,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, An interview of Viper_KillerGuy (Kuski of Month on October 2004): ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' -= When did you start playing? =- I think it was in 1998. -= Ex-teams and why did you change teams? =- I have actually only been in the team I'm in now, which is RDK. the 2. best team in Denmark... out of about 3. I haven't been in teams because I'm not that good a kuski. The reason I joined RDK was because someone asked. -= Current total? =- 44:04:02 Yes I know, I suck :( I've been stuck on 44 for quite some time. -= Top5 newest and oldest personal records? =- This is all according to rec dates. the times in the () are the secondbest ones. Oldest: 25 Precarious 00:30:02 (00:30:02) 2. oldest: 29 Headbanger 01:10:62 (01:11:99) //1:11:99 is so much coolor looking time :( 3. oldest: 32 Steep corner 00:45:03 (00:45:21) 4. oldest: 8 Tag 00:23:14 (00:23:40) 5. oldest: 2 Flat Track 00:17:17 (00:17:23) //Suck cool time!! Now that I think about it. My warm up rec must be the oldest, I don't think I've played it since before i completed all the internals. And I don't even have a rec for it. God I hate warm up. Newest: 13 Hill Legend 00:18:93 (00:19:70) 2. newest: 30 Pipe 00:33:45 (00:33:46 x2) 3. newest: 17 New Wave 01:36:72 (01:37:63) 4. newest: 31 Animal Farm 01:35:23 (01:37:28) 5. newest: 45 Sink 00:33:95 (00:34:28) Again: Yes I know, I suck :( -= Across Career briefly. Any WRs?, World Cup I and II and so on.. =- Ohh, the good ol' days. I think the first time i thought about looking for an webside for elma, WC2 was running, at least I think I remember Sick_Mambo playing some of the WC2 levs. The pexi site. I thought for a very very long time that pexi was the maker of the game plus, supreme world champion. Don't ask me why it took me so long to figure out that wasn't exactly the truth. I remember holding an especially across oriented lan with some of the danes, Magicguy, Gizmo and Raider (I remember i was actually about as good as Raider at that time). Where we had a contest in a level i made (ske2k) the best level I've every made. Alot of the danes competed in that level for quite a long time. I don't remember when the danish acrosschannel started (It's called #elma, so can't be that old). I also remember the first time I found PPP's site (Danish officiel across site of old) It was crazy ugly and took forever to find anything, but still great, and I still remember to total loss of belief that I hadn't found the site before. I remeber hearing all about various emails the other danes had sent back and forth with that crew. -= Elma career? =- The biggest moments in my elma career has been the meetings with other danish kuskies. The first nationwide elma meeting was (I think) in Fredericia in a nerd-club called Silmarilion, It was really fun meeting them and just playing elma a whole weekend. That was the time when my hair was just long enough for the ends to stick my eyeballs, great times indeed. pictures here: http://vk0.dk/elmatraf/billed.php?size=big&pic=2 in the group pic http://vk0.dk/elmatraf/billed.php?size=big&pic=15 from left to right MxB, GuyB, Raider, Sick_Mambo, Rigger, me(Viper_Killerguy), Gizmo There seems to be no pictures of the second danish elma meeting and I don't remeber anything about it. But I've found some pictures from the third danish meeting: http://vk0.dk/elmatraf/billed3.php?size=big&pic=2 I was held in a private school, which Deisel somehow got the key to. group pic http://192.168.1.8/elmatraf/billed3.php?size=big&pic=63 from left to right: Kopaka, Toaster, Vandmand, Petsen, Deisel, Rigger, (gah, can't remeber), Spetzler, Sick_Mambo, Jsim, me, MxB, Raider, Gizz. The other pics are really really great fun. There's the famous pictures of me getting it on with cholocate marie crackers, and MxB being scary-funny-looking with crazy eyes. Pictures from the newest party hasn't been fixed yet because of Gizmo and Vandmand. -= Do you still like Across? Why/why not =- Well, as said before i played it for a long time even after elma was out. But when i play it now it's just so annoying with the brake thing it does when going though halfloops, or some other word for it that makes more sense, hmm perhaps some ASCII?! /-- / | @ / .--KKK | \__|||_ \__ / _/ \ \_ O O \ hmm, That didn't turn out as great as I thought it would. the thing on the right is the kuski moving left and the thing on the left is the halfloop. And the bike barkes whenever the wheel goes over one the many bumps such a halfloop has (as seen in the figure). Also I don't think people should be playing Across, let the old records be alone let the gods of old be remembered that way. -= How did you get Across/Elma? Was it your worst mistake? or the best? =- Across: I first saw it at a LAN, some guy was playing it and he and his friends were laughing at the "bad" graphics and useless gameplay. I knew right away it was a great game and i rushed back to my own computer to start searching the networks for the game, I didn't just ask those across-crash-talking mongoes because how could such stupid people ever be able to do anything. When i finally found it i played it for several hours straight, before i stopped it to play network games it was a LAN for god sake, but within the hour i was back playing across, it was just so good. When i think back upon it i still remember the exact layout of the room where i sat and how the people sitting next to me looked like. After that I started my campaign to get the other danes addicted. The first to fall was Sick_Mambo, and the others followed shortly thereafter. Elma: I don't think i played the demo, I remember only wanting to play the full game. And it took me a long time to find the elma full version ( cracked :( ). I completed all the internals in a row, never stopping elma.exe. It took me most of the night (I sucked even more than I do now back then). But actually i didn't like it that much, I sticked with across for close to a year for some reason I can't remember, probably wasn't very good either. But eventually i converted, and now I love the springy wild smooth action of elma. -= Favourite internals / most irritating internals =- My favorite is Pipe, I don't really know why but every time I play that lev minutes turns to hours. Minutes and hours as in time played, not lev times. The single most annoying lev is Warm Up, I hate it so much! Can't think of a reason, I just hate it! With the other internals it ranges from somewhere in between like and love. -= Your own best WRs? =- Once again: Yes I know, I suck :( -= Best WRs in your opinion? =- I find it hard to compare my times with the WRs since I haven't completed them with the same style. But I can say I really really like the new styles in curvacious, bowling and the multi style in enigma. -= What's the limit of WR times? =- If I say something even remotely likely it'll probably just get beaten within a few months, just to piss me off. So I'll say 30 min tt. And i don't even want to guess about individual internals. -= Are there some kind of external contests you like? What kind of contests do you like? Are there any new competitions you would like to see? =- I love 1hour tt. It's extremly adrenalin-pumping and even noobs as bad as me have a chance of winning. Ofcourse <½hour battles are also great fun. But all kind of contests are much much better when played in a LAN, you get the crazy mindtricks when playing battles, someone saying they have an insane time can really mess up your play. Also hearing someone yell out when dying in the end of a big lev in 1hour tt is great fun. But even funnier than all those are multi 1hour tt. It is so much fun trying to organize with another kuski and discussing what levels are next and who does what. And there is a much bigger chance of dying in lvls, making it even more noob friendly. And noob friendly contests are very good when playing at a LAN. -= Best lgr in your mind? What lgr do you use? =- I use the Retro LGR. The one where things are kept to a single color. I like the simplisity of it. The bestlooking LGR is the Across one. It's one of the few where the colors actually fit in. Many other LGR's have used images that look ugly because elma doesn't use the same color palette. The pirate and matrix thing was great, more lvls with lgrs, please. -= Mention some good things you have gotten with Across/Elma? =- The supreme good thing is the many friends I've gotten through across and elma. Also elma is just a very good game to addticed to, you can always play a little elma It's a good thing to have lying around when you are bored. I've gotten many ideas for coding and other nerdie stuff while playing elma. -= Mention some bad things you have gotten from Across/Elma? =- Hmm. I haven't gotten any serious pains or wounds from it. I don't get angry when I lose a really great time. I'm not so addicted that I've missed out on other parts of life because of it. I honestly can't think of a single bad thing. -= What is the most frustrating thing you have faced in your career? =- I don't remember any specific moments, but i guess it would be one where i thought I had a really good time, and I end up in a very poor place in contests. -= The biggest mistake of your Elma career? =- I didn't play in many contests, like the world cups and all the lesser ones, I still don't play in very many. I don't know why. -= Cheating, what feelings? Do you use level unlocker/1.11hb/1.2 etc? =- I use the 12 patch, I don't think i can go back to low resolution and non-centered turning, and ofcourse alo. I don't consider anything in the 12 patch cheating. But real cheating can very well ruin the community, and that's ofcourse a very scary thought. The thing about darm is almost understandable, he had used the saveload cheat for so long i guess i can see how it would be hard to not use it, and the fact that it's a "mild" cheat, meaning you can still do what he did without the cheat, it just takes a whole lot longer. But that doesn't make it any less excuseable. Naughty darm! At the moment the scariest cheat is the macro thing, and i hope noone will ever waste time using it. Hmm, what about the gravity change cheat, what ever happened to that? is it detectable? uh right, I would ofcourse like to thank milagros and hib for making the great tools they make to help administrating the community. -= Elma tuning, have you tested? Opinion about it? =- I aren't good enough to be changing vsync to whatever level I'm playing, I just always play with it off. Other than that, i have changed my directx refresh rate plus the refresh rate of the monitor in the resolution i play elma with (1024xblah). I use it and i recommend everyone else to do so, when elma is running smooth it's much more fun. -= Best kuskis and teams? What are the things you value in another kuski/team? =- Naturally I like all the danish kuskies the best, although that may only be because they are the ones I've talked to the most. I don't value pure skill very high in a good kuski. I think the kuski I least like is zweq, not that he's not great fun or a general good guy. He just says alot of things I really really disaprove with, and he keeps changing nicks on IRC so I quite often end up yelling at him for saying whatever it was he said. Although this has only happened very few times I don't look much in #across, therefore making it often from my point of view. The non-danish kuskies I've written seem like great guys, mostly Abula, Skint0r and alot of random people who report bugs in my scripts. And also I really like Bartek, it seems as though alot of kuskies don't particulary love him, he's actually great. I see him like the cranky old man who always have opinions that seem weird and old-school, and ofcourse I mean this in the best possible way. I share many of his crazy ideas and oponions, and you have got to admire his designing skills. -= Your best achievements? =- Hmm, there have been a few. First of all I got a 3th place in the battle contest in the last officiel danish elmameeting, but that was pure luck, so I don't see it as a great achievement. And I've won KOM, which is great, although I do admit nomination a kuski every month is alot for as small a community as the elma one. Also I have listed my best achievement as doing alo using the spamming-keys-with-elbow method. I can't do this now for some reason, but I had it working almost 20% of the times when I really played pipe, and this ofcourse is a rather poor achievement. And lastly I won the Contribution part of the gaa04. This is also a rather shaky achievement as I was the one to get the least community nominations and I only won because 2 juries with a rather high priority (I guess) votes for me. So all are rather shady, but I think I'll have to go with the gaa04 contributino award. -= Do you do any other neat finger-related stuff like playing violin, repairing watches, pick pocketing etc? =- I can roll a pencil or other long cylendic shapes (vink vink) through my fingers like some guy from some james bond movie did, but almost everyone who has every tryed that more than 5 minutes can do it. I also play alot of DDR (Dance Dance Revolutions) in for form of stepmania and a keybord. I guess this require some agility, or maybe the people I've seen play are just spastic. -= How much did you play in your sickest period? How much these days? =- My sickest period was when i played pipe, I think i played for at least 8 hours a day for a week. This isn't very sick, but it's the best i have. -= Have you had Elma dreams? =- Nope, I only have extremly bizarre dreams. -= Strengts and weaknesses as a player? What moves you like/dislike? =- I don't like the small very flat levels, like Warm up (god I hate you, warm up). Other than that i like every level. So I guess I'm a rather balanced player. -= Tips for average players? =- Well, I'm an average player myself. But I made some tips to noob awhile back in the form of a news.. thing on the danish elma site, I just copy-paste it: hmm, I really don't want to do that actually, but you can find the news.. item on www.vk0.dk/elmadk it was made sunday the 10. oct 2004. -= Best memories with Elma? =- One of the best was getting third place in the battle combo at the danish elma meeting. I was really lucky to get alot of good times on alot of levs, and the rest of them were rather unlucky. But every danish meeting we've had has been great fun. -= First time at #across? =- hmm, I already wrote about this somewhere so now I have to change in text :( (That's why it seems out of context) But I remember the first time i was in #across. It was truly amazing to gaze upon the gods of the WR table, I don't think i actually wrote anything, just the gazing. -= Best Elma friends? =- I guess that'll be the danish kuskies first of all (in order of how my memory works) mambo, vand, gizz, raider, mxb, toaster, sprocket, jsim, kopaka, napol, eppej, zerox, guyb, rigger, gift, bæst. I probably forgot to mention some, and they'll probably bitch about it too. Also some of the non-danish i remember: Abula, darm, skint0r, 8ball. Hmm that wasn't very many, but all the people who've reported, and helped me fix bugs for my scripts should be here too. -= Thoughts about Elma meetings? =- Well, as mentioned countless times before, elma meetings truly are the greatest way to play and enjoy elma. So get it together someone... I think i once made a site where kuskies that were interesset in a international meeting could sign up, but I can't seem to find it. I remember i made it with random funky colors, heh, that was great. -= What do YOU think should be improved in an eventual new version of Elma? =- I have grown very use to elma, I also grew very close to across and refuced to convert for a long time as mentioned before (i think), so I don't have any suggestions to what should be changed. But elma has turned out to be really great, and I have my fullest confident that Balazs can make an extremly nice game, which can be far better than elma. I just hope to god he does make it. -= How about battles? =- I don't submit many of my times to #battle, but i like to download a lev and play just to see how well i do (it usually isn't very good), and see a good rec. But I am really really extremly happy with the fact that there's almost always a battle going on at #battle, if only we could make a weekly/montly tradition for a more officiel battles, like we once had. Just remember: As fun as battling may seem, it's at least twice as fun at a LAN. -= Have you got any negative feedback about playing Elma from your mates? =- Many of my friends have several fases they go through: 1. They laugh at the game and graphics and think i'm crazy. 2. I tell them how much i play and how much about the game i know, and they become quite scared of me. 3. They play the game and 1 of 2 things happen. 4a.They quit after completing 5 levels and never play it again and go back to either fase 1 or 2. 4b.They play the game and simply refuse to beleave any of my times. There was even one who just wouldn't accept that I have in fact completed every single one of the 54 levels. 5. They die (Although this haven't happened for most of them yet) -= What games do you like beside Elma? =- My alltime favorite both singleplayer and multiplayer game is quake (I refuce to mention that it's the 1st quake and not the 3th or even, shudder, the 2nd). I also really really like Warcraft (I, II, III, World of) DDR in the form of Stepmania as mentioned before. And minor games i usually pull out and play insanely for about a week every year or so: xcom, gta(whichever), ascendancy, system shock 2, strife, battlezone(1, 2), freelancer, hitman(1,2,3), the zelda games (emulated :/) and probably alot more which I can't remember. Yes, I like games. -= Did you buy Elma? Why not? =- I'm a little offended that you naturally assume i didn't buy it and go on to ask "Why not?" Other than that I didn't buy it because I was very young and didn't have a way to pay balazs, and now I don't really have a good reason, I really should get myself together and figure out a way to pay him. -= Have you thought about if you could stop playing Elma soon, or anytime? =- I doubt I'll ever stop playing elma completly, for the most part I don't play elma seriously (I don't strive to improve internal records), but I don't think I'll ever stop playing a little elma now and again. -= What gets you still playing Elma? =- Regular days it's #battle and contests/levels being talked about on mopolauta. But seriously playing is usually triggered by a danish elma meeting. Even the stubborn Petsen began playing elma again quite seriously after being to a elma meeting. -= Are you at the top of your career now? If not, when? =- I haven't really felt my elma play gotten any worse, it just gets slighty better all the time. I myself don't believe there will be a highpoint for me, I'll just keep playing and improving untill the end of time (That's right, I'm gonna live forever). -= Forecast the future of Elma. How the scene will be in five years? =- I think it will be roughly the same. From what I have seen the last years, the scene seem to have stabilized. Some of the old kuskies quit and new kuskies come and take the forsaken's places. -= Was it a surprise to be voted for the kuski of month? If it was who should have won in your opinion and why? =- I had been in the past several KOM's so it wasn't a big suprise i was nominated, and I've been close to winning before so that wasn't a big suprise either. But I'm still very honored to have won it. -= Mopolauta, thoughts? =- I like it, it a must-have for a community, great place to announce new levels and contests. I would say that it's actually a little more important than #across. -= Opinions about Elma Crime, MUe's animations and stuff like that. =- I really loved Elma Crime, I saw it for the first time on a big screen projector at one of the danish elma meetings. For all the rest, small avis, flash, the cartoon, they will never messure up to elma crime, but that doesn't mean they aren't extremly great as well. Great fun to see these things. -= You have made many php script tools for the elma scene. How do you feel about those contributions? =- I'm quite happy with them, I'm very proud that people are using scripts I've made. Although some of the scripts are very old and rather poorly coded, I still like every one of them. The only thing about them that makes me sad is when people aren't using them as much as they should be used. Take for example the recordlists I've made for the danish elmasite. Everyone can sign up and add a few levels into the script, and have an easy to manage recordlist, or if they choose they can make it interactive so times are automatically updated everytime someone updates a new record. Other than that, the rest of the scripts seem to be going more than fine: Today is 30.dec 2004 elmatimes.php has 103067 hits ratemylev has 97109 hits ratemyrec has 59598 hits uploadthing has 63754 uploaded files I'm glad to see the non-elma formats are quite low on the list, if this should change I will ofcourse change url. elmatimes.php: Another version of elmatimes was the first "big" php site/script I made, it just uploaded the stats.txt's and went through all of them and extracted all the data and compared it with eachother using very very poor algoritems, only the danes were allowed to upload there, becauses of lag issues. The version that's up now I made over a weekend, quite a few years ago. I've only changed the script a few times since then, so it is getting quite old and should be replaced soon, the server it's running on is using 100% cpu all the time because of number-crunching for elmatimes.php. ratemylev/rec: These scripts aren't very old (released 8. dec 2003). The idea behind the scripts are Toaster's (danish kuski) and the design is by skint0r, I've used this design for quite a few other pages as well, so extra special thanks to skint0r for it. Heh, while going through the ratemylev just now i fixed a bug and found out that skint0r is also the one who has reviewed most levels, so even more thanks to him for that. Some time ago I changed ratemylev so the best time for each level was also held in the database, only took me 10min but it has proved to be a very big success. It's quite amazing that ratemylev has almost surpassed elmatimes.php considering that elmatimes.php has been up for so long compared to ratemylev. I'm glad to see that. And I would like to thank toaster for the idea and skintor for the design again. private upload thing: This is a really small script, not much to say about it, I just though a script to upload and share small files would be a good thing, again and again i see people on irc trying for ever to upload single files to eachother, and this is especially annoying when the files you want to transfer is as small as the elma .lev and .rec. The changes with all the stats and the file limit were made a few months after the script was released. the official danish across and elma site: I think I spend 2 or 3 weekends making this script, it is by far the biggest script I have ever made with about 2500 lines of php code. The script helps to make the site interactive and much easier to maintain and update, especially for multiply users. It also allows random people to register and make their own interactive or manually updated recordlists with levels of their choice. Unfortunately noone cares. But it has made updating records quite easy. Although noone really uses the script, I'm still very proud of it. Uh, I'm also very proud to see people making improved versions of my scripts, such as mxb upload-thing and the russian stats compare site. -= You are the updater of the Danish Elma & Across page. How's that feeling? =- It's actually rather frustating. Every week I see how much work GuyB really did and just how good at it he were. The site is still missing some records, some lost and other recordtables I haven't added yet. Making scripts is fun, inserting data into isn't. The site is meant to be a site where every danish kuskis has a part to do on the site. But noone seems to want to do the dirty work of inserting data into the database. -= What's your favourite Elma website (not moposite)? =- Although I don't fell right about it, I would have to say the danish elma site, and the scriptsites that I've made. I usually don't stick and read sites regulary, I just read through them and watch them as long as they are mentioned in mopolauta. But although I don't visit it very often, the best site that isn't my own would be skint0rs. It's a little cheating since I've specifically tailored my scripts to my own needs. -= Your relation to OLP? =- I hate you OLP! -= Why that nick, Viper_KillerGuy? =- I actually started out wanting to be called Viper, but that's ofcourse already taken so i had ViperGuy for a while, but that was also beginning to be taken, so I just went for it and choose a nick noone would ever think of or even want. In RPG's I use magiper, but i still se my nick as Viper_KillerGuy... or just vk.. or vk0 as vk.dk was already taken. -= Your real life. Do you have it (school/work, other interests etc)? =- I started studing at the university of Århus this sommer. I'm studying Math, with a few classes in computer science (And learning to program using specific objectoriented approches proves to be the best just sucks, and the fact that it's all going on in java doens't improve anything, don't take programming courses! learn yourself from other whatever other method you can). So most of my time goes reading and trying to understand math (Math is great by the way, I would highly recommend this to anyone, and no, it's not like whatever kind of school you went to before university). Also World of Warcraft is coming out soon, so I spend every spare moment playing that. Even though I have to play on loucy korean servers, infact the only reason i wrote this interview now is because the servers are down because of [korean-sign] [korean-sign] [korean-sign] [korean-sign] [korean-sign], for either 2, 5 or 12 hours, days or weeks, oh, and my real name is Dan Amlund Thomsen, as if anyone cared. -= Write something about the game, fellow kuskis, moposite, #across, etc =- NO! -= How did this interview make you feel, like a moviestar? =- It made me feel tired, took several hours to get through these questions, it's freaking 4am here! Viper_KillerGuy 30. december 2004