August 2013
ZetaAzuel
You were lucky, Zeta. The next American is Bandit Keith again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the Member of the Month; an interview that I do at the end of each month. It's a fun way of finding out about respected members of the community.
I personally select each month's Member of the Month. People are picked based on their contributions to the community, whether they are: making excellent trials, providing comic relief or just being a brilliant person. The next Member of the Month could be you!
If you have any questions about the Member of the Month system, please PM me.
ZetaAzuel: It's great to be there today Tap, and by the looks of things... it seems that you won't be here to hlep me fix my typos as I go along through them. But hey! I'm sure
that no one will notice that stuff anyway... I hope...
ZetaAzuel: Ah yes, my journey to find AAO is a rather... long and different route than I'd expect people to know. It all started out back on Youtube. You see, I was watching video's of a guy who made robolox bloopers as well as other things. One thing he used often was Godot's theme during his outro, I loved the theme and eventually I found out about the series from there. And me, being the curious young soul at the time, wanted to see what the Ace Attorney series was all about.
So after I finished watching all the playthroughs (I dont' belive that Ace Attorney Investigations was out yet...) there was one thing that stuck into my mind. The FeeniexIris ship. I loved it, and at the time I also loved reading about it, so my journey eventually took me over to the land of Fanfiction.net. There I read a whole bunch of fanfictions regarding the Ace Attroney series, mostly though about PHoenix and Iris becase at the time all I cared about was the lovey-dovey relationship they had in the past.
Eventually, I saw an author talk about some stuff happening on a site know as Court-Recrods.net. I was curious about the place, and decided to look it up, after which... I noticed the huge collection of sprites and other Ace Attorney stuff. Though what I was really interested in the fan case editors. Now understand one thing, I had no idea what in the world Pywright was or anything like that back in the day I was only looking for the most simple and useable editor that I could find back then. And then I came across...
*Heavenly Voices*: Ace Attorney Online
I had made myself an account to see what the editor looked like, and for a guy like me it looked like the right kind of editor for me, something that I understood (looking at the guides helped too.) and after playing a few fan cases myself I was finally able to write myself a case. Of course, that was also when I found Ace Attorney Online and found all these wonderfull people. I'm glad that I came here, though... the way was arather odd XD.
ZetaAzuel: To answer the first part of the question, I loved the idea of making my own trial. I figured that there had to be SOME system that would make it easy to do, and when I found the editor well... that basically gave me the drive to give myself a crack at it. I tend to have a bit of a wild thought process and in turn that gives to some rather wierd but sometimes good ideas. Also playing other fancases (specifically Virtual) kind of gave me the boost to try something out.
For the second part of the question (or question 2 I guess...) the Opieed* series was supposed to be about a kind of a lone wolf style DA who through the course of the series becomes a bit more open through the interactions of Tim Pertantrum(a witness in the games first and a "Thief for Hire" Bandit who's named Risque... anyway, there was a whole plot idea I had which was esentially going to be about a hatred beetween two families, and eventually the big plot twister was going to be that Tim Pertantrum (A member of a family that was waring with another.) was a stolen child used to create peace beetween the two families in the future. Said child was stolen by the bandit guy, and well I had a whole bunch of ideas but that case was so old I forgot so much about it. In fact I think I still have the second part of the case in my editor... I keep getting reminded about that old case...
Eventually though, it turned into probably my best case Jakub Opieed, another case comp fancase I created... I guess I was scrapped out of ideas for characters and ended up making another Opieed character on it's own. That one kind of made a few references to the actuall William Opieed series but in a sense it might as well be independant from it. Though, I've been told it's probably my best case... with all the wierd characters, my own locked room mystery, and a pretty good multiple ending feature, I think it's one of my best works.
Funfacts: A few characters in the William Opieed series are actually references to some community members. William Opieed was a reference to Dypo, his last name spelled backwards is deeipo which pronounced (at least to me.) sounds like Dypo. And on a not so suttle note, another character in the series was named Eve O. Lina (Yes my names wern't as creative back then.) this was probably because back then we had the AAO family tree and Dypo and Evo were my parents(and Rune my grandfather b that note).
Tap: However, you've become quite a trial developer in your own right since then, with "My Dearest Diary" even managing to beat "Hope Springs Hotel"! (*sahwit shaky fist emote*)
ZetaAzuel: Well, it didn't get as popular as Hope Springs but I don't mind. Hope Springs was a pretty awesome case in my opinion.
ZetaAzuel: Actually, this case comp was probably one of the times I did things a bit differently than usual. Normally what I like to do when I come up with a case or trial is plan. Yes, I plan extensivly, despite being known for Zetaspeed, I actually end up taking weeks sometimes just thinking about my trials, the characters, their personalities, theme's, crimes, I like making sure that everything works out that way I don't have to pause when I'm in the middle of scrpting to think about things. Though, I do have to pause to find backgrounds, tracks, etc.
Dear Diary was probably an example of that, I think I spent about a week or two planning the idea for that before I started writing it. I knew that I kind of wanted a... not reallya dating sim, but something along the lines of romantic coices influencing the plot in a way that wasn't all about romance. Though I wasn't quite sure about some of the testimonies and stuff... so... that's why I like planning! I like having not only a skeleton but muscle, and skin before I begin constructing my stuff.
Now, I'd LOVE to talk about my unnamed project but... a certain collaborator is just crazed on keeping nearly everything in closed doors except for the fact that there's a Beatrice Castiglioni involved. But I suppose I can talk about at least the planning process and things like that. So to be honest, towards the end of the last comp I had been thinking of the idea for another case or trial that I might've wanted to start. I had actually talked with Kwands about it while I was doing the scores and deciding rankings. And, much to my surprise, when Rune made his DIS BEAR comp theme I was estatic to find out it matched my idea PERFECTLY! So I talked with kwands about collabing and we planned probably for about a week or two, I would've perfered more time but... we had most of it figured out.
So in the end what happened was I kind of just scripted on a whihm, I had our basic ideas but not as to how testimonies and stuff would go, but I was confident that my writing would be good enough for making up that kind of stuff.
ZetaAzuel: It was nice being the host, the idea for the last case comp actually wasn't mine, but Woopers who was my collab partner for pretty much all my case ideas. All the same, it was both fun and somewhat stressful. I'd totally d it again but hopefully this time it won't be as hard to judge. The joy of being able to play the cases pre-offical release is nice, and I sometimes get to se works that don't get released for awhile. More over, it also lets me see the potential in people, as well as the wonderful ideas that come with them it's a great experiance.
On the flip side, it's also hard to judge when you're not certain how to judge them or if you're not sure you're judging them properly. That was something I was afraid of when I realesed my initial rankings, especially since not many people can see a case the awy you do... which is why I used scores but... well... you know how that ended upkind of scewing me over ^^".
Though most of the community seemed pleased with how I did, and considering it was my first time I was feeling pretty good about myself. I'd give it another go, though I'd need to think up of another comp idea first...
Tap: You're bound to be ask this before the competition ends. If you win, will you pass on hosting rights, or is kwando eager to have control of the next competition prompt?
ZetaAzuel: Well I'm not quit sure as of this stage yet. Personally I'd actually like to host the next comp because I actually want to give my own idea a go for once. As for Kwando... I'm not sure, I haven't asked him that, but he's been a collaborator for all the previous comp winnners. I wouldn't have a problem giving him the rights if he wanted to anyway. All the same, we have to win first before we actually think about that kind of stuff.
ZetaAzuel: Indeed I do good sir, my favorite fan trial was withouta doubt Turnabout Pairs! *Shot for not chosing Curtains or Courage*. It was probably the only hard case that I was able to solve by myself without the use of walktrhoughs, advancements, or source codes. It was a brilliant trial of course, I loved the logic and characters. It felt like the case would play on your expectations far too often, and that in iteself was good I thought. It kept the players guessing more and more and you really had to throw out any previous thoughts and ideas in order to win and get the TRUE solution. Plus, it was the case that ended the Blackrune Curse (BP will say something about this I'm sure.) so there's also that as well.
ZetaAzuel: The furthest back I can remember was pobably being in kindergarden, I remember that as a kid I loved playign soccer with my dad (he was our coach for I'd say 4 years.) and making friends with my classmates as well. When I got to primary school that's where I met most of my friends that I have today with me. Though I'll have you know, as a child... I had anger management issues, according o teachers. But I honestly think (as do my parents.) that I was just being a kid, being hyper active and enjoying myself. The problem was that when you're doing that as a kid in school... you tend to get a lot of negative responses... such as R3's (my school's equivalent of detention). Eventually I went off to a private school called ROOTS (and yes... it was a school teaching a lot of african culture shut up.) I went there for a ear and then went back to my public school for the rest of my elementaty school life with my friends.
Back then I did play a lot of video games, mostly on the gamecube and some on the computer with my friends. Though I had most of my fun when we were playing sports like socer and sometimes football. I guess I had a prettty nice childhood.
ZetaAzuel: Well starting as of today my average day will consist of me going to football practice at around 7:55 AM - 2:00 PM we'll have breaks and stuff and I'll chat with my friends and all. I'll come either to my mothers, or my fathers house and probably shower off the stink of pactice, eat and drink a little, and then head on the computer to see what's going on at AAO. Then I'll do a mulitude of things, work on cases, chat, write RP posts, watch youtueb video's, all that other stuff. Probably till around 11:00 PM and then I'll end up going to sleep. Around the weekend though I'll probably go see a movie witha friend (I do enjoy movies a lot.) or with my family. The days vary though, sometimes I'll watch TV with my bro or we'll play LoL, or do other things. But as of late, I've been having some lax days. School will be starting soon so I'll probably have to worry about that next...
ZetaAzuel: Well I've always wanted to be a game designer... I think I made the decision when I was 11 and since then I've been dreaming about the idea. Personally, I'd love to start my own Indie game company or develop a nice game. I've taken three classes of Java programming and even went to a college campus to actually make a small 3-D game which I'm proud to have called my first. But in short term, getting to a nice college would be the dream for now, and to do that I've got to get some SAT and ACT scroes up... I've got decent scores but not "great" scores.
Family would be nice too but... I've got a god amount of time to think about that so it's not a problem.
ZetaAzuel: What!? Um oh uh... well... while I may not be following certain political key figures(Or even new lwas or anything among those lines.) I do have certain stances when it comes to American polotics. I have a mix of conservative and liberal views on things... but if you need a comment on anything I guess I'll say... America is the land of wishy washy politics? (Don't kill me I'm so uneducated... I somehow got a 5 on my AP exam and yet know nothing about what's going on now XD)
ZetaAzuel: No one will like me for saying this, but I loved JFA. Not even for the 4th case, I loved bigtop. *gets shot* I know that it's considerd the bane of the game. But... I loved the cooky characters, and I felt sorry for the killer of that case considering what happened. And am I the only one who found Ben and Moe really fun? Maybe... my sense of humoris just way off...
But aside from that, all the cases I personally loved, epecially considering it's the case where cute lil' Pearly get's introduced and all. And it really teaches the big idea of "truth."
ZetaAzuel: Mostly Strategy Games, XCOM, Total War Games, LoL, Fallout New Vegas, Starcraft a lot of steam games. I think I thrive best when I get time to think about my actions. Though there used to be a time when I plated a lot of FPS, not that there's wrong with them. But looking back i wish I played more strategy games and RPG's they're just more fun to me. The game that probably gave me the most fun ever though was probably Super Mario Galaxay, and Super Mario Galaxay 2, I remember wanting those games so badly for X-MAS that I bought them beforehand and then ended up getting two copies for X-MAS, and the same thing happened when Super Mario Galaxy came out. The game was just so surreal and the sound track was amazing. Personally my favorite game of all time.
ZetaAzuel: I think it was some winny the poo game for the nintendo 64, I remember playing it in my moms room as a kindgergardener xD. There was Tiger who did some wierd hop thing, and owl made you play rock-paper-scizors I think...
ZetaAzuel: Stay thirsty my friends... no in all seriousness I'd like to tell everyone to find something that they are good at and excell at that area! I mean, I such at grammar and stuff but here I am today! So as cliche as it sounds, go out there and find tour special something! Also I'll be eager to answer ANY questions... cause I like attention and stuff.