Which FPS games have the biggest mapping communities?

[Drilbur]

I always thought Half Life would be immediately behind Doom, then Duke Nukem or Quake.

[Doomkid]

Has counter strike mapping really died that much? I remember a time where it would have been #2 behind Doom easily, or at least it seemed that way back then. The times they are a changin'.

I'd be curious of a broader approach: For all video games, regardless of genre, which has the most active modding community? I have no doubt Doom would still be top dog, but thanks to Lunar Magic, there's a nice number of Mario World mods out there, some of which are really impressive. I'm sure that'd be a contender for Duke3D mapping, which I honestly thought was mostly dead.

Aren't the Halo games modded fairly actively as well?

[Tuxlar]

Zed said:

Also, without getting into what others have said, I think Minecraft mods are slightly different from Doom mods. I mean, Minecraft is about creating worlds, while in Doom it's about modding the world where you play. I really haven't played Minecraft that much, but it seems that the sole purpose of the game means that mods created for both differ, at least slightly, in what they offer, right?

There are 'fps' mods for minecraft. Sandbox is only the default mode to play... which even still is played in First Person, and occasional involves Shooting.

[Soundblock]

Zed said:

Also, without getting into what others have said, I think Minecraft mods are slightly different from Doom mods. I mean, Minecraft is about creating worlds, while in Doom it's about modding the world where you play. I really haven't played Minecraft that much, but it seems that the sole purpose of the game means that mods created for both differ, at least slightly, in what they offer, right?

EDIT: Now that I read my post, it doesn't make a lot of sense. What I mean is that in Minecraft, being a sandbox game, you have more freedom to create your own content, because that's the whole point. In Doom and other FPS games, you create content based on what is already availabe, which seems to impose certain limits on what you can create.

At the very least, the Doom mapping community is an interesting precursor to the Minecraft phenomena. There's a common creative nerve of building and playing your own gaming architecture that no other games can really approach the size or thoroughness of.

[Clonehunter]

Doomkid said:

I'd be curious of a broader approach: For all video games, regardless of genre, which has the most active modding community? I have no doubt Doom would still be top dog, but thanks to Lunar Magic, there's a nice number of Mario World mods out there, some of which are really impressive. I'm sure that'd be a contender for Duke3D mapping, which I honestly thought was mostly dead.

I believe Megaton's Edition has been bringing it back somewhat, due to the Workshop for the game and a Level Editor included in the game's purchase. Shadow Warrior is also getting the treatment, which will possibly give that game more mod hits too. There was also some recent zombie game from three years back that was made very Duke Nukem 3D (Like a TC, which was released a s free standalone game for PC and PSP).

[methy]

Clonehunter said:

I believe Megaton's Edition has been bringing it back somewhat, due to the Workshop for the game and a Level Editor included in the game's purchase. Shadow Warrior is also getting the treatment, which will possibly give that game more mod hits too. There was also some recent zombie game from three years back that was made very Duke Nukem 3D (Like a TC, which was released a s free standalone game for PC and PSP).

Megaton brought back some popularity to the game, and the workshop to usermaps. Only about 4 new mappers came out of Megaton though. The problem with Megaton though is that its workshop doesn't support mods, and that plenty of mods/maps are EDuke32-only and don't work with it. Also due to some technical things it CAN be a pain to make your already existing map work and look PROPERLY in Megaton.
Also, very few Steam users care enough to look at what's beyond Megaton and the workshop ; so it doesn't actually make the active community much bigger.
The level editor that comes with Megaton is very dated ; and, the way it is setup in the Megaton folder, doesn't even work as is.

So in conclusion it brought some new mappers but not many. It however did bring tons of new (or old) players. 2 of my maps got downloaded 5000 times on the workshop.

For the zombie game, you mean Zombie Crisis. A good little zombie game, kind of wolf3D-style. But there are other Duke mods that became more popular than that, whether they are DN3D related or EDuke32 standalone games; like the DNF 2013 mod (over 26k downloads on moddb) or Slender Woods (38k downloads on moddb).

I'm very positive we do have more maps/mods released than Quake, but a less than Doom. Not sure about other games, I'm thinking Half Life could be somewhere up there...

As for Shadow Warrior, one guy still makes maps for it and singlehandely is the SW community.
However, there are things that will happen for SW in a near future makes me think SW mapping might pick up a little bit, but it doesn't help that SW mapping is really hard and not user friendly at all, with little to help you with it.
The Blood community is bigger but it's still only a handful of mappers. I'd say maybe 5 active mappers.

[Doominator2]

I really wish there were lots of maps for Half-life 2.

[negke]

There are quite a few releases for HL2 actually - and more coming steadily, albeit at a slow pace. Check PlanetPhillip.

[Doominator2]

negke said:

There are quite a few releases for HL2 actually - and more coming steadily, albeit at a slow pace. Check PlanetPhillip.

Hey thanks never knew about this, why do most of the maps require episode 2 though?

[reality 2.0]

@doominator2
half-life 2 episode 2 has a newer version of the source engine compared to half-life 2 and half-life 2 episode 1. Also, it has extra textures, models, weapons, and enemies, ect along with everything from the previous half-life games. It's kinda like how everyone uses doom 2 for doom maps these days.

[MeetyourUnmaker]

Team Fortress 2 has a pretty big mapping community especially considering how complicated and half-broken hammer editor seems to be plus the fact Valve doesn't really seem to directly support TF2's custom maps.

[Magnetick]

MeetyourUnmaker said:

Team Fortress 2 has a pretty big mapping community especially considering how complicated and half-broken hammer editor seems to be plus the fact Valve doesn't really seem to directly support TF2's custom maps.

Hammer isn't that bad.

If you want a truely bad editor, the Unreal Development Kit is looking right at you. Things that should be all too simple are turned into drawn out ordeals, it's incredibly unstable and crashes ridiculously often.

The Unreal Engine is also pretty much an industry standard. I've seen developers stand by it when they didn't completely understand how to use it, ended up releasing a buggy mess that needed a far beefier computer then it should of. They'll keep on using it too.

That reminds me, no matter how much Unreal devs try, it's nearly impossible to get a successful modding community for a game using the Unreal Engine. It's like they added in "Casual user repellent" or something. Casual users can figure out Hammer much easier.