Welcome to a new feature for AoKH,
For the uninformed few who may not know that name, Ingo van Thiel is the savant designer behind such cherished campaigns as The Quest and The Kings Best Men, as well as Ulio, largely regarded as the finest campaign ever made in the Age of Kings editor. His campaigns have often been held up as examples of creativity, ingenuity, and excellent storytelling. His work has served as a constant and sometimes daunting reminder of just how much is possible in so simple an editor.
I chatted with Ingo over the course of a week through email. Upon finding out his excellent memory included recollections of a very newbish matty12345 (yours truly), we exchanged pleasantries and got down to the business of answering interview questions! Questions follow in bold, Ingo's answers in plain text. I have added some notes after the fact in italics. While I have copied Ingo van Thiel's answers word for word, the order of the questions has been made more linear and logical than the back and forth email affords.
Enjoy.
A mix of both. I feel nostalgia and wouldn't want to miss my time at AoKH, but without the urge to go back to designing again. It was different for me back in the day, when I just couldn't keep my hands off the editor. For me, making scenarios was like creating interactive worlds for others to explore, and I was quite good at finding new things. That was quite a rush for me, and the positive feedback from people kept me coming back. Add the amazing community to the mix: I haven't followed AoK much in the past years or so, but at the time, many designers kept inspiring each other. One came with an idea and others then built on it. It got even better when GeniEd and Trigger Studio - these programs opened a whole new world of designing, and opportunities for new tricks and visuals exploded. I loved these new tools and they inspired me a lot when I was working on When the Wheel Breaks. For a while, with GeniEd and Trigger Studio I felt like I was on a constant creative high: "whoopee, I found a new idea, and another, cool, I never had so many new ideas in such a short time, ooooh, and here is another"... Looking back, maybe I overdid it: It was a like when you really love chocolate but then you eat too much of it. At some point, the urge to design wasn't there anymore. My energy shifted back to my old favorite hobby, making music. Now I get that creative rush out of writing new songs and playing them to small crowds at Open Mic sessions.
So, how is AoK Heaven going now? Are designers still inspiring and bouncing ideas off each other?
Speaking of community, you achieved something of minor celebrity within the AoE2 community. What did that feel like?
It was a ride. Most of the time, it was a fun ride, and made me feel proud and good about my work. On the other hand, when you get a lot of attention, not all of that attention will be positive. And then you need a thick skin. Also, success and praise can quickly go to your head, and I was wary of that. Thankfully, as soon as I switched off my computer, I was back to my normal life and that also kept me grounded.
Haha, no. No one ever recognized me at the supermarket, and that was a good thing. I honestly don't know how real-life celebreties handle it, when they can't set a foot outside without being recognized.
Wow, then it looks like your celebrity status made it into real life! :-D
It was a great time, I recall countless of emails going back and forth with players and fellow designers, debating, testing, helping each other out. Sadly, all my online contacts from that time fell asleep. I guess that is how it goes when people just know each other online, and only share one hobby. It's different with my real-life friends, some of them I have known for decades. But who knows, your interview series might revive some of the old AoE community, too. I'm curious what became of them!
Quite a few people come to mind: Mark Stoker, Gordon Farrell, the Rasher, AnastasiaKafka, Berserker Jerker, Mashek, dave_earl, LordBasse...
And alas, I have had little luck tracking Ana down for this series.
Thanks, I appreciate it! In my view, the AoE rating system is a great guidance how to make a good scenario. I don't think one category should be weighed against the others. It's not creativity vs balance, or playability vs a nice map or story. They all count, and it's all of them combined that make a good scenario. If a designer neglects one or two of these aspects, the scenario will not be as good as it could be. What helped me: I was willing to playtest my own scenarios over and over again, until they worked fine and "felt right" for me. At that point, asking other people to playtest helped me a lot too. Other people will play your scenario differently, and find new bugs and balance issues that you didn't dream of.
In the original AoE, it was Tai Gun 2. In AoK, it's a tie between The King's Best Men and Ulio.
No. Considering it though. Does the steam version also have an editor, where you can fix Steam bugs? I recently saw someone on Youtube play a Steam version of Ulio. I loved it, but there were a couple of sound and playbility bugs that weren't there in the original campaign. Some bugs were hilarious, like cows running through a dramatic scene when the Ulio baby gets found...
I still play games. If I want to relax, I'll play AoE3 random maps and listen to some music while I do. If I want to be fully immersed in the game, I also have an Xbox360 and PS4. I like The Last of Us, Uncharted and the Splinter Cell series.
A beer or a wine. Depends on what the other person is drinking. I don't like the hard stuff though.
Music is my big hobby again now, as it was before Age of Empires. Cologne, my home town, has a very lively musicians' scene and I spend a lot of time at Open Mic sessions, or just jamming with our guitars out in the park during the summer. It's a different kind of magic, some of it reminds me of the old AoE community at its best. I have one album online on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon and a few other online services, which is called “Into the Haze” and was out around 2013. In the past four years, I have worked on a new double album called “Song Machine Vol. 1+2”. That one is a bigger project with 24 songs of mine. The first part of it should be online sometime in October. You'll find these albums typing my name.
My pleasure. Glad to see that the community is still going so strong!
[This message has been edited by Mr Wednesday (edited 08-20-2017 @ 02:28 AM).]