Modders are engaging with technology and industry in substantive ways. By releasing tools like the UDK and the more recent Steam, game companies seek to capture modding communities for development of valuable derivative works.
Modders can be seen as resisting this logic but they are often able to move within it by structuring their productivity through technologies and laws like EULAs, SDKs and level editors.
Space Exploration
A popular type of game, space exploration games allow players to build their own intergalactic empires and embark on epic interplanetary adventures. These games often feature complex mechanics that require significant skill and precision, resulting in a rewarding experience for experienced gamers.
While space is often seen as a place of wonder, exploration also presents a number of dangers and challenges. To combat these, many games have a variety of gameplay options to help players succeed. The most famous example of this is the Kerbal Space Program series, which features a mix of realistic science and humorous humor to provide an entertaining and challenging gaming experience.
For those who want a more immersive and challenging experience, many space exploration mods offer additional gameplay options. For example, the KSP 2 expansion pack adds a variety of gameplay enhancements that make the game more challenging than vanilla. This includes the ability to use time warp while accelerating and a new non-impulsive maneuver planner that takes the guesswork out of interplanetary flight.
Another popular option is the Space Engineers mod, which provides a range of improvements and additions to the game that improve the overall quality and feel. This includes a new audio immersion pack that utilizes real recordings of a rocket launch, VAB construction noises, system-heavy wind effects for flight, atmosphere (or lack thereof) driven effects and much more. Other visual improvement mods include HUD Colors, which adds colors to the washed out blue HUD elements in vanilla and Colorful Icons, which gives a bit of personality to the icons that appear on screen.
While story isn't a primary focus of most space exploration games, a few can be found. For example, the 4X genre of strategy games, such as Endless Space 2, can be considered a kind of space exploration game because you're building a space station and colonizing planets while attempting to spread your brand of free market capitalism to all corners of the universe. https://gameboost.com/
For a more traditional space exploration game, the acclaimed Elite Dangerous has a wide variety of missions to keep you busy. The game also features a variety of weapons and other gear to help you explore the universe, which is procedurally generated so that you'll never run out of things to do.
Time Travel
If you're a fan of the Portal series, then you'll love this mod that adds a third green portal to the game. This portal allows you to travel between timelines, including a version of the game 20 years in the future. It's a fun way to add new challenges to an already great puzzler.
This is one of those mods that makes you realize why developers create games with mod tools. It adds a ton of cool stuff, like a Marty McFly skin and a DeLorean from the movies that actually flies in-game. It also lets you time-travel by typing in any date from 0 AD onwards. Be sure to avoid yourself while traveling, though, as you may accidentally change the world around you.
The latest update to this mod brings a massive overhaul of the Nuka World settlement, adding new buildings and player homes as well as a time-travel quest. This is perfect for fans of the post-apocalyptic sci-fi series who want to mess with the local timeline and see how it impacts their lives.
Another mod that takes the time-travel concept to a whole new level is Thinking With Time Machine for Portal 2. After escaping Aperture Science, Chell is handed some sort of tablet that let's her record and "playback" herself. This gives players a third-person glimpse of past versions of themselves, who can be used to open doors or pass cubes from one timeline to the other.
The newest version of this popular mod allows you to travel back in time to play through your own saved game. You'll still need to complete the original story, but this way you can skip some of the boring parts. The mod is available on Steam, and it requires the full version of the game. Movement, thrown items and held items are all tracked for replaying in the past, and mob tracking will be added soon. There are also base packages that don't change anything visible, but must be enabled to work. Updates are automatically downloaded through the mod's internal UOTA system, although you can manually update it with Nexus if necessary.
Mods That Add a New Sense of Humor
For a long time, it has been possible to mod pretty much any PC game. Most mods are minor tweaks that enhance quality of life or add small new gameplay mechanics, but some go a step further. Some transform entire games, reshaping them into something different, or even creating an entirely new game. These are the mods that have taken the gaming world by storm, the ones that have gone viral for how awe-inducingly they’ve transformed beloved video games.
Some of these mods are hilariously badass, bringing the best parts of the original game to new heights. They are the re-skins that let gamers play as their favorite character from another franchise, or the huge multiplayer mods that take classic multiplayer battlegrounds to a whole new level of awesomeness. Others are re-imagined for modern audiences, reworking classic games and genres for a more discerning taste.
But some are also deeply disturbing, and it’s these that have truly grabbed the attention of the media and the wider public. From mods that remove people of color from human factions in Paradox grand strategy games to a mod for Crusader Kings II that uses the pope’s announcements of holy war to create an elaborately racist parody of Taylor Swift, there is no shortage of mods that push the boundaries of what gamers are willing to tolerate in their games.
There are also a number of mods that go beyond racism and even sexual deviance, allowing players to alter the appearance of characters to grotesque degrees or simulate explicit activity. This is perhaps most prevalent in the Garry’s Mod community, which began as a mod for Valve’s Source Engine before becoming a full-fledged standalone game, but it can be found in many other titles as well.
Modding has been around almost as long as video games themselves, and it continues to be a huge part of the gaming ecosystem. With an incredible amount of creativity on display in the community, and a willingness to push the limits of what games can do, it’s no wonder that mods continue to be such a big draw for players.
Mods That Let You Play Out Your Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica Fantasies
Many gamers have a deep appreciation for sci-fi and space epics, and some mods are designed to let you play out your fantasies in games with already impressive scope. For example, if you are a fan of the TV series Battlestar Galactica and want to see some of its action play out in the world of the game, there is a mod that brings the search for Earth straight from the show to Sins of a Solar Empire. This TC (total conversion) mod includes all of the major ships from the original and reimagined series, as well as the Cylon Fleet that was created to destroy humanity's twelve colonies.
Other TC mods are based on other popular sci-fi franchises, including the cult classic Babylon 5. This mod includes all of the major races from the series, as well as all of the major technology like jumpgates from the show. It also features events, research, and other gameplay changes based on the universe of the show, putting more emphasis on combat while still making the other aspects of the game important.
Another recent mod that's gotten some attention is Sacrifice of Angels 2. This one features more than 100 new units and events based on Star Trek. In addition to bringing in more Klingon and United Federation content, the creators of this mod took it a step further by adding more story elements that make it feel more like a part of the Star Trek universe.
Mods are often created by enthusiasts who want to add more depth to a game that the developer didn't have time or resources to implement themselves. While developers usually try to optimize a game so it will run on a wide range of hardware configurations, mods aren't usually given the same level of optimization, and they can be more hardware intensive than the original game.
Some mods are even released as a complete package, called a "mod pack." These are groups of mods that are made available together for easy download. They usually come with an automatic installer and solve some of the cross-mod interaction issues that can happen when multiple mods are used at the same time. For example, there are mod packs for UT2004 that include GUI launchers and installers to make it easier to use several mods at the same time.
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