Please welcome a great figure in AOM designing, none other than the legendary HailToTheOboe himself!

Yeebaagooon: Welcome to this interview, Hail. Your time in the MOTM spotlight has most certainly been overdue. In your time at AoMH you have accomplished much. What do you think of as your greatest achievement?
HailToTheOboe: The thing I'm most proud of is the cinematic I made for the Christmas Competition last year "Let Heaven and Nature Sing", before that I had never made anything large but only dabbled in screenshots, very small scenarios and small triggers. LHANS was the first thing that I could really consider to be something "big." I'm still very proud of it and I'm still drawn towards cinematic design.

Yeebaagooon: Everyone loves cinematics, and they've tempted many to make them. Let Heaven and Nature Sing was quite groundbreaking because it was the first use of your circle triggers. So, what was your favourite part of that wonderful cinematic?
HailToTheOboe: Not the first use - the original ideas came from Elrich and were showcased in his Thrynn teaser, but I didn't want to wait for his release (good thing :P, so I made my own versions). My favourite part was the music. I chose the music before doing any work, and let the music shape the story. It's tough for me to choose a favourite scene, but I'd say the "dream" scene with Erland alone in the town was a crucial one (music by Malcolm Arnold) and the finale with the camera spiraling over the town and fading (music from Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky) are the ones I enjoy most.

Yeebaagooon: Setting the scene to the music is very difficult, but you managed to pull it off quite nicely. So you pretty much created those lovely circle triggers from scratch? You also have other amazing triggers to your name - how difficult are they to make for you and do they involve any special parameters?
HailToTheOboe: Well, the main obstacle in coming up with a good trigger is inspiration, and Elrich already covered that part for the teleport in line/circle triggers. The math behind it is all very simple grade 9/10 material, and the programming was no different than any other trigger, so really, writing the code was the easy part. For making triggers, usually coding them is easy and debugging them is difficult, because everyone will make really stupid mistakes in hard to find places. I'd say 90-95% of the time working on a trigger is debugging it. I have to give huge thanks to invent00r for his help in my early stages of coding, and also to Mythic Freak for his code reference which makes it all so much easier. But still, debugging always takes a fair bit of work. I don't think I really use any special parameters - the majority of my triggers have come from other people's ideas and maybe extended with twists of my own. the Target Protounit Query triggers are very clearly based on nottud's ySearch but use a different search method. I've still got a load of unreleased triggers that I make for myself as I design, and eventually they'll find their way out. and of course a handful of those will be coming out with Rocmaninov .

Yeebaagooon: Excellent, do you think there will be more quantum leaps forward as far as triggers go - or are you planning any ;p?
HailToTheOboe: Tough to say, we've covered a ton of ground, but there is still some room for expansion. Rocmaninov has some huge leaps for hotkeys and camera work in it - but I'm pretty sure most of these tricks were already known by the old greats, even if they weren't put to huge use.

Yeebaagooon: Sounds good. I saw the Rocmaninov showcase and it certainly looks very sexy. Are there any special things you can tell us, or will we have to wait and see?
HailToTheOboe: I'm afraid I've already tipped most of my cards in that video, so you'll have to wait and see to learn much more, but if you watch the video closely there are some special things there already. One thing I'm working on is a variation of the line and circle triggers that will be unaffected by computer performance (naturally, another idea from Elrich) where you use Speed as a parameter instead of Step size, so the frequency of looping triggers won't influence the rate something moves.

Let Heaven and Nature Sing video | Rocmaninov: Teaser

Yeebaagooon: Cool . So now, on to screenshots. You make your screenshots in unique style, you place down loads of objects, change them and then use triggers to take the screenshot, is this difficult than normal screenshotting?
HailToTheOboe: To me, it is normal screenshotting. One of the drawbacks of Vanilla is that I don't have the animation viewer, so if I want to capture a unit animation, I need to use the Set animation effect. Right from my very first screenshot, I've done it with triggers. My initial reason was because cinematic mode was the only way I knew to get rid of the interface, but since then I use triggers for many other things, including animations, timing special effects, colour fades, lighting, and much more. The added bonus of this method is that now I can open up my old screenshot scenarios, playtest it, and take (almost) the exact same screenshot again. To me, it's the only way I've ever done it, so it doesn't seem hard, but I know at least a few titans players think I'm a nutcase because of it.

Yeebaagooon: I think it makes perfect sense, it may be harder but it's so much more accurate. What has been your favourite screenshot and what tricks did you use to make it? You've won the CSC many times.
HailToTheOboe: That's a tough one, I've made an awful lot, but this is one I particularly liked: The Sea and Sindbad's Ship for the theme "Caught in a Storm." I got the idea from the music Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov, where part of one of the movements depicts Sindbad the sailor encountering a storm and having his ship dashed to pieces on a rock. There's actually no water in that screenshot, I did it all with various blue terrains, cinematic wakes, waterfalls, and various splash sfx, including arrow splash sfx, splash footprint, and the water waves left behind when you remove a boat. Lighting was also critical to make sure the land did not look like land.

Yeebaagooon: I always thought that was all water - I can only see it now you've pointed it out to me :P. So you are famously Vanilla - have you ever thought of sampling the delights of TT and the many scenarios that go with it or are you sticking pure to the original?
HailToTheOboe: I've considered it - more for playing TT scenarios to let me see other designers work, than for actual design use. My main reason for sticking with Vanilla is the vanilla ESO community - I find supremacy gameplay a lot more interesting in vanilla before the gameplay changes that were made in TT, and I played a lot of supremacy with vanilla players. I'm a member of the "HailToThe" clan and I want my clannies to be able to experience my work as well, and they are all vanilla players. Vanilla's not that bad - it has limitations, but it hasn't stopped me from going farther than many titans designers would go.

Yeebaagooon: Yes I guess scenarios would be your biggest reason for getting TT. I also hear you are now part of the Dawn of Fantasy team at Reverie, so how's that going?
HailToTheOboe: Great - the Reverie team has been great to work with, and Dawn of Fantasy is a great game. I have barely started at all in the scenario work I was hired for, but I am already happy working with them, and looking forward to writing some quests. The editor is really very powerful, but I'm still learning the ins and outs of it. Triggers are done directly by coding, which makes them a lot more flexible, but a little tricky to learn. Better start brushing up on your Lua now! Although the Lua part is not very difficult at all, just familiarizing yourself with the Dof-specific commands.

Yeebaagooon: Could you tell us something about your personal life?
HailToTheOboe: Brown hair, blue eyes, I like long walks on the beach.... I'm studying Aerospace Engineering in university, but this year I'm on a full year co-op work term, where I'm involved in data collection for creating flight simulators. That's a full time job, so it takes up most of my week - a lot of my week nights are spent playing music (I play the oboe, if you hadn't guessed), where I play in an orchestra, a concert band, and multiple chamber ensembles, several nights a week.

Yeebaagooon: And still having time to fit everything else in? Super-human .
HailToTheOboe: I didn't mention sleep anywhere, did I?

Yeebaagooon: Excellent, that's the way to do it. Any last words for AoMH?
HailToTheOboe: Keep on truckin'! The community has grown smaller over the years, but it's still vibrant and the design community is as great as ever. Since getting hired by Reverie, I'll have much less time on AoM, but I'll always enjoy coming back and seeing what's up and giving a hand. I'm quite intrigued by some of the recent project showcases, I may just have to borrow a copy of TT to give them a shot. Happy new year AoMH, may 2010 bring as much good stuff as 2009!

Yeebaagooon: Wise words indeed, I'd drink to that but I hate the stuff. Thanks for taking part .
HailToTheOboe: No problem, thanks for the interview.

[This message has been edited by Yeebaagooon (edited 01-01-2010 @ 01:06 PM).]