mod

Your favourite game ever.

by ZombieSkittles on May 27, 2011

This entry is part 3 of 17 in the series 30 Day Gamer's Challenge

Well that would have to be Wolfenstein 3D. This game has been in my life for the better part of around twelve or thirteen years. Can’t be too sure. Either way, this game had not just a major impact on my idea of gaming, but on gaming itself, leading the way for other first person shooters to follow over two decades following it’s release.

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I stole this image from some website because I was too lazy to take my own screenshot.

The game itself is a simple first person shooter, if not the simplest in what you do. Walk through, shoot, maybe find a key to unlock a door, move on. You could literally do nothing else. Levers were 64×64 block mazes, and graphics were basic sprites. Despite this, it has active players even today, shooting Nazis and saying Aardwolf.

It also lead me to the first real online community I became an active part in; the Wolfenstein 3D modding community. In fact, I’m still a part of that community (Though to a very minor degree; I occasionally write an article or two on Wolfing Time when I’m in the mood.), and it’s still alive today. Hundreds if not thousands of mods are available on a website called the Wolfenstein 3D Dome, all made by various members of the community over the years.
The community has done amazing things within the confines of such a primitive engine, and have even pushed it beyond it’s limits and released a completely rewritten engine to make the game playable on modern operating systems like Windows 7, on which DOS is non-existent.

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Mods by members in the community continue to push the engine in amazing directions.

Wolfenstein 3D is an amazing game and although I’m not as obsessed with it as I was 6 years ago, it is still an all time favourite of mine, and probably always will be.

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Desura

by ZombieSkittles on March 23, 2011

I’ve come to have a bit of a love affair with Steam. It’s been a little over a year, and it’s helped cement my love with Valve as a game developer, having invested almost a thousand hours in it’s games and the sales they have always making me depart with my hard earned money.

However, while I love Steam, I’ve still got trouble convincing myself to depart with over fifty dollars for a game. This is where I’ve come to find myself searching for and enjoying indie games like VVVVVV, Onslaught Arena and World of Goo. Luckily, I invest the money pit that is PC PowerPlay Magazine1, and they pointed me in the direction of Desura.

desura_logo_blackWhat is Desura?

Well if you didn’t catch on from my dedicating a paragraph to a digital distribution system, and another to indie games, let me spell it out; Desura is a digital distribution system dedicated to mods and indie games.

The system was launched publically last year and while still fairly new, the community boasts over half a million users with several hundred joining every day. Created by the people responsible for ModDB and IndieDB, the social aspect of the program syncs with that of those websites, with a universal user profile over the three.

Why should I care?

Where Steam is an all round system, selling commercial games as well as the more popular indie games like World of Goo, Desura targets the complete modding and indie game creation community, and adds a more interactive spin to the whole experience. Going to a game’s or mod’s page, you’ll see news for the game, images videos and a threaded comments section in which community members and the developers can discuss the game.

This level of interactivity with the creators makes the experience feel a lot more sociable than the classic shop style of Steam. Imagine being able to walk into a games store, and have members from Bethesda Software on hand to talk with you about Fallout: New Vegas.
Games also can be ranked 1 to 10 by players and reviewed, so you know whether what you’re about to buy will be worth it. Luckily, unlike other indie-dedicated platforms like XBox Live Indie Games, Desura seems shit free; I haven’t seen a single bad game.

Desura IS a constantly changing beast though. Being so new, it gets updated at least once a week, and new features and enhancements are constantly in development (Unlike Steam, Desura is planned to have a Linux release).

Oh, the best part!

If I still haven’t convinced you, allow me to point out two more simple things. They have multiple free games on offer. That’s right, besides the array of free mods on offer for games like Half Life 2, Desura has multiple standalone games on offer that are completely free. Two fine examples are Warsow (A fast paced multiplayer FPS with an art style similar to Borderlands) and Alien Arena (A deathmatch style FPS built off of the Quake II engine).
The other thing? The games are DRM free. Unlike Steam, which binds your game to your account so you have to be logged in to play your games, Desura lets you play them without needing it. Sure, this means risking people pirating the games on offer, but it also gives a certain level of freedom which is much appreciated in this sort of community.

tl;dr

In closing, Desura is a new comer to the digital distribution scene, but being dedicated to a particularly large niche, and already having a big audience, it’s fairly established. There are plenty of free games so even if you weren’t interested in buying games, it’s worth it for the value you get for the sweet price of nothing dollars and nothing cents.

  1. I love you Hyper Magazine.

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I made a Minecraft skin.

by ZombieSkittles on December 11, 2010

You heard me. It’s lame and terrible, but I attempted to make Duke Nukem.

Yes, this is duke in all his glory. Unfortunately the big screenshots glitched and don’t display properly.  While it isn’t the best skin, I’m proud because this marks the first occasion when I have actually finished a game modification I’ve started. I’ve started making plenty of things in the past (Alien Swarm maps, Wolfenstein 3D mods, Game Maker things, etc) but always end up shelving them because of an acute case of the CBFs.

You can see the skin in action (running like a tard) here, and you could be awesome and either vote it up here, or leave a comment telling me how much I lack in art skills and whether I should/shouldn’t kill myself. Either is appreciated.

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TF2 Randomizer Mod

by ZombieSkittles on November 26, 2010

I have a new favourite mini-game to play in Team Fortress 2, and it is so ridiculous it is nothing short of brilliant, and amazing fun to play.

The randomizer mod works in the simplest way; you don’t get to choose your class or load-out. Instead your class is chosen at random and you are given completely random weapons. The trick is that it’s not confined to weapons specific to the class you’re assigned; you could be a scout wielding the Black Box, or a Spy getting revenge with the Flamethrower. The possibilities make it so much fun. There are even a couple of extra weapons not from the normal game; Ludmilla, and the Texas Ten Shot (Shotgun which surprisingly, has ten shots per clip.) to further the possibilities.

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Yep, that’s me being a Sniper with the Natasha. It throws out the game something shocking, but is so much fun. You discover that if a weapon were given to another class it would be extremely overpowered. For example, finding yourself face to face with a scout carrying a rocket launcher is a fearsome thing.

There are of course, bugs with the system. If a Demoman has a Chargin’ Targe in their normal load-out, they are able to use it in combination with 3 randomized items. This technically means the Demoman has 4 weapons active at one time, which while quite fun is a bit of a glitch.
Additionally, because of the way view models are, some appear as glitch-filled messes, and occasionally cover the whole screen, as in the case of the Kritzkrieg.

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As you can see, the Homewrecker doesn’t quite fit in with the Sniper’s view model, and comes out looking a little odd. The majority of weapons have similar effects, but luckily don’t ruin the flow of gameplay.

It is such a fun mod though, that it disappoints me that I’ve only found it on one server so far. If you want to give it a go, the IP address is 123.100.230.199:27062. It’s a great mod and needs more people playing it.

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Alien Swarm – A free Valve game

by ZombieSkittles on July 17, 2010

Valve made an announcement which as far as I can tell, is little more than a footnote at the bottom of a blog post on the Left 4 Dead website, that they are releasing a free game on Monday the 19th. Not only that, but it will come with everything needed to create your own mods for the game.

capsule_231x87The game itself is called Alien Swarm, adapted from what was originally a mod of Unreal Tournament 2004. The creators were apparently hired by Valve a couple of years ago1, and have made an official version of the game on the Source engine.

Alien Swarm is a four player co-op game based in the future. You play as one of four classes (Medic, Officer, Tech or Special Weapons) and fight through different maps full of alien creatures. Unlike other Valve games, it’s played with a top down view so you can see your team and the area around you, and judging from the screenshots seems quite stunning graphically.

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Valve boasts a levelling system that gives the player “persistent items” in the game, meaning anything you unlock will carry to any game you play, regardless of map or server. As is traditional, we can assume experience is given for killing various enemies, and probably for performing acts like healing teammates.

It looks really well made, and like it would be addictive as hell with friends. The game being released with the game code and complete mod tools indicates that the developers wanted to create a game with lots of user made content, to give the game more replay value. I have to say that if it catches on, which given Valve’s vast fan base it should to some degree, the results should be amazing. I myself will probably even give the mod tools a look.

As a final note…

The game makes me think of the history of Team Fortress; it started as a game mod that got the mod makers hired by Valve. Then the game got ported into the companies engine of the time, and was followed up years later with the game that I and many others obsess over; Team Fortress 2. That is pretty much what has happened with Alien Swarm. Except that instead of then spending years making a sequel, the game itself appears to be the end product they worked to2.

I can’t wait to play it.

  1. I say apparently because I’d never heard of them
  2. Also, no hats.

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I are artist

by ZombieSkittles on October 30, 2009

With all the work concerned with posing and the like in Garry’s Mod, I consider this to be art.

gm_construct0003

It’s my first time working with the program, but I’m quite proud of how this came out. Garry’s Mod is a game, but at the same time not. It’s a sandbox program where you can just mess around with the models and items from various Valve games including Half Life 2, and as you can see from the above screenshot, Team Fortress 2. The system is difficult to get the hang of, and I accidently deleted the models a few times, but it worked out eventually. There’s still tonnes for me to look through and explore, so I’ll no doubt be posting more of my hideous creations as time goes on.

Being that I’m new to the program, I know these aren’t very good. But still, I’m proud I was actually able to make it all work.

gm_construct0005

Playing this was so involved, that I lost track of time, and at the time of writing this, it’s a whole hour later than when I wanted to go to bed. I wouldn’t even get this distracted had I been playing TF2.

Anyway, if you have anything you want to say about my first attempt at G-Mod, I’m eager to hear it.

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