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MrFlibble

Total conversions/mods that became standalone games

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For some time I used to think that total conversions of video games that eventually became separate, stand-alone titles are few and far between, as I knew only of a couple examples, like NAM and Gunman Chronicles. Eventually though I started to discover more and more of such games, and decided to make a list of them.

 

Probably not very surprisingly, what I managed to find so far are mostly FPS games based on popular engines (id Tech, GoldSrc, and the more recent UDK), with but a few titles from other genres. No idea if this is because of the general level of popularity of the FPS genre or some other factors have played a role as well.

 

The criteria for picking games were as follows: 1) initially there has been a requirement that another title, of which the game in question is a TC or mod, needed to be present in order to run the game, and 2) eventually said requirement was dropped, making the game in question stand-alone. In some cases below, however, a fully stand-alone game was preceded by a mod/TC with a similar theme or storyline.

 

Command & Conquer: Renegade

Crysis Wars Doom Doom II
  • HacX [requires an engine port]
Doom III Duke Nukem 3D FreeSpace 2 Half-Life Half-Life 2 Mount & Blade Mount & Blade: Warband
  • Vikingr (does not require Warband to be installed but asks for a license key)
Quake Quake II Quake III: Arena Unreal Tournament Unreal Tournament 2004 Unreal Tournament 3 Warcraft IIINow I also know that some Tiberian Sun mods/TCs have become stand-alone (like Twisted Insurrection), however it's often hard to find out if there had been non-standalone releases of them, or they were conceived as standalone games from the very start. I would very much appreciate information on Tiberian Sun TCs that fit into the criteria of the aobve list, as well as on other games that I probably missed as well. Edited by MrFlibble
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Great starting list, Mr. Flibble. :thumbsup:

 

Was Garry's Mod started as a Half-Life 1 mod? I thought it's a HL2 mod as now standalone.

Edited by zocom7

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I find Age of Empires II HD: The Forgotten to be interesting enough to make the list. It wasn't a total conversion and it isn't standalone, but it also started as a mod for AoE2 (called The Forgotten Empires) that was completely finished and released when Microsoft made a deal with the mod team to make a full expansion pack for AoE2HD. It is now available on Steam for a price.

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A while ago I read about a game called Wings of Dawn which runs on the FreeSpace 2 engine. It turns out that this game was originally a total conversion for FreeSpace 2 that was released in 2010, but last year the author started reworking it into a stand-alone game using the open source engine of FreeSpace 2, which is released in an episodic manner. However, as I am completely unfamiliar with the original FreeSpace 2, I cannot tell if this new stand-alone version uses anything from it apart from the engine.

 

For some reason, the most comprehensive source of information about this game that I have found so far is TV Tropes.

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Project Reality for Battlefield 2 is a good example. Squad is an interesting one to try and fit because while having nothing to do with battlefield its a standalone game from some of the Project Reality developers and a spiritual successor to project reality, so not sure if that counts or not.

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