(Feel free to jump directly to the "-Intoruction over-"part if you're not in the mood for a little bit of useless reading. (But be warned that you're most likely not going to avoid that anyway))
Time. What a strange thing it is. We usually perceive it as passing of the present moment, which is constantly changing future into past. And what is this present moment? It's now, now and now. And it's history again. There is really no such thing because everytime you think that something is happening, it has already happened. Every moment is a recorded in history and all your experiences, accomplishments, mistakes, hopes and dreams that make you who you are. To really know someone you need to
know at least something about his/her history, and to really know a kuski, you need to know at least something of his elma history. That's what this thread is about.
One way to react to time is to deny it's passing. This is what I've been doing for months now. I've delayed and delayed the making of this thread and never got myself to sit down and do it until now. Ok, I'm not actually doing the thread right now, I'm just typing stuff in notepad, you know, I'm not going to write a ridicilously long post in that little text field in mopolauta and then watch it all disappear when the session times out. I Don't think so.
I guess now would be time to get into the real thing, so without further ado let's get to the practical things of the thread. Oh yeah, almost forgot that I have to let those lazy readers know that the boring introduction part is over now.
-Introduction over-
Why make this thread?
Now many people will ask some of/all of the following questions: a) Why do we need this thread when ppl have their histories written in kuski gallery? b) Why would I want to read boring biographies written by stupid n00bs? c) Why should i write here when ppl can read my history in my KOM interwiev? d) Other.
a) Well, you're right, my imaginary critic, we don't really need this thread. We could just browse kuski gallery and try to find kuski histories there. If we were lucky, we might even find some. But unfortunately most kuskis don't have storys in kuski gallery. Actually I just checked randomly about 30 nicks and maybe 10 of them had any kind of story written. Ok, kuski gallery is good when you're searching for info on some certain kuski. But it's hardly great for finding out their histories. I'm thinking this thread would be kind of like a concentrated place for only those stories, where people could get to know other kuskis better and learn more about them. Or maybe just browse the thread and stop whenever they see an
interesting nick whose story they'd like to read. Something like that.
b) Why would you wan't to read boring biographies written by stupid n00bs? Well you don't have to if you don't want to. And besides, n00bs won't be n00bs forever. Think of the nostalgy if you could read the story Karlis wrote about his elma history years ago. Of course unknown and strange kuskis will write here too and that's a part of the idea. After you read their storys, they probably aren't so strange anymore. In any case, I'm still hoping that some veteran players will make the effort and write something here too. They are such crowd-pullers.
c) Wowow, you won KOM?? That doesn't mean we read your interwiev. But most likely we did so there's no point in you writing it again here (OR COPY+PASTE). Please don't give us the url either or worse yet, let us know that you've won KOM and your interwiev is on on the net and we could find if we just weren't so damn n00bish.
d) Please use your own imagination to answer the rest of the questions your brains have provided you with.
What to write in this thread?
In this thread people are supposed to write "little" summaries of their elma histories. "Little" is in inverted commas because I'm quite sure that we're going to have plenty of these fascinating "I started playing in 2004 and i have ok tt now. My brother's name is oxy and his favourite level is spiral. Bye." posts anyway so there's really no need to encourage people to write them. Also, those 1MB autobiographys aren't that suitable either, so I can't leave that "little" out completely. The ideal length is long enough. That means that you don't leave too much stuff out nor spend entire chapters on how you missed an apple in Circuitous three and a half years ago. Also try to avoid wondering off too far from the main subject, for example telling the names of the cats of the friend of yours who first introduced you to the game. But of course, no one is perfect.
Naturally some people have had much longer elma careers than others, but don't let that bother you. If you started playing yesterday, you can write your career in much larger detail. Ok, enough preaching. Probably the most "eager" people didn't read beyond the second sentence in my post anyway.
In the last (but definitely not the least) part I'm going to give you an example on how to write a proper story about your elma history by writing a one about my own (hopefully not a warning example). Before I get to that though, I'm going to sleep a few hours and spend ten refreshing hours at school. Ok done. Funny how that seemed shorter to you.
Now comes a story of my elma history. It will begin with the words "The year".
My story (Rated R for strong sexual content, nudity and language.)
The year was 1997 and I was cycling back from school with my friend. I was at 8th grade and I believe it was sometime during the fall. We were playing quite often at my friends place and had gotten quite far in Lemmings 2. At some point during that day he showed me some games that he had received with the latest issue of some computer magazine. Among these games there was this odd motorcycle game where there was only one way to go and suspension made of rubber. The game was quite hard and we quickly moved on to other games. That was my first encounter with Across.
Later, in the spring of 1998 I was visiting the same friend again and this time he was very exited about some game. The game looked familiar to me and when I told him that, he said he got an earlier version of that game with a computer magazine, then I remembered it too. He explained to me that the game was actually really good and that he had found a way to turn and go to the other direction too. This marvellous discovery had enabled him to find out what the game was really about. As he explained
to me about apples and flowers, I was more interested in the little cutie that was rubbing herself against my leg. My friend's family had just got their third cat, Iris, while they already had two, Caesar and Mussi. As I directed my attention once again to my friend, I noticed that he was playing a level that had a spiky start, flying shredders and very complex tunnels (expert system). I thought I'd never learn to navigate in such a maze but he comforted me by saying that he is actually quite far in
the game and there are much easier levels that have to completed first. He was also very eager to get me playing the game. I politely said I'd try it some other time.
Few weeks after that he gave it to me and said that I would have to try it. So I did. For a while I was stuck in Uphill Battle but eventually finished that one too. I had had some trouble inventing a nick but eventually I had got it. It was loosely based on my real name, Jari, but was much better. And because capitalizing every other letter is so cool, my new Across nick was JaRi. Then some weeks after I had gotten the game, I was all the way in Labyrinth Pro and I asked my friend how he was doing. He said
something like: "Oh, that game. I finished it long ago and now I'm playing Worms 2." After some talking it became obvious that he had no intention of playing it now that he had finished it. He wanted to move on. And I had to find some other playing partner. I offered the game to another friend of mine and advertised it with great enthusiasm. He accepted the game and it didn't take long before he was playing it almost as much as I was. I had clearly found an ideal playmate. Hehe.
I think I was struggling in Enigma II when that friend of mine told me that he had 16.xx in Warm Up (I can't remember the exact time anymore). My first reaction was: "Fine, obviously I could get better if I played it few more times." I had never really thought that the game could be played like that, improving your own times and comparing it to those of others. So I started to play Warm Up and soon discovered that I couldn't get under 17 s. It was just impossible for me. No matter what I did, the
clock just refused to show a time starting with 16. I was really annoyed but realised that I was beaten and more than anything, wanted to know how. I admitted defeat and asked if he could show me how he did it. It turned out he climbed few centimeters up the right wall after getting the apple. I hadn't thought of this because I only tried to turn back at the apple as fast as possible. For the first time I had seen an example of a different, faster style.
So the war had begun. We were quite equal in skills and both had best times in roughly half of the levs. We traded recs and styles of our best runs (of course only after the other one had got better time). There were some accomplishments that were more important than others though. One of those was who would finish Apple Harvest the first, aswell as, most importantly, who had the best time in Warm Up. The one who had Warm Up, was the master. Our Across frenzy also included some poor and poorer levmaking. The main problem in that was that we couldn't really understand jack shit about the editor. Pardon my language there but we
really were like a pair of monkeys scratching their heads in front of a Boeing 747 user's manual. Btw, if you were reading this story because of that R-rating, I must confess that it's really not too accurate. There actually isn't much sexuality in this story. But you might see a nipple down there somewhere if you just keep on reading.
At some point during 1998 there was a breakthrough. I finished Apple Harvest. (With the time 6:18,47) This allowed me to brag to my friend about my superior skills, but it also allowed me access to the Internet-link written in the next level. (You go straight to hell if you skip levels) The only problem was that neither one of us had Internet-connection. Luckily this was solved soon when my father brought home his laptop and mobile phone. By connecting one to the other, we were soon surfing in the net with an impressive 14,4kb/s speed. By following the link, we found more levels as promised, but we also found the WR Table. As we were drinking Cola and watching TV while waiting the computer to load the page, we discussed about those world records. We agreed that although we might not have world records in all the levels, we still would have more than half of them. Needles to say, when the page was finally done loading, we couldn't believe our eyes. And even more needles to say we weren't even close to being able to say that we were kind of close to the WR in some level.
The WR Table had some strange names and crazy times but we were most interested in the fact that some wr times were links to the corresponding recs. At the moment we were watching the first one, we realised that we really didn't know how to play the game. Those recs were on one hand depressing, but on the other hand very useful in our little two-man battle. We didn't count total times but I'm sure they came rumbling down at that time. We copied wr recs as well as we could and came up with clever compromises when we couldn't. We also made some really bad levs and despite the official requests: "Please only send your BEST levs" we sent nearly all of them to the official level packs. For example, I made such immortal classics as NEEDLES, NICE, OHO, KITTEN, PACMAN, CAVE, SPIRAL2, VERYTHING, MIRRORS, NIPPLE, BIGRAMP, BIGJUMP, MAZE, SMAZE and PUZZLE (the last two levs were intended to be so long and hard that no one would ever finish them).
Unfortunately our Internet-acces was severely limited since my father would only bring his laptop home once or twice a month. At school we didn't have even that much inet time. This caused two unfortunate things. We really didn't get into the scene at all. We didn't even know that there was one. We just followed the WR Table and collected recs like George W. Bush collects oil countries. Another thing was that we missed three world cups. But we kept following the WR Table when we could and I remember how devastated I was when my great hero Champi0N started losing WRs to a strange, menacing guy called psym0rph. Stop taking them! In our battle for best times, I was starting to get the upper hand. We were both focusing quite much on Warm Up and eventually I was the winner. My 15,22 was unbeatable. It was only 0,25 seconds slower than the WR and it's still my best time in Across.
As time went by, we eventually lost a big part of our interest in the game. I can't really explain why. Maybe it was because we had so much other stuff to do so we didn't have that much time for playing anymore. Most likely though it was because we weren't involved with the scene, we were only playing against each other and we had pretty much achieved the level of playing we could. We were only battling in internals because, well, you know, they're much more official.
We weren't really playing at all anymore when my friend suddenly told me that there was a new and completely different version of Across published. He had inet-connection now too and it didn't take long before he got the game from somewhere and gave it to me. It was called Elasto Mania and it would be a very big part of my life in the future. When I tried the new game, my first reaction was amazement which then changed to bitter disappointment. The times in Across and Elma weren't comparable. I had played Across so long, and for nothing? In Across I was never able to jump over the pole in Steppes or jump over both killers in Over And Under, but both were relatively easy to do in Elma. Even for me. I had no interest in playing Across anymore and I was seriously considering stopping Elma too. But I kept on playing, mainly because it's so damn smooth compared to Across. I was still a bit sad for losing the times I made in Across but at the same time it was nice to be able to make all those styles and tricks which I couldn't do in Across. And to be playing a game that was almost the same, but still different. And the smoothness, better looks and the feel of it. I changed my nick to cyre and just kept on playing.
My friend had also started to play Elma and we were fighting again for the best times. We also enjoyed the multiplayer feature. We played long flag tags and almost even made a multi WR in Serpent's Tale. The new levels were quite fun to drive but they got boring quite fast. Sink was the only one we played more. I took the best time in that with 34,16. We also discovered the stats file and the next goal was to be first under 1h. I won that too. At some point I noticed that the site that used to have that
"under construction" thing and % completed scale was now online. It was vast in content and had a very pleasing appearance. The beautiful green butterfly had emerged from it's cocoon.
The moposite (yes, that green butterfly was moposite. If you didn't figure that out by yourself, you can gratulate yourself because I really thought you wouldn't have the mental endurance to read this far. I was wrong) became my number one source for elma related material and as I had recently got a more permanent inet connection, I spent more time on the net and started to become more interested about the other people involved with elma. I would've probably entered the scene actively at that point if it weren't for one unfortunate thing...
My army service started in the summer of 2001. I spent 9 months there and can't really think of anything elma-related from that time. And since this story is showing signs of becoming quite long, I'll just jump over the whole army service and continue my story from the time when I was released. Yey! Bring out the champagne...
So we're in spring of 2002 now. I'm back home and taking a well deserved vacation. With no school, no work and no army it's not hard to guess what I start to do. I get together with an old friend called Elma. And although that friend is old and called Elma, it's not an elderly woman, eventhough I do have a relative who meets those criteria. I started to play again and follow the scene more actively. The friend of mine had just started his army service now so I couldn't play with him anymore either. so I started to read mopolauta. The WR table had changed quite a bit too. There were some amazing improvements in most levs and also new kuskis that seemed really strange to me. The First one that comes to mind now is dz. Along with pajen he seemed to be very popular and famous at the time. Of course he had many wrs but I guess the biggest reason was that he had jus gotten under 40 mins in total time. At that time I also finished the best lev I had made, called Elma trial for Xperts. I sent it and some other levs, like The alley of Death and The Stepppes, to the new EMpacks (Sorry if I made mistakes with the timeline here, I'm not exactly sure when I sent them). Most of them weren't that good but some even got to the top25 lists on moposite. I was so proud of that trial lev and I needed some kind of feedback, recs, or anything to prove that other people had played it, so I posted in lauta and did some absolutely disgusting selfpromotion by pretending to have troubles finishing the lev and needing the rec to help me out. It's so humiliating to read that post that I don't even want to paste it here, which was my original intention. If
you are interested enough, go ahead and read it from the source. But I hope you don't. Well anyway. That was my first post in lauta.
During that spring of 2002, I played very much. There were new amazing styles invented (and published nicely on moposite) to all levs while I was in the army. One of the easiest to remember is the new supervolt style in Warm Up. Of course I knew of supervolts, I just never thought of using it in Warm Up like that. I managed to improve my total over 15 minutes in just few months. The last clear milestone was getting under 50 mins in total time. At first it seemed impossible but lev by lev, style by style, I got closer. Then finally I did it. I think I got under 50 mins about two months after dz got under 40.
The first of august 2002 I finally registered in lauta. And I know exactly why I did it. I had just got throught the Headbanger pipe and I wanted to share my joy with someone. Of course no one congratulated me or anything like that but that wasn't too big an issue for me. It still felt good to make contact with other elma players. From that moment on, I made several idiotic posts, including the whole "Elma Survivor" fiasco, which was surprisingly quite popular. At that time I was using a different nick in
mopolauta. I was known as Gunos. Don't ask me why. Later on antz said it best when he congratulated me about changing my lauta nick to cyre (or actually Abula was the one who changed it) because as he pointed out Gunos was very similar to guano. Bat shit. Obviously Gunos was a poor choice in the first place.
August of 2002 was quite a big month to me elma and elma scene-wice, because it wasn't long after my first post in lauta that I joined #across IRC channel for the first time. IRC would later play a big part in my life too. Ironically I was introduced to IRC by the same guy who originally introduced me to Across. I don't know whether to kiss that guy or to hit him with a shovel. Actually, tell you the truth, I only realised that connection few minutes ago. It's quite spooky really. I wonder if that guy still exists, or maybe he was just some demon of some kind sent here to capture souls by any means possible. Anyway, my first words on #across were, surprise surprise, totally idiotic. They went something like this: "Onks täältä kukaan käyny upinniemessä inttiä?". So I asked in finnish if anyone had served their armytime in Upinniemi, the place where I was. I didn't realise that the majority of the people on #across weren't even in highschool yet.
The first thoughts I had about #across was the massive number of celebrities there. People like psy, Karlis, dz, BarTeK, Abula, PeXi, Jokke and many others had only existed to me as some kind of marble statues on high pedestal. Something similar to meeting David Hasselhoff, your childhood hero. Later on I learned that #across was more like madame Tusseau's vax cabinet. Where there's many fine statues of famous celebrities, but they just idle and never talk to you.
Things started to heat up when Wcup4 started in October 2002. I was in fairly good position to not gain any points whatsoever but I surprised even myself by actually getting few. I've only participated in one, but I think Wcups are like the olympics of elma/across. The undisputed kings of all contests. And that's exactly how it seemed when wcup4 started. There was a huge fuss about it everywhere. Polls and normal threads were created on lauta like bad analogies (or good in this case) are created in
cyre's head. (figure that one out). In #across there was little else that people talked about. It was clearly a mass event comparable to the muslims' pilgrimage to Mecca. And all the best were there. Karlis, psy, zyntifox, dz, MP, Jokke, TorInge, you name it. The cup had a real atmosphere of it's own, which even I could sense, although I didn't play any part in the top10 positions in any event. I still could enjoy all the nice drama, excitement and tragedy the cup had to offer. There really is no
comparison to it in the elma world. You have to experience it to understand it. Of course, it was also hugely demanding. You would have to spend (I won't say waste) almost half a year of your life to intensive höyling, which is very hard to do when you are fighting alone, without a team and your skills aren't worth mentioning. Wcup4 was by far the biggest elma experience I've had and it was a real joy to be part of it. Even though I was only 57th. At least I beat Rasu.
The year 2003 came along and after Wcup4 there was emptiness. What do i do now? How will I spend my spare time when i'm not in school, eating or sleeping? It was hard at first but eventually I got used to it. And even enjoyed it. In the beginning of 2003 there was again a new change. I was invited to a newly formed IRC channel #elma.fi. Compared to most other elma-related channel, it's quite non-elma related. And unlike all other elma-related channels, it has a very low percentage of troublemakers and all kinds of juvenile idiocy. This is accomplished by maintaining a some sort of "quality" by keeping it a rather closed channel
for the selected few. In that perspect, the name is a bit misleading. Anyway, I soon found myself being more and more active there, and getting to know these people who I had never even met. Also, it's much easier to be open and to bond, at least sort of, with people in closed environment than in a big public forum where there's always more strangers than there are familiar people. I'll never forget the conversation I had with psy some time ago after I'd started hanging around on the channel. We had a long conversation about going to liposuction and then making soap from the fat and selling it in classy cosmetic boutiques,
or at least at their doorstep. It was so cool that all time pro veteran elma-legend psy would talk trash with some strange noob he'd never even heard of. At that time I also started to become more active on #battle, since there was no longer Wcup going on and I had time to play battles as well. It wasn't until early summer when I started playing internals again.
My skills had increased immensely thanks to Wcup4 and when there were also some neat new styles to exploit, I had no trouble lowering my total down to 47 mins. But I wanted more. Once more, and probably for the last time, I set myself a goal in the form of total time. I would get under 47 mins. At first it seemed quite easy but as I wen't through the styles and levs it became apparent that there wasn't much loose seconds left after 47:30. So I had no choise but to do one of the more impossible
styles. I choosed Enigma. After plenty of playing, practice levs and fatherly advice from Karlis and others, I finally did it. And don't even think I did the 19s style. I did the 29s style and I'm quite happy with that. After that I was so close to 47 that I only needed to take some seconds off here and there. And so my final goal was reached. My total was under 47 minutes. I could leave internals once and for all.
My skills as a lev maker had also increased. Not only from the times when I was the monkey and the editor was the 747 manual, but also from the time before I started being more active on #battle. I had made lots and lots of crappy battle levs and at some point I decided that I would make no more of those. From now on I would make an effort with every lev I make. This would also be my eventual downfall as a levmaker. Because I put so much effort into the levs, was very very critical of my own work
that it would take me hours to even get a small battle lev done, let alone a big cup lev. It felt as if every lev I made was consuming me somehow. Although I got plenty of positive feedback about my levs, I also realised that this wasn't my cup of tea. Being too much a perfectionist and too little a creative artist makes a very slow and burned-out levmaker.
The year 2004 was rather quiet on the elma front. Or at least on my elma front. There was no Wcup that year so there was plenty of smaller cups, with different quality levs and hosting. I've heard that many people don't play small cups simply because they don't feel that they can trust the cup host. I, however, participated in many different cups in 2004 and got, by my standards, some "semi success". In the summer I dug a damn big hole in my parents backyard. I'm sorry, that's completely off the topic, but it really was a big hole. Also, DarMoed got caught cheating (which is why I haven't mentioned him anywhere in my story, as far as I remember, which is about as far as I can throw a piano), which wasn't a big surprise for some but I must say it was to me. I moved to my own place in 2004 and elma moved with me. I got an operator status on #across and started studying in a new school.
So now we are catching the present. As I'm writing this, it's 10th of february 2005. I haven't thouched internals this year and I don't think I'm going to. Not without a good reason at least. I'm still very much active in the scene, although my school demands quite much time these days. Don't think you can get rid of me that easily. Writing this story has taken me three days (ok not days since I mostly write in the evenings) and I feel refreshed. Yes, refreshed. It's been interesting, sad, funny and nostalgic at times but I think it's been worth it. Even if no one reads this story, I've still gained something from writing it. Going through old logs, posts and comments, I've understood how much I've changed as a person during these years and how much of that is due to the people in the scene. Although this is going to sound like some bad Oscar speech, or a going away speech of some kind, which it isn't, I still have to say thank you. Thank you to each and every one of you. It's been great.
cyre
10.2.2005
