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To Hell and Back by Silevran Moonflower Interview by Jay Watamaniuk Go to (Previous - Introduction, Myranni's Magic, Walking with a Ghost, A Hero's Death, Firestarter, The Realm Below, A Moonless Night, Aspects, The Badger, the Cat and the Book, Grains of Truth, Find the Fish!, Ghosts of the Past, To Hell and Back) Where can I find your module, To Hell and Back?You can find it at NWVault. What is the most difficult part of the writing process for you?
As for the word limit, I found it restrictive. I originally planned for Ahmed the Hell Guard to offer to speak to the Jigen the Hell Judge on the player character's behalf during the appeal should the player agree to help him in return, but found that I had to remove that option completely to stay within the word limit, and thus limit Ahmed's character development. Too bad that word limit rule was changed into a guideline later on. Where did the inspiration for your module come from?To Hell And Back was inspired by Chinese and Japanese mythologies. The Chinese and Japanese interpretation of Hell is starkly different from the Western version that is commonly depicted in fantasy worlds. In those myths, both sinners and innocents are brought before a Hell Judge to be tried, and there is a magical mirror that reveals the person's sins. If the person is found innocent by the mirror, he/she will be sent to another part of Hell to be reincarnated. The guilty ones will be sentenced by the Judge to receive all sorts of gruesome punishments. I felt it would be interesting to transpose that into a Western setting as that was never done before (to my knowledge). As for the Hell denizens in the story, I was inspired by Joss Whedon's portrayal of such creatures, and wanted to give my characters personalities that aren't typically associated with demons. Subverting the demon stereotype helps give the characters more depth to their personalities. The comments I've received so far is that a number of voters liked Spike the Spirit Guide for being well-developed and his sense of humour, and some people sympathized with Ahmed's plight. As a final note, I'd like to thank Ahmed and Jigen (whom I named the characters after) for giving feedback while I was developing the mod, and to Imported_Beer and Brassfire for their support throughout this contest. I'd also like to thank those who played through my mod and gave feedback. I'll be making more games in the future, so stay tuned. I was wondering if there might be a larger picture behind submitting a story to a contest billed as BioWare looking for staff. Would you consider moving to Canada? Why?I learnt about this contest on 13 January, but I initially didn't consider participating as I had no experience with the Aurora Toolset. It was only later during the evening, after hearing the speakers from the Gaming Talk at NUS encourage people to create mods if they wanted to join the gaming industry, and after Ahmed, my classmate, asked if I wanted to join, that I was more open to the idea. At first we thought of forming a small group of two to three people and come up with an entry for the contest since there didn't appear to be any rules disallowing team efforts or requiring only certain countries were eligible, but I still searched the forums to check. True enough, the contest was indeed open to all countries, but Georg Zoeller, BioWare's designer, had indicated that they wanted solo efforts, not team efforts, so there went the team idea. For a while I mulled over whether to join, as I knew that I had little time to get things done and had university assignments to boot. Eventually I did join, because I do enjoy creating games and wanted to expand my portfolio, so this contest gave me the excuse to get started on the Aurora toolset. It was also a personal challenge, to see if I had what it takes to come up with something when the odds were against me, as I had only about four days to get it done by the time I was free to start on it. Despite this contest being billed as a chance to gain employment with BioWare, I had no intention of moving to Canada as I cannot leave my family in Singapore. I've personal obligations here. Perhaps if BioWare has an affiliate in Singapore, or if there's a freelance position that'll allow me to work from home, I might consider that, but working overseas is an option I cannot consider at this stage. Go to (Previous - Introduction, Myranni's Magic, Walking with a Ghost, A Hero's Death, Firestarter, The Realm Below, A Moonless Night, Aspects, The Badger, the Cat and the Book, Grains of Truth, Find the Fish!, Ghosts of the Past, To Hell and Back) Related Links |
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It's a toss up between actually getting started on the writing and confining the story to the 3500 word limit. When you know that you only have about four days to complete a mod using a toolset that you've never used before, it can be a rather daunting task, especially when you know you're up against people who either have the benefit of knowing about the contest when it was first announced, or those who have experience creating mods, or both. It took some effort for me to put my doubts aside to focus on getting it done, and sacrificing on sleep during those nights. I treated it as a test on how much I can achieve despite being handicapped from the start, and I'm proud that I succeeded in finishing it before the deadline. I also had the "benefit" of experiencing what crunch time mode was like.
