Games to Mod With

Greeper

So modding games is something that cool people do. I, being a cool person, should obviously know how to do this, but I don't.

Some games are better for this than others, of course.

I'm in no way a PC gamer, so I'm completely out of my league here!

Do you guys have any suggestions about what are some cool games that are good to mod with, have extensive support, or are generally 'modder friendly'?

MechMantis

Well, if you have the tech knowledge and wherewithal, you can pretty much mod any game ever.

THAT SAID.

Games That Are Easily Moddable With Relatively Well Supported Tools:

Source Engine games
Most Unreal Engine games
any Elder Scrolls that is Morrowind or Oblivion
Fallouts 3 and New Vegas (same engine as Oblivion, for reference)

Of course those first two umbrellas are pretty damn big. Starting points for Source Engine and Unreal Engine would be Team Fortress 2 and Unreal Tournament x. Of course, the Unreal Tournament modding scene has basically died since UT3 sold like shit.

probably because it wasn't that great but hey

If you're interested in just straight up making a game, the Unreal Development Kit might be a good starting point; I wouldn't know, I haven't messed with it. There are a few people who have, though, I'll let them talk about what's up.

RoyceSraphim

I'm currently doodling around with fallout 3 so I'll drop some things I've gotten. This assumes you have Fallout 3 and all DLC, so the GOTY edition.
Fallout 3

Bethesda's Geck Wiki
My first Vault tutorial
Quest and Dialog Tutorial
Fallout 3 Nexus and Nexus Forums for tutorials and Utlities The main one I use but questionable ethics.
Fallout 3 Underground Never tried it but I hear its good.
planet Fallout forums

Be forewarned that the GECK construction kit is built upon the desecrated remains of previous tool kits from Oblivion and Morrowind, its much like a Servitor. So there are several bugs and vestigial features. PM me if you need help.

Online book for Blender a freeware 3d modeling program.

Lork

Bethesda's modding tools are friendly and easy to use in a way that puts them on an entirely separate level from anything else. If you're not comfortable with reading/writing code, I'd almost say that their games are your only real option.

If you know your way around an if statement, though, Unreal is probably the best compromise between power and ease of use.

Glal

MechMantis wrote: »

Of course, the Unreal Tournament modding scene has basically died since UT3 sold like shit.

It sold fairly well, some 1.2M copies by March 2008. It just wasn't really embraced by the community.

rayofash

Source Engine
Unreal Engine (free and midly open source now if I remember correctly)
Quake 3 (free and open source)

MechMantis

As for Source Engine: the SDK is about to become free as in beer.

So there's that in favor of learning Source engine stuff.

Mechanical

The earlier C&C titles are pretty easy to modify. Red Alert 2 and TS can be pretty heavily edited with Notepad.

kitch

Hammer seems way easier to use than UnrealEd.

Ross_C

Make a map for Portal 2. Since you already own it you can just install it from the tools menu in Steam. Source Engine/Hammer is way easier to get the hang of, but aren't as flexibly awesome as the Unreal Editor. I recommend Portal 2 mapping since that is generally a bit more straightforward.

Bullio

Not sure if they're technically considered mods, but the Neverwinter Nights games come with game editing tools that let you create custom content. They're the same tools that Bioware used to build the official campaign modules. Not entirely sure about NWN2, but there is a fuckton of user made content for the first one to play around with, and it's supposedly rather easy to make new content not included in the default toolset assets themselves. There are other games that have a similar setup. DA:O has a toolset, but it's supposedly not very good.

Zombiemambo

If you want to oldschool, both the Doom and Build engines are open source.

MechMantis

kitch wrote: »

Hammer seems way easier to use than UnrealEd.

It's not.

Holy shit it's not.

Six brushes to make a box in Hammer vs one brush in UnrealEd, for instance. Once you understand CSG it's far easier to mess around with.

Frem

Nobody's mentioned StarCraft II yet? Because Blizzard has been yelling and pointing and begging people to make maps for it. The editor is apparently flexible enough to support first person shooters as well as shumps and such. WarCraft III is also good stuff to mess with.

Zek

SC2 definitely has a strong community but it really only works for point-and-click style gameplay.

Frem

Zek wrote: »

SC2 definitely has a strong community but it really only works for point-and-click style gameplay.

I don't actually have the game; I'm just remembering the demos they gave before it was released. Did the over-the-shoulder 3rd person shooter and the 2D Galaga clone they showed off turn out not to be very doable in the final product?