Video game modding

For case modders, see Case modding

File:GTA Vice City modding - 2004 Banshee by Suction Testicle Man.jpg

2004 Banshee car modification for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - replacement of original Banshee.

Mod or modification is a term generally applied to computer games, especially first-person shooters and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public, and can be entirely new games in themselves. They can include new items, weapons, characters, enemies, models, modes, textures, levels, story lines 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 (the TES-Construction Set), 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 or continue the success of the original game. 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".

Recently, computer games have also been used as a digital-art medium. See artistic computer game modification.

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. Team Fortress, one of the most popular mods, is a partial conversion of Quake.

One thing that many gamers/developers become confused on is whether a partial conversion still counts as a mod. Well in the literal sense, any change to a game which changes it from its off the shelf condition is a mod. So even a new map, create by a general user, is still a mod. The confusion seems to come from maps actually being called new maps, and not counted as a mod, which is often the name given to edits such as new GUIs.

Total conversion

A total conversion is a mod of an existing game that (usually) replaces 100% of the artistic assets in the original game, as well as a good deal of the gameplay. Many games provide players with the ability to edit the game's many elements, for example levels, sounds, enemies or weapons. Most modifications are limited in scope, resulting in a partial conversion. Total conversions are much less common, mainly due to the large amount of development and man-time needed to bring a whole project together. Often 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.

In contrast, partial conversions may add new maps, or models, skins, and weapons. Some changes may be even smaller, such as changing the variables for physics, movement, or weapon qualities. In the Unreal engine, these smaller changes are sometimes implemented as mutators which can be selected in the administrator menu. Other mutators not considered mods include those that provide anti-cheater, map voting, and lag-free (client-side hit computation) functions.

Some total conversions can end up in an unexpected place, such as changing Dungeons and Dragons into a game where the player meets Japanese businessmen.

An example of a well-known total conversion is Counter-Strike, which is based on the Half-Life engine. Half-Life is a linear, single-player first-person shooter with some puzzle solving, where you take the place of a character named Gordon Freeman. The Earth 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 settings 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. Practically the only thing that Counter-Strike has in common with Half-Life is that Counter-Strike originally required Half-Life to be installed for it to run.

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 3, or the D-Day: Normandy mod for Quake 2.

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, 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 Valve Hammer Editor which is used to create maps for Half-Life and its sequel, Half-Life 2.

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. This shows that the word 'mod' has been picked up into language and bent in all ways thinkable.

Portability Issues

For cross-platform games, mods written for the Windows version have not always been compatible with the OS X and/or Linux\GNU/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 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 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 mods for selected games

Battlefield series

Since its release in 2002, Battlefield 1942 has spawned a large number of modifications, especially total conversions. Battlefield mods tend to focus on changing the theme and balance (such as more realistic) rather than changing the game mission (conquest game mode). The highlight of most mods are unique vehicles and their use. Only a few mod teams started to port their creations to the Vietnam game, which may be one of the reasons the game sold relatively poorly in comparison to Battlefield 1942. A large amount of mod's have been released for Battlefield 2, and many of the older mods from Battlefield 1942 that were reluctant to move to the Battlefield Vietnam engine have decided to move to Battlefield 2 instead. (See List of Battlefield 1942 mods and List of Battlefield Vietnam mods for a longer listing.). EA's Special forces, Euro force and armoured fury expansions are seen by many gamers as commercial partial mod's. A large amount of mods are expected for the latest game in the series battlefield 2142

• Desert Combat
• Surreal
• Point of Existence

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. Some of the more popular mods include:

• Burden of 80 Proof
• The Cassandra Project
• Hotel Carone
• Redsun 2020
• Zodiac

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.

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. Classic Doom 3 is a mod which overhauled the original episode of Doom, Knee Deep in the Dead, for use in the Doom 3 engine. 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.

The Elder Scrolls

For the PC versions of both Morrowind and 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. Some of the more notable mods are:

• GIANTS - A very popular modification that adds over 200 new monsters to Morrowind.
• Better Bodies - A modification that improves the model quality of Morrowind's NPCs.
• Emma's Children - A modification that adds children NPCs to Morrowind.
• Tamriel Rebuilt - A large modification aimed at rebuilding the entire continent of Tamriel according to lore.
• Silgrad Tower - A modification that adds a large portion of Morrowind's mainland province west of Vvardenfell.

Grand Theft Auto (GTA) Series

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). Modification on was not easy any mistake could lead to some bizarre results or worse, crashing the game. The mods range from replacing vehicles, character and buildings to a total conversion. Most of these mods are created independently and often made as a hobby so the quality may vary depending on author's experiences and skills.

Some of the examples are:

• GTA: Myriad Island - It claimed to be the largest GTA mod and it comes with new maps and cars[2].
• GTA: Long Night Zombie - Came earlier before Capcom's Dead Rising. It converts Vice City with an original storyline, turning pedestrians and gangs into zombies and eliminating daytime.[3]
• GTA: Liberty City - (Not to be confused with Liberty City Stories) It converts Vice City to GTA III using the newer Vice City engine. The conversion replaces the lead character and maps while retaining the pedestrians and gangs. The improvements over the original GTA III include better graphics and faster gameplay.[4]
• GTA: State Of Liberty - A mod that has combined all 3 GTA Cites (SA+VC and LC) on the Vice City Engine. [5]
• Hot Coffee mod - The infamous mod that allowed players to play a mini-game in which they had sex with the main characters girlfriend.

Half-Life and Half-Life 2

Mods for the Half-Life games range from simple mutators 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. (See List of Half-Life mods and List of Half-Life 2 mods for longer listings.)

• Counter-Strike (CS)
• Day of Defeat (DoD) - Both Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat were so successful, they were bought by Valve, Half-Life's developer, and put into full game production.
• Insurgency (INS)
• Nuclear Dawn (ND)
• Natural Selection (NS)
• Science and Industry (SI)
• Firearms (FA)
• The Specialists (TS)
• Team Fortress Classic (TFC)
• Garry's Mod (GMOD) - Garrys Mod's popularity has caught the attention of Valve, which now has leased the Source Engine to Garry. GMOD 10 will cost $10.
• Hidden: Source (HS)
• Iron Grip: The Oppression (IG)
• SourceForts
• Dystopia
• Obsidian Conflict

Halo and Halo 2

Two of the most famous mods for Halo and Halo 2 were the "Golden Warthog" and "Golden Banshee". These were, and still are by some, believed to be easter eggs in the game; however bungie has disproved this myth on several occasions.

Halo 2 has always had modding issues on Xbox Live, where modders would get a two month free trial to Xbox Live and create a modded account for six hours. They would play matchmaking with a group of friends to try and gain levels. Bungie has introduced many methods of trying to stop modders, which included banning the whole group, normal players included.

Some example Matchmaking mods for Halo 2 are things like "auto aim", where the player needs to simply hit the trigger to kill his enemies, "fast running" and "high jumping", where the player can run and jump many times faster/higher then normal. Most modders have automatic weapons that can fire continuously with no ammuntion depletion. Modders can also change where players spawn (or resurrect after they die) on the map. This can be used in conjunction with auto aim to fix the game for the modder; he/she sits under the spawn and holds the trigger as his enemies spawn. The game is ended, and the modder continues to play his remaining time in matchmaking.

Although bungie bans modders from matchmaking, it does not ban them from playing custom games with people on their friends list. Custom games are user-created games where players join groups or "parties" and play together under their own rules. Many modders, once banned from matchmaking, will make more interesting and fun mods to play with friends in custom games. These mods can include things from flying tanks and turrets to weapons that shoot things like rockets and grenades.

There is also a large Halo demo modding community.

Max Payne

There are a lot of interesting mods for the original Max Payne game. Some of the completed ones are:

• Kung fu 3.0 - A stunning kung fu engine for Max Payne. Many mods use this engine or build on it and expand it.
• Polar Bear - A funny short TC where the main character is a polar bear.
• Katana - An excellent TC with many levels, new characters and an amazing katana fighting engine.
• Max Payne @ University - An outstanding TC, which unfolds a possible background story on Max Payne, while he is post-graduating from the polytechinque University of Patras on Informatics.

There are also some mods currently in advanced stages of development.

• The Real World - A cool looking mod inspired by the Matrix Series.
• Dawn of the Dead - An atmospheric and haunting-looking mod based on the 1978 Zombie Horror classic Dawn of the Dead. The mod follows closely an uncut DVD version of the movie.
• Matrix Revolutions - Another very promising mod inspired by the Matrix Series.

Quake III Aren]

Some notable mods for the Quake III engine:

• Bid For Power - A Dragon Ball Z style martial arts combat game.

• Challenge ProMode Arena (also referred to as ProMode) - A competition oriented deathmatch mod, adding the best elements from all the games of the Quake series to Quake III Arena.

• DeFRaG - A mod in which players can train their trickjump skills and compete in several kinds of parkour.

• Excessive Plus - All weapons mods excessive, turning each game into a crazy fragfest, including advanced new visual layouts, new game-types and a new name code system.

• Generations Arena - A class-based modification in the spirit of the original Generations mod for Quake II, which allows players to fight as a character from previous id Software games using its own weapons and more.

• Loki's Revenge CTF - A team-based Capture the Flag modification and tribute to the popular Quake II modification Loki's Minions CTF.

• OSP - Orange Smoothie Productions, an enhancement modification to the original game which added features without altering the core gameplay.

• Reaction Quake 3 - A team-based total conversion, based on the popular Quake II modification, Action Quake 2.

• TrueCombat - A modern counter-terrorist shooter featuring modern weapons followed up by a mod for Wolfenstein Enemy Territory called TrueCombat Elite which features many advancements on the aging QuakeIII engine including simulated HDR effects.

• Urban Terror - Team based combat with modern firearms.

• Weapons Factory Arena - A Capture the Flag class-based modification, sequel of Quake II's modification Weapons Factory.

The Sims 2

There are many websites offering downloads of objects, lots and skin textures for The Sims 2. Some sites offer more cheating objects, that when used, refill a sim's needs or lets you choose a promotion etc. A well known mod site is Modthesims2.com.

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

Mods for Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy include:

• Movie Battles II - A "Last Man Standing", objective oriented total conversion. Reworks the siege game type into a class based, point allocation system. Features a totally reworked saber system, considered by many to be far superior to Jedi Academy's. Classes include Soldier, Elite Trooper, Jedi/Sith, Mandalorian, Clone Trooper, ARC Trooper, Droideka, Super Battledroid, Hero, Bounty Hunter and Wookiee. Featured maps include Duel of the Fates, TantiveIV, Jabba's Palace, Cloud City, Hoth and Tatooine.

Makermod - Designed by a player nicknamed Toast, this mod allows you to build and use cheats on a Multiplayer server. The building part of the mod is used for roleplaying, and making houses, ships, bars, jails, and other things. This mod can be unstable at times for it is still in the beta and is still being worked on. This mod has a major limitation with the number of entities jedi academy can hold at once. The max is 1024, but with 64 reserved for the players and corpses, and needs at least 200 entities free so it doesn’t crash when the game creates temporary entities for sounds and effects. Most sp maps have around 500-700 entities already used, so this mod can easily crash if the entity limit is exceeded, weather by mistake or by players maliciously spawning for this purpose. Also, it has a known history of having the regular players abuse the building feature by purposefully screwing up other peoples work and blocking spawn points. This should be the primary mod of choice if you wish to have fun building on your server. Forums are at http://www.makermod.com/

Lugormod - A mod originally made by a player nicknamed Lugor, and continued upon by TGHHG120097FGE. The mod has a money system and an advanced player registration and profession system. The goal of the mod is to collect money by competing against other players to level up your player. Admins can use its building system (which is considered superior to makermod by some, but widely agreed to be more difficult to use) in order to create quests and interactivity in the maps for players to use to get more credits, or possibly has homes the player can rent (this feature is specific to the newer version of lugormod called “T2”). This should be the primary mod of choice if you wish to have a competitive gaming environment. It also has many other game types, such as instagib (infinite ammo, slow firing ‘beam of death’ for every player), battlegrounds (capture control points to make the other teams points go down), and ghost (a player gets a powerful weapon and cloaking, and must defend against all other players. Whoever kills the ‘ghost’ becomes the ghost).

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

File:KotOR0087.jpg

Darth Malak sports a modified costume in this mod for KotOR 1

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR) modding began at the Holowan Laboratories forums, which are part of the StarWarsKnights.com site, by the end of the year 2003 when some users started releasing small mods using tools made primarily for Neverwinter Nights. On January 19, 2004, Fred Tetra, a professional software engineer and member of the StarWarsKnights.com forums, released a first version of KotOR tool, a utility which made access, extraction and editing of KOTOR's textures, models, scripts, etc more accessible to the general public. Since then, the modding community got more organized, Kotor Tool has developed into a nearly complete toolset and others such as tk102 and cchargin have also created several utilities to add more possibilities to KotOR modding and making it appealing to KotOR fans of all ages and backgrounds.

KotOR's override folder allows easy activation of these edited files because when those files are put into the override folder the folder (as the name suggests) overrides the games original files and uses the edited files if the file is the same name and type that the original is.

Some sample KotOR mods taken from different areas of modding:

• Darth Revan Reincarnate by Lil'Jawa. While fairly basic, the was first mod publicly released for the game. The mod allows the player to begin the game as a Jedi and select his alignment. Several more developed mods released afterwards were based on this mod.
• Talchia's hardcore mod tweaks the AI to make the game more difficult.
• Holowan Plug-In by T7Nowhere: this mod is a compilation of many early Kotor mods made by different modders to ensure compatibility. It includes reskins, an arena for battles, recruitable characters, a few additions to the storyline and tons of new items.
• Darth333's All-In-One force powers mod for KotOR 1 is also a compilation of mods made by several modders but this time it includes new force powers and items.
• Redhawke's Planet ORD Mandell adds a new planet and sidequest to the game.
• Prime and bneezy's Imperial Stormtrooper Conversion mod transforms the Sith Soldiers into Stormtroopers.
• The Ultimate Saber Mod for KotOR 2 is a series of new lightsaber models and includes some mini quests.
• Allronix's "Dialogue Pack" Mod restores a large portion of Juhani's dialogue cut from the game, and adds new dialogue options for the player to choose.
• JdNoa restored a cut ending for Darkside Female players, allowing the PC to turn on her Sith apprentice and die with Carth aboard the Star Forge.

A nearly exhaustive list of KotOR mods sites, including modders personal websites can be found here. Several tutorials and most modding tools can be found at the Editing Forums at StarWarsKnights.com.

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.

A few examples of some of the best fan missions available:

• Calendra's Cistern
• Calendra's Legacy
• Equilibrium
• Gathering at the Inn
• The Inverted Manse
• Raid on Washout Central
• Ranstall Keep
• The 7th Crystal

For a complete listing of fan missions available, visit Cheap Thief Missions. To acquire all available fan missions without having to download them, check The Keep Of Metal And Gold.

Total Annihilation

Total Annihilation (TA) is one of the most moddable games there is, with already over 2,400 custom units, one hundred mods, and a dozen custom races available for download. Some well-known TA mods and total conversions:

• Absolute Annihilation - Compilation of elements from Uberhack, XTA, GMTA, TAUIP, UTASP, Evolva and others.
• Uberhack - First and most popular mod.
• TA Evolva Project - Replace original TA's 3D models with more detailed ones.
• Axis and Allies TA - Replacing TA units with extremely accurate World War II units and structures.
• Star Wars TA - Massive Star Wars total conversion.
• TA: Final Frontier - Space total conversion featuring the Arm Space Navy and Corespace.
• TA: Independence War - Space total conversion featuring The Federation, The Corporation, The Raiders, and The Aliens.
• The Lost Legacy - Massive race with over 100 units
• The Rumad Race
• Emergency Pack - A pack of smart units.
• [6] - Not only is TA highly modable, but the Swedish Yankspankers(SYs) created an entirly new game engine to run the same content, called TA Spring.

Unreal Tournament 2004

• Total conversion mods, often with totally different gameplay to the original Unreal Tournament 2004:
  • Alien Swarm - Top-down coop total conversion where a team of up to 8 marines battle their way through alien infested levels. Alien Swarm's fan community created a full expansion called The Telic Campaign, a mod of a mod.
  • Red Orchestra - Overall grand finale winner of the Make Something Unreal mod competition, a multi-phased contest with one million dollars in prizes sponsored by Epic Games and NVIDIA to foster the creation of mods.
  • UnWheel & Carball are car games, with many different gametypes such as racing and car soccer
  • Metaball
  • Air Buccaneers
  • COR
  • Uskaarj
  • Frag Ops
  • Deathball
  • Killing Floor - a horror co-op zombie shoot 'em up with very detailed environments.
  • Hollow Moon
• More conservative mods include Jailbreak, Wehtam Invasion III, and Clone Bandits.
• The Editor's Choice Edition pack includes the aforementioned Red Orchestra, Alien Swarm, Air Buccaneers, Frag Ops, Jailbreak, and Clone Bandits, as well as ChaosUT2, Domain, Rocketeer, Deathball, and the UnWheel caste of gametypes.
• There is an RPG mod which adds a skill based leveling-up system into the game and is commonly used in online games to give the players rewards after getting to a certain amount of points needed.
• The Unreal Tournament Revolution mod was an attempt to give UT 2004 the feel and game play of the original UT. Unfortunately, this mod is now difficult to find. However, it is possible that a similar mod might be released for UT 2007. UTR Mod Download

Warcraft 3

Warcraft 3 stores it's main game data in two files war3.mpq and war3x.mpq. An mpq file is a Blizzard compression format which can be accessed by warcraft and various internet programs (eg winmpq).

Most 'mods' in Warcraft 3 are heavily modified maps. This is so that the rest of the game doesn't become corrupted. The map are files are also MPQ archieves and so if you include a game file(eg sound file) in the map it will use that instead. Modding in the expansion is easier because of the more powerful editor which includes the ablities to edit data files and import files into the map.

There various sites on the net where you can get infomation related to Warcraft mods. One such site is the file site: www.wc3sear.ch

This information has been found from various sites on the internet.

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 (see Simtropolis). The release of the BAT (Building Architect Tool) allows users to create their own buildings in a free 3D modelling program, and export them to the game with the Lot Editor.

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, Max Payne 2, Half Life 2, World of Warcraft, and Grand Theft Auto, to name a few.

Fox'ing

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. 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).

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. 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. (Using a mod to cheat is now considered as "Hacking")

External links

• BeyondUnreal.com Mods Mods subsite for the Unreal series of games
• Doom Wad Station Thousands of mods (many with reviews and screenpics), total conversions and megawads for Doom and Doom 2
• GamesModding, A huge list of modding tutorials
• GTAGarage.com GTANet's Grand Theft Auto Modifications Database Website
• Macologist.org Mod conversion and downloads for the Apple Macintosh platform.
• The Modding Theater
• Mod the Sims 2 A very popular site used for uploaded modded objects or skins. You need a free profile to download these mods.
• Mod Database
• Planet Elder Scrolls (formerly Morrowind Summit), one of the most popular Morrowind modding and news sites and the common repository for mods.
• PlanetUnreal hosted mods
• Valve's main Source Editing Reference.