Mod Ideas

The Mod Ideas page is a place for suggesting and debating mod ideas for any Unreal Engine based games. Although the primary focus is on UT2003 this will change over time as more Unreal Engine games get released. It may even lead to new mods being created. This page grew out of a scratch pad of the stressed ramblings of EntropicLqd, father, or menagerie-keeper as he would style it.

This page is part of the Unreal Wiki site. That means anyone can add text or edit the material that is here. It's a collaborative environment, and newcomers should read New Contributors Quick Start before making edits. To see what is new since your last visit, see Recent Changes or the (diff) and View other revisions links at the foot of this page.

The guidelines for using this page are still rough, so open to suggestion.

It's Open!: Firstly, when adding an idea to this page be aware that you are opening it up to comment from any casual passer by. Be prepared to be met with stony silence or many suggestions. As well as opening the idea up for comment you are also giving up some ownership of the mod – someone else may write it before you.
Commenting: When commenting on an idea, add your comments to the discussion section of the mod. Allow the original owner of the idea to refactor their mod description to include your suggestion should they like it – and be prepared for your suggestion to simply be ignored or rebuffed. It's not personal.
Expressing Interest: If you are interested in writing a mod, but haven't got time to do it right now, add your name to the Interested Scripters list. Before you start work on a mod idea listed on this page you are responsible for checking to see if anyone else has started the mod before you. The aim here is to contribute effort rather than duplicate effort. If someone else has started the mod feel free to offer help, but again, be prepared for your offer to be turned down (some of these mods are way to small to be built by more than one person). You really also want to read Mychaeel/Modding Etiquette before starting any project...
Delivery: Once you decide to go into "delivery mode" with an idea here make that fact plain within the Interested Scripters section. It would also be nice if you added a journal page to the Wiki on Category Journal for the mod. The journal should read more like a tutorial rather than a diary and explain why you decided to do things the way you did, as well as how you did them. A journal is by no means a requirement, but it would be nice.

There's also a corresponding Map Ideas page for ideas for mappers making maps.

Wider Reading

Other pages on the nature of mods, how to make them, and how to make them good.

Gameplay - what is gameplay? what makes good gameplay?
Mychaeel/Mod Startups – essential rant
Brandon Reinhart's Mod Authoring
... and generally, the rest of the Unreal Wiki, maybe starting with UnrealScript.
and you can use the ScratchPad to work on code

CTF Variants

/TurnCoat
/Balanced CTF
/CarJack – Steal all the cars on the map, and park them at your base.
/CarryTheFlag – Carry the flag home rather than simply touch it.
/Cold War – Collect, attack and defend parts for your nuke!
/ExpertCTF – All weapons given, regen health and ammo and off-hand hook. See www.planetquake.com/expert for details.
/LonelyFlag – Two teams compete for a single flag.
/MultiCTF – Aka CTF+, CTF4, I'd like to get a combined mod going for this.
/Reversed CTF – Only a little modification make things more hectic
/TouchDown – Effectively Bombing Run with an attacking and defending team that swap over.
/UnrealBallPool – Collect the most balls at your flag base to win (Maybe Dom maps would work better?).

DOM Variants

/DestructionDOM – Control points need to be destroyed to be captured.
/Dompendant – You, i mean you, are by yourself!!
/KOTH – King of the Hill mod (one DOM point).
/UnrealSprint – Touch consecutive control points without dying to score points. Delete Mark
/RandomDOM – 6+ Dom points but only a random 2 work

New Game Types

/Anagram – A team word game with big weapons.
/AntAttack – Rescue stranded people from an invasion of giant ants. Delete Mark
/CatchTheSmurf – Catch that Smurf!
/ColorfulWarriors– A Flying Airboats Mod w/ Giant GreenNalis, 25-30 Colorful Warriors skins, etc.
/CrossfireFootball – Use mass drivers to knock the ball into the other teams goal. Delete Mark
/DinerSaur – Cavemen and Dinosaurs compete for food (sort of). Delete Mark
/DownhillUT – Bobsleding and Snowboarding meets Back To The Future meets Super Mario Kart meets UT2k3
/Extreme Co-op – Advanced UT2k3 Co-operative Mod
/False Prophets – Defend your prophet or die trying
/FishFood – Who can be the biggest fish in the pond then?
/GoneHunting – Hunt scary creatures before they hunt you. Delete Mark
/Gladiator – Only the Gladiator can frag!
/IceClimbUT – a single player mod that you have to climb obstacles and stay away from ice spikes. Inspired from the TI-83+ game IceClimb.
/KarmaCrossfire – 2 players, 2 stationary guns, 2 goals, a Karma ball and lots of explosions
/KillingSpree – a single player gametype focusing on killing sprees
/Hoard – Collect "Hoard Orbs" to score.
/Magicans – A magic teamgame
/MonkeyKnifeFight – Small dudes with knives!
/Origiut – The original UT weapons and playing!!
/Pool – Play pool (billiards) with a UT 2003 twist using karma.
/Predator – Destroy your opponents as the predator.
/Railshooter? – Players with instagib guns go around a set track shooting monsters and other targets
/Ringworld– A Ringworld-Inspired Mod for UT2003
/RollercoasterRider – Build coasters and ride them.
/RoundUp – Take members of the other team prisoner, lock em all up. [UT]
/RunningOfTheBulldogs – AI/Human controlled bulldogs try to run over players
/Soul Devourer – 1 Ultra Powerful Demon VS Everyone.
/Spelling – Recognise the picture then spell the word. Delete Mark
/UnrealTanks – Drive big tanks with big guns on reasonably large maps. Delete Mark
/Virus – Blow away virus in your own computer just like the original game.
/WaterFight – See who can get the most soakage.
/We've Created a Monster – Not your average Mutant variant.

Miscellaneous Ideas

/Deadman Launcher – You know you love to see your character tumble like a ragdoll down the stairs...its unfortunate you have to die though (thats why I propose the Deadman Launcher).
/Arms – Play UT with ported weapons from other games like doom, quake, etc.
/BinkPlayer – Plays .bik files on the 'new scriptedtextures' that appear to render level action on them.
/Bomberman – You know that old game?
/Bubble Blaster – Catch people in bubbles and jump on them. Delete Mark
/ChargingJumpBoots – Jump boots with variable height.
/Dark Match – Turn out the lights and run around with torches.
/Decal Match – Adds more decals to the game
/Delivery – Deliver the package type of mod...read on...
/Enhanced Spectator Camera – A Truly ESPN worthy Spectator camera mode.
/Helmet – Play UT2003 through the eyes of your helmet. With vision filters.
/HyperspaceButton – Instant teleportation across the map (or maybe death).
/Hovercar – Remember those cars buzzing around the UT intro? Drive them!
/InstrumentsOnly – Frag using your instruments only (aka Spammer heaven) Delete Mark
/Jedi – To hell with unreal lets have some starwars.
/Jet Set Tournament 2003 – JSRF-style lock-strafing, with possible further conversions
Mind Reader – A UT2003 version of.
/Minefield – Run around with caution, you might step on something nasty.
/MovementTrainer – Practice moving, aiming, and generally grooving around.
/Multi Team UT2003 – Models and interface support for 4 or maybe even 6 teams.
/MutatorShuffler – Randomly selects mutators for use in the next map.
/NowWithWings – Provides players with two modes of transport.
/Possessed – Fighting is easy once you have a body.
/Real Terrain – Deformable terrain as in Red Faction
/Riftwar – Three team species/class based minimod
/Smoke Bomb – Dissapear in a puff of smoke.
/Spam Weapons – Yeah, I know, spamming is bad. But in this case you don't have other options.
/Sticky Boots – Run up walls and across ceilings. These boots are amazing.
/Talkative Bots – Hey, the bots are talking back.
/Splintercell mod – sneak around shadowy maps...
/Wipeout-style mod – futuristic racing mod idea

Total Conversions

/Block Wars – Mayhem in the Judge Dredd universe.
/Cyberwars – Cyborgs test their toys on each other
/Descent Mod – Remember that game where you used to fly around and, er, shoot robots and find the reactor and escape? The 360° of freedom one?
/Freeloader – Ever heard of Excape Velocity? try combining that with UT2k3...
/Medieval-Fantasy – In the vein of Rune/Dark Vengeance
/Rocket Jockey – A Rocket Jockey inspired game, in which players must ride rockets around an arena and launch cables at each other.
/ShineMatch – Super Mario Sunshine converion?
/Ski-ing – How about that?
/StarCraft – SC Single player/multiplayer shooter.
/Stellar Conflict – BF1942 meets space.....sorta
/TheMachine – Single-player RPG mod on Mars.
/TheVirus – Suriving in deep space waiting for rescue, before they get you...
/UTroids – I once saw Tetris for Uwindows... why not 3dAstroids?
/Xenocide – futuristic class-based warfare simulation with human, alien and robotic factions

Map Components

/ChangeMusicVolume – A volume in which the music changes to whatever the mapper designates when you walk into it.
/GravityWell – Add an area of gravitational effect to your map
/Lightning – Lightning that attaches to a player (like the red beam that attaches to a teamate with the link gun) like how static electricity would do, and does damage!
/MeteorShower – Add a meteor shower to your map.
/PlayerMovementZone – A zone that lets you tweak the player's speed (Should probably be volume now)
/ShockTower – A point defense or DM feature
/TargetKicker – Fly towards an actor taking only a set time
/Trampoline – A jump pad you have to work at
/Unreal1Monsters – your favorite baddies are back, with shiney new meshes and karma deaths ^_^
/VelocityTrigger – A diferent for of Targetkicker
SustainedDamageTrigger – A trigger based upon total damage recieved rather than damage amount.
/NoRotatingItems – Disable rotating for some or all items in a map
/Sunshadow – Player shadows are adjusted based on which way the sunlight actor is pointing

Weapons

/Instagib N Grapple – An instagib rifle with a grappling hook as the secondary fire.
/Charging Shock Rifle – A weapon that does more damage the less you fire it.
/Spiderman Gun – Spiderman, spiderman, does whatever a spider can...
/Ablative Gun – a gun thats only what your opponents make it!

Mutators

/Accelerating Rockets – Rocket Launcher rounds accelerate until they run out of fuel.
/BotReport – run a botmatch and report what happens
/Chameleon – Causes a players skin to be replaced with the walls texture.
/CratePickups – all pickups are in crates!
/Creeper runes – Think RealCTF's RealCreeper. or, Quake I's CreeperCTF
/DevTools – Various Developer tools
/Dodgeball – Think Super Dodgeball for the NES.
/ForcedLowGrav – LowGrav mutator goes into effect for certain maps of your choosing otherwise regular gravity is in effect.
/GunsAndShields – Help me I need a better name. Delete Me
/Heavy Items – You'll be weighed down by your items.
/InstaVsSniper – Arena mutator where Red team gets the Enhanded Shock Rifle and Blue team gets the Sniper Rifle.
/Iris – your "eyes" adjust to changing light levels.
/Kinetic Rifle – modifies the Shield Gun primary fire to operate at range
/MarioUT – Head bouncing ahoy!
/Mercury Missile InstaGib – Descent II Mercury Missiles instead of energy beams.
/Mini Bulldogs – Replace players with miniature Bulldogs
/NukeRifles – Combat with very dangerous nuclear sniper rifles!
/OptOutDeathMessages – No DeathMessages cluttering up the Chat area.
/OptOutTauntPacks – A way to avoid downloading taunt packs without canceling server join.
/Really Random Spawn Points – An end to spawn camping.
/RegeneratingAmmo – A mutator that regenerates ammo for weapons held.
/SeasonsMultiMap – Map assets change depending on the system date on the server.
/Sorcery – forget machine guns, rocket launchers and shock rifles, bring on the fireballs!
/Synthesizer – Uses normal ammo in combinations to create new attacks!
/TacticalScreen – one player of each team has a multiscreen showing every transloc-cam
/TeamWeaponArena – Specify allowed weapons and pickups on a team by team basis.
/Sentry Weapons – deploy a Sentry Weapon that would be a tripod with the weapon you have selected on top
/Variant Weapon – A new weapon with the alt-fire configurable to the client to fire whatever he/she wants it to from a list.
/X-ray - adrenaline combo to see through walls
/X3Pak - Latest iteration of the xpak mutator packages (40 plus mutators)
/UT2003 Jukebox - a concept I had to make something similar to a jukebox for 2003
/Yog-Sothoth – adds the Great Old One to the map, who seeks to devour all

Third-Party

/U-Replay – Takes Recorded Demofiles and Renders them as High-poly, High-res Video files

Ideas for Other Unreal Engine Based Games

/Devastation Conquerors – Multiplayer co-op across single mission maps.

Vehicles

/Dropship – A flying vehicle capable of carrying four bulldogs inside itself

Discussion

EntropicLqd: When the game finally gets released, is it worth creating a "bin" section to place ideas that are already implemented in the final game .. or should they simply vanish without trace? I'm kid of loathe just to immediately delete stuff because it almost goes against the whole concept of the page. Hmmm, maybe I should simply eat more instead.

DJPaul: Vanish without a trace.

Capt. K.: There's also [Unloaded], the website for which doesn't seem to want to... um... load... for me right this second. All download sites of the last release seem to have either gone defunct or otherwise completely disappeared. Also, sometime last year I threw together a Smash TV/Robotron control-style proof of concept (if anyone's interested...)

Quote from Wiki Public Relations

DJPaul: we'd have a lot of newbie scripters come the release of UT2003 bookmarking projects saying "I'll do that", and them releasing a substandard one, or nothing at all.

Tarquin: What about making it a condition of the mod ideas above that any developments of them are open source / GNU GPL? That would solve that problem, I think: if someone releases a cruddy implementation of an idea, improve it

DJPaul: Good idea re: the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, but the developvehicle based mods (Unreal-Kart and the like) as there already seems to be huge numbers of people lining up to write their own racing game. I guess that Tanks thing is an exception but thats not about racing as such.

It's now gone truly public and had a change of name to boot. Lets have some fun.

CH3Z: Was there a decision made here? Refactor Me

Foxpaw: I don't really like the idea of requiring it to have a public license, for a couple of reasons. Number 1, I like helping people with their problems but I don't like the idea of other people peering at my code if I write something that I'm going to call my own. However, putting a Mod Idea here is a good way to gather some feedback on the concept. Number 2, although it seems unfortunate that someone new to coding may make a mod of lesser quality than an experienced person could, since no claim was staked already that implies a lack of interest by those same experienced people. I'd say most of the time when "newbies" release a low-quality mod, it's better than nothing, which is almost definately what would have resulted otherwise.

spoon: I don't think the GPL is compatible with the current license Epic has installed. Since mods and mutator are kind of like libraries, the LGPL could be used. The LGPL allows simular protection to the GPL, but allows it to be linked to non-GPL code. The real question is how do you punish people who ignore any license you put with your code? I've had someone already take my code, strip my name from the source, modify only 15% of the code, and released it under a different name and took the brunt of the credit.

Foxpaw: This has been discussed a little bit below the rant in Trystan/Code Protection. I have a tentative solution but I haven't written and tested it. It may be possible to make a script that would garble and mangle up your script, making it more or less completely undecipherable, without actually altering it's functionality. It would, however, be difficult to just "copy and paste" because things would become heavily distributed. It's still not a perfect solution, but definately better than nothing. Your only "real" option if someone rips off your code is legal action, which I think many people are unwilling to do.

Another alternative is to do what I do for my 'Total Conversion,' which is to just write my own controller/pawn/weapon/pathfinding/etc. from scratch, just from the actor class. The obvious problem here, though, is that it would be excessive and incompatible with smaller mods like gametypes or mutators.

ZxAnPhOrIaN: Should there be tables here, this page is getting too big and long and it takes dreadfully slow to load. This page is worse than the former Mapping Resources page. Just a thought.

Foxpaw: I think that may have been chopped off on purpose. The discussion on this page is pretty old and I think for the most part isn't really refactorable due to the indexy nature of this page.

Wormbo: It got chopped off in the middle of a sentence, that doesn't look intentional to me.

EnropicLqd: Warning: In a frew hours time I am going to delete all of the ideas I added to this page that I do not believe are worthwhile. If there are any that should be preserved then add a note to that page.

Tarquin: Maybe tell us which ones first? I see the point you made on the Monster page about how do we know which ones to delete if there's no immediate interest. So let's not be too hasty

EntropicLqd: OK. I'll mark them up now. If anyone has an objection to the ones I want to delete they can simply remove the Delete Mark tag on the idea. I'll pop by tomorrow night and remove the ones that are still marked. Over Christmas I'm intending to take a bit of a break from working 24x7 so I might pick up a couple of the smaller mutators and map components.

Tarquin: Give it a few weeks. Maybe we should drum up some publicity to get them adopted, rather than wipe some. (I'm regrettting my rash comment that we should wipe any at all in the first place )

EntropicLqd: It's funny how it's always hard to let ideas go - there's a definate melancholy feel to it. I'll hold fire for a bit. I was planning on backing the ideas up onto my hard drive as well. I have removed the "War Gyros" one though as the Marble Madness mod for 2K3 covers that off quite well.

HSDanClark: Why not just create a sub-page of Mod Ideas and move all the mods/projects that haven't had updates in "X" amount of days/weeks/months to that page? It's very easy to check when the last Diff on a page was. If a project is active and it gets moved, it will certainly be noticed by the project team, and can be put back on the main page. Then, after a period of time on the sub-page, we can pare down the ones that are truly inactive or dead.