Ode to Modders(or there is a little bit of game developer in all of us) - Knight165's Blog

Knight165's Blog

Ode to Modders(or there is a little bit of game developer in all of us)

Posted on November 22, 2008 at 10:58 PM.

(7)

As some of you know, I'm a bit of a roster fanatic.
I've often been asked...."What the heck makes you want to create all those players?".....or have been told...."You're insane!, that's a lot of time to put into something you're not getting paid for!"(that last one is usually my wife saying that as she shakes her head in disbelief that her 43 year old husband still plays games

)

I've been making rosters for baseball games(just about every one of them!)...hockey games and even some football games back in the day for nearly two decades now.

My first stab at the process was with the original Earl Weaver Baseball. Well, it was actually when the Commissioners Disk was released in 1988. It was pure mana from heaven. I'd be making the rosters up to date FOREVER, I thought!....and I was almost right. I'm still trying to keep the rosters up to date, but it's obviously moved on from Earl Weaver Baseball.

Then, some ten years later a little gem called Front Page Sports Baseball was released. In between and right along side were some other great baseball games. Tony LaRussa and Hardball, just to name two. But with Front Page came something else. The ability to customize. You could change the uniforms, the camera angles, the players. It seemed like you could change EVERYTHING! MORE MANA FROM HEAVEN!!!

It was then that something else was starting to take place, the surge of internet use. Everyone was using AOL and it was then I decided to start a league, with myself as commissioner, made up of guys who got together in chat rooms to talk baseball. It was rotisserie baseball ONLINE! National On-Line Baseball was born(the NOLB)
National On-Line Baseball was a lot of fun. In the NOLB, we had 20 teams(I controlled the teams not USER controlled), and it went on until the demise of FPS:Baseball which was around the year 2000(the 1999 version was virtually unplayable).
I had always had the urge to create my own game, and I had realized that with making rosters, creating leagues and making changes galore, I actually WAS developing the game in my own way.

Nowadays the new gem is MLB:The Show. Honestly, I've never had so much fun with a baseball title. It seems like a little bit of each of my favorite baseball games rolled into one. It wasn't always such...it has evolved that way and let's hope it keeps evolving into a more and more customizable game because with the emergence of the console as King, much of that customization has been taken away.
Case in point is two of the most customizable games around.....the High Heat series and the MVP series for PC. There were still mods being made for both of those games until this year!
The Show at first didn't even have an editor...that was thankfully put in.....then you couldn't edit rosters out of franchise....the devs heard our cries and changed that.....then in this last year they added a face editor..I was finally able to make a realistic Keith Hernandez and Tom Seaver!!!!MORE MANA I'M OVERDOSING ON IT NOW!!!!!

.....all the time adding new sliders and options for the user to control. We're still a long way from being able to change everything, but we're moving in the right direction.
As I stated, hopefully the console versions of our sports games harken back to the PC versions of the games as far as customization is concerned, because as the title says, I think there is a little developer in all of us.

So if you're a slider guy...a uniform guy....a roster guy, the guy who mods everything heck even the guy who just comes up with an idea and asks someone who does mod the game....in your own way you are developing a game......and IMO that's always a good thing!

Here's to GREAT GAMING

and thanks to all those who mod AND inspire modders.

M.K.
Knight165

Comments

# 1 mlblover15 @ Nov 23

wow, i remember every game you speak of my freiend... great stuff and even better memories... did you ever figure out the trading glitch in fps that allowed you to get any player you wanted... for near to nothing??/ i did.

controll every team, then go to the team you wanted the player from. you traded that player to your team for who ever you wanted to give up. it worked 99.9% of the time... i used to make the most killer rosters... oh mna... the div would be clinched in may lol... anyway great stuff my friend... great stuff

# 2 mlblover15 @ Nov 23

# 3 jim416 @ Dec 6

MK, it's almost an obsession, rosters. I probably get more fun out of making my daily transactions as I sit at the computer in the a.m. drinking my morning coffee than playing. Don't know what it is about it, but I just can't play the game unless all the rosters are accurate.

Maybe there will be a home for us, Retired Roster Makers Rest Homes of America, or something along those lines.

Keep up the good work.

# 4 RAZRr1275 @ Jan 1

I'm addicted to the roster thing too. I spend more time editing a game than I do playing it.

# 5 Jason_19 @ Feb 12

This is an excellent write up.

# 6 jnegs @ Jun 21

nice post my friend, and keep up the great work u do, ur last upload u did was awesome

# 7 Dolso003 @ Oct 11

Yea I know what you mean, I did everything I could to keep my ps2 version of MVP05 up to date and then after ur rosters and mb08 i finally found a combination that I felt was worthy of putting MVP away. Keep up the great work.