Modding Heaven: When Games Become Engines

this video is sponsored by War Thunder moding Heaven is attained when a game is so modable that it becomes a game engine not necessarily a literal game engine like Gau but more so in the sense that new experiences can be built off of it even if that might have not been the original intention I'm talking games that are so capable of being modded that entirely new games can be built from their Foundation few games have achieved this status but the ones that have are legendary titles that are so modable that they can act as a template for brand new experiences a good example of this is when a game has multiple total conversion mods or mods that change an entire game's resources however a game can also reach modding Heaven if it's simply modable enough to feel like different experiences so if a game needs to be really modable to achieve modding Heaven what does modable even mean there are at least three factors three solid traits that I believe determine a game's modability Factor One support how much modding support is built into a game and what is its relationship with modders does the development team behind the game encourage a modding scene or do they want nothing to do with it do they make it easy to mod their games by providing development tools or do they ignore their modding communities altogether it will be much easier for a game to be modded if it's a original creators are involved Factor two nature the nature of a game plays a big role in how modable it is is the game naturally a Sandbox or open world that can be added onto or does it play more like a fixed path with concrete levels does it make sense for mods to be in this game or do they seem out of place how suitable is a game's environment for new and experimental content factor three Passion the more passionate A Game's player base is the more modable it will be if a game has a passionate Community it will logically have more people putting effort into contributing to it that means more people making patches tools and doing all the work it takes to reverse engineer games with no support a game might be hard to mod but if its player base is passionate enough that won't be a problem if a game does well enough in more than one of these factors it has a good chance of attaining the rare status of modding Heaven you might ask why I chose these specific traits and the reason why is that a game that exhibits all three of them is usually the exact type of game I'm talking about a game that is so modable that it becomes its very own engine I'll be talking about multiple games focusing on their history and what kind of mods their communities have been able to create not every single game in this video will attain modding however every game will have its strengths highlighted the criteria won't be strictly followed and I'm not going to be too formal about it the three traits are just guidelines that show my thought process behind how these games became engines I'm going to analyze multiple games that have big modding scenes to see if they fit the definition but if there's a game that I don't cover and you think I should feel free to comment it and maybe I'll make a part two but for now let's start off with the grandfather doom doom has a fascinating history with modding first of all just as a vanilla game it was already really popular so popular that any other FPS game that came after was deemed a doom clone Doom could have easily redefined the FPS genre without any modding involved but somehow it was equally influential in that realm too despite coming out in 1993 Doom's modding support has yet to be matched and how Innovative it was if you look at Doom mods today you'll see one of the coolest and active modding communities around people have been creating mods for Doom for 30 years now with mods that often appear polished and like they fit perfectly within the game's Universe while you can sometimes tell when a game is modded do mods often keep in line with the game's overall aesthetic and really fit into the vanilla game most Doods look like professionally made spin-offs and many of them seem like they were effortlessly made fitting in seamlessly with the game it's almost as if Doom was a game that was made to be modded and that's because it was Doom was the first game to ever be released with real built-in mon support I'm not just talking about allowing or being open to mods I'm talking about Doom debuting with a custom set of files made to be changed and it all comes from a team that truly wanted to help aspiring modders Doom was created by ID software a studio whose previous game Wolfenstein 3D was known for being a popular game to mod it was a frequent practice for fans to hack into Wolfenstein in order to change its levels in graphics making their own mods despite Wolfenstein not being designed for this many people love to do it anyways this would light a spark as ID software would take notice coincidentally the studio had a particular fondness for modding themselves co-founder John Romero had a passion for modding games from his Youth and weed programmer John carmac was an avid fan of hacking and the idea behind programmers sharing and reusing their work seeing how popular it was to mod their previous game the devs decided that with doom modding would be as easy as possible through A system that they called wads not to be confused with the wi file of the same name wad or where's all the data was a product of pure awesomeness unlike any other video game at the time Doom would be released with all of its assets contained inside this invention rather than try to hide game data from its players ID software would make everything available through one convenient package I call it an invention because wads did not exist before Doom as they were made for it wads are a default format of package files that contain all the Sprites levels textures and sounds of Doom from enemy animations to music numerous assets were ready to be changed within the Doom wad modified wads could be saved and loaded which means if you created one anyone could easily play it if they had access to the file this of course made it easier for people to modify Doom's assets by making it so they didn't have to make any changes to its engine instead players could poke around everything going on inside of Doom change it however they wanted and share what they had done with others and with the scene behind modding Wolfenstein being big without modding support you can imagine that when this came out people ran with it the earlier years after Doom's release consisted of modders exploring what they could do with the new W system experimenting and learning all of the new possibilities by changing assets and playing around with all the options at their disposal but it didn't take long for more coherent and detailed wads to start appearing some of the most popular early wads were booill which turned Doom into the wild west cyberdreams which was space themed and of course the Beloved Batman Doom although wads were already a pretty Limitless tool there were still some parts of Doom that were hard-coded and not included in wads one of them being the timing and strength of weapons this would be quickly addressed by a doom player named tree who would go on to create an editor called dehacked which allowed the operation of the Doom executable to be changed there are hundreds of Doom wads the best of which are archived on Doom world.com you can still see the best mods of every year since Doom's release such as Army of Darkness Icarus and Gothic DM websites like this show how much passion was behind Doom modding as people were preserving the community's Creations from the start four years after its release even more freedom would be given to modders when Doom Source would become available for non-commercial license this would lead to the creation of player made Source ports coupled with the Rel release of Doom 2 which was also compatible with wads and any limit to what you could make within the Doom Universe no longer existed Doom fighter is a wad that turns Doom into a boxing game while Doom mower turns it into a landscape simulator complete with the ability to sip an energy drink I love how true these two mods stay to the Doom world but it's equally impressive to see Doom mods that completely change the environment such as trench foot trench foot is a mod that turns Doom 2 into trench warfare the graphics are absolutely stellar and it looks like something ID software would make themselves one of the most impressive Games built off of Doom like a thorn transforms it into a world of unique fantasy design inspired by Castlevania lethorn contains eight levels it has a dramatically different aesthetic from Doom and features a custom HUD which accompanies its medieval weapons and it looks quite Charming if you think lethorn looks cool though check out lethorn 2 with lethorn 2 the map takes place in an open map with a day and night cycle as well as multiple characters you can play as you can go anywhere in the world find different Dungeons and fight enemies you won't find in any other game I think you could convince someone that this was an original game from the late '90s but leorn is built off of the Doom Source Port it's not an original game more recently popular is the my house mod which is one of the most cryptic and interesting mods ever created known for being uniquely terrifying this mod is super trippy the less you know about it the better so I won't spoil what happens but if you're interested I highly recommend you play it in my opinion one of the most unbelievable Doom mods is Sonic Robo Blast 2 an original platform game that is somehow made from Doom this mod is better than some real Sonic games and it looks absolutely amazing and of course who could forget pirate Doom while Doom might seem like a pretty straightforward game to be so heavily modded that's actually a huge plus modding Doom is fun because the game is essentially a template for any FPS that you want to design or platformer if you're talented enough all of the coding and mechanics behind Doom are ready to go which is a bit different than if you wanted to create an FPS like Doom from scratch on a real engine while real engines have templates Doom is such a good game and is so malleable that it can serve as a great starting point for development you can start off changing how a couple things look but if you want you can also create a whole new game wait a second that sounds like modding Heaven let's take a look at how Doom does with the category when it comes to support that's a no-brainer Doom had insane mod support Not only was it the first game to attempt something like wads but it also did an amazing job at it the nature of Doom doesn't really make sense to be modded since its levels follow a traditional episodic format and it's very Concrete in its design it's not a game that I would guess served as a pallet for other games however it clearly does the support and passion for this game is so great that the original games format doesn't hinder it at all in some ways having a fixed set of levels with concrete paths helps because it means that less ambitious modders can build on an already furnished campaign but the support of Doom also makes it so modable that people quickly broke out of that format anyways while some of the other games will talk about benefit from having a more open-ended nature Doom just had such outrageous support for modding that it surpassed those traits the community is still going strong to this day with mods being published all the time and you can really make anything off of Doom if you are ambitious enough it's a really unexpected pairing one of the most influential FPS games of the 9s was also a Pioneer in the world of mod support contrary to its aesthetic Doom attains B heaven now a quick disclaimer before we start talking about Minecraft I want to clarify that I'll only be talking about Java Edition as you may know there are two versions of Minecraft Java and Bedrock Java is the platform exclusive to PC and Bedrock can be played on anything they also have a lot of differences in their UI and how they play there are multiple reasons why I will only be talking about Java the first being that Minecraft Java Edition existed for many years before Bedrock came out and therefore most of Minecraft's early history with modding took place exclusively inside of it due to bedrock not being out yet the second reason is that Bedrock is straight UNM modable at least in the sense that most people think of it the reason why is because unlike Java code Bedrock C++ code cannot be reverse engineered and so it's actually impossible for it to be modded while Bedrock does come with a Marketplace that sells add-ons they're not considered mods as they don't change any built-in code in their creation and instead use custom developer software hence why they are called add-ons and not mods when I say Minecraft I mean Minecraft Java Edition with that being said Minecraft is easily one of the most modded games ever when I hear the term mod pack Minecraft is usually the first game that pops up in my head and I'm sure I'm not the only won and yet when it comes to the matter of support Minecraft doesn't actually have that much going for it with a game like Doom there is much more to say because of how dedicated the developers were to making modding easy however Minecraft has never had an extended effort to support modding so it's pretty weak in that aspect right now though I want to talk to you about War Thunder War Thunder is the most comprehensive vehicle combat game around yet it's free on PC and consoles control over 2,500 tanks planes helicopters and ships from 10 major nations from by planes and armored cars of the 20s to Modern fighter jets and main battle tanks War Thunder immerses you through stunning Vehicles realistic graphics and authentic sound effects that put you behind some of the most powerful vehicles in history I personally recommend trying an aircraft cuz dodging and firing at other Pilots is an absolute blast join the worldwide community of over 70 million players enjoying the high stakes War Thunder experience with an unrivaled set of highquality content fans of military history are covered play War Thunder for free on PC Playstation or Xbox by using my link in the pinned comment or video description newer returning players who haven't played in 6 months will get a massive Bonus Pack across all platforms with the exclusive vehicle decorator Eagle of Valor 100 ,000 silver Alliance and 7 Days of premium account available for a limited time only so act fast there was one time in 2012 where Mojang hired some modders to make an API for the community but that was a one-time thing as nothing similar has happened since that's not to say they haven't been inspired by mods the Piston horse and scaffold were all once mods that Mojang ended up turning into real features and they've also hired modders to join their team so clearly Mojang isn't against mods but they're also not really trying to help for the most part they basically left modders to their own devices not stopping them or boosting their progress which makes sense and is actually pretty normal compared to the phenomenon that is Doom support it's easy to forget that that was essentially all charity it's not any Studio's obligation to add modding support and that's why it's really cool when they do support is the first stage of moding Heaven because it can help games get there the fastest but most development teams are going to be more focused on making sure that the vanilla version of their game is as good as possible before they make any sort of modding support for it most so when it comes to support Minecraft has a minimum level due to Mojang focusing on vanilla development whether you think they do a good job at that or not is a different argument altogether but either way vanilla is what they focus on so Minecraft is light in the support category nature and passion however are where this game excels if you take a look at Minecraft mods you'll see that they are teaming with creativity and that it's naturally one of the best games to add content to so let's take a step back in time when Minecraft first started out there was absolutely no support as the game hadn't even found its own identity and would have a long time before it had a proper launch it's still not done being updated to this day and yet even as Minecraft entered Alpha in June 2010 players were already ahead of the game already starting to make their first mods the passion for Minecraft had quickly gotten to a place where people wanted to add their own spin to it didn't matter if it was easy to or not and from there on the legacy of modded Minecraft would begin the basic explanation of how Minecraft modding is done is by reverse engineering its Java code and changing it at first Minecraft modding started off with basic server mods which added more control to owners today we would call these server plugins but they are technically considered Minecraft's first mods the first ever widely known mod of this type was hod which is considered to be the predecessor to the more well-known bucket however it would take long for the types of mods we know today to start showing up as the game updated from alpha to Beta the first mods that added actual content would start to be shared railcraft industrialcraft and BuildCraft would be some of the most popular the insane part is that even though these were some of the first mods to ever exist they were already really Advanced personally I would expect earlier mods to be more primitive and not so good right off the bat but contrary to this modders instantly made revolutionary ideas some of which are still being used in mod packs today industrial Contraptions like quaries and water Mills were a big part of early modded Minecraft there were even laser guns and engines that you could fill with liquid fuel pipes that transferred items were the original Hoppers and automation was overall a big Focus Minecraft wasn't even fully released but its mods had already gone far out of the scope of what vanilla could offer a theme that would continue throughout the game's history not only were players passionate enough to figure out how to manipulate Minecraft's code but they also put a lot of time effort and energy into crafting these mods by the time Minecraft 1.0 dropped there were dozens of mods to choose from people were now more experienced with modding Minecraft and so more ambitious ideas started to surface one of the most iconic Minecraft mods to this day would debut before its beta was over the aether mod was an insane Endeavor at the time of its release and to this day it hasn't become any less impressive adding a new dimension to the game complete with dungeons bosses in a new world where everything was different there were tons of mobs and a fascinating realm now adjacent to vanilla Minecraft an entire Dimension that took place in the sky with floating islands and buildings placed on clouds even though it's not in many ways Aether feels like a total conversion mod you could do a whole playthrough within the Aether and never have to go back to the Overworld with many YouTubers doing just that the sheer amount of content was incredible it's not a surprise that this mod gained a huge fan base and following on YouTube although it did accidentally lead to the creation of one of the most shared childhood disappointments when everyone discovered you couldn't go there in vanilla this was heartbreaking this mod didn't just capture the attention of players but also developers a fun fact that a lot of people like about this mod is that the Creator King bogs would go on to be hired by Mojang funny enough people complained about vanilla Minecraft not matching the amount of content that modded did even back then here's a form post that was made when the aether mod was still a fresh release posted on July 27th 2011 some of Minecraft's best mods are making Notch look bad Aether Mod blows nether out of the water he could have done so much more if the nether this is still a sentiment that is discussed today maybe even more te it was an equally iconic mod pack that transformed Minecraft into a game all about building factories and automation it featured the aformentioned trio of industrial craft railcraft and BuildCraft as well as the equivalent exchange mod the wireless Redstone mod and of course the not enough items mod as well as several more these mods were all some of the most popular on the Block so it made sense that a mod pack combining them would be a hit most memorable was the yog cast playthrough of it and how they used teet in their pursuit of jafa cakes other famous mod packs include Galactic Craft Attack of the B Team Feed the Beast create hexit volts skya Factory and crazy craft Minecraft was so modable that it was like there was a Multiverse of different ways that you could play it additionally there were the stand ofone mods that focused on smaller scale features these were also popular with many of them getting attention through YouTube mod showcases there were mutant mobs Portal guns Furniture Elemento creepers Lucky Blocks clay soldiers and morphing I'm not done listing them just let me catch my breath Go plint versus Zombies Spider-Man natural disasters weeping angels and the Herobrine mod now while I'd like to tell you that I played all these mods myself and didn't just watch DanTDM do it that would be incorrect it was way too hard for me to install Minecraft mods in the early 2010s and my already decade Old Mac hand-me-down was not making it any easier in fact it was actually a pretty widely held belief that modding early Minecraft was difficult Not only was there 30 more steps to it than there are today but you also had to be on the lookout for malware which I may or may not have installed in my failed attempts to go to litero moding heaven this speaks to the lack of support from Minecraft's devs making it a bit of a wild west at first and creating a much more treacherous Journey for aspiring modders but that's okay because Minecraft mods evolved and now I can download them way easier through Minecraft mod launchers and it only takes like clicks I I still need a tutorial though it's no secret that all these mods created Priceless experiences but in my opinion the ones that act the most like different games are Pixelmon and rlcraft Pixelmon is the original Power World a combination of Minecraft and Pokemon this wasn't just a mod that added a couple reskin mobs it Blended Pokemon's RPG elements into Minecraft by overlaying a custom interface over the player's view the mod made it so that it was possible to engage in RPG combat and see a roster of Pokémon you own to the left of your screen all while still playing regular Minecraft the mod offered an engaging grind where on on top of doing the regular Minecraft stuff like building a house and Mining you're simultaneously playing a whole different game it's very different from vanilla Minecraft but still clearly connected to its base it's worth noting that another take on this type of mod has been released called Cobble mod rlcraft is a mod pack that is known to make the game extremely difficult it combines up to 186 mods in an effort to make a unique challenge where nothing is familiar and everything is horrifying Minecraft's comforting process of gradually cultivating the world has been replaced as everything one knows about the early game must be relearned even the traditional first step of punching a a tree is gone and instead you have to sift through gravel hoping to find flint you have to drink water and the water can have parasites in it you can escape a monster find some ore and then you mine the ore and there's just another monster inside of it well it might sound like this mod pack is just made to punish players it's far from being a pointless rage game rlcraft offers a very rewarding endgame if you take the time to learn it unlike vanilla Minecraft you can upgrade a skill tree that makes you more powerful and there's also plenty of new armor and the ability to ride dragons if you get far enough the early game is brutal but it can be refreshing and a nice change of pace to anyone who finds vanilla Minecraft to be too easy both of these mods have created their own subcultures within Minecraft's community and the passion around them is undeniable a big reason why mods work so well with Minecraft is its nature first of all there's the fact that Minecraft worlds are infinite while there's technically a border if you go far enough the average playthrough will never come close to reaching it so in practice the world has endless space this amount of room is already awesome with vanilla but with modding it's especially beneficial because Minecraft worlds are essentially infinite they have much more space for modded content than other games when I say space I don't mean it as in storage space but rather I mean it as an actual room because Minecraft worlds are so big you have room to fit more mods than other games would allow you if you're playing Skyrim for example that's a game that initially has decent room for mods but the more you add the less physical space there is every time a modded location is added to Skyrim's map it takes up room and the same goes for NPCs and anything else that takes up space in the map such as animals this might seem like a silly concept but it can be a real problem if enough mods are added to a Skyrim World they can start to overlap and clip into each other a new modded Bandit Outpost for example might conflict with the physic iCal location of a horse pen you also modded in dunkey's Ultimate Skyrim video is an extreme example of this but it's true the point is that there is a ceiling to how much you can add to most games before things get cramped but with Minecraft being infinite it has much more room for Content there's room for content in the sky underground and in every direction around you this couples well with the fact that Minecraft worlds are also random in their generation so modded content like new loot or ore can be added in unpredictable places a new or called subscribe or for instance could be set to have a 150 chance to replace a diamond or spawn or just spawn somewhere else on its own basically it's easy for mods to shuffle into vanilla Minecraft and fortunately its worlds offer plenty of room for them I'm not saying that other games AR incapable of smoothly integrating mods but I am saying that Minecraft is especially good at it one of the things about vanilla Minecraft that people often complain about is its lack of progression this is another place where Minecraft is the perfect game to mod since its progression is relatively straightforward modders have a perfect Foundation to work off of they can take the base progression of the game and build onto it in whichever direction they want if they want to add a new sword they don't have to place it beside you or put it in a random chest instead they can add it as the next step after netherite many Minecraft mods will come with books full of quests that guide you through their content adding days of extra progression to your experience if Minecraft had a more mandatory route of progression this wouldn't work but again its Simplicity is a key strength this is the big reason why I'm an advocate for slowing down on Minecraft updates because the more updates that come out the less simple the game becomes if vanilla were to have the complex progression that a lot of people want there wouldn't be as much room for modders to continue to gamees Journey that might sound dumb especially if you're a a console player cuz you can't can't mod awkward uh but that's another video for another day so does Minecraft achieve modding Heaven absolutely in the right hands modded Minecraft can act as a game engine it might not be as obvious as Doom turning itself into Sonic but it definitely serves as a vehicle for new game experiences to be built on the Aether Pixelmon and rlcraft all share the same Roots but play like different games each of them use Minecraft as a skeleton to build onto and yet they are undeniably their own thing but if that's not enough someone also made a real-time strategy game in Minecraft called Minecraft Fortress this is also Minecraft just moded to have a different perspective and play completely differently either way as long as a game can be modded into different gaming experiences it can achieve modding heaven and with rlcraft and pixelon being such dramatically different games Minecraft is the second game to attain modding Heaven Minecraft benefits from mods but Skyrim Skyrim's different Skyrim needs mods both games are associated with modding but the difference is that where Minecraft runs to its modding scene Skyrims is intertwined modding for Minecraft is kind of like a signature jacket it could do without it but it's still a big deal in a core part of its look but mods cannot be separated from Skyrim it needs them to live separating mods from Skyrim would be like separating it from its heart thankfully it clears the support category Skyrim came at the dawn of Bethesda really starting to push modding it was likely that before Skyrim was completed Bethesda had realized how powerful modding could be specifically how useful it was towards extending their game's lifespan mods have a talent for keeping games interesting they they can breathe new life into past titles and keep players coming back without developers having to do any heavy lifting as a studio who only released games ever so often Bethesda likely saw the value behind this longevity they were also similar to ID software in that they had a passion for modding within their team Todd Howard was another developer who enjoyed modding when he was younger and he's expressed several times that seeing players mod his games is amazing according to Todd the studio as a whole were big fans of it too and so Bethesda decided that with Skyrim bding support would ideally be available from day one nowadays there are a lot of mixed opinions about Todd Howard's leadership as Bethesda has taken quite a few missteps in recent years you can tell that the criticism towards Starfield has taken a toll on Todd because when IGN told him that they gave the Fallout show a nine he looked too broken to believe them it was absolute pleasure thank you so much yeah you really give it a nine yeah that's what he told me I was like regardless of where his reputation stands right now I think we can all agree that what he and the Bethesda developers did with Skyrim was pretty awesome as a vanilla game Skyrim is a classic your first few playthroughs will always be fun especially if you play stealth Archer but its support for mods is really what makes it still playable a decade later the primary way that Skyrim modding would be supported was through a new editor called The Creation kit named after the creation engine this is an editor that gives anyone who downloads it these same tools that Bethesda uses to make their games the kit was like nothing that had ever been seen in the gaming industry before because it was basically Bethesda giving players the keys to modify Skyrim with the same type of software that they used to create it in some ways it was like a much more evolved spiritual successor to wads besides obviously being far more advanced than them the most distinct part about the creation kit is how Visual and interactive it is for example you can go to Riverwood and actually move furniture around its physical space you can copy and paste doors and delete rugs it's like creative mode values can also be edited such as the weight and damage of weapons and NPCs or actors are highly customizable as is everything else any changes made can be saved into a plug-in file which can be shared and loaded to bring your modded world to life a feature which is very reminiscent of how wads could be saved Bethesda also made moves to support sharing mods by coll crating with valve with their help it would be possible to directly upload to the Steam Workshop from the creation kit the creation kit would end up being released 88 days after Skyrim but it's still how most mods are made today if you ever wondered why Skyrim has such a big modding scene this editor is a huge reason why not only is the kit wellmade but it's also free on Steam for anyone to use the entire project was like a gift to the modding Community especially because Skyrim is a particularly fantastic game that many consider to be their favorite overall this is some s tier modding Heaven stuff right here this is the blueprint Bethesda also supported modding Skyrim in a different way but it's a way that not everyone is happy about the creation Club is a store where players can buy mods or Creations right from inside of Skyrim all content was made by independent modders who were hired by Bethesda and the Creations can be purchased from within the game and downloaded without any outside software I would classify these mods as being quality but safe they fit in so well to Skyrim to where I won't even notice that a creation Club mod isn't part of the vanilla experience it's basically the Minecraft Marketplace of Bethesda games except I like it more than the marketplace the first reason why the store is often criticized is because it uses microtransactions to sell paid mods in order to unlock the mods you must this is going to be a tongue twister but you must buy a currency called creation Club credits the second reason that the creation Club is disliked is because a lot of people say that they are equal if not better mods out there for free and that these paid mods can't really offer anything that free mods can't both reasons are perfectly valid I can see where people are coming from however I will offer a counterargument I think criticizing the creation Club is a little bit unnecessary yes the store sells mods and there are a lot of better free ones but I kind of see it as harmless the mods on the store are not developed by Bethesda but real independent modders that they contracted by buying these mods There's an opportunity to show support towards Contracting more modders and I can't think of anything better than getting paid to do your passion to be completely honest with you I know that free mods destroy the creation Club but I don't think that there's any benefit to hating on it either when Gamers and especially YouTubers give Bethesda backlash for doing this they ultimately make it less likely that opportunities like this will show up in the industry again which is kind of a bummer when you realize that this program probably made a lot of modders days when it gave them a really cool opportunity I don't see how you can call yourself a fan of mods but get upset when the people who make them get to be compensated Beyond adfly and patreon for once but anyhow I I got sidetracked even though I used it to prop up Minecraft Skyrim has its own benefits when it comes to Nature 2 because Bethesda games are well known for having a do whatever you want play style skym is a game that is anything but linear it doesn't follow a sequence of levels or check in with you as you progress you can spend your your first 20 levels on one side of the map without ever having confronted the main quest line there's really no M or fixed way the game plays out and this naturally works well from a modding perspective because the open-ended gameplay means it's possible to fit in new quests and locations even Skyrim's weaknesses benefit mods it is said that vanilla Skyrim is as wide as the ocean but as deep as a puddle which means that the game contains a variety of content but it can sometimes feel like it lacks depth fortunately that just means that there's more room for mods with a wide amount of content that can be expanded upon this natural compatibility with mods is even better due to Skyrim support and the things that have been created off of it are astonishing there's been some really amazing work from Standalone mods to completely different games Prime examples of modding Heaven one mod literally became a real game Skyrim's most subtle yet game-changing mods are the quality of life ones these are some of the most popular mods because they significantly improve how Skyrim plays they fix bugs make the UI better and usually adjust the parts of Skyrim that feel outdated some of the modded patches are so important to a smooth playthrough that there's even been speculation that Bethesda purposely released an unfinished game knowing modders would pick up their slack which is pretty funny and might be true graphic mods are the cousin to Quality of Life mods they give Skyrim that 8K rate Trace Costco TV quality moded is known for Standalone mods that add content are a whole another world Al together there are companions with thousands of voice lines custom armor sets lightsabers and Alternate starts I couldn't list them all if I tried like other games it is the combination of these mods that create mod packs building a mod pack for Skyrim is a really fun experience in itself but it takes a certain level of skill to compose a large mod pack that still still works together or hits a certain theme because on one hand it's fun to pile hundreds of mods into a pack but it takes a certain level of skill to choose the right ones without it evolving into a big mess if there's any mod pack that shows how to do it right it's Skyrim Ultima Ultima has been getting attention for looking like a spectacular new RPG but the crazy thing is it's not using a different engine or even its own assets this is just the result of a really wellp put together mod pack the organizer of the mod pack knck hasn't released it yet but the description of its trailer says it will take at least 200 GB of SSD space to run this Ultima might require a PC upgrade to play but it is proof that with Skyrim if you simply download The Right mods this can be the result we can almost say that Skyrim has managed to attain modding Heaven through this example alone however skipping over its total conversion mods would be a mistake as they are some of the best out there Ender all is an original game built off of Skyrim it doesn't take place in Tamriel but rather its own world with its own lore because it uses Skyrim as an engine some assets and mechanics are shared and it's pretty easy to recognize Skyrim written all over this however andreal plays out much differently as a narrative it has a far deeper and darker story than Skyrim and its characters have a lot more personality there's no dragon born shouting or anything Skyrim related instead the endre mod presents its own world with its own quests the interesting part about its Origins is that rather than being made by one person it was made by a studio this is a development team that has made their own games and they chose to use Skyrim as a platform for one of their stories which is a crazy thing to think about a whole team chose to make a game off of Skyrim because it's that modable Skyrim is an engine in everything but conventional meaning the forgotten city is a Skyrim mod that was remade into a real game there was this lawyer named Nick Pierce who thought that modding could be a good way to tell a story so he got to modding his own Skyrim mod centered around what he had wrote the story is about the player discovering a city in Skyrim where if one person sins everyone dies and it's up to you to figure out why everything is going wrong inside the city there are multiple characters with different motivations and flaws and by talking to them you'll try to deduce what they know and what they might be doing behind closed doors the mod uses time travel as a mechanic where you can reset the day Groundhog Day style in order to build up knowledge and use it to your advantage it's a mod that plays like you're solving a twisted mystery I won't spoil what happens but the highlight of this mod is the questions it forces you to ask about how morals are judged the reason why this mod works so well is because it uses video game mechanics like NPCs and time travel to tell a story that it would otherwise not be able to this mod was so well written and produced that in 2016 it received a writer Guild award a mod not even a video game but a mod got a writer Guild award that that's insane if that wasn't enough it was made from a $0 budget and has been downloaded over 3 million times the success was so great that Nick decided to quit his job as a lawyer and turn the story into its own game which means you can now find the game on Steam with a now Roman aesthetic and beautiful Graphics what's funny is there's people out there who have played this game and left five-star reviews with no idea that forgotten City started out as a Skyrim mod I don't think I have to elaborate anymore to prove that Skyrim is a Bonafide engine Skyrim has attained Bing Heaven draria is one of the most loved indie games fa time this game has a community that is even more passionate than most like I'd put Terraria Geometry Dash and TF2 in the same Circle because they all have communities that stayed together while they waited ages for a new update that finally came well one of them is still waiting logically Terraria has a good amount of modded content but it also has some unique patterns in how its mods are designed the support for Terraria was no support almost like with Minecraft Terraria developers were focused on the vanilla game more than adding mod support however that's not a problem because the Terraria Community went ahead and did it for them tmod is one of the most successful and well-known modding applications and it was created by a group of players known as the tml team free and open source the t- mod loader is essential for modding Terraria you don't really do mods without it it is the place to get mods to load mods and to make them and it does a really good job at all of it it's an amazing and convenient software that almost everyone uses to mod Terraria ironically through using C in the past this would be where terraria's analysis on support would end Terraria just had a really good community that made a really good loader sometimes that's all you need however a cool thing about t-mod loader is that it was actually a officially endorsed by Terraria developers that's right Rel logic actually partnered with the developers of t- mod Motor and supported it as Publishers so the game could be sold as DLC on Steam so yeah Terraria has a straightforward story behind its mod support due to the passion and talent of its Community modding Terraria is something that even the most inexperienced beginner could do considering that you can get the number one loader straight from Steam for free modding Terraria will never give you a headache you don't have to download anything online or choose the best manager just grab this DLC and you're good the Calamity mod is no doubt the most popular terraria mod and that is because it combines two things that players love new content and difficulty Calamity is a large scale mod that adds hours of endgame content and plenty of new enemies in bosses it also tweaks the vanilla Terraria enemies by giving them new Universal stats such as faster projectile speed and knockback Immunity the modcs life steal at 10 HP and all bosses ignore 100% of the players's armor just those stats alone can show you that this is a mod made to challenge players it comes built in with harder difficulty modes and it's just so well made I mean look at some of these bosses the content of the Calamity mod we into terraria's vanilla progression adding to and lengthening the original games road which is something that I found most Terraria mods often try to do unlike other games where you will find that most mod packs take the game in a different direction Terraria mods often try to fit in with the original gameplay route this says something about how good vanilla Terraria is in fact one of the reasons it probably doesn't have as many mods as other games is because vanilla Terraria is already packed with content since it takes a long time to run out of things to do compared to a lot of other sandbox and RPG games Terraria requires less modding to Feel Complete think about it this way is is it a coincidence that people say that both Skyrim and Minecraft don't have enough content but they simultaneously have huge modding scenes it's almost as if the games that initially feel empty come back the strongest due to the room they provide for mods Stay With Me Now For Better or Worse large modding scenes might be the result of a Content vacuum maybe a game can only achieve modding Heaven if its vanilla base is broken broken so it can be repaired twice as strong like a muscle gaining only because it once lacked enough to be left wanting I might have been writing this video for a little bit too long Terraria doesn't have this vacuum in fact when I made a video about my thoughts on Minecraft's updates the main comparison that people made to vanilla Minecraft was Vanilla Terraria with people agreeing that Terraria has far more things to do the amount of quality content in vanilla Terraria means that there might be less demand for mods because vanilla already provides so much it's not a flaw in any of these game's Parts but it is an interesting Dynamic games that have less vanilla depth will attract more modded content whereas games that are already closer to perfection might get less Terraria is already so good that tearing it down would simply be a mistake most Terraria mods don't want to reinvent the game as much as they just want to continue it the Calamity mod is an example of this and so is the thorium mod the thorium mod is a much more familiar and earthy mod pack this mod has another brilliant collection of features that were made by more than 36 different developers I don't want to generalize everything that was added in this mod but I also can't possibly describe all of it so I'm going to go ahead and name some of my favorite additions thorium adds several events including a Pirate Invasion Goblin Army attack and solar eclipse it adds way too many cool weapons such as the backstabber Doom fire axe and Spoon and that's just the swords the spears added also include a fork and a flesh skewer classic Terraria combination but now for the most aesthetically pleasing mod Starlight River Starlight river is an elegant mod that focuses on delivering a compact supply of quality content it hones in on just three bosses Each of which you can tell had a lot of thought put into their design and gameplay and in case you are wondering if this game adds any kitchen wear it has a frying pan is there some sort of inside joke in the Terraria Community about turning kitchen wear into swords that I I just don't know about I mean the Calamity mod literally adds a microwave I mean I don't think it's a microwave okay it's it's not really microwave but look at this beautiful super Terraria world is an older mod that turns Terraria into a classic MMO RPG it takes terraria's nature as a 2d platformer and leans more heavy into its aspect of exploration instead of the world being randomly generated it's handcrafted and designed like an MMO there are multiple worlds you can travel to Via boats and doorways Each of which feature unique environments and dungeons made to reward exploring this is complemented by quests and skill progression with of course a bunch of extra content I recommend playing this mod if you feel like playing Terraria but want to jump right into combat and exploration the nature of Terraria is another straightforward perk it has the same infinite and randomly generated world of Minecraft which means that it shares the ability for mods to randomly distribute content in every direction the many facets of Terraria are also a plus if someone wants to create a terraria Mod they can choose to focus on a variety of different features you can add more accessories add more minions pets events NPCs Furniture Wings there are many different aspects of content that can be added to Terraria the two-dimensional spriton art of Terraria is perfect it makes for a game where you don't have to be a modeler or Texture genius to make good-looking mods just being able to work with pixel art is all you need interestingly enough the anachronism of Terraria is another perk what I mean by that is that while it does have a recognizable aesthetic the stuff you find in Terraria is very random like the vanilla game has typical looking fantasy swords but there's also a star cannon umbrella pair of scissors and ruler there is stuff from every time period in this game so as a Moder the nature of terrara gives a lot of freedom to what you can add you can add a Roomba and Santa's nauy list to Terraria and no one's going to bat an eye that stuff will straight up look vanilla you know how I know that because the Fargo mod literally added both for those things but with all that being said time to discuss Terraria status with modding heaven and to be frank I'm a bit conflicted because while this is a very modable game and it has some of the most Stellar mods in the market it's difficult to call terrarian engine I haven't been able to find a mod that fundamentally changes its reality and that means that the only way that Terraria can attain modding Heaven is if it shows evidence of being able to be modded into multiple different gaming experiences the problem is that most Terraria mods fit in so well that they don't actually do that much dramatic change I talked all about how Terraria mods are kind of built around vanilla rather than overhauling it obviously not a flaw but it definitely keeps them more uniform the question is can you truly feel like you can play multiple different gaming experiences through Terraria mods or are you just playing the same game but with more content I liked how Minecraft had Pixelmon and rlcraft and a strategy Fortress building game as examples those are dramatically different experiences all coming out of the same game but even Minecraft was cutting it pretty close it's nowhere near Skyrim or Doom's level of modability with Terraria there aren't that many massive mods and the ones that do exist keep the game's reality in line with vanilla they are quality some of the best mods but none of them are using Terraria as a platform for different games because it's already such a good game why would you want to transform Terraria into something else anyways it's Suffering From Success you know what I'm going to do it this calls for a different category altogether I'm going to do it gaming Heaven modding Heaven is a concept I created because I thought the pun was funny for 10 seconds but the more I develop the theory the more I realized the power of modded games and the price that goes into making them getting a game to the point where it can be an engine for other games is not an easy thing to do on the developer part it takes the willingness to put in a lot of extra time into something that might distract people from your original vision and on the player side sometimes countless hours of personal time if the game has no modding support uh even when games do have modding support it can still be pretty hard and take a long time to make these mods but when a game does have support and it's naturally got a good base for creation some really cool stuff can happen creating a platform that Bridges the gap for people who want to make something new from their favorite inspiration that is modding heaven when a game is so I don't know I hate saying the word modable when a game is so able to be changed that's worse that you can do anything oh dude this this sounds like a freaking 2009 Minecraft commercial shout out again to War Thunder for sponsoring this video play it today for free on PC Playstation or Xbox by using my link in the pinned comment or video description if you've never played or it's been at least 6 months that bonus pack with premium vehicles 100,000 silver lions and 7 Days of Premium is waiting for you thank you so much if you're still watching this video don't forget to hit like thanks for watching I'm lofa

Channel: Lufa

Views: 193,333

Keywords: terraria, skyrim, minecraft, doom

Id: bmVsv15gjdg

Length: 40min 15sec (2415 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2024