Hey guys,
After a few years of relying on consoles, I finally have access to a PC again. Its running windows 7 and I've taken the opportunity to delve into the world of mods for some of my favorite shooters. I'm currently blasting my way through Doom II (never played it originally) and just finished off Batman Doom.
I did play through Half life 2 and Duke 3d on consoles - and once managed to rig up the three commercial Duke add-ons on a university computer. Outside of that though, I'm completely baffled at the avalanche of software.
Far as Half life goes, everyone seems to recommend Stanley's Parable and Minerva, but I haven't really found a master list of the really great levels that are worth digging into.
Similarly, there still seems to be a ton of Duke content floating around, but I'm completely baffled where to begin. I'm not really interested in great map design or enemy placement - I really dig the levels that are laden with easter eggs, new environments, and just plain cool stuff.
Posts
For Duke, though, the current must have mod is War of Attrition. It puts you through a random selection of levels from a huge pool of (mostly) good custom maps, with a really satisfying upgrade system for your guns, random enemy variants and all sorts of crazy (but cool) additions. There's also a total conversion called WGRealms 2 which I've heard good things about but haven't played much of myself.
Edit: Actually, why don't I just link you to the Early FPS Megathread on SA? That's hands down the best place to find out about what's going on with Duke3D and its ilk right now.
I never got into the Duke3d mods. Theres is so much content and creativity in the user created levels. Its been years since I've played though so I dont have any good information off the top of my head.
Get Shadow Warrior - same engine. You can fire a nuke and hide behind a lowly parking meter to avoid the blast because physics, thats why.
Also in Duke3D, you can use laser mines to scale down tall heights for no falling damage. When you place a mine on a wall, it stops your falling momentum temporarily.
And ONE SIDED WALLS. They just dont make games like that anymore.
I've also got Redneck Rampage on my list of things to purchase from GOG - even a mediocre build engine game is still probably worth a few bucks.
The only mod scene I ever really got into was Star Wars Dark Forces - the Doom clone that's basically better than doom. www.df-21.net is absolutely amazing and offers all the information you could ever need. The dark tide series is probably one of the best modifications I've ever played, but there's some hidden gems all over that site.
http://wiki.eduke32.com/wiki/EDuke32_Modifications
There's also:
http://forums.duke4.net/forum/26-eduke32-eduke32-modifications/ where most of us post progress and announce new mods. Sometimes you'll find demos and there's new map releases as well. You can also get information about how to develop your own mod. It's actually a pretty good development platform (EDuke32). For example I threw this together in a weekend.
And we've had (and been getting more of) modern engine features for awhile.
If you want older Duke mods (Which should all work with EDuke32. It's a bug if they don't.) then check this page here. It even has all of the mods made under the radar after Dukeworld (the main community hub) shut down in 2000/2001.
I feel like outside of randomly downloading every damn Duke level ever, I'm sorta at a loss on where to begin. Though Shadow Warrior and Blood are scratching my FPS craving incredibly well at the moment...
I also tried to register with the Duke4 forums but for some reason I'm still waiting validation from the mod, like a week later.
Steam // Secret Satan