X3-Terran Conflict : Multi-national collaboration 'X-Timelines' mod

This modification was born out of a sense of wanting to turn a really great game into something even better. At this time I had only just started out on the road of proper game design. The days of tinkering were definitely over by this point and it was time to start learning the real workings of games. This project was so ambitious it is difficult to believe that four people actually pulled it off.

Firstly we had the team leader, Trixx who is an Australian, the coder IceMan from America, the general scripting and importing god; a Canadian called Jeff, and an eager young British designer keen to learn about it all (me).

When we started this project I lived, ate and slept it for many months. I got my first taste of using 3DsMax, Gimp, Photoshop and also encountered XML, shaders and Xscript. Though the project did not ultimately get finished (I had to start university work for one) it was a wonderful time that was instrumental in making me want to learn how to do this professionally.

My main goal in the team was to create a new universe which was more alive, more dynamic and less predictable than the stock universe in the game. In addition, many small changes were also introduced, such as roaming asteroid fields and a higher rate of attrition between empires.

One of my favourite parts of this project was developing new, awe-inspiring scenes. I felt as though many assets in the original game were not used to their full potential, and that the universe had been populated 'robotically'. As efficient as this method probably is, one never sees vistas like the following images if a bit of love isn't put into design.