BleepingComputer.com: Mods

One of the many reasons that the PC > consoles is that many games end up with user-created mods. There is nothing like getting your money's worth from a game like a healthy stack of mods...a ton of new games built into one! I thought it would be a good idea to start a thread for people to suggest good mods they have played.

I will start it out with a mod for Unreal Tournament: 2004. It's called Hollow Moon. It's pretty strange! Very different gaming experience. It's in black and white...and has no sound effects. I think it's down right creepy! You start out on the outskirts of a base on the moon...a base that is for some unknown reason devoid of its normal residents...

Another UT2004 mod that is pretty fun is called Ballistic Weapons. Same gameplay, but a new list of weapons...all based on, you guessed it, projectiles. A railgun with a nice spiral effect, some conventional guns like an M4 and a MP5, and some wacky melee weapons, like a katana. The mod shows up as a gametype option when you launch the game.

There are plenty of good mods for Half Life and Half Life 2. Though I have noticed, with some disappointment, that Valve has been releasing more and more mods that once were free and now are 10 to 20 bucks a download.

Here's a site with a ton of different HL2 mods.

Also, here's CTF for HL2.

Homeworld 2 is the ultimate engine for anything space sci-fi. Here's a Star Wars mod for it, called Warlords. It includes just about every ship in the Star Wars universe and then some. The latest version is still under construction, but I am sure it will be pretty neat when it gets done. Check out the screenies.

I had hoped that there would be a Star Trek mod for HW2. There were a couple for the original Homeworld, but nothing so far for the new engine.

The only mod I've ever used for a long period of time is for Command & Conquer Zero Hour called "Reborn". It was cool....made all sorts of adjustments to the individual units (almost every individual unit).

There's about a billion and one mods out for Generals Zero Hour. I've had good results getting them from COMMAND & CONQUER GENERALS DEN.

PLEASE NOTE: That mods, as locally pwned said, are just that: modifications to a game made by people other than the manufacturer (usually). When you download and install something from the internet, no matter what it is, you run the chance of downloading a virus. When you install something on your machine that wasn't made by the manufacturer (like an update for a specific game), you run the chance of "damaging" your game. I've only had this happen once, and it was my own fault....don't try to run 2 mods at the same time . This was easily fixed by uninstalling my game, then reinstalling it. Download and use at your own risk. They'll keep you entertained for hours. Also note that some mods are for "mature audencies", meaning that they'll add foul language or "other bad things" to your game, which may be undesirable for our younger members. I mention all of this only as a curtosey, and as a reminder to be aware of what you download

There is an interesting mod for Half-Life 1 called Afraid of Monsters. It's about a guy who is addicted to these pills that have hallucination effects. The game begins with the guy taking the pills and freaking out. It gets really ironic because instead of the usual med-kits, bottles of pills refill your health which in essence, keeps the game moving. *edit* Afraid of Monsters isn't about taking drugs, it's a horror game based of the guy's hallunications. . .which I guess you could look at every 'monster' you kill as a random person who stood in your way.

Also, a really good Half-Life 2 mod is the MINERVA: Metastasis episodes by (I believe) Adam Foster. The coolest thing about it is it completly screws with your mind because your pretty much like Gordon Freeman, a puppet sent to do somebody else's bidding. Also, I'm not sure if the third episode is out, but the first two are all in one loading time which is amazing for how nicely sized the area you have to travel is.

This post has been edited by Wizdabest: 30 November 2006 - 09:42 PM

stevealmighty, on Nov 30 2006, 08:03 PM, said:

Just to prove a point....I downloaded a matrix mod for Command and Conquer Zero Hour last night. The directions said to drag and drop a file into the "zero hour directory"....so I did...........well, at least I thought it was the directory. Now, when I try to start the game, it tells me that I need direct X 8.1 or higher installed and to ensure that my graphics card meets the minimum requirements. I already have direct X 9.0c installed (I reinstalled it again just to make sure...no help though), and my graphics card is a Nvidia 6800GS 256mb ddr3 ram overclocked (from manufacturer) to 500/1000 mhz (core and memory respectively). Now, I think I'm going to have to reinstall the game and go through the hassle of updating it because I muffed up the mod....lesson learned!

Below are two high quality Half-Life 2 mods that are still being worked on.

http://www.insurgencymod.net/ - So far, it looks like something similar to Counter-Strike, but more realistic. It doesn't have a release date, but it's close to being done. Definatly check out the screenshots.

___

Secondly, I don't know if anybody else was dissapointed when Valve merely released Half-Life: Source with only minor improvements and effects rather than a complete remake of Half-Life on the Source engine. Well, the people making the Black Mesa mod are doing just that and I must say, it is very high quality.

http://www.blackmesasource.com/

This post has been edited by Wizdabest: 01 December 2006 - 11:20 AM

Nice link, Wizdabest. I hadn't planned to buy Half Life: Source because it seemed like Valve wasn't doing much to it..

Steve, you are right to mention that any time someone downloads a bit of software, there's a risk evolved. But I have been playing with mods for a long time, and have had few negative effects, when compared to the enjoyment I have got from them. Most mods are projects built with care and enthusiasm by their crews. And, many great games have actually come from mods in the first place. Counter-Strike, for example, was in fact a mod to begin with. I actually never owned the retail version...I have a Half-Life key and just kept downloading each new version of the mod. Some late-comers to the game don’t even realize it was a mod built by a college student long ago…

I would suggest to the newly initiated mod-seeker that it is good to look for mods on hosted sites; (such as the "planet" series...unrealplanet and the like) often the manufacturer has a user-created mod section on its own site, as software developers often include many if not all of the tools needed for mod work.

Steve - as for Generals, I never got into it...I was initially turned off by the fact that the game play was so distant from the original C&C games. But I did mess with Zero Hour a bit, seemed pretty cool. I was tossing around the idea, once again, of buying the 10 year collection of Command & Conquer; that way I could get both Generals and Zero Hour keys. I had originally planned to get the collection until I found out that the original RA and C&C included in the compellation were not modified to play on an NT-based OS. But who knows, maybe they will release a patch…

This post has been edited by locally pwned: 02 December 2006 - 01:00 PM

I agree locally pwned, mods are great. I just wanted to point out the risk that one takes when they download an exectuable file from the internet. I've never had one that ended up being a virus or anything of that sort. I've had some that don't work, and some that didn't work like they should. This last one I downloaded didn't work. Although, I'm sure that it was something that I did....like not put the file in the right spot.....