Modding and Tweaking, anyone?

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Anyone else mod and tweak their games endlessly? Whether installing what you see and like, or making your own content, do any others here feel a need to make a game really theirs? Maybe a need to bring in what you know should be there, even?

I personally like changing things to prolong the newness of games both favored and unfavored. Textures, sounds, and a little mesh modification. I like losing myself in a project as well. I hardly release anything though...

Seriously, any other modders? Maybe we should start a showcase in here or something...

I'm not a modder but I do enjoy their work. I'm especially a fan of mods that changes a game's perspective from third person to first person as FPS are the only kinds of games I like.

I have made plenty of maps and mods for Doom. Some of them are pretty well known among the multiplayer doom community. I haven't done any mapping/modding for a few years now, I can't seem to find that drive anymore that I used to have

Before I went back to school, I used to mod a bit--mostly for a comic book related tactical/RPG called Freedom Force and a space sim called X3: Reunion.

With Freedom Force I mostly did custom skins, meshes and character files for my original characters... I posted them on some fan/mod sites and got a few complements (mostly for character backstory) from people who downloaded and used my stuff.

With X3 I mostly just did custom fixes to make the game run better on my computer. But, there was/is a VERY talented and active modding community for that game.

These days I mostly play PS3 games, when I play at all. I don't have time to spend hours fixing and modding a game anymore.

I heavily mod certain games, but it's downloading other people's mods. I'd barely know where to begin in creating custom content. SimCity 4 would not be what it is today without an insanely dedicated mod community that allowed the players to properly unleash their creativity. Back in the day I had a dial-up Internet connection and still managed to download 1 GB of buildings, textures, terrain, and props for SimCity 4.

Doom's another game that wouldn't be where it is today without the mod community. I mean, it's an old DOS game that doesn't work natively in x64 platforms, yet it's still alive and well. Some of the stuff they've done with the source ports is insane -- for example, adding scripting support (as in zdoom).

Currently playing a modded Oblivion. Mostly graphics mods with a few gameplay tweaks that are supposed to make the beginning of the game more balanced.

My history as a console gamer makes more or less of a very vanilla player of most of my singleplayer games. I don't see the point of endlessly modding Bethesda RPGs or shooter games. Modded Minecraft, on the other hand, is a completely different ball game. Now that game, THAT would not be where it is today on PC if it weren't for modding. If the raw creative potential or the resource gathering necessary to unleash it wasn't for you, mods and especially the modpacks could make Minecraft a completely different, much more long-lived, enjoyable, and rewarding experience.

I dunno, mods made for Bethesda games are usually pretty nice. :3

Yeah, most of my mods are actually for Bethesda games. My most useful mod for people is apparently one I did of dishes and pottery for Skyrim. It makes me laugh in one sense.

Well the only Bethesda games that I played enough to warrant any modding were the ones I already loved too much to change. Having played all of them, I really do like Oblivion and Fallout 3 (the ones I didn't mod at all) more than Skyrim and New Vegas (the ones I modded).

Could you link me your mod? That is if you released it to the public...

I'm not a modder in the sense that I create mods, but I do like to use player created mods in games that I enjoy, to get more out of them. Right now I am playing an extremely heavily modded version of Skyrim. I'm using a bit over 200 mods when I play Skyrim and I could go for some more to be honest! I would like to be able to create mods, but at the moment I do not have the time to learn the how to's of modding.

My favorite mods so far have to be ones that add new choices for character creation, weather effects, skies, lighting changes, HD Retextures of the land and its people, new weapons and armors, increased artificial intelligence, combat alterations, increased difficulty, a less spoiled economy, humble or not too spoiled housing, towns, wars in skyrim, NPC characters to meet randomly or in specific zones during your travels, spells, cooking recipes, aspects of survival or overall realism, pets, added sounds, books to read, and quests. Anything that adds a new level of immersion basically. Skyrim is one of those games that I can play for hundreds of hours and keep having a new and interesting, enhanced experience each time I play because of the large and active modding community that exists.

Don't Starve is another interesting game with an active modding community. I'm hoping there will be a Steam Workshop released for it, as the official forum does not do DS's modding community enough justice. If anyone plays DS and wants a steam workshop, please send a ticket to the DS devs at their official site, requesting that you would like to see a workshop implemented. I sent them a large letter and they responded to me saying that adding a Steam Workshop is definitely a large interest for them but no guarantees as for a release... So I hope that if a lot of people contact them about wanting a workshop, seeing a workshop in the near future is more likely to happen.

I've been modding for about...14 or 15 years now. I started on DOOM and Quake (and stuck with Quake), and it seems like the whole "modding" world has taken a completely different turn.

Back in the day (and still mostly true for the older games) it was all about creating a unique world, or play experience, or even a completely different game (new levels, new monsters, new weapons, new gameplay modes, etc.)...but today, it seems like it's more about tweaking certain aspects of the game to make it slightly more customized for that player.

Not that I'm saying we didn't have a lot of mods like that back then (because we sure as heck did), but it seems like a lot of mods I try out lack that professional polish and wealth of content, and instead give you "I didn't like the skin on the AK-47 so now it is pink camo colored! And all of the Russians sing Def Leppard songs now."

But I digress...anyway, I've done a bunch of Quake mods and maps (most of them unfinished), but sharing them would probably require coming out of the closet... Also, one of these days I need to update my site and re-upload it somewhere else (since PlanetQuake died).

I used Mods that others have made, along with tweaking mods and the game itself. For example I tweaked a 1964 Chrysler Imperial mod for a demolition derby game, to be indestructible. I have also tweaked at least one Tycoon game, so I get paid for placing objects, or people pay me to work for them, instead of the other way around.

which tycoon game did you teak? and how did you do it?
was it any of these, Zoo tycoon 1 or 2? roller-coaster tycoon 1, 2 or 3?
or was it something else?
I'd love to have unlimited money in any of those games... for the scenarios mostly.

It was Mall Tycoon 2 and Mall Tycoon 3. I did it by altering values that are stored in a spreadsheet file.

Actually, it would probably be exactly where it is.

The number of people that play mods is dramatically lower than the number that just use the vanilla version. Particularly since right now, there's no super-duper-easy way to set up mods, aside from certain very specific modpacks, and alot of players just arent comfortable with messing with files directly. The percentages of mod users VS non-mod users is actually pretty surprising.

The 360 version is proof of this: You *cant* use mods on there, but the game sells like crazy.

People with WAY too much time on their hands have researched this one.


Still, for those that DO use mods.... it can be pretty darn entertaining. I usually keep a vanilla save and then a seperate modded version, to switch between as I see fit.

My only problems with mods for that game are that most of them are about as balanced as a drunken one-legged spider on a trampoline during an earthquake.



I like mods for games well enough in general, but.... I'm fairly picky about them. I prefer mods that keep challenge intact, or add greater difficulty, and balance is very important. For me, an imbalanced mod is a deleted mod.