making a mod on your own Thread

I have no experiance with making mods.

I have built a few maps for a few games over the last decade, i have a little experiance codding with vb and asp, i have used photoshop and 3d max a fair bit.

I am/was planing on making a mod for a game for my major project in college next year, i will be in the final year of a multimedia degree. I have been researching farcry in relation to modding for the last couple weeks because i heard it is the easiest game to mod. I have now found that it seems crytek have not done what they promised and therefore it is not easy to mod at all. The SDK cetainly to me seems somewhat confusing and limeted.

I have been reading a lot on this site and other sites about different games and i have a couple questions that i cant find ansers to or more i have found many different ansers to to the point that i am a bit confused.

Firstly i am assuming the first thing to do before developing an idea is picking the engine which will decide on what you can and cant do, is this a bad idea?

I am considering Farcry, Battlefeild vietnam, Call of duty, half Life, Quake series, Unreal series. I am sure they all have advantadges but if Any are a bad idea or a good idea it wood be good to know?

Would any of them be easier to code than others, There seems to be more tutorials around for the older games but they seem harder to code and more complicated to mod, is this the case? Other than farcry are there any games that use script rather than c++?

I read a starting a mod post here. It said you cannot build a mod on your own. is this true, would trying to make a mod, not a total conversion but say an alpha version of a multiplayer mod, impossible for one person over say 6 months?

If anyone would like to share thier knoladge it would be great, i know from experiance in other areas that 'noobs' posting things like 'what do i do to build a mod' is annoying its just i cant find the information i need anywhere and i need to make a decision in the next week on what i am doing for my project.

Any usefull information would be great, any information would be better than none, Thanks.

Rowan

First of all, I can say your literary skills are lacking, so you might want to look into that.Also, it's not impossible, but highly improbable.The problem is that you need every skill including coding,mapping,2d art,modelling,sfx tech,voice acting if you're going to have that,animating, and a variety of other things.

All in all, I'd suggest trying something with a team unless you're going to adjust an already existing mod ever so slightly.

I'm a one man modder.

It's not hard; just takes alot of dedication.

CyanideCotdPnuts wrote: First of all, I can say your literary skills are lacking, so you might want to look into that.

Thanks for pointing that out, they certainly are. Its a problem i have had for some time.

CyanideCotdPnuts wrote:
Also, it's not impossible, but highly improbable.The problem is that you need every skill including coding,mapping,2d art,modelling,sfx tech,voice acting if you're going to have that,animating, and a variety of other things.

See this is the thing i would have no problem with most of it exept the coding i dont think voice acting will be nessesary. More than anything i want to know which game is easiest to mod in terms of coding. I cant any faq or a web site that will tell me this.

CyanideCotdPnuts wrote:
All in all, I'd suggest trying something with a team unless you're going to adjust an already existing mod ever so slightly.

While i may at some stage decide to make a mod with a group of people it is not for this because it is a college project you have to do on your own. I will have all year to do it. Is it highly improbable to do?

I really would like anyones opinion on this even if it is just saying your literary skills are lacking.

Rowan

- Edited By timkiller On Thu 19th, Aug 2004 @ 6:40:34pm

I love pimping my sticky topic

It's all about making and pimping Half-Life mods. You can reach it here: Moddb.com

@timkiller: a lot of making a mod is coding :/

If you wouldn't mind doing something besides an FPS, Freespace 2 requires literally no coding to mod successfully.

As i recall, I heard Quake was the easiest to code for but I can't remember if it [i[was[/i] Quake or if it was UT4k

CyanideCotdPnuts wrote: As i recall, I heard Quake was the easiest to code for but I can't remember if it [i[was[/i] Quake or if it was UT4k

You're right. Not only did I say that but SeienAbunae did too it's goooood.

yeah... if you know coding it's easier to take on a mod project on your own... because this department knits all up in the end.

Both Quake and UT2K4 are easy games to learn how to code.

- Edited By Dragonmaw On Fri 20th, Aug 2004 @ 1:34:33pm

You need to establish an idea before you decide on the engine. Then you can figure out which game best suits your idea.

*agrees with a_llama*

i beleave it is not really possible to make a mod alone, if you have a whole year doing nothing than modding ,
no it is not a good idea, and people really don't know how hard it is

Must it be an entire mod? It's multimedia, not software engineering. Couldn't you make a portfolio of models, maps and other graphics?

Dragonmaw wrote: Both Quake and UT2K4 are easy games to learn how to code.

- Edited By Dragonmaw On Fri 20th, Aug 2004 @ 1:34:33pm

UT2k4 is far too more involved than Quake. Sure UnrealScript is relatively simple, but there is alot of stuff you have to do for it. UT99 is not as complex as UT2k4. Quake is as simple as eating pie...on a bike...while talking on the phone... Nah, it is pretty simple compared to other engines, but the one dis-advantage I don't like about it is that its no an OOP language.

Quake is as simple as you want it to be

There are plenty of people who make mods on their own. Cheap is an example of such a person, since he doesn't really need anyone else to help him out, because he can do all the work himself.

but cmon , there is LOT of stuff to do ! i have never seen a one man mod , but i'll take a look at cheapys .
i can do all the stuff my self , like : design , concept art , modeling , uvw unrwap , textureing , mapping , codeing , site design and ...........
but i still can't creat mods alone.

We're not talking about mega, super TC-style mods. More on the scale of fun little mods. Cheap has made about a dozen or so of them. I've made one mod all on my own (still working on it as a matter of fact, for Daggerfall, "Legends of the Iliac Bay"). It's not impossible.