Modding, or the roots of my passion for videogames
While making this page won't make you see any new flashy art/game/etc of mine, it can be useful to understand from where I come in terms of approach and dedication.
The pivotal moment :
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| september 2006 |
was when I used all of my weekend to do this. It was the very first time ever I didn't do any of my homework at all before Monday, and I was very frightened and thrilled at this idea.
I was, at the time, a big fan of Code Lyoko, and a big player of Jedi Knight III : Jedi Academy. This game was heavily moddable, and so a new era began for me!
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| MUST GO BEYOOOOOND!!! |
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| And, yeah, I also liked Futurama and Daria very much. |
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| Breathtaking! |
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| I always tried to make maps the most interactive I could (without knowing how to script). One map would need the player to navigate, and/or for certain actions to be made in the right order, to unlock the way to the next map it was linked to. There were parts that were traps - other that would lure the player into storytelling (ie you want to get downstairs through the elevator, but it gets stuck. You then have to find another weird way around, which is longer and more unexpected). |
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| A test room to investigate mirrors and portals - I wanted to use this technology to make better water. |
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| I even created an entire room to try out all of the more tricky FX I was making!
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EXPERIMENTATION was the key word : how far is it possible to do? Can I combine these? How do I access this? How can I recreate that? How does all of this work??? I must LEARN!And so these were the first models, maps, textures, skinnings, particle effects, data edits, basic scripting... with my source of knowledge being 2006's internet, and my inexistant methodology, the results were often wonky, but made for great lessons.
At some point I had the goal to port most of Star Wars : Knights of the Old Republic (or KotOR) into Jedi Academy. Obviously, I didn't succeed, but the sheer number of characters and vehicles I adapted merely out of passion gave me a good headstart in skinning, data edition, sound design, FX, shaders, animation...
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| I've added some more since, but most of them are here. |
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| Oops |
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| This massive cruiser is a pain to control - it has tremendous fire power but I never hit anything but the floor (while crashing). So when you manage to do anything with it, the reward is huge!!! |
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| The alt-fire of this seemingly useless cargo drops a crate, that upon impact creates a nuclear explosion (at the time I didn't know how to make particles that wouldn't be additive). Even if you're high in the sky, the blast takes half your life. |
With time, modding exchanged places with school. It had become my life, and school had become... well, not a hobby, because a hobby is something you do for fun. With my ultimately failing high school in 2008 by lack of interest, the more traditional options closed, allowing me to choose something else for myself.
Well... this choice wasn't made in a day, but rather in a year. Luckily, university was on a huge strike, which shot the second semester of classes. During that time, I practiced art a lot more, and played other games. My interests gradually shifted to Oblivion.
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| Wearing a rat is a good way to test the limits of the skeletal standardisation for the game. |
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| This time, I focused more on developping my modeling skills. |
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| Modding, and then modding mods that you join with other mods, is the sign that you're not even playing the game anymore. You're just playing modding. |
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| After vs. before learning UV mapping. |
Then I got to art-animation-videogame school and didn't have so much time anymore. Still, in 2011 Skyrim tempted me very much and I did a helmet but nothing more.
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| Same concept, different design : great for easy comparison! |
And finally, because I loved the game and was EAGER for the modding tools, in 2015 I participated in the Christmas modding contest for The Witcher 3. Just a reskin with some geometric changes, but it was still satisfying to me, given the user-unfriendliness of these tools.
So, what now? No more mods?
Well... maybe less game are moddable, maybe I play less too. At the moment I'm looking through Minecraft to see what I could do. I prefer looking forward to Hytale, though.
OR MAYBE, I'm just modding all the time now! Creating a videogame is really just a bigger mod, or playing a bigger game!
If you're interested about what happened after my biggest modding phase, see you soon for Part II : School!!!
