From playing video games to creating and sharing his own custom levels, there’s no telling where the limits will end.

Jose Alfredo López is a 21-year-old modder from Spain who has transformed his childhood hobby into a passionate career. 

This began as a mere ‘experiment’ with modding Lego Star Wars games but soon evolved into establishing his community. 

Jose recalls his first acknowledgement of modding, which received attention: “I decided to change some files and see how the game reacted.”

He contacted his high school technology teacher, Mario, seeking guidance, who embraced his technical skills and encouraged him to keep pursuing them.

Over time, Jose became more fascinated, replacing files and testing the outcomes, driven by trial and error, which resulted in the stepping stones of his modding skills.

“Every process starts with simple steps, and you gradually move to the harder ones.

“If you don’t understand how the game works, you can’t mod anything because you don’t know how it will react.

“This is what I call try and fail.”

To amplify his modding abilities, Jose decided to challenge himself and create a custom level by incorporating AI modelling.

This included modifying the chapters and game files and replacing effects.

“I used a hex editor to manipulate the game files, replacing bytes to see how they affected the game’s behaviour,”

“These mechanics are located in a 12-byte position, with each group of four bytes representing X, and Y coordinates or a set and the final byte indicating the type of pickup or star.”

Jose showcased his modding skills by uploading YouTube videos to his channel, ‘Linterni Gamer.’ 

Here, he gained a significant following, as one of his videos, featuring a hectic battle in ‘Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga,’ gained nearly 2 million views.

“I’ve seen that, and another video wasn’t quite right, but there was one time when I suddenly defeated them all. 

“Thousands of dark moles were following me, which interested people in the video. The two-million-view video is aggressive, with thousands of enemies.

“That video was an inflexion point for my YouTube channel. At that time, I had 1,000 subs; after that, I reached 6 or 7,000 subs. Yeah, the video was beneficial for the channel.”

Jose became a vital part of the Lego modding community as his channel grew in popularity, contributing to its growth and development. 

This eventually led to Lopez creating his own Discord server to share his work and collaborate with others. 

“The community is excellent, with thousands of members dedicated to improving the games and discovering new ways to mod them.”

Servers have reached 1.5k members globally and is run by six Discord mods, who all work in different time zones.

When considering the future members of the community, Jose said, “I would like to have some more people, for example, actually getting developers or that kind of people who work in the video industry, but it’s their choice.”

“I would like to, but I don’t know how people would react. for example, imagine a video game director, the guy who directed its development that joins your server.”

However, Jose mentioned he was not as well received after introducing his Discord server five years ago, as he faced criticism and isolation from other parts of the modding community.

“When I created my server, some people accused me of copying the main modding server.” 

He recalls that this misunderstanding led to a lack of support from specific community members. 

Feeling isolated from the community, Jose experienced a sense of abandonment and was on the brink of giving up.

However, others understood Jose’s main intentions and defended him, boosting his confidence in continuing his passion.

“Their support is amazing because it makes me feel loved and better, just how I wanted to feel.”

“I would not recommend going into that situation again because it was pretty hard.”

Jose’s love for Lego games fused in 2004 when his four-year-old self received ‘Lego Star Wars the Complete Sage’ and fell in love with the experience.

Since his launch on YouTube and Discord, all his Lego videos are community chats that are voiced and written in English.

“When I started a YouTube channel, I made it in English because it is one of the most important languages worldwide. 

“If I made it only in Spanish, fewer people would watch it, so I made it in English.

“Even though at the beginning it was challenging because I could barely speak English. I really, really like it.”

Jose’s story inspires aspiring modders and reveals the power of community support in pursuing one’s passion.