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Staff Spotlight - August 2017 - The 3AM show with Impetus EP5 (Ft. RPG Hacker).

We're back again, broadcasting an extra long interview =D If you make it to the end, there will be a cat.


Impetus: Welcome back, most gracious and worthy audience, to another episode of your favourite talk show - The 3AM show with Impetus! I'm joined today by a well known friendly and helpful member of our community and recently appointed ASM and Tool moderator, RPG Hacker! Good to have you here.
RPG Hacker: Thanks for having me here!
Also why is it called the 3 AM show when it's 8 PM? D:
Impetus: 3AM is the only timeslot we can afford on the network =D
RPG Hacker: Crazy! The internet makes no sense.
Impetus: Yes, we have to PAY the network to have our show.
Impetus: Nobody wants to advertise near me ;-;
Impetus: Anyway, how are you doing today?
RPG Hacker: Pretty good! Actually just so happen to be starting a week of vacation today (just came back from work). So of course I'm looking forward to that.
Impetus: Oh, awesome, I hope your vacation is good~
RPG Hacker: Thanks! I'm sure it will be.
Impetus: So, the first question for today... Let's get right into the staff part of the staff spotlight first! You've been moderating ASM and the much neglected Tools section, how has that been so far?
RPG Hacker: Pretty interesting and fun, actually. And also slightly more time-consuming than I had expected. I have done only few ASM moderations so far and mainly concentrated on tools, though it's a section that is known for being moderated very slowly and rarely, with submitted tools often being stuck in limbo for months. I suppose that's because few people like moderating tools, but I actually kinda enjoy it. I guess that's for multiple reasons. For one, I have some experience doing this kind of stuff from work. Meaning things like compiling source code into an application with different compilers and tools and then debugging that application to look for bugs etc. Honestly, most tool moderators probably wouldn't even go that far, they would just check if a tools is working in general and be done with that. I'm different there. When I get the source code to some tool, I actually need to take a good look at it and try to compile it myself. The good thing about this is that by doing this, I actually get the opportunity to fix minor bugs I come across. Something other tool moderators also don't usually do, from my experience, but I'm the person who really dislikes rejecting a tool just for a single minor error or something like that, so I've actually made use of this quite a couple of times so far already.
RPG Hacker: I guess that's the second reason I enjoy moderating tools, being able to do this (although you can also do that with ASM stuff, just to a lower degree). A third reason I like it is just that every sinlge new tool potentially adds some interesting new functionality to the game, and I really like exploring those and seeing their potential. For example: I recently moderated a tool for inserting custom objects into the game, which, when used correctly, could make complicated things like setting up screen-scrolling pipes much easier. And I guess a fourth reason I enjoy moderating tools is because there aren't many other people on SMW Central who are very experienced at it, so I guess that makes me feel kinda "special" doing it. I may not be the fastest doing it, but I'd like to think that that's only because I actually try to do it well.
Impetus: Nice, that's a much longer answer than I anticipated actually. Your help with the tools section has been great! In a sense, you're setting a much higher standard for quality than has existed for a while due to your knowledge in the area. Onto a more general question now~ SMW hacking is a main hobby and a big part of people's lives for a lot of users here. However, correct me if I'm wrong, much like me you've only made small contributions to the scene, opposed to people releasing big hacks and regular content. My question is, what motivates you to continue hanging arond the site, and what keeps you intrested in SMW hacking?
RPG Hacker: Haha, indeed, I'm that person who loves writing long walls of text!
Glad to hear that, I'm certainly trying my best. As for your second question, it's definitely not like I ever completely lost my interest in SMW Hacking. There have of course been phases where my motvation for SMW Hacking wasn't very high and I kept some distance, but I was always interested in SMW Hacking to at least some degree. However, the thing is just that I'm interested in so many different things that, with the limited free time I have, I barely manage to make a big impact in any of them. For example: I actually started a Binding of Isaac mod some months ago which I have yet to finish, I started coding my own game engine in C++, which I haven't worked on in a while, I have a small website which I wanted to write a few blog posts for, also didn't get to do that yet, I have a huge backlog of games that I still have to play, I have a girlfriend and friends that naturally I spend some time with, and then of course there's SMW Hacking. And that's probably not even all.
RPG Hacker: Technically, I like all of those things equally, but if I spend all my time on one thing, I don't get to do the others, so I actually have to limit the time I spend on each thing so that I can get to do all (or most) of them. Especially with my free time pretty much being limited to (most of) my weekends. So yeah, it's really not that I wasn't interested in doing some bigger SMW Hacking-related things (in fact, I still have a few plans for that). It's just that I don't manage to do that with the amount of time I currently have. In the past, I don't know how, I somehow had the time to seemingly do all of those things, and that's also when I made some of my "bigger" contributions to the community, like the VWF Dialogues Patch (quite an achievement for my past, inexperienced self) Today, though, even when I want to, I can barely find the time to work on big things like that, and that's also why I agreed to a position as an ASM and tools moderator, which is something that is (usually) doable with just your weekends worth of time.
Impetus: Heck, that's a lot of hobbies o-o I'm actually surprised you manage to get the moderation done now =p. Another SMWC related question I suppose - How has being a part of SMWC impacted your life over the years? It might not be much with so many hobbies, but maybe it's actually more than that?
RPG Hacker: Haha, indeed. It's kinda difficult when you like so many things! :D
And yes, you're very right. One of the reasons I kept coming back to SMW Central, even at times when I wasn't actively engaged in SMW Hacking, is the fact that I also simply like the community itself. There is quite a number of people that I respect and like, and I also love taking part in discussions about all kinds of things or helping people when I can and feel comfortable. Now obviously, SMW Central at this point is like a gigantic family, and as anyone with a big family (such as myself) can confirm, there is a point when your family gets so back that you don't even know or remember all of your relatives anymore. This means that there are probably hundreds of people on SMW Central by now that could be really nice and interesting personalities, but that I don't know much about yet, because I didn't interact with them too much yet. Like, there are a lot of active members at SMW Central whose names and avatars I know, but whose personalities I can say very little about because I simply didn't meet them on such a "personal" level yet. That being said, I enjoy the company of most of the people I DO know well, and I guess that's part of the reason I keep coming back and enjoy my time here.
Impetus: Aw, that's cool. SMWC has always had that special community vibe that keeps people together. Onto a more hacking releated question - We've seen a lot of advances in SMW hacking since its inception, SA-1 support, better integration for editing layer 3 and overworlds, and many advances in asm and music. In the future, what direction would you expect, or want the scene to go in? And do you think there's any point where changes to the game will cross from modding into homebrewing?
RPG Hacker: The thing I woud love to see most in the future is actually something quite simple and not even very technical: I would love to see hacks get more and more polished. Like, one thing that is often done when trying to make your hack stick out is to add custom resources to it that aren't commonly seen, like patches, sprites, certain level gimmicks etc., and while I do think that that's actually not a bad thing to do, these things also usually lack polish and don't feel "quite right". For example: most of the custom SMW bosses I have seen so far share the same mistakes. A lack of animations, a lack of transitions, a lack of tells etc. The classic example for this would be almost every "custom noob boss." Those bosses usually feel quite random and unpredictable, and in my opinion, despite making them unique, it just doesn't make for a good boss battle just yet. Those bosses often feel frustrating and unrewarding. A well-designed boss basically gives the player the ability to learn their ability just from observation alone, and a skilled player will usually at least do decently on those bosses even on their first try. For a lot of thoses custom bosses, however, this isn't quite the case and the first few attempts come down more to trial and error and you basically have to die a couple of times to understand what the boss does; observation alone isn't enough.
RPG Hacker: Now this example of course refers just to bosses, but small imperfections like that can be found almost everywhere. And that's totally fine. After all, most SMW hacks are just hobbyists. They don't come from the games industry and thus probably don't have that same first-hand experience yet. Of course a lot of them also lack the technical skills to even realise things like that. For a hobby project, I'd also say that's perfectly fine and I wouldn't even really criticise most of those hacks for that. Personally, though, I really love playing games that are as polished as possible, so that's something I'd love to see more of in the future. It's also actually a thing I've been working on myself. One of the most recent things I did for SMW was to write a patch which makes the input delay from BSNES less noticable in your hacks. Most people probably don't even notice it, sicne they've gotten used to it, but as for me, I consider most hacks almost unplayable thanks to it.
So yeah, I guess from my perspective, right now, SMW Hacking really needs mor small innovatins and less major innovations, that would be great. You don't always have to reinvent the wheel to make an impact.
Impetus: Hmm, that's intresting. It's a bit different to recent opinions I've heard, prefering less polished and more experimental hacks, or prefering more vanilla hacks. I actually like the idea of polished chocolate hacks myself however - but it's a much larger undertaking than I could hope to achive on my own. Arguably, SMWCP/2 is kind of supposed to be that, but it'd be different to see something simalar come out with a much more consistent quality. I guess at the end of the day, there's no perfect hack, we have a pretty diverse set of tastes here, from vanila to kaizo, from mario themed hacks to ones which diverge from the normal gameplay style.
RPG Hacker: Pretty much! Both definitely can have their appeal, and there is no one correct way to do a hack. Although I don't think a polished hack necessarily has to be chocolate. I mean, polish can refer to many things. When I speak of a "polished" hacks, I refer mainly to things that affect the gameplay and make the game more accessible and more intuitive. That kind of thing.
Impetus: Ok, so, second to last question! The site has tried to branch out into many different mario games, with SMRPG, SMAS, SM64, Yoshi's Island and NSMBW hacking all having forums or some traction here, to name a few. However, none of them have competed much with SMW hacking or managed to get a good chunk of the limelight, with only YI and SM64 hacking really hanging on. What do you think is the reason for SMW hacking's broad appeal, the lack of intrest in hacking other games, and do you have any sort of post-mortem for them?
RPG Hacker: I guess there's a bunch of reasons for this. The first reason: the SMW hacking scene may be the biggest Mario hacking scene currently out there. Not only in terms of community size, but also regarding the state of hacking itself. Right now, there is pretty much at least one decent to good tool for almost every thing you could wish to do with SMW, not to mention loads of resources like music, graphics, ASM etc. We've got so far with SMW hacking that its limits are pretty much just the limits of the SNES itself. Most other Mario hacking scenes, on the other side, just didn't make it quite this far yet and are still stuck somewhere close to the starting line. I would say that the entry barrier for hacking SMW right now is much lower than that of other Mario games, which probably means that a lot of people start with it, and since they're already perfectly fine with it, there is little incentive to reverse engineer other Mario games and write tools for that. This directly ties into the second reason: SMW, Yoshi's Island and Super Mario 64 are all rather unique from one another, so it isn't surprising to me that each of them stuck around to at least some degree. Each of them fills a different gap. Most of the other Mario games, however, are similar to at least one of those games, which means that there is little reason to advance any of those scenes any further. For example: All of the NSMB games are similar in gameplay to SMW, so SMW mostly already fills the gap that NSMB hacking could fill. Super Mario 64 already partially fills a gap that Super Mario Sunshine or Super Mario Galaxy hacks could fill. And Yoshi's Island is yet different from both of those games, again making its own hacking scene that much more understandable. Now those reasons alone do not explain why certain Mario scenes aren't bigger. I mean, the SMB and SMB3 scenes, from what I know, both are quite respectable, despite the games being similar to SMW in gameplay style.
RPG Hacker: However, there is also a third reason, and that's advance of technology. The newer a game is, the more complex its internal architexture and the processor it's designed for. While an SNES ROM is usually rather simple to hack, due to its ASM being quite simple (in fact, most SNES games were directly written in ASM), modern processor are quite complex, so are modern compilers, and while you can often take a look at some SNES ROM disassembly and immediately tell "oh, this code does that, so I just have to change this here to achieve X", the same doesn't necessarily apply to applications built from modern compilers, where the code often is so complex that it can take quite some effort to even get the slighest understanding of it. And this is of course refering to just the code. Now add to that the fact that those games are also usually bigger and use assets that are harder to create (I mean, a 3D model with textures and animations is certainly more difficult to make that a simple low-resolution 2D spriteh with a few animation frames), and I think it's understandable that mostly the old games have stuck around in the hacking scene and are still more popular.
Impetus: Yeah, that makes sense in terms of accessability, although it's intresting that SM64 which would seem less accessable has still taken off to some extent. One last question before we move onto the quickfire questions! This one is a bit more personal, but something I think a lot of users would be intrested in hearing about. Namely, what's your job as a Game Programmer like? Do you have any insight into the industry to share with other users who might want a job in that industry, or any tales to tell?

RPG Hacker: Hehe, I could talk for hours about this, but I'll try to keep myself relatively short (well, as short as is possible for me).
Working as game programmer is awesome and I certainly wouldn't ever want to do anything else. I was very lucky in life and so a lot of things just somehow worked out perfectly for me. Not only could I become a game programmer in the first place (which really, for a major part of my life, I had no idea how to do), but I was also lucky enough to get a job at a game developer with amazing employees who value the same things as me. In many regards. I never have to crunch when it's not absolutely necessary (this alone barely exists in the industry), I can work on games I'd actually want to play myself (no mobile or free-to-play hell), we value good gameplay and smooth framerates over fancy visuals and graphical effects, and on top of all of that, my boss is also an amazing person who I have learned a lot from and who has a great personality, meeting his employees eye-to-eye and working hard himself rather than just looking down upon anyone. It's been a pleasure working with him and my other coworkers. That being said, I'm aware that the games industry is certainly not all roses and developers like us are rare. You often read stories from artists who are exploited and do hard work for little (or no) pay, like unpaid internships that go for a full year with a dumb promise like "it'll look great on your resume". Also for most developers, crunching is pretty much the norm rather than an exception. A lot of developers are simply expected to do a year's amount work in just nine months or something like that. Completely ridiculous and inhuman. I could see how people ending up with such developers will probably be scared away from the industry quickly. As I said, though, I was one of the lucky ones, so I never had to regret my job choices, which I'm thankful for.
RPG Hacker: As to what I'm actually doing at my job. Well, quite a lot of things, and I guess that's one of the things that makes it exciting. Currently, I'm mostly working as an engine programmer, which means I have to work on "low level" code. Simply put, while a gameplay programmer does work "on the surface", an engine programmer does work "on the core". Or let's describe it via a concrete example: While a gameplay programmer could say "when the player jumps on an enemy, kill the enemy and award the player points", an engine programmer could say something like "when the player's hitbox overlaps the enemy's hitbox and the player's Y previous Y position was higher than the enemy's previous Y position, set the enemy's "jumped on" flag". I don't know if that's a good explanation, but I hope it somewhat gets the point across. Another (and hopefully simpler) way to explain my work is to say that during my time at KAIKO, 90% of my work so far has been porting games. When porting a game, that game's gameplay, of course, is already in place and you're not rewriting that. Instead, you're only rewriting the game's low level code, like how it interfaces with the console, reads controller input, renders an image, plays sounds, unlocks achievements and all that stuff. I guess in terms of SMW, you could say that patches and tools usually contain "engine code", while blocks and spriets usually contain "gameplay code" (there are exceptions from this, but mostly it's true).
RPG Hacker: The games we work on are usually written in C++, which is still the most common language used for games, due to its great performance, though C++ isn't the only thing I ever user, and engine programming not my only responsibility. I also do other things occasionally, like writing or updating tools or other things related to our build/asset pipeline. Our build system is based on Ruby, so naturally, I also work with Ruby every now and then, and thanks to this I've learned to appreciate it. There often come occasions where I need to perform certain tasks or certain automations would be helpful to me, so I quickly whip up a script in Ruby and it does everything for me. For example: One thing that happens surprisingly often when doing game ports is that source assets from the original game are lost, because people forgot to commit them to source control. Whenever this happens, one thing we often do is to download the original game from Steam, then locate whatever asset contains the data we're looking for and write a simple Ruby script for converting that data back into a source file. Granted, this will usually just reduce its quality, but often it's still the best you can get. When working on Darksiders Warmastered Edition, for example, the Russian voice samples from the entire game had actually been missing from source control, so all we could do was to extract them from the orginal Steam version's packfile. Those samples were already in MP3 format, though, which means they were already compressed and compressing them again could only decrease their quality further. However, it was of course still better than just leaving the Russian voice acting out entirely. And to actually get the MP3 files, I used a Ruby script I wrote myself. Ironically we're having a similar case with our current project, where all voice samples except for the English ones were missing.
RPG Hacker: Now at this point some people may interested in knowing what game I'm currently working on, though of course I can't talk about that yet due to NDAs. All I can say is that it's a port once again and the biggest and most complex project I've worked on so far, but also a very exciting one. I hope we'll do a good job on it and that people will enjoy it.

This leaves only the final question of "how to get into the industry". Well, since this is already getting way too long, I'll keep it short, but it really helps when you're passionate about games and also do some game development in your free time (like programming simple games when you want to become a game programmer or creating 3D models and animations when you want to become a game artist etc.). For a game programmer, I think some kind of computer science degree (like the bachelor) is a great start. For artist's, the most important thing is experience and an impressive portfolio. I'll just leave it at that, and if anyone is interested in further details, just feel free to talk to me and I'll tell you everything I know.
RPG Hacker: And to anyone out there actually reading this far, sorry for the walls of text, you deserve my respect!
Impetus: Heck! That is indeed a colossal wall, the most colossal wall in staff spotlight history as far as I can know (and a spoiler to the audience, recording this reply actually took almost an hour!).
RPG Hacker: I guess that's also some kind of record.
Impetus: It's certainly a really fascinating read, so I hope people do read all of it =D. I'm actually a bit envious, as, in addition to being a talk show host I also work in the games industry doing QA... However, my job is not with nice clients at all, and usually consists of testing gambling or horrible mobile games =c. B-but, maybe there is hope for me to get an actual game design job somewhen. (P-put a good word in for me? ;-;).
RPG Hacker: Hehe, it's certainly never to late to consider a carrier change!
And also shoutout to you QA people. Your job certainly isn't easy, but without you, game developers would be hopelessly lost.
Impetus: Thanks! Before we move onto the quickfire questions, is there anything else or any shoutouts you'd like to add?
RPG Hacker: Don't do mushrooms, peeps! (Unless you're into that kind of stuff, in which case, what other choice do you have?)
Impetus: Alright, time to Quickfire! First up: What's your favourite music genra?
RPG Hacker: Music genre... difficult question... would probably some something like "techno trance", maybe also some kind of electric and chiptune music. Those genres help me concentrate at work.
Impetus: Fantasy or SciFi?
RPG Hacker: Would say SciFi
Impetus: Peanut Butter or Jelly?
RPG Hacker: Can't have one without the other!
Impetus: Favourite cuisine style?
RPG Hacker: Umm... is "pizza" an acceptable answer?
Impetus: Not quite, but I'll let it slide =p.
Impetus: What did you eat for breakfast?
RPG Hacker: The most disgusting salmon & egg wrap I've ever eaten (well, in fact, the only one I've ever eaten). You don't wish that upon your worst enemy.
Impetus: Yikes. Okay, one more food question since you like pizzas =p. Pineapple, Banana, Eggs. What are your opinions of these pizza toppings?
RPG Hacker: Pineapples: I can appreciate them occasionally. Bananas: Never tried on a Pizza yet, but sounds delicious! Eggs: Same as pineapples.
Impetus: Nice, someone else with good taste =D. (All the thread comments will be about this now.)
RPG Hacker: I have no objections!
Impetus: What's your favourite SMW hack?
RPG Hacker: So far The Second Reality Project Reloaded. But I also have to admit that I'm a bit out of touch with recent hacks.
Impetus: Yoo, that's a really old one indeed.
Impetus: What's one game which inspires you?
RPG Hacker: A bunch, I guess. If I had to decide for one, though, I would probably have to name Xenoblade Chronicles.
Impetus: Showers or Baths?
RPG Hacker: Showers. Though our bathtub isn't even usable right now, so consider me biased!
Impetus: Are you a morning person or an evening person?
RPG Hacker: Definitely the latter. I don't even go to work before 10 AM!
Impetus: I go to work at 9am about 20 mins after waking up on some days =v
Impetus: Easier to get ready the night before.
Impetus: What's your favourite gaming platform?
RPG Hacker: Right now definitely a Switch. That thing has definitely clicked with me. As for older platforms, I would say the SNES, mostly for nostalgia reasons.
Impetus: Best anime?
RPG Hacker: Best ones, I don't know, though my favorite ones are One Piece (when talking about long-running series), Eureka Seven and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood (when talking about short-running series). Though again I've been out of touch for while and barely watch new ones nowadays.
Impetus: Have you ever cosplayed?
RPG Hacker: Well, actually, kinda, more or less, coincidentally, very recently, and you will probably learn about it sooner than you'd want!
Impetus: Have a prediction of the future?
RPG Hacker: I will die one day.
Impetus: Woah I think you might be a psychic
Impetus: What type is your pokemon gym?
RPG Hacker: I have a thing for fire and electric.
Impetus: What's the name of your ultimate attack?
RPG Hacker: Farting
Impetus: Any last words for the interview?
RPG Hacker: The buttler is always the killer!
Impetus: Alright, thanks for joining us today! We'll be back whenever this show next airs, but for now, thank you all for watching!
RPG Hacker: Thanks for inviting me, it was a lot of fun


I admit that I did not read all of this. Doesn't stop me from congratulating RPG Hacker.
I forgot how to read. Thanks, RPG man.
Seriously i didn´t expect anything but immense walls of texts.

I think RPG Hacker was a great choice as a staff spotlight and i adore his effort to give that detailed answers (and i also deserved his respect, woo \o/ )

It´s also rather impressive how you manage so many hobbies in your life and that you´re able to split your limited lifetime still spending enough and rightful time on everything. Stay the way you are RPG Hacker, from what I´m reading you´re a great person #tb{:]}


Also good job at Impetus not to get smashed by these walls of text and still being able to give the interview a relatively consistent flaw. Well done!








Long interviews are the best ones!

It's nice to see interviews.
I don't have much to say about them (most of the comments probably don't either, as they're mostly "congraturation!"), but I enjoy reading them.

I always find interviews nice, here or anywhere.
It's just fun in a way, I guess.
Хуй войне!

桐生会FOREVER #ThankYouCoco / Rest in peace, Near, thank you for everything
Congrats RPG Hacker, you're one heck of a smart person as it seems.


In all honesty, though, thanks for the kind words and thanks once again for featuring me. And don't worry, everyone, I really didn't expect most people to read through all of that. #tb{^V^}
But of course appreciate everyone who does! #smw{:TUP:}
(And also everyone who doesn't, you're still great!) #tb{;)}

Originally posted by Sariel
It´s also rather impressive how you manage so many hobbies in your life and that you´re able to split your limited lifetime still spending enough and rightful time on everything.


Well, the sad truth is actually that I rarely manage to invest time in more than one or two of those things. :D
Like I said, I'd love to dedicate myself to all of them, but that's not possible, so usually, instead of constantly switching between all of them, I have longer phases where I do the one thing, then longer phases where I do another thing etc. I think going back and forth between different hobbies too constantly would make it more difficult to manage and probably reduce the quality of each thing I do. Right now, for example, I'm mostly concentrating on moderating tools and stuff, so I barely get to do the other things.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
As someone who has read all of that delicious interview and wants to get into the game industry in the future, I first of all thank you for sharing your detailed and interesting points of views, and second, congratulate you for getting this Staff Spotlight #tb{^V^} Let's be honest, it was only a matter of time with the help you provide and the content you share with everyone.

also great gif ;)
Congrats RPG Hacker
Those are some really long walls of text lol

Congrats RPG Hacker! I didn't read the entire interview just yet, but getting the spotlight was deserved given your contributions.
Windowless ride, feeling alive
Are you alive or just breathing?
#smrpg{<3}