About

Hellkeeper

Bonjour.

Hellkeeper is an unfortunate nickname. It evokes pictures of edgy, rebellious teenagers. But as it turns out, back in 2004, at the grand age of 14, I was (or wished to be) an edgy rebellious teenager. I soon outgrew the name, but it was too late: I was now universally known online as Hellkeeper. So it stuck.

I first played Unreal Tournament on a friend's Playstation 2, then Unreal Championship on a relative's Xbox. Soon, I bought my own copy of the brand new Unreal Tournament 2003. For any long-term fan of the Unreal series, this must read like a horror story, the worst possible introduction to the world of Unreal, through a console port of its most beloved title and two of the lesser games in the franchise. But most of all, it introduced me to UnrealEd 3.0, hidden in UT2003's directory. Soon after, I was making my first bare-bones levels for Unreal Tournament 2004, which had hit the stores by now. I wrote a large amount of tutorials in French to help newcomers, plenty of which were based on tutorials in English I had to painstakingly decypher.

Nowadays, Unreal is a venerable series which remains a fond memory for many and a reminder of a time when gaming communities were constantly thriving with creativity. As for me, I have released more than 20 levels and still enjoy toying with UnrealEd. The game and its editor have made me fluent in English and working on them helped me develop skills which, later, served me well both in personal and professional projects.

The Site

The current Hellkeeper.net is the fourth (and green) version of what started as an ugly (and blue) learning project years ago, back when personal websites were all the rage. Many experienced level-designers for Unreal used to have their own site listing their maps, articles and musings. When I decided to do the same, in the early 2000s, ready-made websites were not a common service, which meant I had to learn how to make my own site, which in turned meant I had to learn the basics of what was at the time cutting-edge web technology: XHTML, CSS and PHP. And so Hellkeeper.net was born. It has since gone through several complete redesigns and changed purpose several times along the way. It has changed language too, hence the bits of English and French mixed up around here. It currently serves as a portfolio, an archive of the tutorials I wrote and a place to write whatever I feel like.

What's next?

The Unreal series is a relic of the past. Writing tutorials for old versions of the editor seems futile. As for making maps, though it remains a very dear hobby to me, it is more niche than ever. That will not stop me, however, as I always made levels for my own enjoyment.
Similarly, though writing tutorials on specific features of UnrealEd no longer serves an evident purpose, I remain interested in writing more general stuff. My opinions and ideas on games, for instance, or stuff about maps and map-making which I believe to be interesting, etc. In a word, whatever I would have liked to find when I first began experimenting with the editor.