Modable games?

Asthane

I'm not really in the habit of buying PC games these days, so I figured I'd just ask: is there nothing worth modding (character-wise) anymore? There's little better for motivation than seeing your work running around in-game, but most of what I see these days seems to be aimed for and no farther than the portfolio (or fun, or competitions, nothing wrong with that). I'd kill for a decent RPG to mod, something like Oblivion, but y'know, ten times better by virtue of not BEING Oblivion. (Seriously, even if you could do character work for it with any effectiveness, the game is a headache and a half in every respect, I could fill a blog).

Between proprietary physics/skeletons making exporters much harder to hack up and multiplayer games with anti-cheat content-checks, is there really nothing beyond full-blown 'mod projects' that never get anywhere anyway?

Shady-D

half life 2 is pretty doable?

CheapAlert

You end up REPLACING an existing character in HL2DM than adding

UT2k4 has nice player model support, limited support for custom player sounds though

Severity might have custom player support coming based from Quake3's source, but I dunno what will come out of that since i'ts not out anyway

Tulkamir

Dungeon Siege (And DS2), Neverwinter Nights (And NWN2), Oblivion is great, though apparently you don't like it, UT2k4 is a bit out of date for shooters, but UT3 is coming soon, it should be awesome, Doom3/Quake4.

I have a buddy who prefers modding Morrowind over Oblivion, so you can try that if you aren't liking oblivion.

There's more on top of that. Lots out there if you look around.

buddy the designer

F.E.A.R. SDK is pretty awesome toolset (I'm slowly working on a small sp map). I switched to it from Source and I like a lot of features in it

Asthane

Hah, don't get me started on Oblivion It's not that I don't like it exactly, it's just that there pretty much isn't a single part of it that I wouldn't change, and most of what I would is impossible to change or too rooted in the core game anyway. Honestly, if I tried to mod Oblivion I'd probably never get around to the actual <u>art</u> part

Thanks for the suggestions all around though, pretty much what I expected. It's too bad we don't see more standard 3d file formats; so many of the games that could use a little more love for their art assets (or frog grenades, whichever) never even consider releasing their tools. Sure, it would look bad if fans kept 'fixing' your art, but that never stopped Morrowind

Richard Kain

I've found that very few games support the plug-in-player style of character modding these days. It really is a shame. After all, that mechanic is what Polycount itself is based off of. Naturally, Polycount has expanded to include all manner of game-related art. But in the beginning, it was the Quake II Player Model Pack. I really loved the plug-in-player system from Quake II. Drag-and-drop a folder into the player directory, and your new multiplayer model just...worked. No unzipping files, no modding, no adding or subtracting from script or config files. Just copy and paste. Ah well...

I'm currently tooling around with the NeoAxis engine. NeoAxis It uses the Ogre3D engine for visuals, and the Ogre3D .mesh format for models. I've found it very easy to get my own models into this format. Also, NeoAxis comes with a pretty decent template for first-person shooter titles. It also features a great resource editor and map editor. Visual editors are a big plus in my book. Being able to preview levels without having to recompile anything is a huge time saver.

The engine is still a little weak in terms of controlling animations. But its physics modeling is surpringly capable and easy to work with. And its rendering engine through Ogre3D has all kinds of features and expandability. (full support for multi-pass rendering, normal maps, transparancies, and even in-game GUIs...Doom3-style) If you're looking to make a quick demo to showcase some of your 3D work, I'd definitely give it a look see. I believe its free for non-commercial use.

coldwolf

I've been eyeing Fear--I really want to tear my environs apart with that badass particle system. And PARALLAX MAPPAGE!!! oh em gee I love those things, they're so much better than normal maps.

So yeah, I've been working with Hammer (Source) and it's not bad for the most part, but "meh".

I practically creamed my pants when I saw that new Crysis editor. That thing opens up a whole new dimension of possibility. Can't wait for that game.

CrazyButcher

we are working on a "crysis for poor" like editor for our engine. some early shots can be found here, although we are in the process of rewriting.
http://www.luxinia.de/index.php/Tools/WorldEditor

and small testvid on enviro lighting (dynamic sky...) here:
http://crazybutcher.cottages.polycount.com/wip/skytest.avi

the tech used is "oldschool" and runs fine under GeForce3/4 hardware. The NeoAxis guy really did a very good job, and we aim for similar with a bit more ease and more script oriented.

mikebart

Ive been into modding for doom3, quake4 for the past couple of years, I mostly just use it to display my models in, but I've seen some pretty amazing stuff done in this engine.
Having missed out on the quake3arena modding scene I found the learning curve pretty bumpy to say the least, I still recognised alot of QERadiant(now Doom3edit) from modding quake2 but I had alot to catch up on especially with the shaders which is something I still strugle with a bit.

Theres heaps of info out there on modding for doom3/quake4 and its still pretty current technology, if you up the polys and texture size and add more lights than origionaly recommended, you can get it looking pretty good and with a decent framerate on a modern rig.

have a look at www.doom3world.org