Mods

With the Dragon Age: Origins Toolset, users can create custom adventures for Dragon Age. The toolset can only be installed on a machine that has the full Dragon Age: Origins game installed. The EclipseRay Lightmapper Source Code is an optional add-on.

Download the Dragon Age: Origins Toolset (472 MB)
Download the EclipseRay Lightmapper Source Code (6 MB)
Download HD Dragon Age: Origins Toolset Trailer (80 MB)
Check out all Dragon Age: Origins downloads

Originally designed as a Unreal Tournament 3 mod, Prometheus is now available as a stand-alone and free to play game made using the Unreal Development Kit (UDK).

Also known as Prometheus version 4.0, the demo includes:

• A full circle storyline with three new levels
• New awards for tracking progress
• Additional custom textures, meshes and animations
• Bonus original weapon
• New custom layering music system and new voiceovers
• Seamless cutscenes
• New Epimetheus menu with active previews of individual quantum state histories
• Dramatic improvements to the quantum state character movement and firing accuracy

"You're never alone when you have a clone. With the Prometheus Device, you control Einsteinian Physics laws of time and space. Create distinct past, present, and future Quantum States of yourself to solve puzzles and accomplish mission goals in this single player co-op game. You'll need to keep your wits and memory sharp using an original game play mechanic presented in multi-dimensional format inspired by Portal and Mirror's Edge."

Download the Prometheus UDK Demo (321 MB)
Download HD Prometheus Gameplay Trailer (142 MB)
Download the Unreal Development Kit (562 MB)
Check out all Unreal Development Kit downloads

While certain upcoming military shooters have yet to reveal if they will have any mod tools, Codemasters' recently released Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising game has a full mission editor for anyone to make their own maps and missions in the game. Now PC processor maker Intel will be rewarding folks who come up with the best missions for the game in a new contest.

People who own the game can use the mission editor to submitted their creations to the contest (they have to have, among other things, an Intel i7 processor as one of the mission's objectives). Deadline for entries is November 29. After the top 12 are decided by the game's community via their votes, the winners will be determined by a jury of people from Codemasters, Intel and others. The people who create the top two missions will each receive a gaming PC valued at over $2,000.

With the Darkest of Days Level Editor, players can create their own custom maps and scenarios. For more information about the tools and how to use them, please visit the official forums. You might also want to pick up the 'Instant Action' patch, which allows players to revisit any completed level in the game. The playable demo can be downloaded here.

Download Darkest of Days Level Editor (56 MB)
Download Darkest of Days v1.05 Patch (181 MB)
Download Darkest of Days Demo (784 MB)
Check out all Darkest of Days downloads

This mod adds the 'Dead Before Dawn' Campaign to Left 4 Dead. It's inspired by the movie Dawn of the Dead. Installation instructions are shown after the jump.

"The custom campaign Left 4 Dead fans have been clamouring for has finally arrived, bringing Valve's zombie shooter to the Crossroads Mall--the setting for Zack Snyder's zombie movie remake Dawn of the Dead.

Dead Before Dawn contains 5 maps--the sixth, the finale is not included in this beta--for both co-op and versus play. For that complete shopping mall experience, there are hundreds of new props along new music, new voice-overs and randomized special events. "

Download Left 4 Dead 'Dead Before Dawn' Campaign (1.1 GB)

Gallery: Left 4 Dead

As some developers continue to dodge the question on whether or not they will release or support third party mods for their games (*cough* Infinity Ward *cough*), Valve is actually fulfilling a promise they made last month. Namely they have now released all of the character model and animation sources for their multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2.

But Valve is throwing out some extras as well. They have gone ahead and released some of the models and props they used for their various "Meet The" movies they made for the various Team Fortress 2 characters (the first ones come from the "Meet The Sniper" film). These models are not meant to be used in playable maps but they are still kind of cool for mod makers to have for use in maps and/or fan-made films.

Developed by the Broken Glass Studios mod team, this is the version 1.0 beta of The Dark Mod for Doom 3.

"The Dark MOD is a total conversion for Doom 3, turning it into a dark and moody stealth game inspired by the Thief series by Looking Glass Studios. We have created a toolset with revamped gameplay, AI, graphics, HUD and weapons to allow fans to create missions in a gothic steampunk universe."

Download The Dark Mod (1.4 GB)

It's clear that a lot of PC gamers who were hoping to enjoy Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 are very upset at the surprise decision by developer Infinity Ward to abandon dedicated server support in favor of a matchmaking service hosted by the developer. Many PC gamers enjoy the freedom of hosting their own servers, allowing for mods to be run on their own machines and generally having more control of their own multiplayer experience.

A few hours after the "no dedicated servers for Modern Warfare 2" decision was revealed, an interesting "tweet" from Digital Illusions' Battlefield producer KM Troedsson was made. While Modern Warfare 2 was not named, it's clear he had the game in mind when he wrote, "Dedicated servers FTW. What ever secures a better online experience is a given for us." Hopefully that means DICE will continue to release that kind of support for future Battlefield games for the PC, including Battlefield Bad Company 2, the PC port of Battlefield 1943 and the (officially unannounced) Battlefield 3.

[Via Kotaku]

Gallery: Battlefield Bad Company 2

It's the old cliche of showing barrels in first person shooters. Sometimes the barrels have no real world reason to be there in a level. They are just around for you to take a gun and shoot it, causing a big explosion that you hope will take out some enemies.

So how about an environment that is filled with barrels? Lots of barrels? Barrels that are just waiting for, say, a Redeemer fired by a player in Unreal Tournament 2004 to start the biggest chain reaction of explosions we can remember seeing in a YouTube video? There's no need to wonder about those questions. Just check out the video above for the answer. Oh, and check this post on the BeyondUnreal message boards for some info on how the video was made (here's a hint: the video isn't rendered in real time).

The current lead developer behind the popular Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients has made the suprising announcement that he is "now leading a team at Valve". Presumably he means the same Valve that has mostly worked on first person shooter game titles like Half-Life and Left 4 Dead. In his announcement on the official DotA page "IceFrog" (that's the only name he goes by) he stats that now he has "all the resources needed to do some very exciting stuff that you guys will love. I look forward to revealing more specific details when the time is right."

This would certainly be a change of pace for Valve if they decide to develop a DotA-like game. The mod has become an inspiration for a number of current and upcoming commercial games including Demigod, Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends (who have former DotA team members as part of their dev team).

[Via Shacknews]

LucasArts' decision to revive their Monkey Island adventure game series via a remake of the original Secret of Monkey Island and the all new Tales of Monkey Island (developed by Telltale Games) has certainly sparked a lot of interest in the original property. But what if the original art style of the first game was put into the highest tech game engine?

Thankfully we don't have to speculate. A German modder named Hannes Appell has created a level with Monkey Island's original 2D artwork and projected it into the CryEngine 2 3d game graphics engine. The result, as you can see in the above video, is pretty darn cool (even if the illusion is taken away somewhat by seeing Crysis's Nanosuit running around the level). You can check out another video which show the 2D-to-3D projection tech after the jump. Maybe LucasArts should get together with this guy.

Half-Life 2 may be approaching its 5th anniversary but the Valve created first person shooter can still inspire mod makers to create some . . . interesting and even original modifications for the game. The latest such mod that has generated buzz on the interwebs isn't your typical mod. It doesn't add content, really, and doesn't change Half-Life 2's gameplay.

What it does it replace nearly all of the game's audio effects with a person's voice.

Let that sink in.

The mod maker known only as "Trace" used his voice to replace the gun sounds, hit sounds, vehicles sounds, explosions sounds . . in all 1,327 of Half-Life 2's audio effects were replace with this guy's voice handling it all (the character voices are not replaced).. It's silly, it's sometimes dumb but it's certainly brilliant. We think this will start a new trend. Can you imagine replacing the sounds for, say, BioShock or Fallout 3 or . . .well, anything? The mind boggles.

As one might imagine, Valve's offices are a pretty busy place to be at the moment as they are trying to get Left 4 Dead 2 finished before the game is scheduled to ship to stores in November. However, there always seems to be enough time for a Team Fortress 2 blog update from Valve's TF2 lead Robin Walker.

In the latest such update, Walker states that most of TF2's team is trying to help the L4D2 team finish their game but "we've improved our process a little to ensure we can keep some people on TF2, enabling us to continue doing TF2 updates." You may also remember that about a month ago Valve had planned to update their Source SDK to give mod makes access to all of TF2's player character models and animations. However Walker now states that the SDK does not have their current file format tools "which are integral to working with these sources" So now they plan to release just one model. the Heavy, to mod makers "so we could get your feedback on it before we went ahead and got the rest done."

Tripwire Interactive's hit co-op themed shooter Killing Floor continues to sell well on Steam and the company is getting ready to release the game to stores under their own publishing banner. This week the company announced that they have selected the first wave of winners in their custom map contest for the game.

The grand prize winner's work can be seen above. The map, WaterworksV2, was created by Damien "DamDam" Laurent who gets a whopping $5,000 for his efforts. His map and the other runners-up can all be downloaded via the Killing Floor web site. Submissions for Wave 2 of the contest are now being accepted. The deadline for entry is October 2 with the grand prize amount raised to $10,000.