Why do you mod?

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MosinMocachino
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Why do you mod?

Post by MosinMocachino »

I'm kind of curious what the motivation for people here to make mods for the original Unreal engine is. A lot of people I know have moved onto making indie games and I don't know many that stick with older engines. There's a person I follow on youtube who is attempting to make a sidescroller in Unreal 1 which I find fascinating.

So I'm curious, why do you guys stick with a 20+ year old engine and make maps for it? Is it more for variety's sake (IE: Me and my friends wanna play new maps in UT1) or out of tradition? (I've always used U1 and I always will)?

I hope this doesn't come across as hostile or anything. It's a genuine curiosity of mine since I've noticed people have very different answers to the question. My own attempts at modding the engine have mostly been directed at understanding how the technology works.
Terraniux
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Re: Why do you mod?

Post by Terraniux »

Because Unreal / UT is the best. That's why!


And I think most of us are grownups which grew up with the game. I played it since it came out, and enjoyed ever after. So yeah, UT was my hobby / childhood / game to play after I got back from school lol hahaha
I take a break from the game the from time to time, but It always pulls me back. So much memories and great people and great maps to enjoy and explore.
Making content for it, expands the lifetime.

The content for UT is like indiana jones. It is an adventure - exploring gives you treasures of maps, mods and other certain golden stuff.


Thats why it is the best, and will never die. The only and only reason if UT will ever die will be of outdated or too updated operation systems.


But again U/UT is the best. You love UT or you don't , there is no midway. ( I guess? )
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nogardilaref
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Re: Why do you mod?

Post by nogardilaref »

Well... I could give a thousand reasons really...

To start with, in UT99, you can go from idea to development to release really quickly, and in a game that you really like to begin with, and that's very empowering and rewarding.

Unlike indie games, you can just focus in creating that weapon you want to create, or that map you want to play, or that trigger you want to use, etc, rather than think up the whole gameplay and do player models and whatnot.
And unlike more recent games, you don't need to spend months to years to develop a high quality mod, and that is when these games actually allow modding to happen, which generally is no longer the case nowadays.

And you're sure to a very good extent that what you develop now will keep working in newer systems well perhaps within a decade at least, since the engine doesn't rely on almost anything from the operating system API itself unlike others, and since Epic released native C++ headers this means that the engine can be extended and even fixed to some extent, and that's why we were able to have things like more modern renderers like OpenGL and D3D9, a fairly good anti-cheat (ACE), fixes and overall improvements (XC_Engine), etc.
And Epic cares enough to actually keep the master server up, and we got other master servers provided by the community as well given that the engine allows for such.

As a consequence of this, this is probably one of the games in the entire world with the most amount of content. Of course there's both good and bad content, but even if you got rid of all the bad one, this would still hold to be true.
Also among all UT versions, UT99 is still the most popular one.

Other reasons are also:
- the nostalgia factor: there's a special attachment to this game from many of us;
- the community is quite good overall;
- the age range is quite big and varied as well, so you can hold more mature discussions most of the time with more mature people;
- the game works well pretty much on any hardware nowadays, and even from a Pen drive, so it's very accessible to anyone;
- even without going native, there's a lot which can be done to make the game even better;
- Unreal has a much better engine nowadays, giving a glimmer of hope of a good upgrade without going overly overboard in the future;
- no DLCs, microtransactions or any risk of getting banned over modding the game;
- the overall visuals and atmosphere are still quite unique to this game and engine in particular, unmatched by anything else;
- there are tons of servers and half of the admins are willing to try new things on them, so there's always opportunity to see your mod played;
- it's just pure fun to see your stuff working in a game that you love.


Of course, this game has also many problems as expected from such an old game, but it just aged so damn well that these problems are often overlooked, and generally have some kind of fix which can be done by the community.
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Re: Why do you mod?

Post by JackGriffin »

You know those songs you can listen to and they take you instantly someplace else? It's so strong you can taste the air and smell the environment? When I pull out my notepad and open Ued and ConTEXT I immediately get to set aside life's challenges and enter a world as real as that yet external to the one I live in. Modding saved my sanity through a bad divorce, health issues, and lingering PTSD. These people here, this community of heathens and nerds and weirdos...well they are part of the reason I'm as happy as I am today. I love coming into the U-niverse and I love the people here. .......Well, except paper. He's mean to me when you guys aren't around.

Guys who mod do it because it completes who they are. It's really as simple as that.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
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sektor2111
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Re: Why do you mod?

Post by sektor2111 »

I'm modding because I'm interested in maximum of game stability not because I'm feeling too creative.
In nearest future I think I'll get busy doing stuff for NavAdded by self person. Why ?
Because in this way I can play maps which were nasty - MH in stage here - after patching Level in Run-time you can get goodies which have never been possible before. I gotta admit time consuming is one of bad parts but it's worthy.
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XaNKoNII
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Re: Why do you mod?

Post by XaNKoNII »

For me, there is allways the nostalgic factor wich plays a huge role. From a very young age I´ve known UT and a few years later I discovered the Editor... Despite this only up until a year ago i never actually did nothing.

I Have now other reasons besides my emotional ones
Lately I became very interested in Level Design and chose UT because I believe it offers great skills in this "hobby". Being a limited engine it´s not uncomun that you have a vision only to find that the engine itself can´t handle what you imagined in your head, first you try to bypass the problem, or even trick the engine into doing what you wanted in the first place... or you findyourself forced to adpapt to the limitations! People might outlook this, but it´s something really powerfull to master: adaptation and improvisation to overcome obstacles.

Then, in a more tecnical aspect, the game forces you to work the arquitecture of a map with just brushwork. You don´t have all those fancy staticmeshes to mix and blend, only good ol´ Textures and Brushes. This in my opinion forces you to work in the "bigger truths" the player sees instead of relying in many "small truths" , wich many times is what you see in indie games. This leads to Overdetailing and maps/games miss the big picture, something allways feels odd about them for everyone.

There is a big plus! Eversince I decided to become active arround here, I have a newfound feeling of belonging and have people that I can reach out for and ask help!

I notice that you´ve been asking people arround here some things, sometime ago I asked this and I think you´ll find it interesting ;)
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12530
Last edited by XaNKoNII on Wed Dec 06, 2017 1:57 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Why do you mod?

Post by papercoffee »

JackGriffin wrote: .......Well, except paper. He's mean to me when you guys aren't around.
Shut up and get back into the kitchen!


Why do you mod? Why not?
Nog summarized it very well.

This game was the first "sandbox game" of all time.
What ever idea you came up with, UT was the place to try it and make it work. Quake3 was also fantastic but you needed much more external tools to implement your ideas.
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Chamberly
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Re: Why do you mod?

Post by Chamberly »

Well, it didn't take long for me to step into the modding work. Just as shortly after I played UT99 for the first time, within 6 months I worked on learning to manage a server and had a friend named Joey from Mexico / XIS Member who helped me get started worked on modding a sniper rifle. That was fun and the first.

Later I continued to search for many different mods, how they ran, how did they work, trying out different things because I'm like a curious cat who will dig into everything. Coding comparison and so on, it was just really interesting and finding ways to overcome anything is a plus. So I tried to connect with others who do some modding and hang out with them, it helps me learn more.

It helps a lot to know how to do more specific research and finding the goal. A good skill.

Only bothered to keep it on UT99 because the other, eh, doesn't seem much to offer to my interest. That can go for the engine, the coding depends on difficulty, players interest, my interest, and so on. Plus, the interest I have in UT99 as I can do anything! No waiting for patch update for engine update, no market-related stuff, etc.
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