What classic 90s shooter has the least active modding community ?

[Marmiteman02]

I map for Doom, Quake and Duke 3d and these communities are still going strong all these years later. The Doom mapping community obviously being the most active.

 

But what classic shooters have you noticed that have very little activity on the modding front ?

[7Mahonin]

Blake Stone 1 & 2, Catacomb 3D (all of the 3D Catacomb titles) and Hovertank 3D. All of which can have levels made, graphics altered, etc., using WDC, a Wolfenstein 3D editing utility. 
 

Could also say Corridor 7 and Operation Bodycount, as the same program (and some other editors) can edit those games as well. Though I wouldn’t really consider these classics, at least not OBC. 
 

ROTT, but this could change now that the rerelease is out. 

Edited August 6, 2023 by 7Mahonin

[RataUnderground]

Unreal (the 1998 classic) could have a community a thousand times more active, but the bastards at Epic won't release the code, and all the patches to make it at least playable on current systems come from a single guy who has exclusive permission to use the code and is under a strict NDA.

Edited August 6, 2023 by RataUnderground

[Arno]

1 hour ago, 7Mahonin said:

Blake Stone 1 & 2, Catacomb 3D (all of the 3D Catacomb titles) and Hovertank 3D. All of which can have levels made, graphics altered, etc., using WDC, a Wolfenstein 3D editing utility.

 

True, so far very few mods were made for those games.

At least Hovertank 3D has Demon Hunter, Robot Redemption and Doom World Wars.

There's even less for the Catacomb 3D games. To the best of my knowledge, the Peter Dreimour mods are the only Catacomb 3D mods in existence. If there is anything else out there, I would love to know.

Edited August 6, 2023 by Arno

[Herr Dethnout]

Blood 1 & 2.

 

Probably the first game has a more active community than the previously mentioned, but still less active than Duke or even Quale.

 

Is a combination of being the ONLY Build game that is still closed source, and ancient modding tools (literally, DOS programs) that makes it hard to get interest into modding.

 

The Second game is even worse, since it doesn't have an actual modding community from the start. lol

[Ash4ash]

Does Perfect Dark count?

[OpenRift]

WWII GI and Chasm: The Rift, probably. There are a handful of mods/maps, but not much beyond that.

[Murdoch]

I think I have a different definition of "classic" - though to be fair it's hardly a well-defined term and far from objective. That said, I think you would struggle to find anybody who considers Blood II, WWII GI and Operation Body Count classics. Corridor 7 has a few fans for some reason but I would still argue it's stretching to call it a classic.

 

Blood 1 and Unreal are probably the biggest of the 90s classics that feel like they should be getting more modding love than they are as people already mentioned. Unreal had a few decent releases back in the day, but they seemed to fade out and get more sporadic quite quickly over the course of the 2000s - not that I followed super closely.

[G19Doom]

HeXen and Heretic. They deserve more output than what they’ve had all these years.

[HQDefault]

Probably whichever is the one no one here has ever heard of

[YouAreTheDemons]

Quake II has a much much less active community (that I'm aware of), especially compared to Quake I.

[ReaperAA]

44 minutes ago, YouAreTheDemons said:

Quake II has a much much less active community (that I'm aware of), especially compared to Quake I.

 

Was just going to mention it myself. There is a definite lack of vanilla style single player content for Quake 2.
 

Also, while this is stretching the definition of a 90's fps, I would like to mention Soldier of Fortune (SoF 1). That game deserves a much bigger community than it currently has. I reckon that it not being available commercially for a good few years had a negative impact on its community.

 

I would also mention Strife here. Strife mods/mapsets out there can be counted on a hand. I am guessing that people don't bother with strife because it's not easy to implement dialog system in custom mapsets and without them, it doesn't feel like a complete Strife experience.

[taufan99]

Radix: Beyond the Void. Sure, it's more or less a less advanced Descent clone, but IMO it has enough merit of its own to be considered a classic in itself.

 

@jval's effort back in 2020-2021 has resulted in a source port/recreation named RAD, and you can even make custom maps with Doom Builder (just put RAD's own settings to the Settings folder there).

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Strife doesn't have a whole lot of custom content and heck there isn't even a Freedoom equivalent of the game either.

[SealSpace]

Corridor 7 and Blake Stone are all that needs to be said.

 

There needs to be actual dedicated mods with new weapons, new monsters (bosses preferably), and new maps with these two games already.

 

I'd like to see Blake Stone have C7's surreal style of animated wall textures.

Edited August 7, 2023 by SealSpace

[SealSpace]

Oh and Strife as well like someone above me mentioned.

 

On 8/7/2023 at 12:57 AM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Strife doesn't have a whole lot of custom content and heck there isn't even a Freedoom equivalent of the game either.

 

A FreeDoom equivalent of Strife would be awesome and badass in its own way, though probably more inferior to the original than its Hexen and Heretic or even Doom counterparts.

Edited August 20, 2023 by SealSpace

[plums]

8 hours ago, RataUnderground said:

Unreal (the 1998 classic) could have a community a thousand times more active, but the bastards at Epic won't release the code, and all the patches to make it at least playable on current systems come from a single guy who has exclusive permission to use the code and is under a strict NDA.

You can't even buy digital versions of any of the Unreal games anymore, Epic has delisted them all. (You can still download/play them if you bought them beforehand.) Such a shame, and such a difference in attitude between them and id.

[BerserkerNoir]

Turok Games Maybe, I havent seen activity aside from when the Remasters came out.

[Redneckerz]

Rex Blade.

 

Try making a game with it.

[Herr Dethnout]

53 minutes ago, plums said:

You can't even buy digital versions of any of the Unreal games anymore, Epic has delisted them all. (You can still download/play them if you bought them beforehand.) Such a shame, and such a difference in attitude between them and id.

Don't you love when a developer threats like shit the franchise that put it on the map and the main reason why there's a engine NAMED after it?

[MrFroz]

My answer would be Killing Time. I'm on a not-so-small server (given the relative obscurity of the game) with almost 100 people. I have known the owner for years and he's always been interested in the game, but so far no one has been able to do anything with it yet. Like even Nightdive Studios bought the source code but doesn't have the rights for publishing an enhanced version.

Edited August 7, 2023 by MrFroz

[Graf Zahl]

Obviously, most of these games never gained any modding community to speak of, so it'll be hard listing them all and we'll have to concentrate on the ones that still get remembered.

 

Since someone mentioned Blood, I'd say it is one of the more active games around that, unlike most others, still receives new quality content.

The other Build games (Redneck Rampage, Shadow Warrior, Powerslave - and especially Witchaven and Tek War) are virtually dead.

 

Dark Forces and Outlaws also appear quite dead.

 

 

 

[Wadmodder Shalton]

1 hour ago, plums said:

You can't even buy digital versions of any of the Unreal games anymore, Epic has delisted them all. (You can still download/play them if you bought them beforehand.) Such a shame, and such a difference in attitude between them and id.

Other than Epic focusing exclusively on the multiplayer code for Unreal Engine 4 and 5, another possible reason for delisting the Unreal franchise might had been the Duke Nukem Forever 2001 build leak, in which its source code supposedly and rumorly included the Unreal Engine 1 multiplayer and master server code, which probably would've introduced security issues that Epic probably didn't want to fix.

[OpenRift]

2 hours ago, YouAreTheDemons said:

Quake II has a much much less active community (that I'm aware of), especially compared to Quake I.

While Quake II doesn't really have the quantity of mods, it certainly has some very prominent entries in the multiplayer modding scene, like ActionQuake2 (precursor to Counter-Strike), ThreeWave CTF, and Chaos Quake II. It's certainly more lacking compared to the constant stream of content for Quake 1, but to call it much less active wouldn't be entirely true. There are certainly much less active games from around the same time that even in their hayday didn't get much modding love.

[THEBaratusII]

I was originally thinking Rise of the Triad, but that could change since Ludicrous Edition is out. (and includes a better level editor)

 

I do notice Shadow Warrior and Redneck Rampage are the least active compared to Duke Nukem 3D and Blood in regards to the BUILD Engine. Also would Quake 4 count?

 

And also I don't see many making new content for Abuse either. (but that's not a 90s shooter)

Edited August 7, 2023 by THEBaratusII

[Graf Zahl]

9 minutes ago, THEBaratusII said:

Also would Quake 4 count?

 

It's several years too late for 90's, so no.

 

[THEBaratusII]

1 hour ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

It's several years too late for 90's, so no.

 

Fair enough. Then again I wasn't thinking properly as I might need sleep soon anyway.

 

Also I think there are two games I don't see many mods, and that would be NAM and Hexen

Edited August 7, 2023 by THEBaratusII

[Vermil]

Island peril!

[Marmiteman02]

12 hours ago, OpenRift said:

WWII GI and Chasm: The Rift, probably. There are a handful of mods/maps, but not much beyond that.

 

I know with Chasm: The Rift you need to script all basic functions (Like using a Door) in a text file and then import it into your level.

 

Compared with other games that have functions open to you from the start.

[NY00123]

Bio Menace (which celebrated its 30th anniversary last week, btw) and Dangerous Dave are two examples coming to mind. TED5.EXE is all you need for editing levels and tile properties with BM, provided all files expected by TED are present; And in the case of Dangerous Dave in the Deserted Pirate's Hideout (DOS version), Camoto Studio was used on a few occasions.

 

And yet, so far, I'm aware of the existence of these:

- For Bio Menace: One complete level pack, a single level demo of a mod that was eventually not continued and a patched version of the 1st episode with two more levels.

- For Dangerous Dave in the Deserted Pirate's Hideout (DOS): One single level, one level set and one mod. I don't have an answer for the following games in the series.

 

Of course, on top of other games previously listed (like Catacomb 3-D), you can mention many other games from Apogee/id/Softdisk or related companies which didn't get their own modding communities (especially in cases there haven't been tools making this feasible).

Edited August 7, 2023 by NY00123