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Member of the Month: December

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This month, I have decided to do something different and bring to the light an obscure and yet very productive sector of our community: Kaizo hacking. Kaizo hackers have a different style from regular hackers, however that doesn't mean they are inferior and they deserve some recognition for their work; which is why the December MOTM award is for a not so well known member from SMW Central but who stands out in the field of Kaizo hacking: Sadistic Designer. Similarly, the SOTM is for Ultimaximus, even though she's not a Kaizo hacker, she has done much to make the Kaizo community shine, not to mention she has always been a very productive staff member and has been taking care of the forums as well as other staff activities since S.N.N. left.

Enjoy the interviews (be warned though, Ultimaximus' interview is really long).

Originally posted by Sadistic Designer's interview
1. How did you find about SMW hacking and SMW Central?

Oof, that is a long time ago. I found out about SMW hacking through videos on Youtube of Protonjon and dainegai, and later SSOHPKC. Pretty soon I got interested in the hardest levels I could find on Youtube, the old-school Kaizo hacks from all the way before 2009.
I found SMW Central shortly after by searching for help and playtesters. I made a couple of levels to find out how hard it would be to make a challenging hack, and ran into many problems regarding secondary exits and FG&BG settings. Googling my problems led me to SMW Central.

2. What got your interest towards kaizo hacking?

I got interested in Kaizo hacks mainly because they place an enormous emphasis on level structure, and I enjoyed creating devilish puzzles more than working on graphics or the storyline. Obviously the result was that my first levels were absolutely horrible (both to look at and to play), but I enjoyed piecing blocks together to try and see just what would be barely possible and what would not be.

3. Can you enlighten us on what the kaizo hacking style consists on?

Kaizo hackers try to make challenging but fun levels, pushing the game to the limits while still keeping the levels playable for mere mortals. The main problem when creating a Kaizo hack is designing the difficulty curve - making sure the levels gradually get harder as the hack progresses, rather than having an undoable section in the middle and easy stuff from there on. In order to allow for more creativity (and to push the SMW engine even further to the limits) most Kaizo hacks require the player to use some glitches, and often the hacks are so hard that players require savestates to stand a chance. Contrary to popular belief we áre aware of the fact that ugly hacks tend to be less fun to play than hacks with proper graphics, so most Kaizo hacks nowadays have acceptable Vanilla graphics.
Making Kaizo hacks rather than regular hacks brings many interesting new aspects of hacking - re-using an idea from a previous screen will make people bored, so every single part of the hack has to be unique. Also it takes a lot longer to properly test a hack than to make version 0.1 in the first place. Furthermore in Kaizo hacks there are many, many things you are not allowed to do. Did you know that there are over 50 known easy-to-pull-off glitches with Yoshi, most of them allowing players to skip right to the end of the level? These aspects of Kaizo hacking are easy to miss when looking only at the final product, but creating a Kaizo hack takes a lot of time and effort.

4. As a kaizo hacker, what do you think about current status of kaizo hacking as opposed to regular SMW hacking?, and how would you like it to be in the future?

I must confess I don't really know what the status of Kaizo hacking is among regular hackers. Within the Kaizo section I'm rather happy with the way things currently are - the current standard for a Kaizo hack is quite decent (yes, really), and there are frequent creative and exciting releases.
As for the future: there is one potential development that I hope will happen sometime in the future, namely the acceptance of Kaizo hacks in the 'Hacks' section. Several good suggestions have been made in the Kaizo section ("Put a muncher next to the name of the hack"), and I think there are a lot of players on SMWCentral who might enjoy playing Kaizo hacks, but were only vaguely aware of the fact that there are a lot of Kaizo hacks on SMW Central. Also it would finally organise the list of Kaizo hacks, right now people have to search for the release thread among the almost 300 threads (almost all release threads) in the Kaizo section.

5. Are you working on any hacking project right now? If so, can you tell us about it?

I'm currently not working on a hacking project, although there are a few things on my 'to do'-list. I need to fix my Pit hack and release a special version of it for the poor people who played a part and got stuck, I was hoping to redo all the graphics of my first hack and rerelease it with proper looks, and also I have 3 or 4 unreleased levels lying around on my computer, but they don't quite make a hack at the moment. At the moment I can just barely find enough time to play and/or test all the Kaizo hacks produced by fellow Kaizo hackers, I hope to get around to producing some stuff over a holiday.

6. How do you feel about your stance in SMW Central all these years and what do you think of the site's community in general?

I'm honestly impressed by the community of SMW Central. Back when I joined in 2009 I started off with asking for help, and ever since then I keep seeing a lot of people make mistakes and others helping them out. It's really great that the community is able to help with hacking problems, for three years without pause.
I'm currently enjoying my position as one of the older members in the Kaizo section. Back when I joined the site the Kaizo community consisted of only a handful of people (and there were only a similar amount of hacks), over the years I've really seen the group grow and develop. My stance on Kaizo hacks has only gone through one serious change, ever since I did not win the Kaizo Contest I've been paying more attention to graphics. Right now I spend most of the time I spend on SMWCentral helping other Kaizo hackers and commenting on the new releases. It's a shame that I don't have enough time on my hands to venture out into the rest of the site all that much, but all the truly new puzzles in the Kaizo section more than make up for that.


Originally posted by Ultimaximus' interview
1. How did you find this site and what encouraged you to register?

Ah, when I first joined? My, that was a long time ago. Nearly four years as a matter of fact. I suppose now I'm actually part of that elite veteran demographic who's been around for ages, only a mere year and a quarter after the site reset. Over 15000 users have registered since then. A shame I've never completed a hacking project, but more on that later. I'd definitely say it was a different time back then, the resources and tools that were available (AddMusic RevX!), the userbase and staff members, different standards of quality, Arbe, no bsnes, badnik IRC (yes, back before caffie.net, but no, after initialized), how so much has changed. I wouldn't say that's a bad thing though, unlike others who refer to that time (or even earlier) as the "Golden Days of SMWC". Anyways, I digress, I'm merely getting all sentimental and nostalgic here βP

I do recall how I found SMWC, and indeed, SMW hacking in general. I was 14 at the time, and I recall reading about it on FuSoYa's Niche. That was back when Lunar Magic was at version 1.63, during FuSoYa's 4 year absence. I wanted to download it for some time, but I had only my father's computer to use. I eventually asked him permission, and with that, I had my Lunar Magic, a clean headered SMW ROM, and ZSNES 1.51 (how some things don't change, haha). There were a few simple hacks I saw on Youtube, and the idea of making my own game out of SMW was really inspiring to me. I still have that inspiration to this day, but again more on that later. The particular hacks I saw were generic no-name hacks, but I later discovered I was rather lucky regarding exactly the exposure I got. I did not see any of the awful awful Youtube-Kaizo hacks filled with munchers and cutoff to influence me, but I also did not see the epic advanced hacks of the time to overwhelm and intimidate me.

So there I was, making my hack. I still have it, and would like to complete it. Supreme Mario World (I recall piecing together tiles on the title screen for this name), unreleased with only a few levels made. It's not spectacular of course, but still something that's decent for a first-time hacker. I decided to forego the regular grassland theme for the first world, instead I chose a cliff theme. I had big elaborate plans for a sprawling full-length hack all planned out on paper, which I also still have (I'm quite the archivist). I was hacking on my own, not having seen the hacks of SMWC. It was pure, undiluted childhood inspiration that was not bound by the rules and traditions of the site, nor influenced by other hacks. You can see that today, what with people using those elaborate decorative dirt formations, constant re-use of themes and resources, intricate puzzles with reset pipes, and such. I had a standard of quality though, avoiding cutoff but not so excessively as we have done now, but also innocently using things that are frowned upon, such as invisible coin blocks and silent bullet bills, with a few other weird sections.

But again, I digress. I'm fond of my past, at least in the context of SMW hacking, as noobish as I was. In any case, I was having a problem where my entire submap would flash colors when revealing path tiles (because yes, I was also capable of that as a first-time hacker, all it takes is diligence, desire to be competent, and reading the help file). It turns out to be from using certain palettes for your OW, but I didn't know that, and it wasn't in the help file. A reasonable problem, not something too noobish. I took to Google to find the solution, and eventually stumbled upon a thread on SMWC that explained the solution. So there, I found SMWC. I looked around and lurked for a short while, and I liked the place. I didn't really play too many hacks (but for some time after I joined, I played a few hacks and vanilla contest entries under the self-proclaimed title "Beta Tester/Hack Reviewer"), but I did pick up YY-CHR and Blocktool. Yes, the original Blocktool. Armed with a few documents, and those classic 350 blocks, I had some extra resources at my disposal. I made some (minimal) graphical edits, such as spike-ball munchers, cracked blocks for the shattering block, and a different OW texture. Unfortunately, I'd work less and less on my hack as I became more interested in the site and forums. I did participate in the March 2009 Vanilla Level Design contest (The Pit, inspired by Kaizo 2's Yellow Switch Palace (but unrelated to "Pit hacks") because I also was introduced into the world of Kaizo, more on that later as well), but I eventually stopped work on Supreme Mario World July 2009.

At the time, there was a particular post on the main page, this one here, that was a general announcement. However, it mentioned IRC, and mIRC, and I didn't know what that was. I figured it was a part of the site, and surmised that I needed some other program to use it. Being on my father's computer, remember, I didn't want to do that. Though I did download those other tools and documents, I didn't think he'd be receptive to me installing chat software on the computer to talk to random strangers who were necessarily pedophiles, and I thought it was required software in order to post on the forum. I had never joined a forum before and didn't know how it worked, so I lurked for about a month instead. I liked the site and the people, and wanted to participate. Finally, I decided to just screw it and register on the forums anyways (forum activity is more concealable than an installed chat program), on Valentine's Day of '09, the day after my birthday. From there, I became a proud and active member of the site.


2. I see you were working for a hack named "a serioushax production". Could you tell us a bit about it?

The motivation behind the hack was that we, as the programmers of the site, are like our own community, and that we should have something to show for it (though not all of us were actually programmers). In stereotypical programmer fashion though, we were either lazy, had lack of initiative, or got stuck being OCD about doing everything in order and was waiting on Roy to make his Mode 7 title screen. We had a plot (which I proposed btw, heheh) and mostly decided on the graphical atmosphere, but we just.. didn't get started on the actual levels. I dunno. We even had a forum actually, a secret forum on SMWC just for the members of our team hack to collaborate. As you can see in my profile, it had an end date of July 2011. It died months earlier, but that was when I had to make everyone acknowledge it instead of quietly ignoring it.

(Also, if you pay close attention to the hack banner, you'll see that the 'A' appears instantaneously)

For this interview, I actually considered releasing all the stuff I have archived, the demo ROMs, the Nintendo Presents ASM, a status bar diagram I made, the plans and discussions, an archive of the forum I took, but.. This is a special piece of history to me, and I think there are better ways to commemorate it.


3. Have you ever worked in any other hacking projects?

Team hacks, no. Well, I suppose that there was Gramen Terra and Adventum Terminus for SMWCP, which was its own little bundle of "fun". Gramen Terra actually did not originally have Lakitus in it, which was cited as making it very frustrating and annoying for a World 1 level, so somebody else must have added them. For Adventum Terminus, that's a different story. There were a few bugs and problems that I couldn't get SNN to fix because he was too busy, and I'm a bit sad to see it release with broken slopes, bad firebar palette, solid lava, echo issues and such, but ah well, those weren't its biggest problems. It's interesting to me that it actually got a reputation for its length and difficulty, because I was not aware of this until long after the hack was released. I never received feedback for it, nor asked for it (yes, it was untested by other players), and have only now rediscovered it in the form of Let's Plays that are all around Youtube. Yes, I can beat it savestateless, but that's obvious because I'm the creator. I designed it thinking that most people were going to use savestates anyways though, as I hadn't yet realized that that's not the best way to go about making a level. Additionally, that was before the multi-midways patch was made (or became popular I guess, since later someone added a much-needed second midway right before the boss, a god-send), and I had been mostly testing it on room-by-room basis. I was pretty much just tossing every idea I had into it, the whole thing could've been much shorter (say, cut out the entire water section). Alternatively, I could extend it and turn it into an entire world or multi-level castle. It might get boring, so I would have to mix it up a bit, but I'm confident I could do it well. My music choice and recolor of Hydrocity Zone was well received, after all. Another interesting thing to note is that most people don't seem to have found all the secrets. There were indeed 5 Yoshi coins, as well as several 1-ups throughout the level, but perhaps people were more concerned with just beating the blasted thing. And then there was the boss, heheh. I'm not responsible for that, that was Roy's doing XD. I think when I originally made the level, Tap-Tap didn't have that horrible screen-covering spike move, but I might be wrong because I do recall that Roy had to limit that move to only occurring twice or something. Of course, that'd reset if you use the reset pipe, I believe.

Other than group hacks, I have an immense amount of ideas for my own hacks, levels, and worlds. 92 at this moment to be exact, I have a text file full of them. That's pretty much been the problem for me, it is difficult to fulfill these grandiose ideas that would most certainly push me to fame when properly implemented, because I can't really compose or draw graphics. I'd rather do that than make an inconsistent mess using the stuff other people have ported or ripped from other games. It just doesn't feel right to me, playing a custom game and hearing or seeing something from another piece of work. Also, certain ideas just absolutely require custom graphics. I mean, hell, just to have Bowser (for those ideas that do involve him) walk around and *do* things would require me to draw a good number of frames, and I can't draw for beans. I could put in graphics requests though, but it'd just be best if I could learn. I want to implement all of my ideas as an entire saga, with a consistent theme, graphical style, and atmosphere throughout, something recognizable that can really make a name for itself.

I once had a request for Mario graphics in a certain style, and while 3 people responded, nothing more than 4 frames or so was ever completed. I also had a request for hotel furniture graphics, but that was also incomplete. It's a shame, but it's my own fault. I put it off because I've become so busy, but I really want to do something with my SMWC career. I want to have something to show for the years that I have been here. The Fate of Luigi was frozen, and The Pit and Rock Bottom (and Betamaximus I suppose) are the only things I've ever completed, and they're all single-level hacks. Maybe I'm aiming way too high, but I want something to be proud of, rather than making yet another Mario hack with resources from the site slapped in.

I've actually avoided playing most SMW hacks. That's right, most of the famous hacks, and all the classics, I haven't even touched. Why? Because I want to remain my own person, with my own ideas. I'm concerned that my mind will get in a rut and draw inspiration solely from other hacks and level designs that I've seen, and end up just copying those designs. You might not agree, but through screenshots, I've seen that happen to an immense number of hacks. Consider, for example, all of the superfluous and ridiculous dirt formations people use as decoration, and puzzle levels that seem to always require a reset door. These were things I never had in my hacks, because I was using my own ideas, and I want to continue that. Also, I want to break tradition, I want to break the ideal notions and ideas that people have about hacks, such as the negativity surrounding linearity, the use of common world themes over and over again (but I can't really blame people, there are only so many genres of graphical tilesets available, and most people can't draw their own either), ghost houses always being puzzle levels, the OW being merely a pre-determined branching path of levels leading to a final world, the plot always involving a quest of good vs evil or completing a collection rather than being a riveting story that affects the very gameplay (there are hacks that 'do' have good story, but just wrap cutscenes around levels that could easily be interchanged), and the whole structure, length, and design of levels being solely based on Mario games versus the different kinds of exploration or platforming you'll see in other games, just to list a few examples. There are ideas, themes, and atmospheres I want to explore, and I know there's a lot of potential. I have the drive, I have the goal, I have the ideas, I just need the time and effort.


4. You seem to have some knowledge about ASM, what got your interest for that field?

Ah yes, my alignment to ASM. Most people, if they specialize in a skill, tend to do so in ASM, Graphics, or Music (I suppose level design too, maybe), and only really have the mind and skills for one of those. Assembly was much more accessible to me than the other two, being a precise coherent method for building resources that was objective, logical, and absolute. Code is code, it does what it does, and there are wrong ways of doing it (yes, there are also many right ways, some better than others, but that is not what I mean), but art and music will always be subjective.

People quickly came to see me as a coder, that was the demographic I fit in. I hung around #serioushax rather than #smwc (and got +h as I mentioned), and I made a few blocks, but I was nowhere near spectacular, nor even well-versed in ASM. The last thing I ever tried to make was a P-switch that activated the ON-OFF triggers, but then I got distracted in trying to meet the challenge of developing a routine to allow a sprite to move in a circle without using just a table of positions (or trig?). Needless to say, I was only able to make a tangent wave. I haven't even touched that sprite, or ASM at all, for years (I've got differing last-modified dates on my files here, I don't know what was truly my last project), but I knew enough to help other people who were getting started. It's a shame I never really developed that skill, I just didn't have the time I suppose..

My experience in programming ASM for the 65c816 has inspired me in my life, though. As is typical on forums like this, my major is going to be Computer Science & Engineering. ASM was first language (very unique, actually, a point I'm proud of), and it had developed my skills enough such that I was competent enough to be the lead programmer on our FIRST Robotics team. Though I always liked computers, video games, and technology, I feel that learning ASM was directly responsible for giving me the idea to pursue a career in programming in the first place.


5. As a two time host of Kaizo level design contests, what inspired you to run such a contest? What was your experience hosting it during those two years?

It was simply due to my involvement with the Kaizo community. No, I haven't made a Kaizo hack either, but they were something I had fun playing, and I always regarded them as just a different genre of SMW hacking that had its own merits. Indeed, I've been an advocate for Kaizo for most of my time here, such that my name has associations with that as well. I've helped advance the Kaizo genre from something plagued with horrendous cutoff, munchers, cheap artificial difficulty, and stereotypes of being utter shit Youtube hacks made only to aggravate LPers for entertainment, into something that is at least respected and acknowledged as its own genre, that, though it doesn't have appeal for everyone, can be decent in its own right. I aimed for promoting quality and urged hackers to specifically avoid the negative stereotypes, and the Kaizo community has helped immensely with that as well. Along with the forum, Kaizo is now being considered for implementation into an official section of the site, leaps and bounds from where it first stood. Yes, I consider my work with Kaizo as advocacy, speaking out for a discriminated genre, but I won't go so far as to say that having Kaizo in its own forum and section is "separate, but not equal" and compare it to racism β). Of course, the forum was also responsible as being the excuse to actually promote me to the staff, an idea that had been running around for a long time before that, as described in the next question.

As a side note on Kaizo though, I feel there are problems with the way modern Kaizo is approached. It is very glitch-heavy, reliant on the player knowing certain tricks and techniques ahead of time (or figuring it out), and then simply stringing everything together in a long level or a series of small rooms. New ground is made by discovering a new trick, which eventually spread and are used in other hacks. Much design is also drawn from the classic Kaizo 1 and the popular Cool or Cruel, and this can result in simply copying the trick into a different tileset and location, though this practice is thankfully discouraged. There is also ownership over discovered glitches, which does result in discouraging people from copying each other, but I feel it is unpleasant nonetheless. I think that Kaizo hacks should focus on genuinely hard gameplay rather than stringing glitches together, but admittedly that is hard to define, easier said than done. It's another thing I'd like to cover in a hack of my own, as an actual hack rather than the typical single-level Kaizo hacks or hacks with levels put together that have no cohesive connection.

Regarding the contests specifically though, as the question asked about, I had mixed experiences. If I was not making a Kaizo hack, at least I could directly contribute to the Kaizo community by organizing and hosting the contests. I judged in the 1st and 2nd one, and hosted the 2nd and 3rd. Hosting is no big deal, the work involved is "merely" writing and refining the rules, promoting the contest, organizing entries, handling exceptions such as barely late entries and rule ambiguity, double-checking the math of all the judges, and compiling the results. Well I do suppose that is a bit of work to do, but I like it. However, it was incredibly straining for me to participate as a judge. It took a lot of time for me to complete entries, and I held up the 1st and 2nd contest results (I was actually the only judge for the 2nd contest). I had fun, but I decided I wanted to drop out from the judge role (I'm still interested in moderating some Kaizo hacks though). I also feel that, nowadays, the ever-present use of glitches and tricks might prevent me from being able to complete the entries at all, as I'm unfamiliar with most of them. I'm concerned that Kaizo hacks are becoming inaccessible to folks who aren't in the know. Additionally, I'd like to see another contest try something different instead of the Creative/Difficult categories have been used since the very first contest, though. Sokobansolver is hosting the 4th contest, and that's great, I thank him as I had not been in the right state of mind or schedule to properly host one, but it's a shame it got only 6 entries.

In any case, Kaizo contests are more difficult to make entries for and judge, due to the intense difficulty that people have to test for and play through. The results of every single Kaizo contest to date have been delayed past the original deadline. However, for the 2nd and 3rd contest, I had a little extra bonus for the Kaizo forum members, in that I released a TAS for every entry for the 2nd contest, and made a collab hack containing all entries that wanted to participate for the 3rd contest (with an extra rule that the collab levels were SNES/bsnes-compatible... perhaps this is superfluous as most everyone won't be playing Kaizo hacks on the SNES, but ah well). Granted, there were only 6 levels that participated and were actually good enough, it was delayed for a whole year, and the co-host/developer Alexander went inactive, but I did actually manage to complete the project. I was also able to have someone design the Overworld, GbreezeSunset (who has also gone inactive). He also gave every level its own submap, which was a very nice touch. I put a lot more work into it than most would think, given that I had all the entries sign-up for MAP16, level, graphics, sprite, and music slots ahead of time. I added a number of patches to enhance the hack, such as complete and total removal of lives, bonus star points, regular points, and the whole opening menu (and therefore Luigi and save files as well, I should've disabled the .srm file from being generated too, but oh well), which required more research and effort than just applying what was in the Patches section. Of course, I also used the typical functional patches everyone uses (plus Counter Break). I added a custom OW border, each submap with a different color, and extended level names. Sure, a lot of this is typical for a released hack, but it's still a lot of effort for something I could've just tossed all the levels into and called complete. I cared about it enough to give it an honorable and well-made, polished release, embodying what I aimed for in the very beginning.

6. I can see you were always a remarkable and excellent member ever since you joined. Can you tell us how you feel about your role and contributions from your first moments as a regular user to these days as a staff member?

From when I first joined, I became an active, albeit noobish, member of the site. My mask avatar reflected my anonymity, yet now I have established such an identity on the site (I've since completely lost the source for my mask avatars, a shame. I used Paint to shoddily crop and resize my avatar, saving it as a jpg). For my first few posts, I also used a large amount of ellipses, feeling that it made me mysterious, but I eventually stopped that after about 50 posts when some staff found it annoying (such as, guess who, Dapper Swain) βP. I started posting around more often, helped people in the Noob (remember that?) and Basic hacking sections. I posted in Forum Games too, but generally maintained a decent level of post quality. There was also a time when I was forced to browse the website entirely from a Nintendo Wii for the duration of about 6 months due to my then unemployed father constantly occupying his computer, but with nothing else to do, my activity (and thus post count) skyrocketed. I continued to make a name for myself, despite not actually doing much hacking.

I was proud of my contributions, and how some people looked up to me. People were even saying that I should be a staff member, which I did want to be, but I just modestly accepted the praise and didn't say much about it. Indeed, in January 2010, only just about a year after joining, I won Member of the Month, where I see that I've actually repeated a lot of things I've discussed here #fim{^_^;}. 10 months after that, I received the staff invitation from S.N.N. on October 28th 2010, in which he states "Now that the Kaizo forum has opened, this would be an ideal time to finally issue your long overdue invitation to the staff team." Yes, through my activism and lobbying for the Kaizo platform as a legitimate means of SMW hacking, all of the recommendations people had for me for staff, and the activity I had all throughout the forums and IRC, I finally received the position.

My role as staff was actually typical though. I moderated Sprites and the Kaizo forum, and eventually participated in general forum moderation when Kieran elevated all mods to the same level and removed the Global Moderator position. I've moderated a number of sprites, I had been slightly inactive there but of course the section isn't too busy anyways. My main focus was on the Kaizo forums, but I still had my name out there as a good moderator. (For now, my activity will pick up as the staff start to roll out certain changes and updates with the new sections, and my self-assignment to certain sections.)

Nowadays though, I had been pretty busy. I had been idle, away from the site for long periods of time. I think a few people have noticed, but I still had some intermittent activity, even though my daily posting dropped dramatically. This came about from my still-present lack of hacking, and complete upheaval in activity in my daily life, which was regrettable. Leading our FIRST Robotics team as President, going to a summer engineering program at college, then going to college, dealing with certain anxiety and emotional issues, discovering my identity as a transgender Male-to-Female (yes, that's right, believe it or not), coping with the immense workload and complete change in way of life living at college, Rin leaving me after nearly two years in a relationship, seeking counseling, being out in the world with more freedom, and trying to make sure I have time for myself, has all completely monopolized my time.

Though my life has completely turned around and changed tremendously, this is important to me. I don't quite have the time to hack right now, being overwhelmed by my first semester at college, a 17-credit schedule, but I've still been participating. I'm posting more, and I've actually recently been doing a lot of work behind the scenes for the staff (a big contributing factor to myself receiving this very award), helping and planning for the upcoming section and moderator reform/upheaval. This is likely evident by all the "Restricted" posts in my post list, heheh.

I still want to be on staff of course, and I want to get back into the groove of things, hence my current title "Seeking to go back to my roots". I wanted a return back to the days in high school, spending free time during Electronics in Lunar Magic, discovering new things, learning ASM. Thus, I've been making an effort to return to the community after my hiatus, I want to start talking to people again on IRC, help out in the hacking forums, make close friends rather than just generally knowing people, and get a name for myself and who I am known for on the forums once more. I feel like I've been forgotten, faded away with little acknowledgement, receiving few votes in the last couple Mosts when there had once been a time when I won several trophies that displayed testimonies to my activity and dedication to the site, and I haven't even participated in most of the C3s that have come and gone. I want to complete my hacking projects, to be able to produce something with the culmination of my effort and knowledge, have something to put my name on and be proud of. Something to, at the very least, leave as a mark from my past legacy on this Super Mario World hacking website.
The kaizo hack section I've never really looked at, maybe I should as from skimming the reviews it sounds a lot different.
Nonetheless, congratulations to both of you.
I haven't played hacks of kaizo lately, but I certainly understand the appeal. Surprised to see Sadistic Designer here, but not because he's a jerk or anything, but because most people don't touch the kaizo section with a 10 foot pole.
Originally posted by aj6666
Ultimaximus, even though she's not a Kaizo hacker, she has done much to make the Kaizo community shine, not to mention she has always been a very productive staff member and has been taking care of the forums as well as other staff activities since S.N.N. left.


Ultimaximus is a female...?

Has everything I've browsed upon to this point in time been a lie?

But besides that, glad to see Sadistic and Ulti up there. Kaizo hacking deserves some more recognition.
I am 90% sure Ulti doesn't even mind.

Congrats to both of you btw!
Your layout has been removed.
Originally posted by mockingod
Ultimaximus is a female...?

Yeah, Ulti is just like Ladida. ;)

Congrats, both! It's cool to see a MotM/SotM unrelated to SMWCP2 about parts of the community everyone barely notice. :)
It's easily the best thing I've done
So why the empty numb?
That's cool, a Kaizo hacker is the MOTM, congratulations for Both :3
I like that the Kaizo section gets some recognition. Wonder if this is a step toward integrating a full Kaizo hacks section. At this point I'm almost surprised Sadistic Designer isn't staff yet. At first my impression of him was that he was kinda rude and hard to impress, but that went away. Or maybe he still is hard to impress, but I've gotten better at level design.
About the Yoshi glitches, I think if you make Yoshi play a minimal role in the level and keep the puzzle complexity to a minimum, there may be less chance of breaks (and yet I insist on doing the complete opposite, but at least the goal is in a different area than Yoshi, so yay?)
Legacy custom music
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SMW hacking channel

A kaizo hacker being MOTM? That's really unexpected, and at the same time cool. Congrats to Sadistic Designer and Ultimaximus for MOTM and SOTM!
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Are you alive or just breathing?
Congrats to you both! I really hope this makes people more accepting of Kaizo hacks!

- BlackMageMario
Originally posted by mockingod
Ultimaximus is a female...?

Did you read the interview? (Hint: it's in question 6, fifth paragraph)
Originally posted by aj6666
Originally posted by mockingod
Ultimaximus is a female...?

Did you read the interview? (Hint: it's in question 6, fifth paragraph)

Oh.

In my defense, though, tl;dr.
Originally posted by mockingod
In my defense, though, tl;dr.

So in your defense you're saying you're lazy and don't care about reading a 5 minutes text.

bad, my friend, bad...











bad
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to hear birds and see none.
Well, this is unexpected. Congrats to you two for making the cut! Especially a Kaizo Hack community like us. =)
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(rip my other userbars momentarily)

A kaizo section does seem to be in order, even if I don't play them often.

Nonetheless, congrats to the both of you, and good luck with all your future hacking projects!
So if all the women here are in fact transgender... I don't know what to make of that.
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Rather long read this time around, but those interviews are always interesting.
To be honest, I'm not really into kaizo, though I can say the that few times I played some of it, I had some memorably fun (and rage) times :P
But anyway, congratulations to both of you, keep shining!
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