Part 4: Alternate Realities

Returning to the game, I didn't realize that Fortnite had a way for players to create their own game modes. Looking through what was available, a lot of what I saw reminded me of what I would see on Roblox when I was a kid. Interestingly, what I would consider the base game modes are listed in their own category, but it's called "By Epic", buried below a number of other categories, and presented no differently than the custom game modes. There's not an immediately obvious search bar, but there is a search icon up with the menu options.

I didn't have much interest in checking out any of the user-created modes, but decided it couldn't hurt to spend some time on a few just to see what they're like. I stuck to modes based on simple formulas, with most of the time I spent on these modes going to a team deathmatch mode and a capture the flag mode. The specific ones I chose just happened to be easy to find in the many lists of modes available. Since these would mostly rely on Fortnite's basic gameplay elements, there wouldn't be much I'd need to learn before hopping in. It would also enable me to develop a better feel for the game and more effectively evaluate the parts that were worked on by the players who made the modes.

Below is more detailed information about the modes I was playing. This is included for the sake of completeness and doesn't represent any endorsement of either of them.

After playing these modes, I think the functionality that enabled these to be made might be fairly extensive. The map in the deathmatch mode gives me a similar "laser tag arena" feeling that I would get from some Forge maps in Halo 3 or Halo Reach. In the capture the flag mode, those maps seem to be the product of a more involved level editor. I would guess the truth might be somewhere in the middle, with some prefab maps serving as the templates on which to build up the more involved maps. There also seems to be some sort of scripting functionality. I don't think the game has a native feature for giving up on being "down but not out", but the CTF mode has one anyway.

To get the best idea for what's possible with the tools provided, I would need to make my own level. I did not have any plans on actually doing this and the apparent lack of any kind of nuclear missile launcher would make my idea to port over DM-(SUF)DeemeR potentially impossible. This wasn't on my radar of what to evaluate anyway, so I'll skip it for the time being and maybe give it a try later.
who made who. - YouTube (clip)

EDIT: The above paragraph is the first of a few points in this project where I write about something that only a few people would know about and then not elaborate on what the hell I'm talking about. It would be way funnier to leave it like that, but it's not particularly helpful to anyone else. I've added links and notes to points like this.

What stuck out to me in particular was that the modes I was playing seemed to be receiving updates. I wasn't expecting that, but it's good to see that the players making the modes are putting in effort to make improvements over time.

This was something I only looked into as a tangential component of Fortnite's main functionality, so I'll stop here with the player-created maps and modes. Overall, it seems like a great addition that allows players to get the most out of the game.

EDIT: As a result of taking much longer to write this than originally anticipated and finding a group of players to party up with that view these as a normal function of the game, I have spent more time on these user creations and played more of them. What I've written here has not substantially changed as a result of it. Further reference to this aspect of the game will appear in later sections.