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EXtended Member of the Month - June 2016 (Part 1) ~ The VLDC winners!

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Welcome to the MoTM Jun- "Wait, extended?" ... "What did I miss?" - Well, absolutely nothing™.

This month we were gonna give the VLDC winner MoTM status. But, there is a little one issue. There is two VLDC winners. Oh well. So what to do now? Interview one per month? Which order? Would that cause issues? Interview both at same time? How? For one or two months? Why? These were some of the questions brought during that time. I ended up deciding that we will give MoTM for both and for two months. Considering it's two people, they gave the same contribution to the level, when both deserve the MoTM status immediately. But two sharing a MoTM at same time would feel less special for some people, so instead of one month, we're giving two month MoTM status for them. Impetus and TRS this time!

But what about the interview though? Interview both at same time, of course! For the first time ever we're gonna have a collective interview featuring the VLDC winners. As a bonus, the interview is split in two parts: for this month, we discussed about VLDC and SMW Hacking. For the next month, we will discuss about SMW Central (staff, community), real life and... your questions! Exactly. Feel free to reply this thread with your own questions and they will answer for you during the next interview part. Awesome, no? So, what are you waiting for? Check out the interview below, reply with your reactions and questions for the next month!

Have fun reading.
Vitor Vilela Hello guys! How are you two today?
Impetus Pretty good, thanks~
TRS Currently I'm waiting for that moment when my family yells "Get your butt over here!" and I have to leave prematurely but otherwise I'm good.
Vitor Vilela ...Okay. Good to know!

Vitor Vilela So, for the first time ever we're having two members as the Member of the Month. Additionally, a a completely new collective interview! How is the feeling of being you both the first ones to get such interview type?
TRS Well, I'm a bit nervous from even being interviewed in the first place.
TRS Being in a different type of interview doesn't really register because this is the first time any interview here has happened.
TRS ...so, weird I guess.
Vitor Vilela I'm always nervous when I do an interview. Dunno why.
Impetus Its pretty cool. Its nice just to be getting interviewed for member of the month, but this makes things even cooler. Still, personally I'm rather chill about interviews.
TRS Yeah, any interview makes me nervous.
Vitor Vilela Well, we will have to deal with it anyway, lol.

Vitor Vilela So, you both won VLDC9.
Vitor Vilela How it was the experience during the process?
Vitor Vilela Why you two decided to make a collab at first place?
Impetus To be honest, TRS just sorta asked me if I wanted to help and then the collab level sorta happened. I had been pretty unsatisfied with my own level concept for a while and ditched quite a few versions, so being able to work on the level design for TRS's level concept was pretty cool.
TRS I had a tough time dealing with ideas for a level. I originally had the entire first half of the palette be a rainbow gradient and had a palette rotate animation, but I discovered pretty quickly that that was an idea more fitting for a joke entry so that was scrapped.
TRS The animation that ended up happening was just so time-consuming that by the time it was done I'd lost all motivation for the actual level.
TRS In #office Impetus was talking about a level concept so I asked her if she wanted to work with an already existing concept.
TRS As for the experience of working with a partner, it was pretty casual. I'd get home from work and query. We'd swap patches and change minor things and comment on how the other person's contributions were absolutely terrible and to revert it immediately.
TRS To be honest, a first-place result was completely surprising.
Impetus Yeah, I was hoping for the best world if we were lucky, I didn't think we'd be getting first place but I'm really happy about it.

Vitor Vilela That seemed fun. But, why P-switches and a darkish level with heavy palette animation?
TRS It was really just a random thing. Random rainbow rotating palette wasn't working so why not glowy palette instead?
TRS It was just the next thing I thought of, and it actually didn't look horrible, so it stayed.

Vitor Vilela I see. What you two thought about the other entries though?
Impetus Interplanetary was very cool. When I saw it I was pretty sure that level would be getting first, it does a lot of really clever things with its design.
Impetus In general there were a lot of good entries this year.
TRS I haven't played very many of the other entries, but in general the ones I have played are high quality.
TRS I followed Nimono's stream the entire time though, and throughout the entire stream I saw a lot of creative, well-executed ideas. I'm excited to play through the finished collab hack once it's released.

Vitor Vilela Talking about the finish collab, what are your opinions about the current contest organization?
Impetus I think it run pretty smoothly. We had a good number of judges and the anon judging worked fine. A lot of people say that the anon judging proved that people who we expect to get good scores get good scores without bias, and all I can say is that I'm flattered people expected me to do well even though its my first entry, and my last time contributing to smw hacking was way back in early SMWCP2 days.
Impetus I wouldn't say anon judging is necessary, but I think its nice that people can't complain about judge bias this way, even if the judges aren't biased in the first place. From the feedback that we got this year, I guess the one improvement I can think of is making the scoring system a bit clearer and more defined.
TRS I think my highest score in previous vanilla contests was mid-10s. I hope this doesn't prove anonymous judging to be useful, because if it did then a first place result would imply that people hate me. >.>
TRS I haven't had any real problem with the organization of the contest. Jack always answered my questions quickly and without comtempt (not that I would expect any). While the judges didn't always line up when it came to their opinions and scores, I didn't expect them too, that's why we have multiple judges after all.
TRS I had a small scare with posting a picture of the first screen of the level outside of the forum and not noticing it for a while, but luckily nobody really noticed.

Vitor Vilela So, what are you thoughts about the rules? Were them fine or any of you would suggest some change?
Impetus To be honest the one thing I'd change isn't really part of the rules of the contest. I find all of the music being remixes of smw tracks boring, especially since its been that way for a while. Removing the limits on music, putting a few more tracks in and allowing them to be more varied and new would be cool.
TRS Well, you don't have to make your level use an SMW remix. It's perfectly acceptable to submit whatever song for your level. The SMW remixes are for levels that don't use custom music.
Impetus That doesn't go for the overworld themes though, and it still seems rather arbitrary to me.
TRS True.
TRS Anyway, I'm not a fan of anonymous judging; I just don't think it did it's purpose. Everyone I expected to score high still scored high. And it didn't really keep people from complaining. People just complained about other things instead.
Vitor Vilela Yeah, the custom music question again. Nimono recently commented about the same thing too in his interview...
TRS The rules concerning GFX and limitations I feel were right on the money. They did an excellent job in setting restrictions but still allowing ample room for creative levels.
TRS I believe SA-1 did more good than harm. eXcavator's level is a great example, and couldn't have been done without SA-1.
TRS Vanilla is such an antiquated term.
Impetus I kinda like the mix of creative freedom and a lower barrier to entry that the VLDC has.
Impetus A lot of users would be shut out of a contest where others are using intensive asm hacks, so its pretty neat.
TRS Save the asm for the overworld.

Vitor Vilela What are your expectations for the VLDC10? Are you both gonna work on another level again?
TRS I have an idea for a level but who knows if I'll even remember in six months.
Impetus No idea. I wouldn't mind judging next VLDC actually, it seems like fun, even though it would be a lot of work. I'd get to play everyone's levels and I'd probably stream it too.
TRS Oh yeah, you said you were going to do a judging thread for this year's entries.
TRS I said it in the interview, you can't back down now!
Vitor Vilela Ssssshhh!
Impetus Hehe, yeah, I'll do that after the hack is put together.
TRS Re: VLDC10 - I don't expect the rules to change much. Maybe tweaks to specific things like number of ExGFX files, but in general I think it's already hit that sweet spot of restrictions while still allowing maximum creativity.

Vitor Vilela You both are registered for several years, but only now you both decided to actually participate in a SMW Hacking contest.
TRS I've participated in contests before. :P
Vitor Vilela I see. But what about the SMW Hacking as a whole? Have you worked once on a SMW hack for example?
Vitor Vilela And what about you, Impetus?
Impetus To be honest in the almost 7 and a half years I've been here, all I've done is one pretty bad SMWCP1 level many years ago, and one canceled SMWCP2 level because I took too long to finish it.
TRS I've... worked on SMW hacks before. Not any time recently (don't ask about [title]) but it's happened.
TRS This is the first time in a while I decided to make a contest level.
Impetus Entering this contest was sort of a spur of the moment thing, but I have a lot of experience since my last attempts.
Impetus Still, first place is quite a leap from my last time making SMW levels.
Impetus Thinking about it, I can't believe I've been here seven years now and done so little smw hacking on the primary smw hacking resource site, but a big part of this site is the community too.

Vitor Vilela So, what are thoughts about the future of SMW Hacking? Do you believe, for example, it will still exist after seven years again?
Impetus Maybe one day we'll branch out into more game hacking. I mean, I'm always surprised we can keep making more hacks after all of this time, but we're still making advances in hacking even now.
Impetus I'd like to do a Paper Mario TTYD hack, but I don't quite have the knowledge to disassemble the game and make hacking tools all on my own ^-^
TRS Geeze, that's a tough question. All I really do these days is shitpost in Paper Ma- er, Forum Games.
Vitor Vilela weow
TRS I'm not too worried about the future of SMW hacking. Level design is still as good as ever. SMW hacks still have room to grow with SA-1 and Super FX.

Vitor Vilela Interesting. Well, anyone would like to comment about anything else?
Vitor Vilela I think we're good enough for this first part.
TRS I'm honestly surprised you let me say "shitpost" in an interview. 10/10 best interviewer
TRS What does "formal" mean?
Vitor Vilela Formal shitpost, of course.
Vitor Vilela After all, we need a balanced moderation between formality and shitposting!
Vitor Vilela Yeah?
Vitor Vilela ...
TRS ...what was that?
Impetus I take offense to the artfully hand crafted interactive experiences in forum games being referred to as shitposts.
TRS I think I heard staff approaching.
Impetus Unless you're talking about the layout rating thread, of course.
Impetus c8
TRS Quick, hide!
K3fka sup fuckers
TRS oshi-
TRS KILL IT
K3fka did someone say shitpost?
* K3fka pulls out the banhammer
(removed for sanity)
Vitor Vilela Well, I guess it's better I finish with this before the interview gets ruined.
TRS too late
Vitor Vilela Anyway, that's all for the part one. For the part two, we're gonna discuss more about the SMW Central community, the staff team and much more!
Vitor Vilela Don't forget that you can send questions to TRS and Impetus for the next part.
Vitor Vilela See you in the next MoTM!
K3fka o/
Impetus o/
TRS \o
That's all. Thanks for reading! Feel free to post your reactions and questions for the next (extended) Member of the Month.
Congrats to the winners! I see TRS has changed his username color, but Impetus hasn't. If she doesn't use a custom name color, I will hold it against her forever!

Er, anyway, I think it's intriguing that two relative noobs were able to pull together and beat out several SMW hacking veterans. This is a lesson on the power of collaboration. Maybe some people whose hacks end up in development hell for various reasons (lack of inspiration, too much inspiration, real life matters, etc) should consider hiring a partner or two to work on their projects. I know that I've certainly had some ideas that I feel could become real if I were collaborating with someone.


Congrats, you guys! You're proving how powerful collaboration can be.
I think it's totally fine if you're not hacking too much, as Impetus said, there's the community too, and I see lots of members who just post on the site and that's it.
It was entertaining to read this collective interview, I hope this one isn't the first and last.
I know that Impetus & TRS can be employees of the month, that I like it, we are working together for few months, right? Anyway, congratulations! It wasn't easy picking a winner.
Who is your favourite player?

"Cristo Ronaldo, Suey!" - iShowSpeed
You go mom!
Your layout has been removed.
That was expected


Congrats, guys!

Also, since I was in the interview, do I get a custom name color too??

Great job guys!

I'm looking toward to playing your level when VLDC9 comes out #smw{:TUP:}
Officially a Mega Man addict.
Major thanks to Giga and Erik557 for the layout.
Originally posted by #office
[12:50:51] <%Giga> huh
[12:50:56] <@Alcaro> motm
[12:52:42] <%Giga> you guys left me out =v
[12:52:45] <+Hinalyte> moth
[12:53:33] <@Alcaro> mothim http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/thumb/1/18/414Mothim.png/250px-414Mothim.png
[12:53:44] <%Giga> if I had any intrest in hacking whatsoever we could've had the forum games trifecta

This is a thing that's happening, now. Achievements in old video games.
Thank you for the layout, Erik557.
Man, I wish this would've worked. Oh well.
If not for respect, but dramatic effect, take on the face of Guy Fawkes.

Congrats. Well done guys. ^_^
Layout by LDA during C3.
fuk u trs
Congrats to Impetus tho.
You guys managed to pull out a nice VLDC level, so of course it was expected to see you guys getting MoTM too.
who am I kidding congrats trs dude

e: impetus got best color already
Congrats lilac TRS and 'expect me to change my name colour 500 times over the next 2 months btw =p' Impetus.
Originally posted by K3fka
Also, since I was in the interview, do I get a custom name color too??


no
impeTRS when ;)
Question for Impetus:

When are you gonna update Deep Space and Paper Mafia?
fuk u impetus







(just kidding, congrats)

(trs)
Later.
Well, this was somewhat unexpected(for me at least).

Congratulations, you two!
Congrats :D You guys put together a really amazing VLDC level, this was totally deserved. Now go change your name color fifty times in 1 day.
Congrats to both! o/


Congratulations, TRS and Impetus! I knew you guys would win with your amazing VLDC level! You two totally deserved member of the month!
Formerly known as nick 139
My YouTube channel
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