Your first modding experience

[The_Lost_King]

I was setting up Oblivion and thought back to a conversation I had with my friend about how Oblivion was his favorite TES because of its modding scene and how it was what got him into computers in the first place.

That reminded me of my first experience, Dragon Age: Origins. I don't know how I found out about mods, but I do remember not knowing a single thing in how to install them. I didn't even know how to unpack .7z and .rar files. I could only install mods that were .dazips(the file type Dragon Age used for its mods) because there was an installer the game had that could install them. I eventually learned I needed 7zip(don't tell me to use winrar, I much prefer 7zip), and everything else about modding.

I wonder if I would still be so technologically illiterate if the Nexus Mod Manager was a thing back then. Now modding is so easy with it.

So what is your story about the first time you modded a game?

 

[DoPo]

I believe that was Half-Life that I first modded. Mind you, I had played mods for it and other games before and I was aware of the concept, I but it was later on I got my first PC and finally did it on my own. I can't say which was the first mod for it I got though - maybe Counter-Strike if that even counts, or if not, one of the myriad of others. I remember playing a lot of them - the gaming magazines I was getting at that point were coming with CDs and usually had some demos and some crap software, but often times, they padded extra space with HL mods. And it was glorious - that's how I played Natural Selection first, also Fire Arms (still my favourite mod for it), the Specialist and others a lot of which I've forgotten the names of - including one based on Worms.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Do custom .WADs count in Doom?

If not probably total conversions for Quake.

 

[TehCookie]

I'd screw with the files a lot as kid with older games, but they were much simpler. In black and white I'd swap the file names of the creatures so I could have a wolf or leopard as my creature. I'd put my own music in the Sims so their radio would play my tunes, or going into Dungeon Keeper's .txt files to make stuff cheaper or altering textures in many games since they were just there as .bmp.

If those don't count then Minecraft would be the first that I installed someone elses. I saw the mo'creatures and needed it, I loved capturing and breeding horses and dolphins and having it double as a flying mod when I earned a pegasus. I also changed some of the textures, but I didn't mod it too much. I never found it too hard because most mods came with instructions or if you googled it you'd find some.

My first modding experience with me editing modern games would be Skyrim, but all I did were simple recolors as well since the only thing I learned was a way to open texture files in gimp/photoshop. I added a while stripe on the werewolf's nose so it looked like my cat. I am pure talent. I do love nexus for making modding painless as well.

 

[tippy2k2]

I am not a PC gamer in the least so much hand holding is needed for me to Mod something

I really should learn and play more PC stuff but in my defense, I'm lazy and out of money.

I installed my first Mod for "Jagged Alliance 2" after everyone's favorite XCOM buddy Bloated Guppy recommended it to me. After failing to install it twice (I put the mod file thing in the wrong spot and broke the game), I finally got it working.

My only other experience was with Steam and STALKER. Modding that one went way better since I now had a tour of modding experience after JA2

Maybe one day I will find another game to Mod. A man can dream...

 

[shrekfan246]

I'd screw with the files a lot as kid with older games, but they were much simpler. In black and white I'd swap the file names of the creatures so I could have a wolf or leopard as my creature.

That was the only way I knew how to get a leopard, and it was always the neatest creature.

OT: Probably Star Trek: Starfleet Command 3. Might depend on your definition of "modding", though... before (I think) the implementation of the official unofficial Beta patch there were a few assorted mods that would add in the Reman Scimitar battleship from Nemesis, and the game's file system made it pretty easy to tweak around ship stats just by editing them in Notepad.

The first time I tried putting a custom Scimitar into the game it all broke, though. It even broke down the campaigns from what I remember, though I'm not entirely sure how.

What strikes me as odd today though is that despite its massive modding scene back in the day, nobody appears to have ever figured out how to crack the resolution lock of the game to put in custom resolutions for more modern monitors. Especially since the game still runs perfectly fine on modern systems, which is more than I can say for quite a few other games from 2002.

 

[WoW Killer]

Depends what counts. Excitebike on the NES had a level editor. Failing that, what about a Game Genie? I did all kinds of weird stuff with Link's Awakening on the Gameboy. For proper mods, Half Life would have been my first.

 

[Longstreet]

I'm actually experiencing my first modding experience now.

Got morrowind and so far managed to get the code patch MSGO and a few other mods on there, mostly to make things look pretty.

Play try #1, start walking about, all is fine. Get a message on facebook and alt tab out. Bad choice there, game crashes (seems to be a problem with all TES / Bethesda games)

Play try #2, Altering some line in the ini that is supposed to fix the alt tab crash, try to skip the opening cut scene. Black screen and crash.

Haven't fired it up yet but that is mostly because i am waiting on a friend to also get it and we can start playing together. And that i got a few more games to finish.

We'll see how it goes later, just gotta remember that ini file change i made...

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

oh jeez that is tough to remember that far back...

my first game that I DEEPLY modded was probably KOTOR, I had probably 30-40 mods running at all times in that game, not to mention it had probably one of my favorite story mods I've ever played(the brotherhood of shadows mod, was fucking hugee!).

thankfully the game had a simple override folder, and any other thing that went into other folders were pretty intuitive at the time (occasionally swapping out movie files or other text files, it was easy to just search for whatever the "read me" was talking about to find the correct folder to swap stuff for.) so I didn't have much of a problem, the only problem I never got to be able to fix to this day was the one really good companion that someone added in over juhani, I forgot her name...but anyways, there was a glitch where you couldn't pass this part with malak and it took me fucking foreverrrr to get a work around for it, not even removing the mod for that part would fix it; I spent at least 6 hours trying different tactics to get by it

(me and my damn stubbornness)

I will say though, after you get a mod to work or get past a conflict, it is one amazing feeling.

 

[Commissar Sae]

Hmmm, thats a tough one. Oldest I can remember off the top of my head is Baldurs Gate II, added in new characters/portraits. Otherwise maybe Rogue Spear, I remember playing a lot of multiplayer mods back in the early 2000s.

 

[aozgolo]

My first modding experience was the original The Sims game on PC. I actually owned all 7 expansions for it, but wanted even more content, and back in the day making custom skins and objects was all the rage. So I had tons upon tons of awesome new objects ranging from the practical (new wallpapers & carpets) to the bizarre (Fairy Crystal Ball TVs) and enough skins & heads to ensure I never had 2 sims look alike.

It really helped that modding that game was so easy, though if you didn't want your menus to be a cluster**** you really needed to get a third party program to help you organize your new objects into their proper categories.


Of course Morrowind was my first foray into what I'd call "real mods" as they actually impacted the game beyond adding new visuals. I remember it was also my first time making my own mods which included three never finished castle mods, and a cheat item mod that gave me a shirt that had 500 pt constant effect levitation & 100% chameleon enchant. I remember I also edited a few other castle mods to include precisely what I wanted.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

I tended to edit what INI files I could back in the days when I played Red Alert 2 and some other games but that was as far as I wanted to go and still tend to these days.

I still view mods as fan works and never really see them as better than what was created originally but rather equal in some cases, Skyrim vanilla is fine for me and partially modded my feelings remain the same.

most people here would have that "I modded X game and never turned back", but I can easily go back without feeling the clingy need to latch onto a mod to make my gaming experience "better".

 

[momijirabbit]

I made some "ugliest thing under the sun" Skins for HL2, tried Using the GECK for fallout, made a TF2 map then Realised that I am terrible at modding and stopped.

 

[likalaruku]

Morrowind.

I was reading a PC gaming magazine that was talking about the Octopus Overlord compilation mod. Must have taken 8 hours to download the damn thing, but it was bug-free.

Unfortunately couldn't stop just there. Next thing I knew I was playing Morrowind with the framerate of 1920s stop motion animation & the game was telling me "No, you cannot add any more mods. You have ALL of the mods, There are none left for anyone else."

 

[GonzoGamer]

Depends what counts. Excitebike on the NES had a level editor. Failing that, what about a Game Genie? I did all kinds of weird stuff with Link's Awakening on the Gameboy. For proper mods, Half Life would have been my first.

I had the game genie. It did do some trippy stuff to some games.

My first pc modding exp was Unreal Tournament. There were a bunch of great mods for skins and arenas but my favorite were the weird vo mods that changed the voices to Pulp Fiction lines and George Carlin quotes; hilarious.

 

[Roxas1359]

Fallout New Vegas was the first big sorta modding that I did in my life. I have modified consoles before, but that was more to break the region coding on that console.

 

[SomeGuyOnHisComputer]

First experience was playing with the data files as a kid. Like if a level layout was done in XML, I'd fuck around with it and move stuff around and change values and stuff.

 

[CommanderL]

I think it was kotor 2 a few years ago I modded out peragas or maybe it was mount and blade warband

 

[TheSapphireKnight]

My first modding experience is still ongoing with Skyrim. Its been a very positive experience, I can't even imagine going back to Vanilla Skyrim. It is definitely something I will experiment more with in the future and I am planning on playing around with some simple mod making this summer.

There are so many helpful tutorials I don't why you wouldn't make an attempt to play around with modding unless you had a really low end machine.

 

[Stryc9]

Doom. It started with downloading custom maps, buying those cheap ass compilation CDs with tons of maps on them and then getting the books on modding the game itself with a disc that had tools on it. Eventually I started tinkering with the game on my own to a degree and making my own maps for it. Those were the days.