Disciples 2 turns 19 this year! And what do You think? D espite its venerable age, the game is still alive and well, largely thanks to the efforts of modders. One of such enthusiast is Nazar (aka Bethrezen).
For over 5 years he has been working on his modification and plans to publish it in the public domain soon. The author told what prompted him to create his own modification , what was his inspiration, how did he opens modding for himself , and also shared his point of view regarding the projects of colleagues.
Our conversation began with the fact that I asked about creative motivation and received the following answer:
“I have been playing since childhood, but I always wondered why the same Empire can't have magicians of other elements besides air. W hy dwarves can’t have fire giants? Why do we need such a strict binding of the race to a certain element? I wanted to do it on my own way, so I'm doing it since 2014.”
Not bad idea, but what about the implementation? I asked who helped the author with mastering the basics of modding. As this is hard work!
“At that time, there was no one to ask. It so happened that then I got together with Hserg, the creator of all the programs for modding. I had enthusiasm and he had technical skills. Together we created and improved D2resexplorer, D2imgEncoder and other programs. We also released a joint article about adding new buildings.”
By the way, I came across this article. This is really good to read. Judging by how the tree of buildings looks in mod a person clearly knows how to design and to do mechanics things. But what about the models?
“Rendering 3d models is a difficult and tedious process, especially when you take into account the features of Disciples 2. And each time this procedure needs to be done in several iterations. An hour or two passes, and you still check if the coordinates, shadows and everything else match. Very “ sweaty” but worth it!”
I'm not intimately familiar with all the difficulties that arise when modding. But there are also things that no longer depend on author. It's about reaction of community. The demonstration of the author's developments in the public caused a rather mixed reaction. I asked what he thinks about this.
“Well, you can't please everyone. For now, I just want to understand whether people need what I do. We will start from this knowledge .”
While communicating with the author, I could not help but ask him about his attitude to other major modifications. His answer didn’t disappoint me.
“Well, I'm not really following others. A lthough sometimes it is interesting to see what colleagues have done there. I take note of some things . I compare with what I have. That's how we live.”
At the end of the conversation, Nazar assured that he had only a couple of units left to add for the updated Mountain clans. The modification will be released soon . I advise you to be patient and wait . I am more than sure that it will be quite interesting to see, touch and play with the results of his work.