1. How did you find this site and what got you into SMW hacking?

I've forgotten exactly when I discovered SMW hacking(I think it was the summer of 2005), but I do remember how. I knew about SMW from having played it on one of my friends' SNES when I was young, but didn't really learn about the hacking scene before watching a boatload of old SMW hack videos on Youtube. There was this one video titled "The level you'll never complete", which was basically a blatant 105 edit with a bunch of note blocks everywhere, Bowser battle music and a pit after the goal, which Mario fell into during the post-goal walk. As the inexperienced fellow I was, I found this absolutely hilarious, and laughed for a good three-four minutes after watching it the first time. After watching the video again and again, I decided to read the description and found a link to FuSoYa's site, where I got Lunar Magic from. I didn't actually figure out that I needed a ROM and an emulator until a couple weeks later, though, haha.

As for how I found SMW Central, I believe I discovered it in a google search for "exgfx" after finding some options with that word in them in Lunar Magic some months later. I registered as user 409(and 410! D:), made a large number utterly stupid posts - and fast forward 6.5 years, I'm still here, talking about how I found the site.

2. Tell us a little about the hacking projects you've made or attempted to make.

I don't think I've released anything that's not a joke hack beyond the C3 demo I put up earlier this year, but I've been working on it for a long while, and it's pretty much the only thing I've worked on apart from team hacks, collab hacks and contest entries. I never really completely stopped working on it, though I've taken frequent and long breaks from it, though, and I have even redone pretty much everything once, twice or possibly even more. Other than that, there's not much. I attempted some smaller projects like revamping Lunar Limbo, mine and Uhrix' (in)famous entry for the 2011 vanilla contest(though that didn't really go anywhere beyond some concept ideas, palette changes and level themes), a team hack with me and NoelYoshi/LunarYoshi, but he died on me a couple months ago and I haven't seen him since. It's a shame, as it was turning out pretty well.

3. I see you have contributed to the SMWCP2 collab in several aspects such as level design, graphics and discussion. Can you describe your experience with the project?

If you haven't noticed yet, I'm a huge fan of team hacks of any scale, from two-member team hacks to site-wide hack projects. Me taking part in SMWCP2 shouldn't have been a surprise for anyone!

Anyway, I had been looking forward to SMWCP2 ever since SMWCP1 was released. I was one of the first to grab a level in the hack(which later was dropped due to lack of inspiration), but later returned to make an ice castle and do 2/3rds of Lynnes' allegedly cursed Reef Fortress. I did a lot more ASM work than should be done by a person with my minimal amount of coding experience, but after asking around and dedicating several hours to just... getting stuff to work, I managed to make it work out in the end. Regarding graphics... not so much. I've drawn a couple minor things, but most of it is derived from the works of others. I'm no use at drawing detailed tilesets, heh.

In between working on them, I also did a bunch of palette work around the hack, and fixed various issues in several levels... which I still do. I partake in discussions around the forums, although not to as great an extent as some other people, but at least I'm there.

4. Many active members of the community stopped doing anything regarding SMW hacking and just come here to keep in touch with the people. You are, in the other hand, still very involved in a lot of hacking aspects and even in discussion after all this time. What makes you keep in bound with hacking after all this time?

Contrary to popular belief(or so it seems), I don't really hack that much anymore, but I sure as hell haven't forgot how. I think some of the reason as to why I've hacked for as long as I have is how I've always been improving, month after month, year after year. Making themes and designing levels is one of the most fun things I know, as it gives me somewhere to realize my ideas and a reason to come up with them while not becoming boring. Or at least not that quickly, anyway.

eXcavator once said I was the Paul Erdõs of SMW hacking - always collaborating with someone. As I said earlier, I'm a big fan of team hacks, and that includes being a part of one. I think seeing what people can do as a team, especially when their styles are similar to each others' is an awesome thing, and seeing finished products which has been done in this way is quite inspiring, to say the least. I find that working in teams is quite motivating as well. Being a friend of the one you're working together helps a lot; anyone who's ever worked with a good group in school should know what I'm getting at.

I'm also a pretty competitive person. I've entered pretty much every big contest and SMW-related event that's been held at the site, though I've yet to win a single one of them. You can't blame me for not trying, though!

5. You seem to be skilled in vanilla hacking and in the use of original SMW resources. What would you attribute this to?

I think I can owe this to my combination of extreme perfectionism, attention to detail and knowing what the hell I'm doing. I'm not sure how I started out designing levels the way I do now, with lots of care and effort put into the consistency of aesthetics and how everything "fits together", so to speak. It's something I've gotten a lot better at over time, and have raised to somewhat of an art form... or, that's what I like to think. As a consequence of making good-looking levels all the time, I have raised my standards to a level quite a bit above what should be considered reasonable. I have a hard time getting motivated to make more things like this because of it, and while I tend to make high-quality stuff, the process of making them(maybe starting them would fit better here) is a lot harder than it should be. I guess you could say it's a double-edged sword of sorts.

Again, eXcavator told me a while back, to quote him, my "aesthetic sense is ridiculous". Considering what I just talked about doesn't only apply to SMW hacking, but also to doing schoolwork, or pretty much any place I can design stuff, I can't help but to agree with it.

But hey, at least people know who I am!

I want to conclude this interview by thanking the staff members who picked me for the honorable position of Member of the Month, as well as the users and friends who have been encouraging me to keep on doing what I've been doing for as long as I have.

1. What cached your interest towards SMW hacking?

Ever since I was small, I loved making my own levels, both for games I had played, and games I had only ever thought up in my head. I never did anything with them, and they've all since been lost (not that they were likely to be any good, though!), but that at least is part of it. The second part is twofold, I suppose. When I came here initially (pre-wipe), I came here to do what I had always wanted to do: make levels for a Mario game. And even though I wasn't very good at it (and that's putting it pretty lightly), I had a blast doing so. I left once I realized that, well, I really wasn't very good, and I just sort of vanished. For the second part of...the second part...I'm still in SMW hacking now far less because it's specifically SMW hacking (though that's still a part of it). Aside from the great community, I'm here because I want to help people, and I think my specific skill (tool making) lends itself well to that.

2. I see you first joined the site before the wipe but you didn't register again until 2010. Why did you take so many years to come back after the wipe?

You know, I'm not really sure. I think the main reason is that, for a while after I left, SMW Hacking didn't really spark my interest anymore. As I said, I realized that I really wasn't that good at the thing that I had come there for, so in my mind, I didn't have much of a reason to stay. I didn't come back for a while because SMW Hacking had just sort of drifted off of my radar for a bit. I remembered it existed, of course, but it never really reached any sort of point where I wanted to jump back in. As for what brought me back? Well, I had a couple of years to clear my head, I came back here for nostalgia's sake, and...well, you can probably guess what happened. I ended up staying, and I don't regret that decision at all.

3. I know you're more into programming than level designing right now, but can you tell us about the experiences you had with Lunar Magic?

Oh, Lunar Magic. When I first started using the program (which if my math serves me that would be around 2006; it was not long after my 13th birthday) I had come from making games with Game Maker, and so the first thing I tried to do was find the "new game" button; something that would just "let me make my own Mario game". Failing that, the obvious next step was to make a horrible edit of level 105! I no longer have the level (sadly; I'd love to show it off for laughs), but I distinctly recall lining up a dozen Banzai Bills in a row and wondering why only 1 of them showed up at a time. Then I put the goal post on a slope and wondered why there was a square chunk missing from the slope; can't two objects occupy the same space? Ah, good times.

4. What got your interest in coding and tool making?

I'm...I'm not sure, actually. Thinking back, I can't actually find a point where I thought to myself, "hey, this is pretty neat; I should do this more often". As I said before, I did do some stuff with Game Maker previously, and I suppose that could be attributed to it; Game Maker includes its own scripting language that's basically a watered-down C++, so, as heretical as that may be, I suppose that was basically my first experience in programming. To make it "worse", my second language was Visual Basic, taught in high school, which explains why a fair number of my earlier tools submitted here were made with that (I've since moved on to C, C++, and C# proper). But getting back on track, yeah, I suppose that's my answer: Game Maker did it. I hope this doesn't mean that I'll have to pay royalties to them for all my future income...

5. As one of our community's porters, what's your experience with music in general?

I actually had a fair bit of music experience from a young age; I don't know if what I did matches the "standard" music curriculum generally taught in schools, but by third grade we were learning how to read musical staffs (notes, time signatures, clefs, etc.) as part of our general education. In fourth grade I took up the flute, which I sadly never ended up continuing because my family couldn't afford to keep renting it. Apart from that, though, I actually don't have a whole lot of musical experience (aside from having video game music make up for a good 90% of my library). I've always wanted to get more, though. I plan on taking Music Theory at some point during college if I can, so I certainly haven't given up on learning music. I suppose it would be proper, then, to say it's an interest of mine rather than a full-on hobby.

I didn't actually figure out that I needed a ROM and an emulator until a couple weeks later, though, haha.

(happen to GN lissom)