The Power of Game Modding — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Video games are incredibly unique as a medium that, like, I don't go watch a movie and then get home and be like, alright, The Godfather was cool, but wait until you see the Nakey Cut that I made with my Nintendo DSi. The act of modifying something someone else did to make it even better, or turn it into something completely different entirely,

[00:18] this is all a very vital part of video game history. If anything, mods are kind of more like writing fanfiction. It's often much easier to create something of your own if you have a pre-existing thing to work off of that jump-starts your creativity.

[00:32] Entire video game genres have been created because of community-named mods. They are the bridge between creator and man, developer and fan, gorilla and car.

[00:44] Mods are the power to say, I don't like how that guy looks, and I'm gonna change it. Now that's more like it.

[00:56] Mods, mods, mods, mods, mods. These mods are not moderators for your Twitch chat. Mods, go ahead and ban that guy and turn him into Gus Gus from Cinderella. Bottle him up and ship him to his parents. Happy birthday. And these mods are definitely not for moderating your Discord server about your favorite game about horses.

[01:13] I'm talking about making the horses in that game hot as hell. Many of the most popular mods, regardless of the game, are simple cosmetic ones that change nothing about the actual gameplay, but everything about the actual great day you're going to have watching this video.

[01:28] Chat, can we get that story five likes and four comments that say, Yuki Yuki, what up? I want Dragon to be Thomas the Tank because that's my favorite dragon of all time. I want Mr. X to also be Thomas the Tank because that's my favorite Mr. X of all time.

[01:43] And I want Peggy to take to the stretch because I just love that big ring over. God, he has such a wonderful accent. Don't you? Get over here, you young man, you big, beautiful, brain bitch.

[01:55] All right, man. I know as a male gaming YouTuber, I might get into hot water for staying there, but sometimes gamers just want to see a fine shorty with historically inaccurate big jugs

[02:07] sitting around a cartoonishly big sword and next to no clothing. Yes, some of the most popular cosmetic mods for almost any game are freaky style ones. But hey, at least it's not exclusive to one gender.

[02:20] I accidentally downloaded the nude version of a male body and got jump scared by my own damn raw creature. And that shit was searched and I did not consent to that. Give it back, damn it. Can we at least do better female walk cycles though?

[02:35] I'm all for some assets, but why do they gotta make all women walk around like some born yesterday nematode? But one rule, or law, if you will, that seems to be universally agreed upon in the cosmetic modding world is,

[02:47] if it can be modded, then CGO will come waddling. But passionate, spunky gamers didn't just stop at swapping things out for a laugh, or perhaps a giggle. They have even a chuckle if one is feeling particularly full of glee.

[03:00] The real gamers, utilizing their creativity and persistence to the max, have crafted mind-boggling original content within the confines of their favorite games engine and tools. It's impossible to talk about just how many community-made mods for Minecraft were eventually implemented as official features.

[03:18] New biomes, dual wielding, shields, recipe book, courses. It's like, damn, Mojang, I'm making the damn game for you. Modders should get PTO, salary, pension, retirement.

[03:31] Jeez. Dune is heavily associated with fan-made maps or WAD files, most recently made famous by the mind-bending, viral, horror sensation, MyHouse.com.

[03:46] MyHouse.one. Honestly, the less I say, the better. But go load it up or watch one of the many videos made on it, because it is a marvel of creative modding wizardry and magic. Well, well, well, what are you looking at?

[03:58] Someone installed the lawyer mod. Hi, I'm JT. Thank you to Incogni for sponsoring today's video. Modding is so freaking cool. Looking at data, digging around in stuff that other people made.

[04:11] I love that stuff. But what I don love is freaky deaky hidden data brokers tracking my moves and examining my data and getting my phone number my law office address and most embarrassing of all my freaking lawyer financial history Alright so I buy a lot of codes It not weird They help me out with the case They crack the case

[04:29] And then they sell all that stuff to identity fees. What? Enter today's sponsor, Incogni. With Incogni's unlimited plans, their exposure scanner locates every instance of your private info online and compiles it in one dashboard.

[04:41] Plus, their monthly risk assessment report gives you actionable insights on your privacy progress. And if there's one thing I love more than toads, it's progress. Ask anyone. They'll tell you. I could stare at a loading bar for about a fortnight.

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[05:05] Plus, they have 24-7 chat support. And if there's only ever more than Toads and Progress, it's support, and I need a lot of it. Please, help me. Holy crap. Go to Incogni.com slash Nakey Jakey and use code Nakey Jakey for 60% off.

[05:20] Incogni helps wipe yourself from the internet. They can't harm you, and still can't find you. Click the link below to claim your 60% off and get your personal data off the market. Okay, now let's go ahead and mod ourselves back into this video,

[05:32] and hopefully Jacob will have modded himself to be a little bit funnier now. But seriously, he's gotta go.

[05:44] Starfield has a total conversion mod called Starward Genesis, which changes everything to look like, you guessed it, Gustav Frist and Marella. But see you later. This mod is really mean, but unfortunately,

[05:57] no amount of mods can fix the core problems based into Starfield's DNA. primarily how mind-numbingly boring it is, but also the endless amount of loading screens. Can you say loading screens?

[06:10] Remember when my sister did that? Man, she's such a kooky vagabond. So many multiplayer modes that are ubiquitous now initially spawned as community-made content. People added online multiplayer to GTA San Andreas, predating any official version of GTA Online.

[06:26] Trouble in Terrorist Town was an Among Us-style game that existed long before Among Us was a thing, and way before those Among Us songs, if you know what I'm talking about.

[06:38] I know it's you! Which was played using Gary's mod, itself a mod for Half-Life 2, which was made into a standalone game that's still called Gary's mod and not Gary's standalone game,

[06:51] which we really need to stop talking about right now, or I'm going to start singing Among Us songs. Fancy disguise as an imposter among the... Gun Game was birthed from community modes for Counter-Strike,

[07:04] which itself is a mod of Half-Life, which itself was built using the Gold Force engine, which itself is a super-modified version of the Quake engine, which itself is a super-modified version of the Snake engine, which I made in my garage using a pool noodle and some modified TI-84s.

[07:20] Sometimes mods are so transformative and popular that they demand to be a full standalone release. Counter-Strike was such a popular Half-Life mod that Valve said, We must find a way to make this an official game

[07:32] for the sake of the stars. And one day, the chosen one shall wield the blade of destiny. A phase four gamma doctor gut knife named Supercut. League of Legends, perhaps the most popular esport in the whole damn world,

[07:47] is heavily based on Dota, Defense of the Ancients, if you're heavily well-read, a multiplayer mod for Warcraft III, a series that was heavily inspired by the RTS Dune II, which is of course a sequel to Dune, which is of course based on the novel Dune by Frank Herbert,

[08:02] which is of course based on some sand dunes he saw in Oregon. Are you sensing a theme yet? So many video games and building mechanics and concepts are birthed by this magical process called iteration,

[08:14] which is really just a fancy word for, I'm gonna do exactly what you did, but here it's kinda different. Fortnite Battle Royale only exists because Epic saw the massive success of PUBG, PUBG only exists because of Brendan Green's work on H1Z1, King of the Kill,

[08:30] and his Battle Royale mods, which they only exist because DayZ, which started as an Arma 2 mod by the way had Survivor Games tournaments which they only exist because of the Minecraft Survival Games Tournament which they only exist because of the Hunger Games film which they only exist because of the novels written by Suzanne Collins

[08:51] which she only exists because her mom and dad really wanted to play Warzone and buy the Nicki Minaj game. Right on! So many of your favorite games were birthed from mine. And people released this shit for free. This is why gamers do, in fact, deserve rights.

[09:05] There's a specific type of game I've already mentioned. A game that's practically begging you to install at least a couple mods. I'm talking, of course, about Bethesda games. Bethesda games, often out of necessity to fix stuff, have massive modding communities.

[09:21] Dude, you can mod Skyrim to look and play like a completely different game. A game that looks like it has a bunch of gamer mods on it. But my favorite Bethesda game isn't even a true Bethesda game. Fallout New Vegas, aka your favorite video essayist's favorite game to video essay a billion times,

[09:37] is my favorite game made using Bethesda technology, but it was actually developed by Obsidian. I wrote this game off back when it first came out because I thought it was just a buggier and uglier version of Fallout 3 that they had some other guy churn out in 18 months.

[09:51] But little did I know that underneath these bugs and endless onslaught of yellows and browns was the greatest Fallout game ever made, and possibly my favorite RPG ever made. A true role-playing game with such thoughtfully designed quests and dialogue branches that excite, delight, and surprise you and generate some level of brain activity beyond press A to find baby son.

[10:13] Months ago, I started playing New Vegas again, and as I mentioned before, it is unfortunately very buggy and to this day in a very sorry state. That is, if you're not using mods. First, I installed some basic fixes to just get the game running smoother and playable at higher frame rates without the physics shitting their pants.

[10:29] Then I install some fan-made patches to fix a lot of the bugs. But then I go, hold on... What's all this other stuff? A functional weapon wheel? The Quick Loot menu from Fallout 4? Bullet-tyed VACs?

[10:41] They put fucking VAC paint in my Fallout? You put jelly in my peanut butter, you little shit? I call them into the chef, thank you, chef! You will not believe the amount of incredible mods that exist for this busted-ass game. Weapon animations by the prolific Hitman and Rockbiter that have zero right looking this good in a Bethesda game.

[10:57] A real time functional pit boy mini-map by Centorious that shows important stuff like where enemies die so you can actually loot them along with just looking amazing! But as my Dark Souls Sekiro parry loving body was doing some melee combat I thought to myself, I thought, hold on...

[11:12] But is there a parry mod? Yes, there is! FMAX, Simple Melee Attack Cancelling and Parrying by Obi Dwyer. But then I was like, damn... I kinda wish a really cool sound played whenever you got a parry like in Dark Souls.

[11:25] And this is when, for the first time ever, I decided to look under the hood myself. Keep in mind, I had zero experience coding or ever making any mods. But a quick search told me that I needed to use GECK, the official dev tool that's included for free with the game.

[11:39] So I boot the mod in GECK, and I try deciphering the mod's scripts on my own, and I find what I believe is the part where the parry is happening, and another quick search tells me the command to play a sound in a GECK script. So I add a sound to GECK, add the command to the script, boot up the game, hit a parry,

[11:55] Oh my god, it actually fucking worked. Dude, I was elated. And little did I know, this was the exact moment my modded Pandora's box slowly started to pry itself open.

[12:08] So then for fun, I spawned a deathclaw and tried parrying that, but no matter how many times I tried and how I timed it, I always died. Curious. It was time to call in the big leagues. My brother Isaac is a talented, experienced programmer with a beautiful curiosity and an even more gorgeous willingness to solve any problem no matter how convoluted and silly it might be.

[12:28] So I get my brother, who is essentially a human version of an Xbox from 2001 on Discord tech support, and I have him look at the scripts and he's like, Yeah, okay, so how it's probably in immortal mode and handling damage means that even if you parry an attack, you still very briefly take damage and then it heals you the same amount afterwards.

[12:42] the fel attack does more damage than your total health, aka your death clock donkey kick, you're just gonna die the frame before it adds the health back. Does that make sense? And I said, yeah, I think so. Can you help me fix it?

[12:54] So then he walked me through writing code to get the mod working properly and we did And then my modded Pandora Xbox was fully fucking unleashed So let go ahead and mod that video title to be How Jacob Spent the Last Two Months Modding Fallout New Vegas with His Brother colon the Xbox

[13:11] We added visual effects. We added a 5% chance to disarm a bitch. I slapped together my own sound effects. And I layered those sound effects with Vaxxed-like headboard sounds so that they felt more Fallout-y.

[13:26] And then my Xbox brother Isaac goes, Hey, so in that script at the top it specifies that the attack coming at you is a melee attack. We could change that. This Xbox freak wanted to parry bullets and I said I'll raise you one you fucked up demented lunatic.

[13:41] What if a parried bullet deflected the same attack toward wherever you're aiming and used the same amount of AP as that attack would in that? And it does. You can parry a bullet from one guy, shoot it at another guy with his best friend's bullet.

[13:57] And we didn't specify the type of ranged attack. You can parry a fucking missile, or this thing, or even a goddamn meeting duke. And I made this shit an actual melee perk you can get with like a picture and everything.

[14:10] Is it balanced? Probably not, but like so many other busted-ass perks in this game, it's really, really, really fun and funny. Habitable Enemy Health by Nautilus is an awesome mod that adds these floating health bars to enemies,

[14:22] but it was a little too busy with like a bunch of words and they had the enemy level next to it, which I didn't really feel like that was necessary. Xbox On! So obviously we made a patch for Simplify that made it change to yellow whenever you did a crit, made it so that it's a GP damage threshold icon that appears on enemies when you're not breaking

[14:36] your damage threshold, and it actually tracks with the health bar, and we even got it working with the Living Anatomy perk that lets you see the enemy's exact HP and damage threshold when it I've released Hellfire and it tracks perfectly. It's amazing. Because that's just the kind of push-up lunatics that the Xbox brothers are.

[14:49] Okay, I think you get the point. Over the past couple months, me and Isaac did a lot of stuff in Fallout New Vegas. I could go off the deep end with this shit for a while with you guys, okay? I installed over 300 mods over the past couple months.

[15:01] And I fine-tuned little things here and there and did all these different settings and whatever. The point is, I was trying to build my ideal version of New Vegas. And now I want to share it with you. I set up an automated mod list installer via Wobbajack.

[15:16] And if you're seeing this video right now, that means that over on the Ball Creative channel, there is an in-depth tutorial I made so that you can play my version of New Vegas, including all of the mods we made and a billion others that so many talented people made

[15:28] to make this incredible game just even more special. This is like my favorite game ever after I build these fucking mods. Digging underneath the surface and actually making mods with my brother and staying up to like 6 a.m. way too many nights in a row

[15:41] to make these mods so we could then give back to this incredible modding community. That, my viewers, is what we call passion. And that is what modding is all about, goddammit. Doing some shit just because you want to and giving it away for free.

[15:54] I love games. I love mods. I love my wacky-ass sister who unfortunately couldn't be in this video. And I love my brilliant brother who is secretly on Xbox. Don't tell anyone because he might get fired from his job. It's sort of a weekend at Bernie's situation.

[16:07] I should use an Xbox. And damn it, I love Bethesda. They do a whole lot of bullshit, but making their development tools as publicly accessible as they do has resulted in such a wealth of creative modding magic.

[16:19] Okay, real quick, if you're someone who works on New Vegas Reloaded, can you fix the flashlight in third person whenever you're aiming a weapon? It goes all, like, long-ly like this. I don't know if this is going to be a very easy fix. Me and Isaac didn't look that deep into it because we don't really know how your shaders and stuff work,

[16:32] but if you can fix that, thank you, Steph. Love you, Steph. That was, like, the one thing that I couldn't quite figure out. I'm going to leave you with a clip of New Vegas game director Josh Sawyer talking about Bethesda's tools. And I just want to say thank you so much for watching my video.

[16:45] I hope you have a great day. I hope you have a great minute. I hope you have a great hour. I hope you have a great nanosecond. And I will see you in the next modded episode of Modded Dragon Ball Z, where Krillin has a gun. Okay, I'll see you later.

[16:58] This engine is incredibly easy to make content for. look into my eyes without GEC and without the pipeline of this engine we never would have finished

[17:10] this game in 18 months this is the best content creation pipeline of any game that I've ever worked on easily it's buggy you're right

[17:22] it's very buggy