Inside the Paradigm news

When you play Paradigm Worlds I bet you don't have really time to have a closer look at the details. Often we downgrade graphic quality to have a better performance. We just do not have a luxury of watching our soldiers' armours, because there is battle to win and that's all that matters at the time. So let me show you a few designs and tell from where do they come.

I am not a 3d artist, so all models are made by someone else. There are plenty 3d models just waiting to be taken care of. Paradigm Worlds grown up thanks to many talented artist and mod makers. Two most important mods, that allowed creation of a new brave world are: The Last Days and The Reckoning - two huge mods for Mount and Blade.

By the way, if you have looked closer, you would see that the Reckoning was utilising some TLD models as well. At the beginning there wasn't much I knew about modding at all, and knew absolutelely nothing about handling 3D graphics. So, how do you get new items, like weapons and armours?

Some mods become OSP, Open Source Projects, and their authors allow to use their work so that flame of their creation would warm some new entity, Paradigm Worlds in this case.

Anyone who played The Last Days or The Reckoning can identify models you can see at the pictures. I couldn't believe myself, when had succeeded in transferring my first model. As a matter of fact everyone can do it with given tools. You can check how models look like, using openBrf.

The second stage, after successful port to Paradigm, was to remade their textures (skin) so they fit my (some people just say 'sick') vision of the world of Paradigm.

After some time, when I felt a bit more confident I have developed a way of re-creating things, so they would fit my vision. First, I begun to perceive OSP materials not as a ready-to-use, but rather ready-to-remake. So the whole creation went that way.

I started to use ready osp materials like kid uses Lego block. Latest paradigm creations angled not only on re-skinning but rather building new models (also 3D) from 'blocks'.

The zombie head in the down right corner is the original one taken from the Reckoning. The rest is an effect of merging different models to achieve new effect. During the process I have learned how to create transparent items, so helmet in up right corner has 'glass-like' surface for example.

It is amazing, range of change, I mean how much can object change, with texture replaced. You can literally take a medieval armour and transform it into a future-tech within few minutes. Or hours. Working with models, creating new stuff is time consuming... but it is worth every second.

At the picture above you can see an armor set I've made for my own version of Punisher - Tombstone. By the way, most of names from Paradigm Worlds do come from somewhere else. There are like hidden secrets, waiting to be found out. For example: undead shooter Tombstone got his name from another hero who's name was Tombstone. I don't know have you played that game? Freedom Force is unbelievably creative, and triggers player to be creative as well. It let's you design your super hero squad and lead them to an adventure like from best-comic book in a funny, pastiche way. So 'Tombstone' is my reminder for a Paradigm Worlds.

How do you make a bio-viral missile? You take alien's hat, change its skin so it looks meaty, and voila!

These are mutants' shields. They made it out of their enemies skins. One in the middle is transparent, but that can be seen better in the game itself. Mount and Blade is an amazing game but it handle limited amount of textures. So you have to be creative and use same skin on many items, so you can avoid overloading the game engine.

Limits are very important. And don't get me wrong, they are some sort of barrier to the whole process of creation. But if you would have all tools and resources you can imagine it would be a bit boring, no challenge.

Sometimes you have to limit yourself to make items coherent with your vision of the world. For example, for skinning process of mutant faction's items I used just a few textures. In return no one will mistake their stuff with other faction's equipment.

My latest 'creation' - meat armour for a Freddy and re-use for skinning the Ketele Abomination. It was supposed to be a entity beyond our comprehension so it should not have a shape we could recognise, a form we would perceive. But still it had to appear somehow in the mod, to be an ultimate punishment...

What is more important, experimenting or having a certain goal to achieve from the beginning? Ancient Greeks had this saying, that no ship will reach a port without knowing its destination. Same with any project like a whole mod, a single model or just a picture or a photo. Yes, there are some pieces, that their authors claim that were made by an accident, but for most of the time it is not true. It happened many times, that after death of some well-known artist, we could have an inside look at their work-model and in 90% situation it came out that they worked very hard on their projects. At least in literature or painting - that I know a bit.