Community Spotlight
August 8th, 2013 by Possidon

Hockeysam18

The rain was pouring down in the hot summer night. Finally, the man thought. It had not rained in days. Little did he know that multiple shadowy figures were in fact hiding behind this curtain of water. It would not take long for him to find out..

Stopping at a junction, he was suddenly pushed to the ground. You Sam?, a dark raspy voice asked. In Philadelphia born and raised?, another voice asked with a British accent. The man could not utter a word.
Get up, you’re coming downtown.

Welcome to the Community Spotlight, our chance at interrogating one of our beloved forumers (and getting away with it!). This is the part where we (Popeychops, Possidon and Dead_End) grab an unsuspecting person from the streets of AoKH and interview him until he reveals every single dark detail. Tonight’s victim is none other than HockeySam18!

Bold text: Interviewer (Possidon): Regular text: Victim (Hockeysam18).

Tell us a bit about yourself. Looking at your profile I’m guessing your name is Sam and you’re from Philadelphia?

Yep- you got that right! My name is Sam Levin and I hail from the city of Philadelphia (the suburbs, to be exact). I am currently a senior in highschool, and as my forum name suggests, I am an avid ice hockey player and fan. Flyers ftw! To be honest, though, all hockey teams are fun to watch and the atmosphere inside the arena rivals that of any other. I love history and reading historical fiction and nonfiction, no doubt due to my positive experience with Age of Empires, and I am looking to pursue a college major in medieval history.

So how did you find the masterpiece that we all love called Age of Empires?

My dad had played AoE1 during the mid-90’s, and in 1999, when Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings came out, we went over to Best Buy and bought it. We loved it and blitzed through the campaigns at an unbelievable pace, enjoying RM play as well but unfortunately no MP—our internet connection wasn’t good enough. When the Conquerors Expansion came out in 2000, we bought that immediately as well.

How did you find our loving community at AoKH?

Fast forward to 2009, by which time I had also played AoM and AoE3. Whenever I played AoC, I would play the ES campaigns or I would dabble in the editor, creating scenarios about Robin Hood, Siegfried, and the Vikings. I had no knowledge of triggers, and thus my scenarios were all B&D. Ironic, seeing as my favorite scenarios now are FF or RPG. A Google search of “Age of Empires II triggers” led me to zyxzomma100’s online guide to triggers, which suggested I try out some custom scenarios at a website called Age of Kings Heaven. I lurked the forums and played most of the high-rated custom content, which helped me improve as a designer, and joined AOKH in late 2011 (after a brief hiatus during which I helped the Civ4 community develop RFC:Europe through playtesting) to enter the Halloween Horror Contest of 2011. My entry (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) was average at best, scoring a 3.0 originally and then a 3.6 after I updated months later. However, Panel gave me some really nice feedback and a detailed review that identified my weaknesses and strengths as a designer quite well, and I owe a lot of my growth as a designer to him (as well as the inspiration to improve and keep designing).

Your forum signature advertises the teaser for your project Lepanto – 1571 AD. It became a sort of sleeper hit getting great reviews for an unknown designer. Tell us about Lepanto and the background behind it.

Sure! So in early 2012, Jatayu announced the Ensemble Studios Scenario Remake Contest (ESRC12). Everybody signed up and it was quite a popular contest. I had actually just done a detailed research project in school on the battle of Lepanto- its causes and effects, so I decided to give it a go and enter, with the idea of making a scenario that covered that time in history. I usually do detailed research for my projects, and I decided to make a real-world map for this one, stretching from Savoy to the Dalmatian coast and western Greece, and from Venice and Fiume to Malta. Cyprus is also included on the map in the east, since its capture by the Turks was a strong factor leading up to the battle. Essentially, the scenario covers key events leading up to the battle- the conquest of Cyprus by the Turks, the successful defense of Malta by the Knights of St. John (Hospitallers), and a conference called by the Pope himself to rally the Mediterranean Christian powers of Southern Europe in a crusade of sorts against the Ottoman Empire. After the meeting, you can choose from 3 storylines to play- each covering a different couple of Christian leaders on their quest to rally troops and muster ships for the impending battle. The final scene (as you all may guess) is the actual battle of Lepanto, which I will do my best to keep varied and interesting for all players (i.e. not just droves of ships shooting at each other, which would likely cause brutal lag anyway)!

Do you have any plans for a project after you release Lepanto?

Well in the teaser (the first part of Lepanto), you play mostly as a Hospitaller knight who is first sent as an emissary of the Order to the Pope’s conference, and afterwards is sent by the Pope to recruit soldiers from central and northern Europe to fight the Turks in Hungary. However, Lepanto leaves him after he has crossed the edge of the map, heading towards Milan, and proceeds to give you your character choice for the rest of the scenario. So I would like to do a spin-off scenario that wraps up the tale of the knight and covers his adventures, culminating in a battle against the Turks in Hungary.

However, I have laid Lepanto and its spin-off on hiatus for many months now. I still design a little of it every once in a while, but I have become preoccupied with RL. In addition, many of the new mods cropping up from the community have piqued my interest. For me, they all will play a hand in the continuity of the AoK community, and so I hope to lend my designing skills to help them as best I can. When Age of Forgotten Empires came around looking for new designers for their campaigns, I joined up and have been quite busy with them. I can’t give any hints about the campaigns yet, but suffice it to say that you will not be disappointed! In addition, I feel that my designing skills have further improved over the months, and so I hope to use them in making Lepanto even better! In addition, when the great mod ToME reaches a more-or-less final build, I hope to help Matt and Pulkit out there by designing a few LoTR scenarios.

Also, I’ve noticed some of the masterpieces over at AgeArena (the German AoK community) and so I’ve gotten in touch with some of the designers there, culminating in my translation of Great Emperor’s scenario The Last Bastion. I’ve also translated the first two scenarios of aMa (Andreas Marscheider)’s remake of Geachtet (Outlawed), and once he finishes it up, then I’ll be able to upload the entire translated campaign here at AoKH!

In the far future, I plan to either make some more historical scenarios, or embark on design of a “fantasy-style” project. I haven’t finalized anything yet, but I’ve had a few ideas pop into my head and I’ve written some down. We’ll see how my free time pans out over the next few years.

Now for some quick fire questions:

Tea or Coffee

Tea. Earl Grey, to be specific.

Sahara or Arctic

Arctic. I can only imagine playing some pond hockey on those massive ice floes!

Favourite Colour?

Orange.

Favourite Football (Soccer) team?

My buds would probably get mad when I don’t say Philly Union, but I’d probably have to go with Bayern München. The style of football they play is quite fun and exciting to watch.

Rounding up is there any film, book, band or scenario you would like to recommend to the readers?

Film: Lord of the Rings Trilogy + The Hobbit (definitely going to see the next one in theaters this December!
Book: Too many to choose from. I’ve already mentioned LoTR so I’ll go with ASoIaF (Game of Thrones series).
Music: I like a lot of techno, so I’d probably go with Steve Aoki or maybe Armin van Buuren.
Scenario: Battle on the Lechfeld by Andreas Marscheider (aMa). An oldie but a goodie, and one of the best all around scenarios the AoKH Blacksmith has to offer!

— We would like to thank Hockeysam18 for this interview. You can rest assured that he’ll be doing forced labor on his design projects for the next ten years.