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Tom Mai: The Origins
Hi folks, I'm Tom. People here usually call me by my initials, TM, or Tom Mai.
This is a multi-part thread made for The Helper to complete the Site History section. Since the whole section is created and done by The Helper himself, I disliked having to break his pattern he has done with this thread and interrupting the flow. The admins is welcomed to move this thread around, or edit this thread completely.
This thread also has a personal purpose, for me: Practicing my writing skills in preparation for the GRE. So, I really do appreciate any sort of comments/feedbacks given. Your posts may not only help me learn and focus my writing skills, but also help me recall some of the misnomer facts I may have remembered, and correct my errors.
-------------------------------
The theme, origins, is what I chose to signify almost everything I can remember, starting from the past, and moving towards the present. The theme also implies everything from the way back.
It started off with me and my cousin going into a bookstore/cram school in the summer of 2004. We were looking for any hot games we can managed to buy in the Gaming section. I don't know why there's a Gaming section inside a bookstore/cram school for English, but it's there for a purpose.
While browsing through the section, my cousin caught eyes with an unfamiliar face on the front cover, the orcish Thralls. As I see it (or saw it), the green face stood out from a lot of other game covers, and it's very obvious if you're standing from a distance. He got curious, had a little discussion with me actually persuading him to go buy one, and actually did bought one. (How I persuade: Real-time strategy game can boost a person's IQ and reaction times. Fake, I know right?)
We both sped to my cousin's home, got in front of the computer, and started up the installation. At the time, the installation process usually took about a full hour to complete. We both were a bit hasty when it comes to installations, so we started playing our Nintendo 64 games until the installation finished.
We booted up the game, run through its tutorials, and played a network game match. And that's it; That's my cousin's entire gameplay. It's evident that he's not interested in strategy-related genre games, and more keen on action-packed games.
As I expected, he quickly lost all interests in the game. I went up to him, asked if he wishes to give the game to me, and got my gift under a day. There goes his 900NTD taken from his wallet. How sly of me!
I went back to my home, turned on my computer, install the game, and started messing with the game stuffs. I realized how bad I was in the first campaign level, and became aware of my free time, I had to resort to relying on cheat codes to advance through the game and learn the story throughout the campaign.
4 hours and a dinner later, the campaign mode is complete. Awestruck by its wonderful story, I opened up the game manual, and read from front to back the entire book. At the time, game manuals usually come with backstories to each main and supporting characters, and they were pretty thick. Reading them is like you're reading a children's book at the age of 10, it's that blissful.
As you can see, all of this happened within a day. Life sure is wonderful back then. The rest of the events happened sporadically, some even spanning a few weeks in between.
It is around a few days after I received this gift from my cousin, that I started to become curious with the game. While playing against PCs, I noticed that there's nothing else you can do while in single player mode. Jumping online, I created my account name. And this is where my alias was created; It's created from my email account. Some of the history can be seen here.
The fact that this name comes from the inspiration of a hotkey binding, all thanks to playing NES and PCE emulators. There was a game called Ikari Warriors, where you (and a second player, usually my little brother), control two guys holding a machine gun with limited bullets. Everyday, me and my brother play this game after school, trying to beat the game as much as possible. The game is so hard, the weird emulator's hotkey bindings have been implanted into our brains: The letters M (used for inserting credits), A (Red player's machine gun attack), and I (Blue player's grenade attack).
So, my account name becomes tom_mai78101. I am happy with how Blizzard actually allows you to use the underline dash as a legal character when it comes to naming nicknames. The first thing I did was go to Chat Channels, go to "Public Chat", and just hang out there for as long as possible.
Just like in the wiki, the most memorable event is meeting with Paul Branson. There are other wonderful events, such as witnessing a live virtual sex chat on Battle.net while I was eating an apple, joining in on a heated debate about some guy using a air compressor on the walls, and actually had to pay a fine of 300 bucks, playing word plays with other players who are waiting for a session, etc. Those are wonderful times.
Eventually, while chatting, someone started to ask about the game's WorldEdit features. Delving deeper and asking more questions, my curiosity piqued. Suddenly, I was ALT+TABBING here and there, understanding more and more about the game's editor, but I was still a novice when it comes to GUI triggering.
This is where I started Googling for help, and ended up on The Helper Forums. As I was lurking around, I noticed that this place seems to have a lot of activity and so many questions were answered in a day, that I had to browse to the 4th or 5th page in order to follow up on the questions that were asked.
From that point on (been lurking for quite some time), I had no choice but to sign up and ask for help. This was when I encountered a specific problem on the forums that I couldn't even understand how to do. This was when I used my first alias, tom_mai78101, and asked how to post. The tom_mai78102 incident will be mentioned later in the series, I promise.
After that, I started to learn more about scripting, and learned how to create a simple cinematic. I named my creation, "Problem of the Day". This is also the first time I triple-posted and was shunned from continuing, since I really don't know how to post a proper thread at the time.
Not giving up, I pressed on with my testing. That was my first time trying out how to make a public demo for others to try, so I was really learning. I also ended up not knowing what it means to "UPLOAD YOUR MAP!". Man, what a day.
Looking around the site, trying to understand how to upload a map, I saw a "Before you post" stickied thread made by one of the moderators at the time. Read it, understand it semi-fully, and asked how to upload an avatar (which is the account picture).
(Speaking of which, someone did ask why my avatar is a cute version of Megaman? This picture is inspired by Megaman Zero series of the GBA franchise, which I adore the game plots. The picture is a cropped image of the Megaman Powered-Up PSP game cover, cropped from a high resolution image, and scaled down to 100x100 square pixel image, then uploaded to this site. Thinking back, that image alone took me 2 hours of editing. The main reason I don't want to change the avatar is because of that editing time. I do not want to redo another avatar that took up so much time.
Someone else may ask what other avatars have I used: Just this.)
Looking back, I thought that by mimicking the way people post in forums, such as using incorrect punctuations and unforgivingly-wrong grammar, I might be able to "blend" in. I decided to try "blending" in by participating in a joke thread. I tried a counter-argument...
Well, since that failed. why don't I try out something that I'm good at: Making lists! This is where I earned my nickname, "tommai", "tomma", etc. From that point on, I stopped mimicking people, and revert my habits to default. I started typing in capital letters, correct punctuations, etc.
The next day, I tried playing with scripts again. Again, hit a wall, ask and ask again. This is when I started to understand that the Warcraft III: RoC editor is limited, and that the expansion pack gives more features and functionalities in the editor. I was not learning correctly about my scripting.
As I fumble myself around, I started to ask forum questions. It is around this time, that I became more proactive in both the Bugs and Forums Questions and General Discussions sections than the WE Help Zone section, when I lost motivation due to limited WorldEdit features. Some of the threads/posts can be found here. Some of them actually increased discussions, such as this.
Next series: The creation of my once-successful Footmen Wars tutorials, and advanced Hero Line Wars in-depth strategy guide, given to Gamefaq.
Hi folks, I'm Tom. People here usually call me by my initials, TM, or Tom Mai.
This is a multi-part thread made for The Helper to complete the Site History section. Since the whole section is created and done by The Helper himself, I disliked having to break his pattern he has done with this thread and interrupting the flow. The admins is welcomed to move this thread around, or edit this thread completely.
This thread also has a personal purpose, for me: Practicing my writing skills in preparation for the GRE. So, I really do appreciate any sort of comments/feedbacks given. Your posts may not only help me learn and focus my writing skills, but also help me recall some of the misnomer facts I may have remembered, and correct my errors.
-------------------------------
The theme, origins, is what I chose to signify almost everything I can remember, starting from the past, and moving towards the present. The theme also implies everything from the way back.
It started off with me and my cousin going into a bookstore/cram school in the summer of 2004. We were looking for any hot games we can managed to buy in the Gaming section. I don't know why there's a Gaming section inside a bookstore/cram school for English, but it's there for a purpose.
While browsing through the section, my cousin caught eyes with an unfamiliar face on the front cover, the orcish Thralls. As I see it (or saw it), the green face stood out from a lot of other game covers, and it's very obvious if you're standing from a distance. He got curious, had a little discussion with me actually persuading him to go buy one, and actually did bought one. (How I persuade: Real-time strategy game can boost a person's IQ and reaction times. Fake, I know right?)
We both sped to my cousin's home, got in front of the computer, and started up the installation. At the time, the installation process usually took about a full hour to complete. We both were a bit hasty when it comes to installations, so we started playing our Nintendo 64 games until the installation finished.
We booted up the game, run through its tutorials, and played a network game match. And that's it; That's my cousin's entire gameplay. It's evident that he's not interested in strategy-related genre games, and more keen on action-packed games.
As I expected, he quickly lost all interests in the game. I went up to him, asked if he wishes to give the game to me, and got my gift under a day. There goes his 900NTD taken from his wallet. How sly of me!
I went back to my home, turned on my computer, install the game, and started messing with the game stuffs. I realized how bad I was in the first campaign level, and became aware of my free time, I had to resort to relying on cheat codes to advance through the game and learn the story throughout the campaign.
4 hours and a dinner later, the campaign mode is complete. Awestruck by its wonderful story, I opened up the game manual, and read from front to back the entire book. At the time, game manuals usually come with backstories to each main and supporting characters, and they were pretty thick. Reading them is like you're reading a children's book at the age of 10, it's that blissful.
As you can see, all of this happened within a day. Life sure is wonderful back then. The rest of the events happened sporadically, some even spanning a few weeks in between.
It is around a few days after I received this gift from my cousin, that I started to become curious with the game. While playing against PCs, I noticed that there's nothing else you can do while in single player mode. Jumping online, I created my account name. And this is where my alias was created; It's created from my email account. Some of the history can be seen here.
The fact that this name comes from the inspiration of a hotkey binding, all thanks to playing NES and PCE emulators. There was a game called Ikari Warriors, where you (and a second player, usually my little brother), control two guys holding a machine gun with limited bullets. Everyday, me and my brother play this game after school, trying to beat the game as much as possible. The game is so hard, the weird emulator's hotkey bindings have been implanted into our brains: The letters M (used for inserting credits), A (Red player's machine gun attack), and I (Blue player's grenade attack).
So, my account name becomes tom_mai78101. I am happy with how Blizzard actually allows you to use the underline dash as a legal character when it comes to naming nicknames. The first thing I did was go to Chat Channels, go to "Public Chat", and just hang out there for as long as possible.
Just like in the wiki, the most memorable event is meeting with Paul Branson. There are other wonderful events, such as witnessing a live virtual sex chat on Battle.net while I was eating an apple, joining in on a heated debate about some guy using a air compressor on the walls, and actually had to pay a fine of 300 bucks, playing word plays with other players who are waiting for a session, etc. Those are wonderful times.
Eventually, while chatting, someone started to ask about the game's WorldEdit features. Delving deeper and asking more questions, my curiosity piqued. Suddenly, I was ALT+TABBING here and there, understanding more and more about the game's editor, but I was still a novice when it comes to GUI triggering.
This is where I started Googling for help, and ended up on The Helper Forums. As I was lurking around, I noticed that this place seems to have a lot of activity and so many questions were answered in a day, that I had to browse to the 4th or 5th page in order to follow up on the questions that were asked.
From that point on (been lurking for quite some time), I had no choice but to sign up and ask for help. This was when I encountered a specific problem on the forums that I couldn't even understand how to do. This was when I used my first alias, tom_mai78101, and asked how to post. The tom_mai78102 incident will be mentioned later in the series, I promise.
After that, I started to learn more about scripting, and learned how to create a simple cinematic. I named my creation, "Problem of the Day". This is also the first time I triple-posted and was shunned from continuing, since I really don't know how to post a proper thread at the time.
Not giving up, I pressed on with my testing. That was my first time trying out how to make a public demo for others to try, so I was really learning. I also ended up not knowing what it means to "UPLOAD YOUR MAP!". Man, what a day.
Looking around the site, trying to understand how to upload a map, I saw a "Before you post" stickied thread made by one of the moderators at the time. Read it, understand it semi-fully, and asked how to upload an avatar (which is the account picture).
(Speaking of which, someone did ask why my avatar is a cute version of Megaman? This picture is inspired by Megaman Zero series of the GBA franchise, which I adore the game plots. The picture is a cropped image of the Megaman Powered-Up PSP game cover, cropped from a high resolution image, and scaled down to 100x100 square pixel image, then uploaded to this site. Thinking back, that image alone took me 2 hours of editing. The main reason I don't want to change the avatar is because of that editing time. I do not want to redo another avatar that took up so much time.
Someone else may ask what other avatars have I used: Just this.)
Looking back, I thought that by mimicking the way people post in forums, such as using incorrect punctuations and unforgivingly-wrong grammar, I might be able to "blend" in. I decided to try "blending" in by participating in a joke thread. I tried a counter-argument...
Well, since that failed. why don't I try out something that I'm good at: Making lists! This is where I earned my nickname, "tommai", "tomma", etc. From that point on, I stopped mimicking people, and revert my habits to default. I started typing in capital letters, correct punctuations, etc.
The next day, I tried playing with scripts again. Again, hit a wall, ask and ask again. This is when I started to understand that the Warcraft III: RoC editor is limited, and that the expansion pack gives more features and functionalities in the editor. I was not learning correctly about my scripting.
As I fumble myself around, I started to ask forum questions. It is around this time, that I became more proactive in both the Bugs and Forums Questions and General Discussions sections than the WE Help Zone section, when I lost motivation due to limited WorldEdit features. Some of the threads/posts can be found here. Some of them actually increased discussions, such as this.
Next series: The creation of my once-successful Footmen Wars tutorials, and advanced Hero Line Wars in-depth strategy guide, given to Gamefaq.
