Update log
Full Crusader Kings III update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Repeated intro
Hello and welcome to this developer diary introducing the Crusader Kings III Content Creator Pack: North African Attire, I’m Pierre “El Tyranos” Azuelos and you might already play with some of my work in the Community Flavor Pack mod.
Extracted changes
- Store
- Gameplay
I have been playing Crusader Kings franchise since 2012 and mod my favorite games since 2004. I naturally switched to CK modding as soon as 3D characters were announced. Since then, I have made over 260 models for my mod: headgear, clothes, artifacts, royal courts, ships, props, etc. I also broadcasted several video tutorials to help beginner artists to make their way inside the 3D engine.
Today, Paradox Interactive gives me the opportunity and immense privilege to release an official cosmetic pack for our favorite game, so let’s jump into it in detail!
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Introducing the Content Creator Pack
The Content Creator Pack is an initiative that started at PDXCON 2022 when I submitted the idea directly to the Game Director for CKIII, Rageair. The decision to make “North African Attire” came after a process where I pitched different concepts for a Content Creator Pack, developing the philosophy, expectations, interests, risks and scope for 4 options. We then had a meeting diving deeper into what a cultural clothing pack would look like, this time with regional suggestions, and North Africa stood out from the rest. I documented for a few weeks until the project was finally ready to enter production.
The key objective of the project was to create something that added value to the game compared to a mod and blend in seamlessly with the rest of the content. Over the last 4 years, Community Flavor Pack received about 6 original clothings, the remaining ones are vanilla model retextures. Over the 260-ish models from the mod, clothing only represents a dozen. Why? The time and energy investments are barely worth it when you’re doing this for fun and for free. For example, I submitted 8 turbans in this Content Creator Pack that I never did before, because of their complexity. I dedicated more than 2 weeks just to manage to make the first one, see illustration below.
[From left to right: first trial, understanding the workflow, final sculpt of one of the models]
The Content Creator Pack, which becomes officially part of Crusader Kings III, comes with a higher quality standard: more attention to visuals, better optimization, models have all their blendshapes, there is a lot more time spent per asset. Paradox provides Quality Assurance and will offer official support for the content as well.
Why am I saying this? Paradox Interactive trusted me with an ambitious project when I submitted something I still had to prove I could do. Our collaboration was honest and benevolent, my creativity was respected and I tried to do my best in return, they guided me to achieve better visuals all while supporting my initiatives. I've done my best to push the sliders as far as possible, with the weight of not disappointing the community that has always supported my work and within the inherent limit to a commercial project.
Character Art
The first thing to note is that documentation is woefully lacking, there is, to my knowledge, no surviving artifact but a pair of 11th century shoes. Another terrible fact is that medieval art shows almost no women and no other Berber than Andalusians… used in Fate of Iberia’s documentation!
Fortunately, Berber culture is very unique as it kept its own decorations and fashions all the way up from high antiquity all while being permeable to other cultures it met. This
Source