Moding and Level Design
Mod is short for Modification and any game file that is altered be it a graphic files, sound file or alteration to program code is a Mod. Moding or Modding is the hobby of changing existing games, which can stretch to changing a few graphic files to personalise the player's character to a total conversion resulting in a completely new game. Mods have been made for many computer games and if you notice a large number of mod sites for a game, that means a lot of players are enthusiastic about this game and are willing to invest their time and energy into making it better.
It was Doom (1993) and its sons and heirs that in many ways started level design and moding. Ironically, John Carmack creator of Doom and Quake, is reported to have declared that "game creation is 99% programming and 1% game design." This was the typical attitude of then all-powerful game programmers in the production process. Chris Crawford made the staving comment "that Carmack has no design philosophy he simply implements other peoples' game designs better than they do." (Crawford also points out that this has made Carmack very rich!) Doom was inspired by Castle Wolfstein 3D (1992) a shareware game that was made in many ways like many non-commercial mods are today.
Players of Doom who were programmers devised editors to change the Levels or WADs files, and distributed them on the Internet, other players started to make levels with these tools that were more exciting to play than the originals. Level design became a separate job activity from game programming and moding if not a total new born was a rapidly growing infant. The Doom series was followed up by Hexen (1995), Quake (1996), Quake II (1997) Quake III: Arena (1999) and increasingly attracted an increasing level of moding interest from a rapidly growing moding community. The game engines themselves started to be used by other commercial development teams. The smash hit Half-Life (1998), probably the most modified game so far was based on the Quake II/III engine. A total conversion mod of this game, Counter-Strike (2000) was sold commercially in stores by Sierra On-Line. Two other top mods for Half-life are They Hunger and Poke646.
Numerous editors grew up around these games and included such editors as Quake Object Oriented Level Editor (QOOLE), Q3, LithTech, MaxEd and Red Edit. Experience with WorldCraft a graphical level editor you can use to make maps for Half-Life, became almost essetntial to have on your Resume or CV to get a job as a level designer. Unreal (1998) and Unreal Tournament (1999) was released with Unreal Ed, a professional level editor. The developers not only decided that the moding scene was so big that they wanted to attract players who would want to mod any game they played but they also wanted to sell their game engine and realised that having an editor with lots of moders who knew how to use it, would be a big help.
First-person 3D shooters are far from the only game genre that has attracted moders. CRPGs like Neverwinter Nights, Adventure games such as Serious Sam and Flight simulators including Falcon 4 have strong moding communities. The Internet has been a major factor in the growth of moding. The Internet not only allows moders somewhere to release their mods and tools for free across the globe but also allows them to communicate through forums and the Internet. Some Mods are very complex projects, which are carried out by moders who have never met and live at opposite ends of the globe.
Moding - A Personal Experience
I was a miniature wargamer and boardgamer long before computers arrived on the scene. Steel Panthers (1995) launched a series of three miniature armour style computer wargames. The game came with the editor that the scenario designers had used to make the game scenarios. Just as importantly despite poor security it could be played by email with the players passing turns and a community around the games grew up. Extra scenario disks were sold and Novastar decided to set up shop and make and sell scenarios for the game. However, as the series went on and the Internet grew they were surprised by the number of excellent scenarios being made by players and that were distributed free on the Internet.
Players devised editors for Steel Panthers 2 that could alter the OOB file that controlled the composition and factors that made up a tank such as its armour, gun and speed. Having more realistic armies interested me more than scenarios as I played the game against human opponents by email on a points basis. I devised after much research a better list for the Modern British Army and even learned how to make and add better graphics to illustrate the tanks and troops in the game encylopedia. Such lists were put up with extra scenarios on Internet fan sites.
Moders such as Fred Chandler with his tool SHPed allowed the appearance of the graphics to be changed and there were now all the tools available to allow a complete conversion. The first was Steel Panthers WW2, which was converted from SP2 and brought the larger maps and more units of the later game back to WW2. To my surprise I found this amateur mod to be much better than the originals. I was soon making scenarios for it, and my first was the US Marine landing on Tarawa for which I altered a map made for the original Steel Panthers, made by Wild Bill Wilder, a leading light in the Steel Panthers scenario building community. When I contacted Wild Bill for information on how to use the editor, to my surprise, he rapidly and graciously replied to my email and basically told me that I was an idiot for trying to do a beach landing for my first scenario, as it was the hardest thing to create. I also learned that he had only a slightly greater idea than me on how to use the editor as the mod programmers produced what they believed the designers needed! The Buffalo landing craft were represented in the game as the production models not the up gunned and armoured ones used in the battle, so I altered them. Before I new it, I was hooked on scenario design and moding!
Steel Panthers World At War (2000) was a new total conversion this time based on Steel Panthers III engine, which represented brigade level combat. The advantage was that it could run directly on Windows 9x and promised totally secure email play. I liked the mod so much that I set about making a full campaign for it - Normandy Gold that started with the landings on the Gold Beach and followed 9 more actual battles in the Normandy campaign. I even had a reproduction of the map issued to officers who landed on Gold Beach and the campaign was very different from the majority of scenarios and campaigns being made that had little research into the troops or battlefield but purported to be a representation of a real action. I sent it off to a fan site and again to my surprise instead of them putting it up on the site, it was included in the game, and I was credited as game designer. The fan site was run by the people making the mod and they had great ambitions for it.
The people behind the SPWAW mod saw it as a springboard to form their own development company to make computer wargames - Matrix. I was invited to work on two "Mega Campaigns" - Lost Victories Army Group South 1941 and Watchtower Guadalcanal 1942. Like professional developers we were given tasks to complete by a certain date, but communicated through a password protected forum and emails and learned the joys of FTP. As I lived in the UK and Internet charges were still charged by the minute, I was grateful to receive CDs with files in the hundreds of megabits, that were necessary to do the project and were posted to me by the other moders from locations across the world (and by my old mate James Morton in Scotland). Matrix was legally able to charge for the Mega Campaigns, which were sold commercially and included a free copy of the mod. I had now become a published game designer! SPWAW is highly thought of and is considered one of the best wargames ever made. (Don't take my word for it, see what the Wargamer site has to say.) Although no burgeoning game design career has happened for me - Matrix has gone from strength to strength.
About Mod Corner
The Combat Mission series of computer wargames is popular because it allows secure email and internet play, comes with the same scenario editor used to make the game scenarios and was designed to allow the graphics and mod files to be moded. The makers of the game operate a very active forum for players to communicate with each other. If you want to make wargame mods Combat Mission is probably, the game you will want to start with.
Mod School has tutorials for installing and making a very simple graphic mod for the game Combat Missionl. Mod Levels includes a discussion on how to make scenarios and operations. The Mod Files have some of my mods and scenarios for a number of games and a selection of mods by my friends for Combat Mission.