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Fan game facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

A fan game is a video game that is created by fans of a certain topic or IP. They are usually based on one, or in some cases several, video game entries or franchises. Many fan games attempt to clone or remake the original game's design, gameplay, and characters, but it is equally common for fans to develop a unique game using another as a template. Though the quality of fan games has always varied, recent advances in computer technology and in available tools, e.g. through open source software, have made creating high-quality games easier. Fan games can be seen as user-generated content, as part of the retrogaming phenomena, and as expression of the remix culture.

Development

Fan games are either developed as standalone games with their own engines, or as modifications to existing games that piggyback on the other's engines. Each approach has different advantages, as standalone games are generally accessible to larger audiences but may often be more difficult or time-consuming to develop.

Standalone games

Fan games are often developed using pre-existing tools and game engines. The Unity engine and Adobe Flash allow fans to develop standalone games, as with other programs such as GameMaker, Construct, RPG Maker, or any of the Clickteam products (such as The Games Factory and Multimedia Fusion 2).

Fan game developers often select and use free and open source game engines (such as OGRE, Crystal Space, DarkPlaces, and Spring) to help fans create games without the cost of licensing a commercial alternative. These engines may be altered and redesigned within the terms of their open source license and often cost significantly less than commercial options, but do not always allow developers to easily create high-end visual effects without additional effort.

It is also possible for fans to develop original game engines from scratch using a programming language such as C++, although doing so takes much more time and technical ability than modifying an existing game; an example is the Spring Engine which started as fan-made Total Annihilation game.

Modifications to existing games

Fan games are sometimes developed as a modification to an existing game, using features and software provided by many game engines. Mods usually are not allowed to modify the original story and game graphics, but rather extend the current content that was provided by the original developer. Modding an existing game is often cheaper than developing a fan game from scratch.

Because of the complexity of developing an entirely new game, fan games are often made using pre-existing tools that either came with the original game, or are readily available elsewhere. Certain games, such as Unreal Tournament 2004 and Neverwinter Nights, come with map-editing and scripting tools to allow fans to develop mods using the engine provided with the original game. Games such as Doom are old enough (end-of-life) that their source code has been released, allowing radical changes to take place; more examples in the List of commercial video games with available source code.

Another form of modding comes from editing the ROM images of older games, such as SNES games. Programs such as Lunar Magic enable a user to modify the existing data in the ROM image and change levels, character graphics, or any other aspect the program allows. While normally played on emulators, these newly edited ROM images could theoretically be used in conjunction with a flash drive to actually create cartridges for the older system, allowing the modified ROM images to run on the original hardware. A notable recent example of such a fan game is The Legend of Zelda: Parallel Worlds which was hailed by reviewers as a remarkable unofficial sequel to A Link to the Past. Other notable examples include Legend of Zelda: Curse from the Outskirts, Blaster Master: Pimp Your Ride, and Super Mario World - The Second Reality Project 2.

Famous fan mods (for example, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, and Pirates, Vikings and Knights II) may even be adopted by the game developer (in all the mentioned cases, Valve) and made into an official addition to the existing game (Half-Life).

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Fangame para niños

  • Fan labor
  • Homebrew (video games)
  • Dōjin soft
  • Game development
  • Game Maker
  • Microsoft XNA
  • M.U.G.E.N
  • XGameStation
  • Enterbrain's game suites
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