A Whole New World

Apologies for the late post, excessive heat plus too many cheese sandwiches turned me into a moron rolling around on the floor in agony.

As I said before, mods come in all shapes and sizes, one of the smallest and most common comes in the form of a cosmetic change.



The above image would is on the higher end of what one might consider a cosmetic change. In this case, the modder created unique models in a 3d modeling program and tied them with unique items the modder created within the video game's world-editor (in this case, Oblivion). Remember that most video games do not include a world editor or other modding tools. For each item that the programmers include, the easier it is for modders to add new content and the more likely it is that a healthy modding community will develop.

When the developer goes through the effort, and adds modding tools for their playerbase to use (especially one as relatively easy to use as Oblivion's world editor) modders can add wonderful (if copyright infringing) content like this to their games.

While this is a very impressive modification, and it represents at least a couple of weeks worth of work if not more, it is not as far as mods can go.



The above video is a sample video of gameplay in Half-Life 2. This doesn't include everything you'll see in Half Life 2 obviously, but you can see what it generally looks like. Note the first person perspective, and the realistic graphics, these are consistent throughout the entire game. The video that follows is a mod for Half-Life 2.



Obviously mods can add a ton of greatf content to video games, but there are dangers to such freedom. Tomorrow I'll give you a slight glimpse into the dangers of modding.