Observer:Profiles:An Interview With JW

1) What is your favorite feature of Wesnoth?

Truthfully? I have to say that I have two: 1) The ability to play multiplayer matches online. 2) The ability for users to create content for the game. If the game did not have multiplayer matches, I would probably not have kept playing it after I had learned how to use the units to their maximum potential and beaten a few campaigns. If the game did not have the ability to create content, I would probably have only played it for a few months! Being able to creatively contribute to a project does many positive things for the player: 1) It gives them the ability to say "I made that!" and feel a sense of accomplishment when their content is used 2) It gives them the feeling that the developers of the game care about their ideas 3) It gives them the knowledge that the game will continue to grow and change, providing a different experience with time. I'm sure it does more, but I've spent enough energy on this question already!

2) Your era, the Era Of Myths, is quite nice, but is not played as often as Noyga's Extended Era. Why do you think that is?

To be fair, the Extended Era (EE) is far more complete than the Era of Myths (EoM). Noyga has had the blessing of having many contributors help with the era's art, including some incredible spritists known as Neoriceisgood (Chaos faction) and Shadow (Aragwathi), and Turin is also become quite good at the task! I have had the blessing of having Eternal creating some unit sprites, though he has been busy working on mainline units lately, which I believe we can all agree is more important than creating sprites for a usermade era. Other than Eternal's work, most of the sprites in the EoM were already created before they entered the era. I would mainly pick factions to include that were mostly done with art for the main reason that the era had very few art contributors. Yes, there have been a few submissions from others here and there, but they have few and far between.

Also, I must say that even though I am the maintainer of the era, the era is not "mine." So many people have helped in the creation and development of this era that it would be selfish of me to claim ownership. Sure, I change and upload the data and do most of the balancing changes, but I have created perhaps 2 sprites for the era personally, and have only been the ideator for 2 of the factions the era currently uses. Also, many of the balancing changes - especially lately - have been discussed with multiple people to come to a joint conclusion. It may be a time saver to say that the EoM is "my era," but just remember that it is everyone's era that I merely maintain!

Oh, another reason why it is played less is because there were no updates in the era from like May until November. Also, the additional damage types made it incompatible with default units. Now that the damage types are removed I believe it has seen more play because of that decision.

3) What were some major chalanges in developing the Era of Myths?

Ah....well, I touched on some of them above. A lack of sprite artist's with the time to work on unit sprites has been the #1 biggest challenge for the era. A lot of sprites without homes have found a temporary one in the EoM!! Another challenge has been balancing... and rebalancing... and balancing off of those changes... it is truly a difficult task!!! We should all be thankful that the default era is so well balanced now, because balancing 6 factions is not an easy chore!

Lately my biggest challenge has been time. Since I go to law school, I don't have as much time to spend on Wesnoth as I used to. I've finished with my finals now though, so I have some time from now until the 21st of January to work on it!

4) What do you plan to do with EoM in the future? Do you have a 'grand vision' for it?

My ultimate goals for the era are to completely balance the era both within itself, but also against mainline factions! This is going to be incredibly difficult, and will surely take months, if not more than a year to achieve. If the era can achieve this, then it will surely be played more by the Wesnoth community. The main reason people won't play with eras or specific factions is because they are unbalanced. An unbalanced game is no fun. Balancing is my #1 goal for the EoM for this reason.

Secondly, I have a few grand campaign ideas that I hope to make for the era, which would also boost its popularity. Currently there is one campaign in the works (slowly), but I don't want to talk about this too much because they would be better as a surprise!

5) What inspired you to create the (really nice) How To Play series?

Ah. Well, at the time I believe I was just starting with the entire Era of Myths project. I knew it would take lots of effort. I knew that, the way it was going, it wasn't going to be played much by other people, so it wasn't going to be of much use for a while. I felt the need to contribute something to the Wesnoth community that would be a benefit to everybody.

I have an extremely extensive gaming resume. I've played video games for 21 years. One thing I'm good at is figuring out how to find the tiny little differences in things that you can use to your advantage in games. Things that some people might overlook or undervalue. Fro example: in Super Smash Brothers (for N64) Captain Falcon has no ranged attack and has a very slow power attack (falcon punch). For this reason people may choose not to use him. He is however, along with Fox, the fastest character in the game. If you don't get hit (and you don't run off the edge of the map) you can't lose. Both Falcon and Fox had an attack that gave them an additional jump. The difference is that if Fox were hit during his, he would lose it and fall. If Falcon was hit during his, he could use it again for another jump. He could also use it again if he successfully grabbed someone with the attack. He could potentially jump without end! This gave Falcon the greatest survivability in that game, which I abused against my friends with much satisfaction!

I wanted to use this gift of finding the little things in games and give it to the Wesnoth community. The only way I could think of successfully doing this was a strategy guide. I set out around 1.2.1 to create an comprehensive guide of how to play as each faction against each other faction. The original installations met with much positive feedback! Unfortunately, the task was extremely time-consuming and mentally draining. I became burnt out after completing, I think, 2 and a half guides (I forget). From what I've received in posts, PMs, and in-game chats, the guide is still widely used today, even though it is out of date with respect to the unit statistics!

Some day I hope to get back to the guide and finish it up. I'm quite disappointed that I could not finish it at the time. I don't plan on working on it at all before 1.4 is released however, as it surely is close, and I would want the unit stats to remain stable for a while for the advice to be applicable for the longest period of time (so I won't have to rewrite it again!). Even after 1.4 is released however, do not expect me to begin work on it. The project really demands that a person want to sit down and go through every possibility with exacting precision. I may not have that desire for quite some time, and have no ability to predict when I will. Also, I will still have law school demands for the next 2.5 years, on and off, so that may also prevent me from working on the guide. Oh, plus there's the EoM.