Because that takes all the fun out of it . Besides if everyone decided to stop programming and start modding, who will make the engines? It is true, however, if you''re just doing to to make a cool game for yourself and to experiment, that is a good way to go IMO.

Many AAA titles are essentially mods/TCs of other engines. The original Half-Life started out as a mod for Quake (from a certain POV).

You can think of it as using commerial parts for your product...

1) Write OS
2) Create Drivers for everything
3) Write Graphics/Sound/Network API
4) Write Game Graphics/Sound Engine
5) Write Game Scripting code for a completed game engine (probably includes network code)
6) Script a nice game (playability stuffs, game logic)
7) Write nice story build, nice maps, create all the graphics
or something similar

If you're feeling REALLY hardworking do all of the above... otherwise just do the things you can do (and being able to do something doesn't mean using an 'off-the-shelf' thing isn't a better option), and leave the other parts to dedicated people who can fill in the other parts.

EDIT: Basically I'm trying to say, everybody does something. If the world was only programmers, games wouldn't exist. Likewise if there were only mappers, games wouldn't exist either.

[edited by - PyroSA on March 24, 2004 2:38:46 AM]

quote:Original post by angrytofu
I have been thinking. With HL2 far cry and all the others coming out I have found myself more interested in doing editing with that rather than coding everything from stratch.

Since I do everything myself if I make something with HL2 I can concentrate on that side and all the other features.

I am unsure how modding works as far as how limited are you with the acutal game type


But is anyone else here going to start mapping/modding more and program less?

I got into programming because it was fun to make your own games/graphics/sound/music. And if you want to do anything similar to a FPS.. why not just use the UT2004 and mod it??

Modding an already existing engine usually requires at least a bit of programming for most engines (sometimes writing DLL''s or whatnot, sometimes in custom scripting languages).

I suppose the main reason most people want to write their own engine (other than just for the challenge of it) is because a pre-existing engine doesn''t neccesarily do what they want, especially if it''s a novel idea.

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