Can you have an interview with @Konrad, the current PoP dev?
If both of you agree of course.
If both of you agree of course.
Users who are viewing this thread
Pumpkin Lord
Lag'ier Barlida said:Can you have an interview with @Konrad, the current PoP dev?
If both of you agree of course.
I will contact him, sure.
Pumpkin Lord
Faradon
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3D artist - Composer
1. ) Hello, Faradon. You are one of those known as legends to the community. You were basically the first generation of modders. You are most-known for your 3D work notably in The Last Days. So, lets start with an introduction of yourself for those who don’t know you.
Answer: Well, by now there’s probably not so many people around who would remember my name. Especially considering the MaB fanbase has grown so rapidly. But quite a few years ago I worked on creating 3D art for different projects. I also uploaded a few things as packages now and then.
2.) How did you get started on modding this game for the first time? Did you have any past experiences? Why did you want to mod this game?
Answer: Frankly, I cannot recall how exactly I got into 3D modding and also 2D art. It probably was a logical development from me liking drawing and the arts in general. I wanted to mod this game series because I played a ****load of it.
3.) All of your mod projects are based upon the world of Lord of the Rings. Project Smaug, Barad-dur and The Last days to name them. I believe you also did a bit of work on your fellow IRC friends’ projects such as Highlander’s Bear Force 2 when it first came out. Why did you attempt to make mods based on middle-earth, say instead of making your own indie game?
Answer: Not everything I made was for LotR based mods, most I suppose. I grew up being a big fan of the fantasy series and its world. It’s just so huge and open for interpretation and adaptations. Another great mod I made some work for was the “Hunt” mod. It was an asymmetrical multiplayer game. Speaking of the IRC crew, there were some efforts to commercialize a pirate mod headed by the great Yoshiboy. But it didn’t go anywhere, who knows what turns life would have taken otherwise. Other than that I think that modding is a much better way of learning and having fun compared to indie efforts. Creating your own indie game either requires you to have great skills in all categories or having a team that really is sworn in.
4.) Do you think your modding experience influenced you in any way? Maybe, your professional career or your studies?
Answer: Maybe. I am not pursuing 3D and 2D actively for now. Once in a while I whip up some 3D model. My skill there has not really rusted that much, so it would be easy for me to pick it up again. Potentially when Bannerlord releases and I’m an old man.
To get back on track, what I have been actually doing is working on music composition. I’ve worked hard on that. Obviously I seem to be attracted by artistry. In comparison I would say that I feel much more free and inspired when writing music. Digital artwork had sometimes frustrated me to no end. Then again, some kind of mindset must have carried over for sure.
5.) Are you working on any project at the moment? An indie game or a warband mod, maybe?
Answer: Besides plenty of personal projects I have written some music for a game that another old IRC member (Highelf) is working on on his own. I’m hoping to reel in more opportunities going forward. Besides that, I’m actually still active in the modding community, I’m one of the few active composers for a small mod called “Skywind”, maybe you’ve read about it.
6.) What do you think of bannerlord? Do you have any plans to do modding work for the game? It has some revelations.
Answer: I think it looks amazing but it sure takes its damn time to arrive! From the looks of it the modding possibilities will be mind blowing. What I hope to see is those persistent world mods taken to another level, with huge maps and much less clunky mechanics. Personally I will have to see if I have the time or motivation to contribute in any way.
7.) What is your favourite warband mod? Why do you like it? Also, is there any project that caught your attention lately?
Answer: Besides from the first servers with massive player counts (those amazing first cavalry charges!) the persistent world efforts were memorable to me. Even if they were largely boring and clunky, when battles and tactics actually happened it really stood out. Diamond in the very rough. I haven’t followed new mods over the last years.
8.) What is your overall impression of the modding community of this game?
Answer: Superb, only held back by limitations so far.
9.) And - lastly. Would you like to say anything to creative people who’re reading this interview at the moment?
Answer: Work on something that you enjoy and consistently work on your skills. Always challenge yourself. Don’t belittle your efforts and products even if they might be seemingly small, there is a line of thought and greater meaning to everything you create and leave behind. Look at and observe your surroundings and that what is beyond too.
ArnulfFloyd
Knight at Arms
Another good interview, Efe, keep on
Albertus Magnus
Banned
I remember the dwarf equipment. That was amazing! ...the stuff that was made for Khazad-dúm.
Pumpkin Lord
Ruthven said:
I sent word to streets, to my birds, childs of the night that scour the land for these two valiant men.
Pumpkin Lord
Included an analysis of modders carrier info in 2nd page anonymously, I think you will enjoy knowing about.
Pumpkin Lord
Swyter
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
One-man-army - Game Developer
1.) Hello, Swyter. I knew you for a long time now and you are one of the few first modders who did great deal of mod projects such as Star Wars: Conquest and The Last Days, to name a few. You also created amazing modding tools. So, let's start with an introduction of yourself for those who don’t know you.
Answer: Hi! I’m a 26 year old modder from Spain, I’m a bit of a jack of all trades, mostly known for coordinating Star Wars Conquest (SWC) for well over 9 years and porting The Last Days of the Third Age (TLD) to Warband after the original team finished it for the original game in 2011. I started modding Mount&Blade in ~2009, first helping out with tools to change the in-game font and creating a launcher to override a bunch of hardcoded resources that we needed for advanced tweaks. Back then we couldn’t override important things like the Data folder and CommonRes/core_*.brf until it was added a few months after Warband came out because we lobbied for it really hard in M&B 1.011.
Things like creating new races, or changing their size or adding new skeletons or even including a custom font without breaking the base game for everyone else was essentially impossible. I think that the community as a whole knew what it wanted and forced TaleWorlds to remove those limitations. But yeah, even if people nowadays think of Mount&Blade as a very flexible game due to the wealth of mods, we were pretty limited once you went a bit deeper with the engine, at least until 2012. It was pretty frustrating in certain aspects.
I think Marco Tarini (mtarini) doesn’t get nearly enough credit, because he wholeheartedly maintained the tool ecosystem with the amazing OpenBRF after being fed up with the old and rusty BRFEdit, most of the mods or animations wouldn’t even be possible without him. The only official tools we ever got were the module system and the shader files, so it felt a bit like an uphill battle with TaleWorlds to add new features. The good thing is that we often creatively used engine bugs and unintended behavior in our favor for all kinds of tricks and workarounds.
2.) How did you get started on modding this game for the first time? Did you have any past experiences? Why did you want to mod this game?
Answer: I originally found Mount&Blade because its shareware demo was bundled with a PC magazine called Micromania. I was making mods for Battle for Middle-Earth II back then, I remember opening the game folder just for kicks and taking a look at the textures, it looked easy. I think the original The Last Days mod v2.4 for M&B .808 (https://www.mbrepository.com/file.php?id=61) was a big part of why I stuck around. I remember going to my local library and posting on the forum from there, saving local pages and tools in my pendrive to work on tools and toy mods offline on my own. Feels like forever.
3.) How did you go about creating Star Wars Conquest? I bet you faced many challenges.
Answer: Star Wars Conquest is actually the third name, or iteration, of the mod. What Vector and I did when HokieBT had to step down due to family matters was mostly to work on an already stabilized base of mechanics and add a coat of paint and polishment, fleshing out many aspects and expanding them. I remember one of the first things I sent to HokieBT was a new UI and logo, an improved version of the space battle simulator (based on the crazy BattleStar Galactica code by Ibanez), and after that animations for the characters sitting and drinking in the cantina, or the ones used for force powers and speeder bikes.
I also think that one of the first things people see and wonder if they are still playing the same old M&B is when they see the map, with our planetary systems, galactic background and asteroid fields, it holds up surprisingly well even today. After trying to make it work for a while we noticed that map trees are the only meshes that don’t disappear when they go out of camera, so we took advantage of that for our asteroids (they are trees), also the galaxy itself is a big lone snow tree in the middle of the map.
All of that added flavor and made it all look less medieval. But, in retrospective we should have spent more time fixing bugs. The Warband version was ported in a few days after working on other stuff for a while and I’m still dissatisfied with the result. I need to find some free time to make some tweaks. But one gets burned out fast.
By the way, before HokieBT renamed it to its final name it was called Star Wars Mercenaries (you can still download it here for M&B v.960) and before that it was simply known as Star Wars mod, I think that it was started by Grocat and Sith of the Sith Lords in 2006 (you can download it here for M&B .751), which was based on the even older Jedi mod from Blizzybee.
It’s a long lineage, and not even that rare. Since the dawn of time the law of modding dictates that every moddable game shall at least have a lightsaber mod, some Thomas the Tank Engine reskin, and a Helm’s Deep map; so we were all just doing our part to appease the mod gods.
4.) Do you think your modding experience influenced you in any way? Maybe, your professional career or your studies? Was it purely a hobby for you?
Answer: Good question. If you asked me two years ago I would have said that modding had affected me negatively in certain aspects. Coordinating big mod projects is basically a fulltime job, dealing with people can be tough, had to tradeoff a lot of my free time and even of my formal education. But things have changed; today I can safely say that making mods on the Internet since high school forged me as a person, has improved my English, helped me make some friends and acquaintances across the world, gave me curiosity and tools to unleash my creativity, left me with a lot of hands-on experience in very disparate topics, and ultimately landed me a job I never thought I would get. Being featured in big outlets like PC Gamer certainly helped.
Many other modders of my generation are now working on the games industry. Remember Yoshiboy? This is him now. After his Pirates mod was canceled he is working for Ubisoft and publishes state of the art animation research at SIGGRAPH:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0Gilv5wvY
5.) Are you working on any project at the moment? An indie game or a Warband mod, maybe?
Answer: Right now I’m working for THQ Nordic on the PC port and remaster of Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, a lovingly made 2003 action-adventure game from my childhood that came out for PlayStation 2/Xbox/GameCube, it’s an underrated AA Zelda-like from Eurocom and one of the best-looking PS2 games you didn’t know about. I did the console to PC conversion and now the restored game works on Windows, macOS and Linux, supports mouse/keyboard and (of course) has mod support. It’s on Steam and GOG. I’m working on it mostly on my own, after the current publisher liked the unofficial HD texture pack I did on the side. It’s a great privilege to be able to work officially and fulltime on something you were doing in your free time and still retain the same amount of freedom. This is still a labor of love: https://store.steampowered.com/app/606710
6.) What do you think of Bannerlord? Do you have any plans to do modding work for the game? It has some revelations.
Answer: Modding is best done when you have a lot of free time during highschool, and I’m getting old and weary, it’s time to let the new generation do their thing, hopefully our community will be reinvigorated by October 5th 3070, the only release date I can safely predict. I will be keeping an eye out for the sequel because I am told it will be bundled with Half-Life 3 and Despacito 2, and in that glorious day we will finally attain world peace. In other words: no, the game is stuck in development hell and I don’t think we will be modding it anytime soon.
7.) What is your favourite Warband mod? Why do you like it? Also, is there any project that caught your attention lately?
Answer: Maybe I’m a bit biased because I ported it to Warband, but I think The Last Days of the Third Age is one of the most polished experiences you can get right now for either Mount&Blade Warband or Mount&Blade 1.011. And thanks to Khamukkamu, Merlkir and InVain it’s still being actively developed 13 years later and leading the Steam Workshop charts: http://github.com/tldmod/tldmod/
There are people playing the mod younger than the mod itself!
8.) What is your overall impression of the modding community of this game?
Answer: Very welcoming, in the glory days of 2010-2014 the community was huge and extremely diverse. New open source packs (OSP) every day, a melting pot of extremely knowledgeable people that stuck for years in The Forge and would reply your thread succinctly, solving your problems in a matter of minutes, and I still remember all those inventive solutions people came out with. Good memories.
9.) And - lastly. Would you like to say anything to creative people who’re reading this interview at the moment?
Answer: Modding games is a good way of turning a silly passion into a multifaceted hobby and maybe something else. Many people that start programming or doing 3D work do it because they like video games, and even if you end up doing something else in life I believe that, at the end of the day, you still get an excellent crash course of real world experience, while also getting the perks of collaborating with people all over the world and to develop a sense of community... or even an audience. It doesn’t matter who you are, only what you bring to the table; modding groups are constantly in flux and tend to be extremely meritocratic in that sense.
Looking back I’d say that being open about your free mod project and releasing early and often instead of hyping up your fanbase with previews, screenshots and videos helps. There is a lot to gain and nothing to lose; helps your project by being realistic about what you can and can’t deliver instead of overly ambitious and in the process getting more people interested that may contribute their time to bring things forward, the alternative is to work secretively in the shadows for years and abandoning the project halfway, burnt out and without any tangible result.
That’s the main pivotal mistake, and why most mods won’t ever see the light of day.
ArnulfFloyd
Knight at Arms
Another good interview, Efe
Pumpkin Lord
Updated the thread with stories of many modders. These stories are from my 2011 thread, "Modders' Tales", which you can find valuable insights. Also redesigned the whole thing.
NiceEfe Karacar said:
Pumpkin Lord
Mr.Milker said:Lol what.Swyter is only 26?!
I've always been very very sure he was at least my age.
Well now I feel old.
Another interview, then? ^
Pumpkin Lord
Adorno
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Scener / 3D Artist - Game Artist
1. ) Hello, Adorno. You are one of the greats we recognize in the community, done some of the most creative, historically-accurate and simply one of the best maps we have ever seen. Specially for Brytenwalda and Viking Conquest. So, lets start with an introduction of yourself for those who don’t know you.
Answer: You are too kind. If by "great" you mean "old", then yes, I have been around since the early days
I'm from Denmark and have been playing video games since childhood. Now that WHO plans to make gaming addiction a mental disorder it is safe to say I was mentally ill. That is a joke, but I did spent countless hours playing with friends and with one of them started working on simple 2D games for the Amiga Commodore.
Later studies and work came in the way, and M&B is my first real modding experience.
2. ) How did you get started on modding this sequel for the first time? Did you have any past experiences? Why did you want to mod this game?
Answer: Playing M&B for the first time in 2006 was love at first sight. Until then I had never cared much for mods. Some bad experiences with broken games meant I almost exclusively played vanilla.
But I think the large amount of mods for M&B changed that. Already early on M&B had a large modding community and if it was not for many kind and helpful people I would probably have given up. Since M&B at one point was all I played, and it had an easy to access Edit Mode, it was only natural to see what it was.
So a love for the game, curiosity, easily accessible modding features and an already thriving modding community with helpful people are the main ingredients, I think.
3. ) How do you start making a scene? I know you have a special interest in attention to historical detail, so you start with a moodboard, maybe? Or dive directly into scening? How is your progress of making a scene?
Answer: Early on I made a mod called Arena Overhaul which was simply about remaking the arenas. Many were made bigger and various obstacles were added to give them some tactical elements, instead of just being empty open spaces. It was fairly simple, without much planning to begin with, and a lot of fantasy could be used.
That changed when I later on made the Historic Castles Project. There I wanted to create very realistic, historic scenery with accurate proportions. As with Arena Overhaul I was not impressed with the native scenes/castles. Not just are they visually very alike, but also tiny compared to actual castles.
So after some testing it became clear that Warband can handle a surprising amount of geometry. If you just keep details limited to the actual playing area, and avoid too many textures to load, it was not a problem to make quite large castle scenes.
If the scene should be historical then some research is of course required to begin with. But even if it's pure fantasy a proper ground plan of the scene can avoid many problems later on.
If you just start somewhere and let inspiration guide you, you might end up with a terrain that's too small, or there's no room for the attackers/besiegers, or the AI cannot navigate the scene properly etc.
For the historical castles I had to measure everything using objects, like the AI barriers that are marked in metres. To make a circular building (like a fort) I would place a round object (like a wheel) on the ground and increase it to a ridiculous size, and place the scene props after it. Silly, but it works.
It sounds tedious and boring - which it is - but the beauty of exact proportions is a pure joy to watch
The steps to making a scene are like this:
1. Research.
2. Planning - choosing terrain size, outer terrain and making a layout.
3. Terrain shaping.
4. Placing main scene props - houses, walls etc.
5. Adding roads and other terrain textures
6. Details - minor sene props, incl. flora and rocks.
7. AI mesh. Always have that in mind. A plethora of details and minor scene props can create AI pathing issues, and making the AI mesh can take forever.
8. Testing the scene!
4. ) You also did quite a bit of work on texture improvement and sound editing in the past. Do you get inspired from the music that is going to play for the scenes you made? What is the role of music/sfx in a scene? You also love history, the classical greek period specifically. Do you agree literature plays a pivotal role in this process, as well?
Answer: I never liked repetitive music in games, such as strategy. To this day I can still get the theme song for The Settlers stuck in my head.
However when turning off the music in M&B then for the most part all you get is silence. That gave me the idea for an Ambient Soundtrack. Music tracks were simply replaced with sounds of wind, combined with various sound effects, like birds, wolves, crickets etc.
I am not sure how well it turned out, but standing on the battlefield among your troops with a strong, cold wind blowing certainly felt a bit more dramatic.
Literature is excellent, not just for plain historical information but also to get an idea of the lives people lived.
When making a scene you imagine the life taking place there. For example: a village grows naturally around a few houses. The well is the central hub with jugs and buckets around. Streets form naturally around main buildings, like the mill, marketplace, well, merchant's house etc. Fields and pens show the production of the village. A forest nearby has cut down trees, and so on...
I know it sounds pretentious but if you cannot tell a story about what takes place in a scene - what people do - it might be a boring scene.
5. ) You, without a doubt, created one of the most original scenes and did such an amount that when you browse through them, they are so consistent in quality and mood! What was your greatest challenge ever, as a scener? How much time did you spend on a scene by average? Was quality assurance hard to manage?
Answer: I think the greatest challenge when designing historical scenes is visual variety. You have to stay true to history but also use creative freedom to make them interesting.
You learn to use pretty much all elements in nature, like coasts, rivers, brooks, lakes, ponds, cliffs, rocks, hills and forests. Both for aesthetic reasons and as strategic elements in battles.
Time spent on a scene might be distributed like this: planning 15%, terrain 15%, placing scene props 40%, AI mesh 20%, testing and bug fixing 10%. But there are of course many exceptions.
When we started working on Viking Conquest I tried measuring how much time it took to make a scene, but it was almost impossible. It is a very creative process.
Quality assurance is a great challenge when working in a team. To reach a consistent style can be difficult. Luckily - if that is the word - I have mostly been working alone on scene design.
For a project we worked on in the company I wrote a short essay entitled "Dynamic Game Aesthetics", where guidelines for visual principles and elements were presented.
It might sound boring, but the point is, in a group working together it is good to have a leader who defines common goals. Not just in visuals but also other areas.
6.) What happened at your part after Brytenwalda was decided to become the next DLC of this game? Did you set new milestones for yourself to improve upon the new scenes? How was the team atmosphere like?
Answer: The DLC was supposed to be Brytenwalda, but it was decided to only use that as base for a whole new setting, which was Viking Conquest. Luckily Taleworlds agreed and we were all very excited and motivated. The Viking setting was not my decision - being Danish I was too biased to weigh in
But it was perfect for me, with my great interest in the British Isles - and Scandinavian history, of course. I was so lucky to not only make all the scenes in the DLC but also model most of the architecture. Both the interior scenes - halls, taverns etc - and exterior props, houses, walls, towers etc.
That meant the vision for the aesthetics in scenes was in my hands alone, and it created a very consistent style.
Overall I was happy with the result, and only the shortage of time left things I would have wanted to improve and expand upon. Never forget how the freedom of being an amateur modder is a luxury
7.) Do you think your modding experience influenced you in any way? Maybe, your professional career or your studies? Was it purely a hobby for you?
Answer: My case is a little special of course, because modding lead to starting the Brytenwalda Studios company, so we could make the Viking Conquest DLC.
It has since been quiet but we are still a company and are of course working on something. So I remain a professional, practically working two jobs now (the income is not enough 'to make a living').
But also before then I took modding very serious, to such a degree that if I wasn't working on a project I could get restless. Maybe in a few years WHO will classify 'modding addiction' as a mental disorder too, and I will get a perfect score.
Continuing my studies was a natural way to go, but to be honest I found it boring and was not motivated, and modding filled that vacuum in my life.
It is not something I can recommend, of course. Stay in school, kids! But today I do not regret anything
8.) What do you think of the bannerlord? Do you have any plans to do modding work there, too? Scene editor looks great so far.
Answer: As external developer I have been fortunate to get a closer look at Bannerlord than others, especially the scene design part, and they have done some excellent work.
There are now many new features that make parts of scene making much easier, and scenes can be much prettier, with more details.
Just a simple thing like giving water in rivers a direction/naturel flow gives more life and realism instead of the static water.
My favourite feature though, is how you can copy-paste a bunch of scene props, and even save them as an entity and import them to another scene.
Anyway, I am not sure how much has been revealed in the blogs, so I cannot say any more. But I certainly look forward to the new Edit Mode.
9.) What is your favourite warband mod? Why do you like it? Also, is there any project that caught your attention lately?
Answer: I used to play mods like an addict looking for the next fix.
There are some mods that have almost become standards and classics, like the Diplomacy mod, or Polished Landscapes.
I played Prophesy of Pendor a lot, and even did some terrible voice acting for a Nordic lord character. Still remember shouting "your hips are wide and suited for childbirth" and other weird stuff into a microphone. After 20 min. my neighbour came knocking to see if I was okay.
Lesser known mods are the Entrenched and Ranger Company mods by Tempered, that had patrols, spies, ambushes, sabotage, outposts and other fine features. I did a few scenes for those as well.
Finally I have to mention Gangs of Glasgow. Perhaps the most silly, laughable and yet well made mod out there.
Lately I have had little time to play. That is the downside of modding. And once you get behind the scenes (no pun intended) some of the magic disappears. You start contemplating ways to change the game instead of just playing and having fun. Suddenly it is more fun modding than actually playing.
10.) What is your overall impression of the modding community of this game?
Answer: As mentioned people here are very friendly and always willing to help. When we started on Viking Conquest I really missed the help of the community. We could not reveal what we were working on so I could not just post a 3D model or scene and ask for advice and help.
Since Taleworlds are taking their time with Bannerlord it is only natural that modders are cautious starting on projects when a brand new engine is on its way. I hope when Bannerlord arrives the community will stay a welcoming place and great mods will be made.
11.) And - lastly. Would you like to say anything to creative people who’re reading this interview at the moment?
Answer: Thank you for interviewing me. It has been a pleasure, and I hope it has been informative and not too boring.
The best advice when modding is to make as many mistakes as possible and test the limits of the game/engine.
As William Blake says: "you never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough".
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