Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Today I had the pleasure of interviewing modding star Rider of Rohan, who recently released The Horse Lords and has worked on the HD patch for BfME.
Matt: What first brought you into modding? What got your attention? How did you get started?
Rider: The first mod I had ever played was The Elven Alliance, I had loved what they did to Rohan and at the time the new models and textures they had were pretty great. My first steps towards modding was just fiddling with TEA and getting the Mounted Royal Guards for Rohan buildable (because they were for Theoden's summons only). After that I had moved to BFME 2 and preferred the playstyle there, the only thing for me that was missing was a Rohan Faction, and that's how The Horse Lords was born.
Matt: What are your influences? Do you have an inspiring hero in the modding sphere?
Rider: I for sure have various influences, I'm always playing other mods, so sometimes I end up getting other ideas from them. A major influence for me though, has always been the Shadow and Flame team, the first modder who really ever helped me out in the early stages was their leader Mathijs.
Matt: What draws you to The Lord of the Rings? Which do you prefer, J.R.R. Tolkien’s books or Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations?
Rider: As a kid I went to see The Fellowship of the Ring movie with my parents, and that's how the world of Middle Earth became an interest of mine. I collected a couple of the PS2 games and later got The Battle for Middle Earth as well. I had read the books after watching the trilogy, but I will still always prefer the movies.
Matt: What is your approach to modding? What do you focus on?
Rider: I like taking things that are already there and making them better somehow, whether it's improving the accuracy of a model or making a power have a better functionality. I also like to work faction by faction nowadays, first warming up with getting units and heroes in then working upwards until perhaps AI and bug fixing are the last things on the list for said faction.
Matt: What other games do you play? Do you feel let down by a developer if a game is not moddable?
Rider: I'm a big fan of Total War and Naughty Dog games, I also play Dragon Ball Z and Call of Duty games every now and then. I do like it when companies allow modding and give tools to their modding communities, to me it shows they want a supportive community surrounding their games. I don't expect every game to be moddable, but some fun can come around a moddable one!
Matt: How do you source your creativity?
Rider: I like making things that wow others, being someone that runs on attention lol. If I know something is going to look or preform good and is within my ability to do, then why not?
Matt: Any advice you can give to future modders?
Rider: Learn everything you can, take every opportunity to get the ropes of something new, it will help in the long run for sure. Your own Self efficiency will determine what you'll attract to the table. In short, get good or get rekt m8.
Edited by MattTheLegoman, 12 September 2016 - 01:07 PM.
