This recipient is certainly long overdue, at last, Mythic_Freak steps up to claim Member Of The Month! Unfortunately, no pictures this time.

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Yeebaagooon: Greetings, Mythic_Freak, and welcome to this interview.
Mythic_Freak: Hi, is this official yet?

Yeebaagooon: Indeed it is, everything you do is being recorded by a cherub on the wall . So at HG you're mainly known as a coding person, how did you get started?
Mythic_Freak: Well, I've actually played AoM:TT ever since it came out. I used to play aoe 2 before. Soon after I found ESO and started to play online. Well, obviously that was a pretty big fail, I dropped to 1500 pretty fast. After that something wonderful happened, I found the advanced games tab! And more specifically zelda games. Finally I found a place where I could win. From there on I've started experimenting little by little with AoM coding, in the first place to enhance my gameplay. That means mostly hotkey programming. I think I got my first post on a forum ever recorded somewhere, let me search that... http://web.archive.org/web/20060114084723/www.rtscentral.com/readTopic.asp?PostingId=1689892
As you can see, totally noob and terrible English. :-O

Yeebaagooon: Oh noes. Well you have certainly come a long way since then. Now your first upload was a user.con file with a lot of new hotkeys - so what did that involve?
Mythic_Freak: Well, the period before HG mainly involved trying new things with hotkeys. Over the years I had built up quite a large amount of those custom hotkeys. When I joined HG, obviously with the intention to get to know more about hotkeys..., invent00r was so kind to help me out. Later he encouraged me to post that file because it could be of good use to many other players.

Yeebaagooon: And I take it a friendship with invent00r blossomed from there?
Mythic_Freak: Well, it took a while but that was indeed to starting point of a very interesting friendship. After a while we started to chat outside HG and we helped each other a bit on each others' projects. After a while we also started planning some projects together.

Yeebaagooon: Most people (including myself) will regard the trigger loader as your most prolific release. So what made it possible and how did you do it?
Mythic_Freak: It was indeed one of our biggest projects. Most of the code that went into that had been around for quite a while longer though. We just decided to bundle everything together in 1 super trigger in order to provide a standardised way of accessing most useful functions. The size of the file seemed to scare quite a few people though. And I guess most scenario designers still have no clue what it actually does. But I've noticed trigger makers use it plenty, so I'm happy with that.

Yeebaagooon: We all know about it being used for circle triggers, but what else can it be used for, and what do you think would be a really great use for it?
Mythic_Freak: Oooh, tough question. As terrible as it may sound, I actually never used triggers much or created scenarios at all. I'm not really an artist who comes up with beautiful eye candy or fancy stories. I just do the math behind everything. That being said I have no clue what kind of fancy triggers the community wants, but I do know that - if they're possible - it'll be far easier to create them with our trigger loader. So if you think of anything dandy, just enter the Trigger Request Thread and we'll let you know if your awesome idea is possible!

Yeebaagooon: I also believe you have some XS and RMS skills too?
Mythic_Freak: Indeed, as soon as I joined HG, invent00r hooked me up with AI scripting and the likes. Now, obviously that meant I had to try creating a zelda AI of some kind. I never managed to complete it though. But on the way, I learned a lot about scripting basics and XS scripting in general. Once you know 1 part, it's pretty easy to jump over to the next. In my case I made the jump from AI to trigger coding and RMS. Yes... that means a zelda RMS. I sort of managed to complete that, although it's never been officially released.

Yeebaagooon: I'm sure that would be very popular on ESO these days, however you have released a tiny RMS. Any plans for more?
Mythic_Freak: Right, the Tiny RMS, almost forgot about it. :P Well, it might sound weird, but zelda becomes boring after a while. So from time to time I play tiny. With all the different versions popping up (1v1, 2v2, 3v3), I just couldn't stand it any longer and made an RMS where you could have any amount of players. I see the map frequently hosted, so I guess people like it.

But as I said earlier, I'm not really good at thinking up new story lines or map settings. So if I release another RMS it'll most likely be an improved copy of some fun scenario.

Yeebaagooon: Excellent. So what is your typical day like?
Mythic_Freak: Well, on regular school days I usually get up at 8am, have breakfast and get ready to leave. Next month I'll be starting my 3rd bachelor computer science at uni. The courses are boring sometimes, but with some friends along you'll easily make it through the day. On average, the day ends somewhere at 4:30pm. Then I go home, check AOMH and any other AoT related site that's interesting at the moment. After that I have dinner, chat up with a couple of friends and if I have some time left I check out ESO. The gaps in between are filled randomly with complicated computer stuff I better to go into detail about, it's been boring enough so far . In the holidays my days include a lot of sleeping and finishing tasks I've never gotten around during the year.

Yeebaagooon: Yes, we do love the holidays. But alas, our time weigns. Is there anything else you'd like to say to the community?
Mythic_Freak: Let me think... Well, I've played AoT for pretty long now, and I don't think I would've lasted so long if it wasn't for the nice, albeit small, community we have left. So everyone, just keep it up!

Yeebaagooon: Thanks for taking part.
Mythic_Freak: Thanks for the honour!

[This message has been edited by Yeebaagooon (edited 09-01-2009 @ 09:05 AM).]