Post by wafflerevolution on Sept 7, 2013 22:14:30 GMT
by Apathetic_Prick
Who needs replayability when you can just make a new game?
In 1993, a game called Doom came out. Aside from workable LAN and modem-based Deathmatching (and in fact, the gaming term "deathmatch" allegedly comes from Doom) that kicked serious ass, it was also the first game to be openly modifiable.
Not only did iD allow it, that's part of what Doom was, so they openly encouraged it as well. Suddenly, we saw extra levels, new weapons graphics, new sounds, new texture packs, new enemy graphics, new skies and even new barrel graphics. Then another term was coined: "Total Conversion". Or TC for short. TC's changed the world from the ground up, and Aliens TC was the most recognised in that it completely changed the world, right down to added ambient sounds. TC's not only included new levels and graphics, but monsters, weapons, music and texture sets.
Doom is still modified today, but its face has changed entirely; Doom is at the forefront of a lot of moding firsts, including sourceports, which I will go into later on.
The main tools used to modify Doom (prior to sourceports) were Wintex (for importing and exporting graphics and sounds), DEUSF (needed to import main resources from the Doom directory file, call a .wad or WADfile), and the primary level tools were DEU, DEEP, and DoomCAD (which was based off of an early version of AutoCAD and was used by iDSoftware to build the levels for Doom and Doom 2. One of the hardest to use, as well). The primary editor used to change monster and weapon behaviour was a program called Dehacked (and there's also a Mac version called DeMacked).
After that came Heretic by Raven, using iD's Doom engine. There are mostly levels created for this although there is also some weapons mods as well - although there are also some sourceports such as jHeretic which also allows for the use of OpenGL and dynamic lighting.
Next up was Duke Nukem 3D which, until the advent of sourceports, was king of level design, although weapons and creature modders were on hard luck; the way that modding was set up with Duke Nukem 3D (with .con files), although it was easy to change damage and blast radius, it was next to impossible to alter fire rates or even projectile speeds. It was also very difficult to actually alter enemy behaviours as well, so most TC's tended to feel like Duke Nukem 3D, no matter how they were made.
As previously stated, Duke Nukem 3D did give level designers options that were not only unheard of, but unthinkable. Coloured lighting. Destructable sectors. Slopes. Moving sectors. Floor-over-floor. Horizontally opening doors. Not to mention interactivity that put you right on your ear. Simply put, the Build engine was a level designer's wet dream come true.
The primary modding tool for Duke Nukem 3D was the included Build Engine level builder. The CON files could be edited with Wordpad. I don't know what was used to import and export resources from the main game file (called a GRP or Group file).
After Duke Nukem 3D came two more Doom engine titles, Strife and Hexen. Unfortunately, Strife has next to nothing available for it (not even a sourceport), although Hexen has seen some minor modifications and sourceport(JHexen) - probably mostly for the sake of playing with it's new hub level system which does add a very cool element to level design because it allows you to make what is essentially an entire episode accessible from a central location.
After the Doom and Build Engines, editing changed, though. Instead of predefined options, games were being built on scripting languages, started with Quake and QuakeC.
In my opinion, Quake is one of the ugliest games to...grace the computer world. It wasn't much to look at, and was on the far side of non-interactive.It was however, one step away from true 3D, and was the first shooter with true floor-over-floor - as well as a scripting language for modders to crazy ove that was named (unsurprisingly) QuakeC.
QuakeC was the everymodder's bastion of hope because of the enormous amount of capability it would give them, especially in regards to the creation of creatures and weapons. Anyone who's ever used the Quake grappling hook or seen the original team fortress will have an idea of what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, QuakeC was a bugger to learn, so there's nowhere near the material available for Quake as there is for Doom or Duke Nukem 3D. Plus I think everyone was too busy "racing for the rocket launcher".
However, with the advent of game-based scripting languages, the modder's position was changed. They weren't just adding on; they now had the ability to make genuinely new material through and through. Quake was just the rough sketch of things to come.
Obviously things improved from a modding standpoint with Quake 2. Not only was the game not an eyesore to look at, it ran much better and offered more capabilities (due to the advent of the 3D processing - note, by the way, that GL Quake did not use OpenGL libraries and in fact used 3DFX Glide, as did GL Hexen 2), although from a level design standpoint it was a bit limited; outdoor areas would not run well on the Quake 2 engine unless heavily modified (which was demonstrated very nicely by Ritual in their release of a game called SiN).
After Quake came Unreal. Unreal was a much better (but more demanding) engine that offered a lot more capability with a much gentler learning curve; not only that, but the tools were right on-hand (UnrealED) care of Epic themselves. The most notable mod is probably Tactical Ops which is similar to Counter-Strike in that it's a realism-based modification (which uses the Unreal Tournament engine).
This is pretty much the blueprint for modern modding, as things haven't actually changed all that much since Half-Life - which, while it uses QuakeC based off the original Quake engine, has set some major standards, especially with Half-Life and valve's own Team Fortress C-l-a-s-s-i-cand Counter-Strike (which was co-created by a gentleman who calls himself "Gooseman", and was behind the Navy Seals mod for the original Quake).
With the releases of Quake 2, a lot of mods were based around multiplayer suchas Action Quake 2and Half-Life which are basically an interactive homage to John Woo.
Other notable multiplayer mods include Generations Arena and Syndicate (a defunct mod based off of Bullfrog's strategic actioner) for Quake 3 Arena.
As of 1997, a breath of fresh air was given to the older games. iD Software was the first company to release sourcecode to the general public for - you guessed it, Doom. The Build Engine would not be released to the general public until 2003 (because of the numerous titles still using it, such as Redneck Rampage, Blood, NAM and WWII GI).
Since then, Quake's sourcecode has also been released.
With the release of the sourcecode came sourceports. Doom, being the first, has many, but before I do that, I should probably reiterate as to what a sourceport is: It's a an engine upgrade. Plain and simple. What the sourceports have given to Doom are: Limitation removal (generally makes levels more stable and eliminates a lot of nasty bugs - especially "visplane overflow"), Mouse Aim and the elimination of the need to import primary resources from the Doom system files to make new graphics usable, which would drastically shrink down the final size of a mod, and also make installation a heck of a lot easier. These are the main things. Beyond that, they have added scripting languages to greatly enhance editing capabilities to a level similar to Quake's (ZDoom actually has level editing capabilities similar to Unreal, which is quite a leap).
The major ones are ZDoom, EDGE, GZDoom, Skulltag (which is also a mod), PrBoom (used in a lot of cross-hardware homebrew such as DS Doom, and it's alleged that PrBoom is what Doom360 was based from), Doomsdayand Legacy. These sourceports allow modders to go far beyond what iD had intended, allowing the creation of 3D floors, hub level design, slopes, moving sectors (eg. a conveyor belt), dynamic lighting, swimmable water - things that Doom was just not capable of back in 1993, especially since 3D acceleration only existed on the SNES care of the FX chip, and it is shoddy at best (although absolutely incredible back then) by today's standard's.
Duke Nukem 3D's first sourceport was called EDuke, which was coded by the creator of the titles NAM and WW2 GI, although I have yet to see anything actually complete development for it; there are numerous projects but nothing downloadable beyond demos. It mostly added the capability to actually alter creature and weapon behavior, as well as the ability top use true 3d floors like in Shadow Warrior. EDuke was released prior to the source code itself under permission from 3D Realms, and is actually an upgrade to Duke Nukem 3D 1.5 (Atomic Edition). It has since been upgrade to a true sourceport called EDuke32.
Another port is called CDuke, which introduces voxels (true 3d objects composed from pixels, basically)
Most other sourceports for Duke Nukem 3D are OS ports; xDuke, for instance, is for modded XBoxes.
The most commonly used port is JFDuke, which allows OpenGL and models, although work has stalled since 2005, which is a shame because there's also one for Shadow Warrior.
Quake's license went public much sooner than Duke Nukem's, interestingly enough - in 1999. The only real source port that I can find that's a genuine engine overhaul is called "Dark Places", which adds OpenGL, external audio file support (music), enhanced QuakeC scripting language, and it even supports Half-Life map files (Quake and Half-Life are driven by the same engine, don't'chaknow). I have not, however, seen anything done with this sourceport. It also runs in Windows and MacOS (but not the original MS-DOS).
Ultimately, this is the way of modding, but obviously, modding serves a higher purpose than changing a game's engine - it's about moulding and shaping a world that you like a lot to a world that you could like even more, and sourceports add even more capability to do so - and often make it easier, as well - and if it doesn't have it, you can simply add it. If developers didn't extend that ability to us, their games wouldn't last nearly as long as they have, with the exception of perhaps the latter two Elder Scrolls games. Morrowind really didn't need the Construction Kit, but obviously developers also want to see what we can do when the ball is passed to us, the gamer. Which most certainly is a good thing.
Resources (for your mod-grubbing pleasure):
Doomworld
Doomworld's /idgames Archives
New Doom
Planet Quake
Planet Duke
Planet Half-Life
Planet Unreal
Mod Database
Who needs replayability when you can just make a new game?
In 1993, a game called Doom came out. Aside from workable LAN and modem-based Deathmatching (and in fact, the gaming term "deathmatch" allegedly comes from Doom) that kicked serious ass, it was also the first game to be openly modifiable.
Not only did iD allow it, that's part of what Doom was, so they openly encouraged it as well. Suddenly, we saw extra levels, new weapons graphics, new sounds, new texture packs, new enemy graphics, new skies and even new barrel graphics. Then another term was coined: "Total Conversion". Or TC for short. TC's changed the world from the ground up, and Aliens TC was the most recognised in that it completely changed the world, right down to added ambient sounds. TC's not only included new levels and graphics, but monsters, weapons, music and texture sets.
Doom is still modified today, but its face has changed entirely; Doom is at the forefront of a lot of moding firsts, including sourceports, which I will go into later on.
The main tools used to modify Doom (prior to sourceports) were Wintex (for importing and exporting graphics and sounds), DEUSF (needed to import main resources from the Doom directory file, call a .wad or WADfile), and the primary level tools were DEU, DEEP, and DoomCAD (which was based off of an early version of AutoCAD and was used by iDSoftware to build the levels for Doom and Doom 2. One of the hardest to use, as well). The primary editor used to change monster and weapon behaviour was a program called Dehacked (and there's also a Mac version called DeMacked).
After that came Heretic by Raven, using iD's Doom engine. There are mostly levels created for this although there is also some weapons mods as well - although there are also some sourceports such as jHeretic which also allows for the use of OpenGL and dynamic lighting.
Next up was Duke Nukem 3D which, until the advent of sourceports, was king of level design, although weapons and creature modders were on hard luck; the way that modding was set up with Duke Nukem 3D (with .con files), although it was easy to change damage and blast radius, it was next to impossible to alter fire rates or even projectile speeds. It was also very difficult to actually alter enemy behaviours as well, so most TC's tended to feel like Duke Nukem 3D, no matter how they were made.
As previously stated, Duke Nukem 3D did give level designers options that were not only unheard of, but unthinkable. Coloured lighting. Destructable sectors. Slopes. Moving sectors. Floor-over-floor. Horizontally opening doors. Not to mention interactivity that put you right on your ear. Simply put, the Build engine was a level designer's wet dream come true.
The primary modding tool for Duke Nukem 3D was the included Build Engine level builder. The CON files could be edited with Wordpad. I don't know what was used to import and export resources from the main game file (called a GRP or Group file).
After Duke Nukem 3D came two more Doom engine titles, Strife and Hexen. Unfortunately, Strife has next to nothing available for it (not even a sourceport), although Hexen has seen some minor modifications and sourceport(JHexen) - probably mostly for the sake of playing with it's new hub level system which does add a very cool element to level design because it allows you to make what is essentially an entire episode accessible from a central location.
After the Doom and Build Engines, editing changed, though. Instead of predefined options, games were being built on scripting languages, started with Quake and QuakeC.
In my opinion, Quake is one of the ugliest games to...grace the computer world. It wasn't much to look at, and was on the far side of non-interactive.It was however, one step away from true 3D, and was the first shooter with true floor-over-floor - as well as a scripting language for modders to crazy ove that was named (unsurprisingly) QuakeC.
QuakeC was the everymodder's bastion of hope because of the enormous amount of capability it would give them, especially in regards to the creation of creatures and weapons. Anyone who's ever used the Quake grappling hook or seen the original team fortress will have an idea of what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, QuakeC was a bugger to learn, so there's nowhere near the material available for Quake as there is for Doom or Duke Nukem 3D. Plus I think everyone was too busy "racing for the rocket launcher".
However, with the advent of game-based scripting languages, the modder's position was changed. They weren't just adding on; they now had the ability to make genuinely new material through and through. Quake was just the rough sketch of things to come.
Obviously things improved from a modding standpoint with Quake 2. Not only was the game not an eyesore to look at, it ran much better and offered more capabilities (due to the advent of the 3D processing - note, by the way, that GL Quake did not use OpenGL libraries and in fact used 3DFX Glide, as did GL Hexen 2), although from a level design standpoint it was a bit limited; outdoor areas would not run well on the Quake 2 engine unless heavily modified (which was demonstrated very nicely by Ritual in their release of a game called SiN).
After Quake came Unreal. Unreal was a much better (but more demanding) engine that offered a lot more capability with a much gentler learning curve; not only that, but the tools were right on-hand (UnrealED) care of Epic themselves. The most notable mod is probably Tactical Ops which is similar to Counter-Strike in that it's a realism-based modification (which uses the Unreal Tournament engine).
This is pretty much the blueprint for modern modding, as things haven't actually changed all that much since Half-Life - which, while it uses QuakeC based off the original Quake engine, has set some major standards, especially with Half-Life and valve's own Team Fortress C-l-a-s-s-i-cand Counter-Strike (which was co-created by a gentleman who calls himself "Gooseman", and was behind the Navy Seals mod for the original Quake).
With the releases of Quake 2, a lot of mods were based around multiplayer suchas Action Quake 2and Half-Life which are basically an interactive homage to John Woo.
Other notable multiplayer mods include Generations Arena and Syndicate (a defunct mod based off of Bullfrog's strategic actioner) for Quake 3 Arena.
As of 1997, a breath of fresh air was given to the older games. iD Software was the first company to release sourcecode to the general public for - you guessed it, Doom. The Build Engine would not be released to the general public until 2003 (because of the numerous titles still using it, such as Redneck Rampage, Blood, NAM and WWII GI).
Since then, Quake's sourcecode has also been released.
With the release of the sourcecode came sourceports. Doom, being the first, has many, but before I do that, I should probably reiterate as to what a sourceport is: It's a an engine upgrade. Plain and simple. What the sourceports have given to Doom are: Limitation removal (generally makes levels more stable and eliminates a lot of nasty bugs - especially "visplane overflow"), Mouse Aim and the elimination of the need to import primary resources from the Doom system files to make new graphics usable, which would drastically shrink down the final size of a mod, and also make installation a heck of a lot easier. These are the main things. Beyond that, they have added scripting languages to greatly enhance editing capabilities to a level similar to Quake's (ZDoom actually has level editing capabilities similar to Unreal, which is quite a leap).
The major ones are ZDoom, EDGE, GZDoom, Skulltag (which is also a mod), PrBoom (used in a lot of cross-hardware homebrew such as DS Doom, and it's alleged that PrBoom is what Doom360 was based from), Doomsdayand Legacy. These sourceports allow modders to go far beyond what iD had intended, allowing the creation of 3D floors, hub level design, slopes, moving sectors (eg. a conveyor belt), dynamic lighting, swimmable water - things that Doom was just not capable of back in 1993, especially since 3D acceleration only existed on the SNES care of the FX chip, and it is shoddy at best (although absolutely incredible back then) by today's standard's.
Duke Nukem 3D's first sourceport was called EDuke, which was coded by the creator of the titles NAM and WW2 GI, although I have yet to see anything actually complete development for it; there are numerous projects but nothing downloadable beyond demos. It mostly added the capability to actually alter creature and weapon behavior, as well as the ability top use true 3d floors like in Shadow Warrior. EDuke was released prior to the source code itself under permission from 3D Realms, and is actually an upgrade to Duke Nukem 3D 1.5 (Atomic Edition). It has since been upgrade to a true sourceport called EDuke32.
Another port is called CDuke, which introduces voxels (true 3d objects composed from pixels, basically)
Most other sourceports for Duke Nukem 3D are OS ports; xDuke, for instance, is for modded XBoxes.
The most commonly used port is JFDuke, which allows OpenGL and models, although work has stalled since 2005, which is a shame because there's also one for Shadow Warrior.
Quake's license went public much sooner than Duke Nukem's, interestingly enough - in 1999. The only real source port that I can find that's a genuine engine overhaul is called "Dark Places", which adds OpenGL, external audio file support (music), enhanced QuakeC scripting language, and it even supports Half-Life map files (Quake and Half-Life are driven by the same engine, don't'chaknow). I have not, however, seen anything done with this sourceport. It also runs in Windows and MacOS (but not the original MS-DOS).
Ultimately, this is the way of modding, but obviously, modding serves a higher purpose than changing a game's engine - it's about moulding and shaping a world that you like a lot to a world that you could like even more, and sourceports add even more capability to do so - and often make it easier, as well - and if it doesn't have it, you can simply add it. If developers didn't extend that ability to us, their games wouldn't last nearly as long as they have, with the exception of perhaps the latter two Elder Scrolls games. Morrowind really didn't need the Construction Kit, but obviously developers also want to see what we can do when the ball is passed to us, the gamer. Which most certainly is a good thing.
Resources (for your mod-grubbing pleasure):
Doomworld
Doomworld's /idgames Archives
New Doom
Planet Quake
Planet Duke
Planet Half-Life
Planet Unreal
Mod Database