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Mod News: Release-o-matic


It’s not been a particularly newsy week this week in the world of mods. Ordinarily that’d be frustrating, but in fact, the usual stream of pictures of guns has been replaced by a rather gargantuan tub of both updates and new releases. So I’m not complaining at all. Read on for the week’s most interesting mod-related happenings.

NEWS
So this is interesting. Two Fallout 3 mod teams, creating different mods, but sharing all the content and assets they make between them. A lovely idea. Here’s one of the mods, the just-announced Project Brazil - “A journey from your destroyed home across the barren and dangerous wastelands of California, to a hidden place of promise and sanctuary: an entire world protected from the war under two miles of rock and military science.” I like the sound of that.

I also like the sound of Off Limits, a HL2 multiplayer mod in which two teams spend their time searching for one guy - The Juggernaut - whom they’ve been tasked with killing. This week there’s been a work-in-progress video released, which showcases a bit of the design process of a neat-looking level, complete with an absolute truckload of modelling work which the dude then imports into Hammer. An interesting technique, and worth a watch if you’re a Source-modding type yourself.

And more Half-Life 2, Precursor is looking interesting - and, for my money, the most sensible way to approach a single-player mod. As in, they’re aiming for short but interesting, rather than big and lengthy and inevitably samey. There’s been a short teaser trailer unveiled, which is embedded below. I like where this is going.

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RELEASES
I said I’d keep my ear to the ground for Civ V mods, and I am a man of my word. A few have started to gently trickle in now. Here’s one which neatens up the already-really-rather-nice user interface, while this one happily turns all the AI insane so the do wars a lot. I suggest keeping an eye on the CivFanatics forums, as this is where a few mods now seem to be starting to crop up.

Meanwhile, you cannot ignore a mod called Tofu Zombies. It’s a zombie mod for Battlefield 2142, originally conceived as a merger of all other zombie content for the game but eventually expanding into a full-blown original mod. Released this week, it includes four maps, with a few more to be released in the near future.

And then there’s the first public beta of SimMars, which is SimCity 4 on the Red Planet. Really quite beautifully designed, it includes a whole heap of new content to completely transform the mother game into something altogether more alien. Beta, so some problems, but grab it from here.

Here’s another Stalker mod claiming to be what the original game shouldda been maaaaan. This one for Shadow of Chernobyl is called Twilight K.E.T. 2.ZERO, as of course is sensible, and believes the best way to create a Stalker game is to throw /everything in the bloody world/ at the mod and hope that it sticks. Which is the problem I’ve always had with a few of these Stalker mods, I think. There’s a reason GSC reigned in their huge ideas. Shadow of Chernobyl was just lovely as it was. But yes: if you disagree, here’s where to get hold of the beta.

[JIM'S EDITORIAL INSERT: Also, it's worth noting that the RCOM mod is doing some clever stuff with the maps in Call Of Pripyat. It's basically making it so that the guides don't just zap you from one area to another, but get you to walk through one of the old maps from Clear Sky. I've been saying someone should do this for years (in fact I suggested GSC do it for Call Of Pripyat) and now someone has. I AM INVINCIBLE.]

Finally, there’s a vehicle mod for Killing Floor. It’s called Killing Floor Vehicle Mod, and it gives you vehicles in Killing Floor. Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the loveliest.

UPDATES
It would seem I missed the release of One 4 Nine back in August, despite having posted that it looked promising just a couple of weeks previously. It’s a Nevada Desert-themed Left 4 Dead mod, really nicely designed and quite impressively pretty in places. This week there’s been a major update which adds a fifth map, some Versus mode content, and a load of bug fixes. Grab it from the official website, which sneakily hints at a Left 4 Dead 2 version in the works.

Another one I missed, but have been handily reminded of by Strategy Informer’s Jamie Davie, is the WW4 Mod Pack for Operation Flashpoint. A combination of new animations and better optimised content, it supposedly lets you built huge battles without a performance hit. It originally released early last year, but an update - which can be grabbified here - was released fairly recently. I can’t find out anywhere what the update actually /does/, but hey!

And I’ve not really spotted anything And The Rest-worthy this week, so at the risk of ending this thing a little too abruptly for comfort: ‘til next time, m’dears.

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