1. How did you learn about SMW Central?

Oh, this feels like forever ago, so the exact details are fuzzy. What I do remember is that I spent a whole lot of my childhood preoccupied with "what if" situations involving the games I played. Designing things on graph paper was a major hobby of mine, and included Zelda dungeons, Mario levels, new Pokemon, you get the idea. I was already into Game Maker and RPG Maker at this point (2005?).

I wasn't skilled enough to make a Mario engine, so I was looking for level editors or anything similar. Soon after, I typed "mario custom levels" into Google and found out about SMW hacking. In particular, Return to Dinosaur Land piqued my interest in level design, as it stayed very close to the style of the original SMW. I downloaded Lunar Magic, and made horrible horrible levels for a while. I eventually had some questions that weren't answered in the help file, so I guess my reason for registering was to ask said questions. That was way back when my username was Onthenet, my avatar was a Mr. Saturn, and I wasn't an asshole. Go figure.



2. Which users from the site do you consider as friends and why?

I read this as: "Hey Lucas you don't seem to have many friends, so why not list all of them and explain how the world they can tolerate you" ಠ_ಠ

In no particular order and also excluding a whole bunch of people (THAT MEANS YOU)

Feenicks - He made a whole bunch of stuff for SMWCmon, reads Homestuck, is the chillest dude ever.

Raibys - We play Hisoutensoku together, and link each other animated gifs in an elaborate competition of cuteness superiority.

Azure - Raibys's girlfern, she is fuzzy. Go play her awesome games, seriously, go now. The fuzziest.

Bluemoon, Lishy and TLMB - I partnered up with the first two of these guys for a Danmakufu game and TLMB for a SMW hack. Although neither of those projects got very far, I had a fun time working on them, and learned a whole lot that will be useful in the future!

SNN and Kieran - My personal staff microharem. Smalls used to be here too, but Pac is way hotter.

Sonikku - Remember that animated gif thing with Raibys? Basically the same thing except with train porn. He will forever be my Robert Hombre.

Nimono - Fellow Touhou and Pokemon fan, and former Danmakufuer. SHOULD READ HOMESTUCK SOMETIME SOON



3. I know you don't hack anymore, but could you describe your experience with Lunar Magic when you used to?

I had tons and tons of unfinished hacks that I lost in a hard drive crash. After learning some new skill I would scrap my hack and start anew, leaving a world's worth of level design behind. I would later recombine these elements into future hacks, but I was never quite satisfied with how it all came together. Many of the concepts I wanted to implement required high level ASM knowledge that I was simply impatient to learn. Perhaps if I return to hacking I will take more time to explore these possibilities.

As for the levels themselves, my philosophy was pretty simple. I took a holistic approach to level design, and looked at levels not as the separate elements of graphics, music, and obstacles, but as a level that combined these into an experience for the player. This is also a weakness of mine, as I find it difficult to work without resources already on hand. At the very least I always need a placeholder. Even now I still keep this philosophy in mind for my non-SMW projects.



4. Even if you don't hack anymore, it seems you still compose custom music. Why did you decided to keep working in this area?

Actually, the ports I've done for SMWCP2 are more the result of finding a use for songs I didn't intend for SMW in the first place. It's been a long time since I've tried making a song in SMW. I did however retain an interest in FL Studio which led me to try making more custom compositions and remixes. I still consider myself a very poor composer, but it's still the first step at being a not very poor composer, right? And at least now I can hide my shoddy music behind synthesizers and soundfonts.

Sorry, don't have more to say about that :V


5. Why did you decided to quit hacking in favor of game making?

As I said, from the beginning I had a wide range of games and genres I wanted to design for. The ease of using Lunar Magic made it an attractive program to work with, but at the same time I felt it disappointed me in many aspects. I started hacking not to be a SMW hacker, but to be a game designer, and the limitations of hacking became increasingly apparent as I came up with designs that simply would not feel natural in SMW. I wanted more out of the graphics, more out of the music, and more out of the gameplay possibilities, and practicing Danmakufu and programming on the side had finally opened up those opportunities for me. In particular, I think Danmakufu is what sealed the deal, as it bridged the gap between the comfort of having a full game as a base, and the flexibility of easily coding whatever you wanted. Also, making Touhous is pretty fun.

6. Can you describe your experience with some of the game engines you've used?

I don't remember if I started with RPG Maker or Game Maker but whatever...

RPG Maker was fun, and very easy for me to get into as a middle schooler. My friends loved seeing themselves in the game, and as cheesy as the plots seem now, they felt epic at the time. I think RPG Maker is a good start for the storytellers, because the RPG is a very safe genre to play around in when you're experimenting with plots and dialogue.

Game Maker was my first taste of actual coding, and taught me how to deal with loops, conditionals, and variables. I think if you're not afraid of seeing your game in an incomplete state for a longer period of time, Game Maker offers a lot of freedom, and is a good starting point for those intimidated by "real" programming.

Danmakufu is what I use for many of my projects nowadays, and is a script-based Touhou engine that uses a syntax similar to c++. It might seem like a step backwards in terms of flexibility, but it's actually quite powerful. I really appreciate the intricacies of designing a danmaku pattern, how you can express many things through the art of bullets~


7. Is there anything else you would like to tell to the community?

Santas are almost done! For reals! Also I am a homo, apparently not everyone knows that yet!

...Was I supposed to have something interesting here? W/E

1. How is it that you first became interested in SMW hacking and SMW Central?

Well, it sort of is a long story..
When I was little, I used to grab a piece of paper and design my own Super Mario World levels on it. I always liked designing levels. When I was in 6th grade, I didn’t own a computer, so I used my mother’s computer to browse websites I went to daily. Youtube was one of the websites I visited almost everyday. I don’t exactly remember why, but I searched something like “mario custom level” through the site, and a few playthrough videos of a famous SMW hack “Super Demo World: The Legend Continues” showed up in the list of results. I clicked on one of them, and watched the video. The hack was so amazing that it made me want to design my own levels, so I went to google to search for Lunar Magic, and downloaded it. Yeah, so in brief, I became interested in SMW hacking by watching some walkthrough videos of SMW hacks.

How did I become interested in SMW Central? Well, to be honest, I don’t remember much about the time I joined the site, haha. I just found the site, and made an account for no particular reason. Back in the time I joined, I went online just to download some resources such as graphics and sprites, and to ask some questions regarding SMW hacking. I went inactive for about 2 years after realizing that I’m not going to be able to produce a good hack due to my inexperience in level designing. In the middle of the year 2010, I started playing featured hacks, and learned how to make a decent hack from actually playing them. I resumed designing levels, and things turned out pretty well. 2010 is also the year I started porting music, so yeah..

2. Unlike some of the past people chosen to be a Member of the Month, you tend to work quietly and more in the background--and yet what you do for us is equally valuable. What do you think is the reason why you are generally a more quiet user than, say, S.N.N. or me?

Thanks!
That, frankly, is a hard question to answer. I don’t know, maybe the reason why I seem so quiet is because I don't post often. I just don’t post much maybe because I’m not that creative to make a post.. haha
I never post WIP .spc files on the SPC showoff thread, but I sometimes send my friends incomplete .spcs over skype to get some feedback on them. I also talk to my friends a lot on IRC.
It's kind of hard to come up with reasons as to why I'm a quiet user, but yeah, as mentioned above, lack of creativity might be one of the reasons why I don't post much.

3. A lot of your contributions have been music-based. Does this correlate with a real-life passion and talent for music? If so, describe it for us.

Yeah, it does in a sense have a relation to the things you mentioned. Music is definitely one of the important things that affects my life. I listen to them whenever possible, and I also play several instruments for enjoyment. Guitar is the instrument I enjoy playing the most. I temporarily formed a rock band with my friends, and performed ‘Deep Purple – Burn’ in a talent show last year. I’ve had loads of fun doing that! (If you guys are interested in the performance we had done, there is a video of us performing on this page hosted on vimeo. Just to let you guys know, I am the guy who is playing the guitar on the left side of the stage). As of now, I think I will be applying to a music college located in Boston, Massachusetts. I am serious about this, but I am planning on joining the sound team of the Japanese video game company “HAL Laboratory” after I graduate university. I’m still not sure whether I will actually be joining that company or not, but since I’m an insane Kirby lover, I probably will try and make an entry to that company.

4. Who would you consider your 'friends' on SMW Central? You are part of a Skype group comprising of a number of other site members; do you have other channels of communication with other SMWC users?

There are quite a lot of users whom I consider friends. The following users are some of my best friends who I often talk to: Slash Man, Atma (Although he no longer visits this site), CrispyYoshi, Sonikku, marioVSshadow, OGS93, p4plus2, BeniBOD/Core, wa, 757, Anikiti, Koyuki and xjakku. If I get to know a user well, then I’m automatically friends with him/her.

Excluding the chat group you said, I am in two skype groups, and one of them is a group in which Japanese SMW hackers (+2 non-Japanese hackers) share their SMW hacking related works and/or have a chat. The other chat group I’m part of is a group with a few SMWC users and some users from a Touhou fansite. What we mainly do there is we share some cute pictures of anime girls, and have a small discussion regarding them. I find that chat group to be awesome even though I hardly ever chat in there! ahaha

5. Finally, where do you see yourself going in your future on SMWC? Are there other fields, like graphics editing or level design, that you would like to pursue?

I am pretty sure I am going to continue porting and composing music. I’m trying to focus more on composing though.

If possible, I would like to spend more of my free time designing levels (Actually, I already started working on a hack quite a while ago. I just don't have much time to work on it due to the amount of schoolwork I have to do). I would also like to learn more of ASM, because being able to code things without making references to existing .asm files sure will be convenient.