What’s next for NVIDIA RTX Remix? What new features are you working on? And are you working with any other modders to remaster classic mods? Give us the details, Nyle!
Nyle: We’ve been so immensely pleased with our collaboration with Nicolas and David, and the game honestly floors us. Portal: Prelude RTX has benefitted us, the gamers, and the RTX Remix tool. As for future collaborations–who knows!
To keep up to date on everything we are doing with RTX Remix, I always recommend people check out our roadmap.
And if you are interested in other RTX Remix mods (or are a modder interested in RTX Remix), I highly encourage you to check out the “RTX Remix Showcase” community-run Discord. There are over 5000 people there doing incredible things with the RTX Remix runtime, and we always have our team active there as well.
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Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, Nicolas and David; when did you start modding, and what have you worked on?
Nicolas “NykO18” Grevet: I started modding when Half-Life 1 came out with the Worldcraft 2 editor back in 1998 or 1999. I was 13 back then, and it was a struggle to find any tutorials in French about how to do anything with the tool. I mostly worked on small maps and little projects for years, on Half-Life 1, Team Fortress 1, then Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, etc.
In 2008, I launched this large project called Portal: Prelude, which was much more than just “mapping” - it was a fully featured game that required roughly a year of work. It was a little clumsy, but the timing was right: it followed the release of Portal, and plugged a gap before the release of Portal 2. It had a very polarizing but successful launch. After that, I worked on an additional large project by producing a full-length Left 4 Dead campaign named ‘I Hate Mountains’ with some friends, and retired from the field entirely in 2011.
David “Kralich” Driver-Gomm: I started modding in 2014, creating addons for Garry’s Mod, where I developed my knowledge in the Source Engine. In 2018 I started my primary mod project, Raising the Bar: Redux, as a Half-Life 2 cut content restoration mod, and it continues strong to this day. On the side I’ve worked on a variety of other Source mods, such as being the lead asset creator on Entropy Zero 2 and releasing my own side projects like Goreagulation. Beyond that, I like to try and mod games with either very little or no serious modding support and create new communities around them - most notably, I helped construct a community around Bionicle Heroes, which now has a few dozen mods and reasonable activity today.
What inspires you to mod?
Nicolas: The idea of being able to create 3D environments you could play into, and for which your imagination was basically the limit, was definitely the appeal of modding for me. I spent way more time goofing around in the levels I was building with my friends than I was spending building them. It was a good excuse for us to play stuff together and have fun. It definitely allowed me to create life-long relationships with some fellow modders that I consider great friends to this day.
David: Modding allows me to revisit games I have a sentimental attachment to and add to their legacy. For Half-Life 2, it’s just such a powerful and versatile platform for creation that, with my current expertise in the engine, means I can create just about anything I can come to mind with. The creative problem solving inherent to modding - working out how to turn a foundation into something else - is really rewarding, and telling new stories with familiar content helps expand the universes I love. Modding is also a way I can make up for the shortcomings of a game, like expanding the combat sandbox or making more detailed levels, and in the case of much older and more obscure games, it lets me reach out to other enthusiasts for rewarding recollections of the past. I’ve always enjoyed tackling a problem and hitting my head against it until it breaks in, and modding is full of it, for better or worse!
What's something about your content modding journey you’ve really enjoyed or were surprised by?
Nicolas: When I started getting myself involved in more serious projects like Portal: Prelude and then I Hate Mountains, I didn’t realize how much the skills required to lead such projects would transfer to a real job. I definitely landed my first few jobs in my twenties surfing on the popularity and skillset acquired while handling these projects. Modding forces you to wear many hats: you have to be a level designer, a 2D artist, a scripter, a writer, a web developer, a PR person, a release manager, a QA analyst, and so much more. It teaches you resiliency and adaptability.
David: The greatest joy of modding on Raising the Bar: Redux was bringing together a number of specialists and talented individuals who, put together, can achieve things not possible alone. Team building and bringing people together is the greatest reward modding can provide for me, and seeing the collective talent of hobbyists and passionate creators at work is something I’ve never seen in any other context or any other field. Everyone wants to be there, wants to be a part of the collective whole and produce something not for money or personal gain, but for the love of creating, and in that environment there really is nothing else out there like that.
What tools do you use for modding? What are your favorites?
Nicolas: Back then, in 2010 and before, there weren't that many tools available to modders. If you had a level editor, a trusty image editor, and a text editor, you were basically set. These days, working on Portal: Prelude RTX with NVIDIA folks and David Driver-Gomm definitely opened my eyes to how much easier, and at the same time so much more complicated everything has become. Tools like Adobe Substance 3D and the Omniverse toolkit from NVIDIA really blew my mind after years of inactivity in this field. It felt like being a kid again, witnessing magic tools you can’t quite figure out the inner workings of.
David: Every Source level designer has a love/hate relationship with ol’ Hammer (Valve’s Hammer Editor, more informally known as Hammer, is the primary tool used for Source modding), but the power it gives you once you truly understand how to use map logic and how to play by its limitations is immense and means you can really push your creative vision to the max. I also use Blender as my primary 3D modeling tool as I find it’s plugin support and community focus makes it incredibly versatile; if there’s a 3D format out there, chances are someone has written a plugin for it, and that makes it very easy to move from game to game and keep the same workflow.
What’s the story behind the creation of the Portal: Prelude mod? When and why did you choose to make an unofficial prequel to Portal?
Nicolas: In January 2008, I was looking for a new project. Portal had been out for four months, and no one had done anything really serious around it. I was a part of a lot of communities and followed a lot of independent releases, but no mod and no serious story arcs were being released. This is why I decided to launch this project.
Originally, the project was rather insignificant. It was not supposed to be a modification of the game, but just a succession of test chambers, without any real logic between them. I had no goal, I was just making maps as I saw it. And finally, when I reached a dozen test chambers, I realized that it would be a shame to waste all this work by only releasing yet another map pack without any real backstory. This is where I began to write a whole new story and decided to follow the famous belief that prequels were somewhat popular at that time.
My goal was to make it a personal project, without telling anyone about it. I wanted to surprise everyone by releasing a quality, polished, and fully finished game, offering roughly the same amount of playtime as Portal. As months passed, I had more and more difficulty working on it regularly. In real life, I was both a student and an employee, and that didn't leave me with a lot of time to work on the game. This is where I decided to ask for some help, mainly from Jérémy "Capitaine Mousse" Barbe, who helped me by making four of the nineteen test chambers while I was working on the final level. Marc "Moroes" Bidoul helped me too, by making a few 3D models and textures.
[It took me] nine months [to make]. Not nine months of continuous work of course, but nine months with some days filled with dozens of hours of hard work. I worked on the nineteen test chambers for 3 to 4 months, followed by 2 months on the final level, and 2 months of testing, debugging, and polishing (interfaces, voices, commentaries, etc.). It took me a lot more time than I initially thought, mainly because I also had school exams and my actual job to do on the side.
In June 2008, I learned like everyone else that Valve was potentially working on what we thought would end up being an official prequel of Portal (Portal 2). It felt like I was the only person on Earth not entirely happy with this announcement. So, I decided to work twice as hard to release my version way before Valve ever could.
How did Portal: Prelude RTX come about?
Nicolas: Back in 2022, I was approached by David Driver-Gomm from ModDB.com, and Nyle Usmani from NVIDIA shortly before the release of Portal with RTX, and they had this idea of taking a popular fan-made Portal mod from the old days, and working on a remaster powered by the same RTX Remix technology [used to make Portal with RTX]. I originally declined due to my absence from the modding scene for the last ~10 years, but ultimately decided to get on board once I saw the technology in action and because it was the perfect opportunity to deliver the 15-year anniversary remaster that many gamers had requested over the years.
David: I was not a part of the original mod, but I played it when I was a kid, and as a big fan of Portal, I loved just having more Portal to play. Prelude told a very interesting story of a pre-GLaDOS Aperture that excited my creativity, and I remembered it fondly for many years. That’s why when it came to talking about what might be a project to uplift with a combination of Portal with RTX’s foundation and original work, Prelude immediately came to mind.