The community behind hit indie game Minecraft is what makes it so great. While some players of Minecraft are drawn to the incredible easy yet deep gameplay, others are also drawn in by how easy it is to edit the game’s code and create new and extremely cool things for the game. These are called Mods short for Modifications. Throughout its life, Minecraft has had countless mods made for its source and some of them have been integrated into the original game, with Mojang paying a royalty to the mod-maker.

However, the current model of mods did not have any kind of protection against malicious code. In effect, layperson players who do not understand code will be at a loss if they implemented a mod and found that it was malicious especially since the game needs an internet connection to verify your credentials.

For the longest time, there was this mod situationthat Notch had to rectify. A day ago he posted an entire proposal on his tumbr, with a plan for a small feefor signing up as a mod developer (which guarantees a certificate of authenticity from Mojang). However the Great Connected Hivemind (also known in various other cultures as the Internet) convinced him to remove the fee for signing up as a mod developer. While we personally think that Notch should not bow to the internet’s wishes so easily we also understand that it was the community that made him what he is today. Either way, it’s good to see great approvedmods coming the Minecraft way!

Crytek is on a roll with yet another highly successful game released for their adoring fans (so what if it did not break computers?) and on the heels of the release of Crysis 2 comes the announcement of the Crysis 2 editor for the modding community to go wild with (considering that some of the finest mods in recent times were of the original game, Crysis).

But that was not all that CEO of Crytek, Cevat Yerli, had to say in the extensive open letter published for the Crytek modding community. Yerli also mentioned that a free CryENGINE SDK (Software Development Kit) will be released for modders who wish to go above and beyond the normal modding capabilities and wish to make an entirely new game while building on the resources available in Crysis 2.

The meaty part of the announcement, however was that modders will get free access to the CryENGINE 3 (for non-commercial use) in August 2011. In other words modders and budding game programmers will be given free access to the same engine that powers Crysis 2 and the engine that is widely regarded as the most powerful gaming engine currently available. In his own words, Yerli says:-

This will be a complete version of our engine, including C++ code access, our content exporters (including our LiveCreate real-time pipeline), shader code, game sample code from Crysis 2, script samples, new improved Flowgraph and a whole host of great asset examples, which will allow teams to build complete games from scratch for PC.

GDC 2009 – Mod DB

This is an extremely good piece of news for both the modding community as well as the consumers who thrive on the creativity of the modding community that has spawned many-a-gem of a game. (Counter Strike was a mod, if you remember!)