and hypotheses bobbing around my head from those days that I'd like to see in a mod or videogame, but meh. Whatever.

[Good-Old]

Sorry if this sounds like an advertisement.

Necroing this thread for another game which has a modding community, Gene-Rally. It's a free to play top-down racing game which has a Forum for discussion and modding.

The game doesn't even require a good PC, it's from the early 2000s, so if you're not a stupid graphics head, give it a try.

The game can be customised a lot, and loading mods is ridiculously easy, just put them in a folder and load the game. No backups are required beacuse every mod has different namesnand they always add to the game's content and don't replace it.

The community has made a lot of mods, 2300+ tracks and 722+ cars but of course some of them are packs containing more than one car.

Looking forward to mod this, this is so cool.

 

[Jello]

I had to mod the weapons in Serious Sam 3 to make it playable. I did quite a few custom weapon skins for Soldier of Fortune 2 and the Weaponsmod v5. But those were all lost in a hard drive crash, and they were all for personal use.

[taufan99]

That looks interesting! Thanks for sharing. @Good-Old

[Good-Old]

On 7/20/2020 at 2:28 PM, Jello said:

I had to mod the weapons in Serious Sam 3 to make it playable. I did quite a few custom weapon skins for Soldier of Fortune 2 and the Weaponsmod v5. But those were all lost in a hard drive crash, and they were all for personal use.

I know the pain of hard drive crashes. I lost all of my childhood games in one of those crashes. I was able to find a handful of games from those. Don't think I will be able to find the other's names again. :(

[nostalgia]

Starcraft Brood War, also knows as Starcraft Remastered. So many content: RPGs, Bounds, whatever you could ever think of it was made in an "Use Map Settings" map. When I was a kid I didn't have internet, but I had an UMS compilation. I never needed anything else.

Don't mind the shameless promotion Even I made a map, A demake of the first mission of Starcraft II in Starcraft Remastered. This is just an example of the things that you can make with a little bit of creativity and a lot of time.

 

[uber]

It's not really a well-known game, but I really like modding an indie, retro styled RTS called Rusted Warfare. It started off as a simple game for android, then it got ported to PC along with modding capabilities that are actually the main focus of updates, since the game itself actually uses "modded" units (so to say) for its vanilla ones. It ended up getting a fairly dedicated modding community on discord, and even though I'm not really active anymore, I still play around from time to time.

My main project has been a little mod that adds a bunch of mech type units and adds details like recoiling barrels, casings, shell trails, etc. Some screenshots:

 

Plus I've actually worked with the dev to improve some units and even add new multiplayer maps. These are some thumbnails of my maps, ingame for everyone to play:

[Jello]

3 hours ago, nostalgia said:

Starcraft Brood War, also knows as Starcraft Remastered. So many content: RPGs, Bounds, whatever you could ever think of it was made in an "Use Map Settings" map. When I was a kid I didn't have internet, but I had an UMS compilation. I never needed anything else.

Don't mind the shameless promotion Even I made a map, A demake of the first mission of Starcraft II in Starcraft Remastered. This is just an example of the things that you can make with a little bit of creativity and a lot of time.

Completely forgot about that, but yeah when Starcraft and Brood War came out, I spent so much time making custom levels. Actually made a damn close to an entirely complete campaign, 10 levels. Had mission briefings, custom heroes. Again... fucking hard drives. It wasn't completely optimized, I would play the levels a few times to see if they were playable, and winnable, most were except for the last couple. I went a little overboard on them. But yeah, it was basically Terrans and Protoss against the Zerg. Kind of wish I still had it.

[Taw Tu'lki]

GTA Made in USSR

[hybridial]

On 6/29/2020 at 9:18 AM, seed said:

Elder Scrolls games

 

I lost like 400 hours of my life to modding Skyrim. I also spent a bunch of time with Morrowind and Oblivion at various points modding but not really playing them properly. 

 

But since I'd rather sweep that all under the rug, my main answer would be the Baldur's Gate games (and by extension Icewind Dale). I don't go over the top, I have a specific set I like to use but I'd struggle to play without them. I might as well go through some of those additions:

 

BG1 (most apply to BG2 as well) - 

 

Sirene, Tiefling Paladin of Ilmater - Also has content for the whole saga, she is the only outright player made party member I use, because she is extremely well done. I feel she's almost even a kindred spirit for a good aligned Bhaalspawn, similarly struggling with her demonic heritage and desire to do good in the world.

 

BG1 NPC project and Unfinished Business - originally BGEE did not have much talking between the characters; ironic because by Dragon Age I wanted them all to shut up. But I digress. These add more content for interaction, and the NPC project is interesting in particular because given it was released after BG2, elements of the mod were written with that in mind and it leads to bonding the stories together better. Unlike Siege of Dragonspear which I believed did a very poor job of that despite that being its main purpose. 

 

Artastrophe's Portrait art - Great work that covers the entirety of both games that I use, I also use them for custom parties in Icewind Dale. 

 

Rogue Rebalancing - Must have mod really, makes Thieves and Bards better and more attractive to use, and overhauls how theft works in the game giving you options to get out of being caught. 

 

Tweaks Anthology - just a whole lot of little things that make for a better play experience. Some of my most appreciated include multi-class clerics getting access to weapons of their other class instead of being locked to Cleric options where even butter knives are just a no-no to additional containers and items being available in the game, and maybe most importantly, to make it so that evil characters don't leave a party who has maxed their reputation, profitability and status because being too nice in a game that showers you in gold for it is just too much for characters who are evil on the chart, regardless of their character motivations that in almost every case should be happy with that (Except Dorn but Dorn is just edge lord evil). Granted, it wouldn't work on the other end of the spectrum, with this tweak good characters won't leave due to a bottomed out reputation. But to be honest, even if I played an evil character, I would still be a goody two shoes because the game just makes that more rewarding in general. I won't even complain about that, why would any world reward you for being scum? It's not like Mass Effect where both alignments still have the same goals. If your determined to become an evil God, wait till the end, they don't alignment lock the option :P. If you want to wear that... armour in BG2, you know, the one made from the flesh of an "exotic" animal, your rep could still be 20, you can wear it as long as you picked evil at the start. Its' weird, it both makes no sense yet far more sense than how other games do these things. 

 

BG2

 

Ascension and Wheels of Prophecy - Ascension is actually by David Gaider, and is his personal mod to improve on the ending of Throne of Bhaal. Wheels is an extension which adds a pretty major option to ally with another character whom would just be an enemy otherwise. Can't say too much here as every single thing would be a spoiler. 

 

Ding0's Quest Pack, Unfinished Business, Almateria's Restoration Project - Kind of a similar idea for all of them, the latter two specifically restore content that was cut, the former mainly adds more role playing options to existing quests. I don't use everything in Unfinished Business but on the whole these are very worth having. Biggest additions might be Quest Pack's options for a neutral character in an alignment heavy part of the game. 

 

Refinements - I have not used this one yet, I have added it for my next game. I only use its most major component, fully revised High Level Abilities. BG2 and Throne of Bhaal added the HLA concept which has nothing to do with the PnP rules (but some abilities ended up in D&D 3.0 as feats with the same names interestingly enough) but these were in the original form rushed and rough. Paladins and Monks had the fighters table, for example. Based on what I read in the readme, this mod gives the Monk and Paladin classes unique tables, and every single kit and multi class combination in the game gets at least one exclusive ability. It seems really cool, cannot wait to try it out properly.

 

Item Upgrade - adds a lot more to the crafting options. Adds upgrades for character specific items so Keldorn can weild his Hallowed Redeemer at + 5 enchantment among other things. Best aspect for me is getting to wield the already OP as hell Celestial Fury Katana at +5 so its even more OP as hell. Great additions really because BG2 is kind of about building characters to weild immensely powerful items rather than vice versa, which is kind of different and makes those items feel as legendary as they should be, instead of just being random loot you find. And building a Samurai with grandmastery in Katanas doesn't nerf you as bad in the end game. 

 

I love these games, whilst I did say in the thread the best game ever is the one I feel it is at the time, its often the Baldur's Gate saga. 

Edited July 22, 2020 by hybridial

[seed]

48 minutes ago, hybridial said:

I lost like 400 hours of my life to modding Skyrim. I also spent a bunch of time with Morrowind and Oblivion at various points modding but not really playing them properly.

 

Relatable. Out of my almost a thousand hours played, at least a hundred or so of them were spent modding Skyrim and fiddling with them afterwards to solve conflicts and crashes, all coming with very mixed results.

 

I sincerely hope that TES VI will have better mod support, or at the very least make the game throw more useful errors at the user when something goes wrong, makes debugging infinitely easier than constantly CTDing whenever something isn't right, how useful...

[Jayextee]

Heretic. ;)

I know this doesn't count, so serious answer: I was for a time active in the Sonic the Hedgehog hacking and modification scene over at Sonic Retro and some of my work can be seen in the first two zones of a hack called S-Factor: Sonia and Silver. Was originally intended for my own hack, 'Sonic One', but I lack the technical knowhow to do even simple things in ASM so I sorta quit and donated my work...