In my opinion, modding is.....
Poll started by Metafiz with 1,647 votes and 37 comments. Browse the poll archive.
(715 votes)getting harder to do but slowly growing.
(423 votes)slowly dying as sophistication increases.
(261 votes)still the same as I remember it.
(248 votes)easier than it ever was to do.
Post a comment
Hot Polls
Your aims in 2012
24,422 votes
How long have you been modding?
23,225 votes
I prefer my mods to be...
13,660 votes
What do think about free to play games?
12,502 votes
You want to design games in the future as...
10,174 votes
Do you own a smartphone?
9,591 votes
How do you set your resolution for PC gaming?
7,567 votes
What version of Mac OS X do you use?
7,222 votes
Let's try this again. :D
Why?
Because.
Okay, again:
"getting harder to do but slowly growing."
But I never made a mod :(
Someday maybe ;)
Some day....
Getting harder? Not really. It's just a lot of games don't ship modding tools anymore, or their files are generally "Hands off!!!".
Anything LUA, XML, or C++, or maybe even some other variations of those 3 I can handle :).
Of course it's getting harder but growing. It started out with simple mods like reskins and what not. Then mod teams built their own ideas which back then was a lot easier to manage than it is today. Of course modding is a lot more accepted and practiced and so there are tools developed for the purpose of modding but as a team the public demands quantity and quality and that means those of us who first got started over a decade ago have had a lot of studying to do heh.
Definitely harder than before but growing. I just assume anyone voting anything else is new to modding :)
Tats...
Well, it is getting harder, even only because the fact that the scope of a mod becomes larger. As Tatsur0 pointed out, early mods are reskins or map packs, while later ones add new game types and new abilities.
And making a total conversion (basically a new game) is much harder now: think of the size of the team. If with older days one man could do the job, now you need a dozen.
The fact that modding grows however is best indicated by the fact that more and more mods tend to have industry-like quality (see Eternal Silence for example).
Modding in the past was easier because it was actually easier. You could reach the limitations of the engine with a one-man team. Nowadays, engines are far more complex and there are a lot more of them. While some tools are very easy to use (I'm thinking RTS map editors and even the Crysis editor, stuff like Sandbox, etc.), most still have a lot of elements to them. Knowledge and experience now is much more fragmented across disciplines and engine-specific code and tools than it was a decade or two ago.
Mods can do more, but this takes a lot longer. For mod projects that hope to take full advantage of an engine for a total conversion, it requires people and task management skills as well as raw technical prowess. I still believe modding is growing, though, even if it is more difficult than before. As the Internet helps more people to share more experience with eachother, and more initiatives like ModDB spring up, modding as a collective can only grow in knowledge and experience.
Loved your comment, also agree, but now it's too hard to gather and make a mod man :/ . I wish I could do more like you in that aspect.
lol is this vote restettet?
lol ryan i voted for getting bigger, cos it is
I would say: easier, thx to Valve's SDK with all the tools to day its easier to do a X mod to day then it was to do the same mod Y years ago.
But yes, there is so many mods today that's many people want to see some very nice ideas ,new models, weapons etc for a game.
and that's make it... Longer to make a "good" mod.
The Source SDK is harder to use than the Half-Life SDK.
Producing assets for a mod is easier than it was - things like Hammer are easier than WorldCraft, Sandbox is amazingly awesome, art is easier to import with games tending more towards accepted formats rather than obscure filetypes. 3D models are now easier to make because more games have the conversion tools available.
The trouble is, getting those assets into a game is getting harder because the code is getting more and more complex. Even something like Unreal - which has traditionally been easy to code for - is getting harder to use.
All in all I reckon modding is much harder to get started than it was - the barriers to entry are higher in that not only is the code much more to understand but the people who play mods expect a polished uber-quality release straight out.
boo source sdk. i think the unreal engine 3 editor is the easiest modding tool EVER.
Same as before. When someone wanted to mod doom 1, tools were hard to find (unless you could write your own), little/no documentation, the software to actually make assets was pretty much non-existent. very hard to distribute your work.
Now you have all the tools and are finding more time to do actual work. There's free software to do pretty much everything & SDK's. Tutorials, many many books, websites, etc. Many things are automated.
If you want to do something simple you can. If you want to do something complex you can. I'd say, overall, actually doing a mod is much much easier today vs 10 years ago. Not in all engines (some make things more complex) but some let you do a lot w/o ever running a compiler, right out of the box.
Exactly. There's plenty of engines out there, many of which are open source. And the proliferation of broadband makes it extraordinarily easy - and convenient - for the audience to try out modifications. I ye olde days, you might have the luck of getting your mod attached to a PC magazine floppy - nowadays it's far easier to distribute.
And with more tools, tutorials, and design software around than ever before, modding is probably easier. True, coding for the latest games has become harder as those engines have become more complex, but there are plenty of older engines out there that can still achieve a great deal of your aims. The Half-Life engine, whilst old, remains flexible and retains potency even today. Perhaps modding for, say, Gears of War is harder than coding for Quake back in 1994, but if it's just *making your own game* that takes your interest, you've never had it so good.
i can only mod with tools like DATEDIT for starcraft.
In my opinion, it's getting easier because companies like Valve are giving us better tools to work with, and more of them than ever before. Sure, the code keeps getting larger and visuals more complex, but we're given better and better tools to work with.
I think that the actual quantity of mods being released is much lower as it's harder to produce content. Sure, you have the tools but to make something good looking takes a long time.
The only problem i have with Modelling is the UVmapping system, they should really develop a better system for applying textures on models that makes moore sence.
As models get moore and moore highpoly the UV mapping is horrible and it feels like it really limits you from going crazy with cool designs.
its still the same, not much different from 2004 really. Everyone is still using Source still :D, and the mods I was working on back then are still in production.
Yeah ^^
For some games it's getting easier (example: Morrowind, even though it's not the newest), but for many (Oblivion) it's being made harder by profit-minded developers.
To elaborate, Morrowind shipped with a construction set, and Max exporters were made available (same CS and exporters the devs used, which says something). And so, it's had many (many) mods made.
Obvs had an optional CS up for download later, and still no official exporter.
As games are targetted more and more at the console users, and the companies are pressured to make more money, they're slowly killing modding. A few places still make it possible, and hopefully FO3 will be moddable, but too many publishers don't realize that the more a game is modded, the better (and longer) it will sell. Morrowind sets the example again.
there are so many people taking great ideas for mods and wasting these ideas by making halfhearted work and releasing crappy mods.
so thats what makes modding harder.
whilst the amount of tutorials and people who are eager to help others in learning modding, is growing this makes modding easier. but the net is flooded with crappy mods engaging on great ideas...
in my opinion the whole question cant be answered with "easier?" or "harder?"
because its ambivalent
on one side theres the content for the game art, models, maps... which are now easy to make because all is right there ... just type in "mapping $game" to google and you get loads of tuts about mapping for $game, same goes with anything else related to the content for the game
as said before by some ppl in the old days there were almost no tutorials and/or tools for anything game related
and today since the graphics are so pushed to the edge, the quality of maps, models and textures or even sounds has to be so high because otherwise it would look like crap
take doom 1 or 2 for example if were doing a mod for it back in the days well there werent much 'quality' in the graphics, because there couldnt be done much with it ... almost fingernail size pixels and stuff, i mean anything werent looking like much ... most stuff happend in the brain ... we interpretated all what weve seen which made it look awesome
well and today ... HDR, HD res textures ... you will see anything thats not where it should be, so the main hardness of todays mods is basically the quality and the code which is more complex over the years
to actually do a mod, you dont have to do that much, BUT if you want to have a good mod .. well thats a whole different thing i guess
but "back in the day" doom 1/2 WERE the highest quality graphics & content. 1 sprite, 8 angles, 5 different animations @ 15 frames each was high quality and a LOT OF WORK.
Now we would just throw that in a 3d app or use a video camera. Couldn't do that 14 years ago.
I think individual modding is slowly dying, except for mods, which make only small changes to gameplay. The problem today is we have consoles and consoles demand a perpetual stream of new titles to keep them interesting. While you have your PC for "work" and might upgrade it for gaming, the console's purely for gaming and there needs to be new content.
To keep it interesting a number of developers includes mod-tools with their software. since consoleroes want it quick and easy we see a lot of good map editors sprouting, which even the dumbest can learn to use.
To make a mod (TC) however you need a much deeper understanding of how an engine works and what your limits are. So except for mapping (which already is the game industries favorite modding kind: free content made for them, which keeps the community playing and enjoying the game for years to come)we'll most likely see modding get even harder in the future, requiring bigger teams and more, deeper knowledge.
I think modding still the same thing I remember it... but today is more harder than... 3 years.
Games offer more support for modding, so I think it's easier this days.
I think it's harder to create content. With Normal maps, bump maps, specular maps, opcaity maps, and all these other things.
I think people don't put as much time into ideas. Most of the Half-Life 2 mods listed are all "extensions" of the storyline, but never get done.
And it's exactly this attitude of judging a mod on its art assets that is killing the modding scene.
People's expectations of mods are waaaaaay to high these days, and get put off just because it doesn't have commercial quality player model replacements or weapons, even though the gameplay may be sound.
Some people just want to mod for fun, but these mods never make it big because people are completely unwilling to overlook the visual flaws. Not everyone wants to or has time to be part of a bigger mod team, so they can't produce everything themselves and have to focus on one of the elements.
I agree. There's many GOOD mods that don't change much graphically. Most players now saw a mod must be a complete re-write. Normally the smaller change are enjoyed the most (instagib, excessive, bright skins, lights, etc).
Slow death. Evidence? No Hammy Bob: Source.
I believe that modding will become there own games and take over the gaming industry
ITS GETTING HARDER I CANT TAKE IT BF1942 MODDING IS TO HARD I CANT TAKE IT ANYMORE!