| TM Interview Project - tween | 14 Nov, 2013 |
| wormi | (4 comments, 3544 views) |
This time we have a special interview with a double ESWC silver medalist, KarjeN's strongest opponent on C01 and hakkiJunior's second account, tween! You can find more infomation about the project here. -- This interview is an ESWC-special. The first 12 questions tween answered a couple of days before ESWC, and the others were asked after ESWC. Let's begin with the pre-ESWC questions! 1. Could you tell us something about yourself? Hey everyone, my name is Marek Pacher and I come from the very capital of Slovakia, Bratislava. I am 17 years and I'll be finishing high school this year (hopefully ^^). I love music (both listening to it and producing it - my dream is for you to hear my productions on the radio one day lol!) and movies - again both watching and shooting them. I'll make it to Hollywood one day lol! 2. How and when did you find Trackmania? Do you know how annoying 9-year-olds get? Well, that's exactly how annoying I was when I was 9. I constantly required some kind of attention. At times I forced my older brother to watch me play games or whatever, because otherwise I'd cry. Anyway, one day he really needed to study and was like: "Hey tween (don't worry, he was still using my real name back then!), here's a cool free game I found, wanna take it for a spin (...and leave me alone for a while?)?". I started playing through the campaign - this was February 2006 I think - and I was hooked. I started playing online, loved working my way up the ladder and eventually even made it to first place there (I was still 9 at that point). 3. When did you start eSports in Trackmania? I had long periods of inactivity before finding my way into eSports. I usually just played on fake accounts, trying to impress my classmates by winning on public servers. But then I had a breakthrough. After 3 years of playing the game, I realized that if you set up your keyboard properly, you could actually drift left.  A new world opened for me. Until then, I only looked at world records on technical maps with envy and tried to get as close to them as I could with my terrible technique. But now? It was like I was preparing for running carrying a sack of bricks and now I dropped it.
But then again I still felt too young to compete on a serious level, so I kept being the phantom of pub servers. The breaking point was when I decided to join Team Slovakia in the Nations Cup in 2010. That was when it got really funny - everybody thought I was the Slovakian whizkid, hakkiJunior, on a fake account. I remember that we saw a certain movie (The Social Network) on the same day independently and mentioned it online in a conversation. That brought all the Trackmania Sherlocks to the yard back then  However, I laughed demonically when we played our first match with hakki together. I felt real in Trackmania for the first time. Then we were both recruited to eSuba based on our performances and it was all uphill from there.
4. ESWC 2013 is getting closer, and we will see you in Paris. What are your goals there? The way I see it, whichever place is fine as long as I play my best game. As long as it's not second place. For the third time in a row. Some serious keyboard throwing would probably go down. But really, as bland as this answer is, I hope to make a good show! 5. Who are your strongest opponents in ESWC? Also, what is your prediction about the results? My humble expectations for the finals are: me, spam, Carl Jr and Tamarillo. Anyway, there is quite a few world champions attending, so my guess could be painfully wrong, The right answer was Carl Jr, TaLa, Koenz, Bergie 6. Slovakia and Czech Republic have active LAN community in Trackmania compared to many other countries. Why? I think it has lot to do with the launch of Trackmania Nations. I think we're fairly competitive nations (both against the rest of the world and among ourselves), so the idea of a nation-wide ladder appealed to people. It's installed on computers in schools and such, and the community is really big given the size of the nations. As a Trackmaniac, I am really lucky to be born here 
7. Is there really any small a difference between TMNF and TM2 Stadium physics? The only difference is that more people complain about TM2 But yeah, the car feels slightly heavier maybe, but I kinda like that. The only thing that saddens me about TM2, however, is that I expected more of it. I honestly believe that a game with gameplay this addictive has far more potential. But that's a whole different question. All in all, I think all the talks of more bugs occurring are pretty much excuses. I'd suggest enjoying the game for what it is.
8. Which are your favorite maps in Trackmania? ESWC 2013 - CoPilot (by LoCoBuDDha and Ksenun) - I know it might be a bit too soon, but it really flows incredibly well to me. It really is my idea of what a competitive map should be like - the ending even has this epic feeling that only a few maps have. Pro A-5 (Nations) - I played this map so much with my brother in Hot Seat The world record is now like 15 seconds ahead, but those were the times.
Billy Badluck (by Docteur_Kuku) - my first encounter with a Press Forward map. I was endlessly fascinated by it and it sparked a lot of love for the game. Freedome (by Acegikmo) - makes me feel like I am driving on a 2006 public server again
C01-Race (TMNF) - for me an absolute classic among Nadeo maps. It'll live forever. special: Maybe you guys could help me with this one  It's one of the first map I've played online. It was a map from the SupaCup (?) series and that's all I remember. If any of you guys could help me find that series of maps (haven't found any on TMX) I'd love you so much.
9. You're active Nadeo driver also, especially on longer and harder maps. Why do you hunt Nadeo maps? What's different about Nadeo maps is that they feel like a puzzle. A puzzle that's solved by many people over a long period of time. Whereas competitive tech maps can sometimes be just about perfecting a fairly obvious way of driving the map, there is a lot more space for creativity on Nadeo maps. Different minor bugs and cuts are found all the time (I love cutting very much). I find that intriguing, especially the way that some maps have transformed completely over those years, just because people now drive them with different, faster approaches. 10. You currently hold the WR on both TMNF E05 and TM2S E05, and both runs have a crash in the end of the last lap. Tell us about the heart attacks you got during them. In TMNF, it was fully unexpected. A complete brainfart happened 10 seconds before finishing a 54-minute long track and I could only hope to make the last jump. To be honest, I'll just let this amazing video by JaV speak for itself : D In TM2S however, I was really satisfied with the run and with like a minute left, I thought "so how am I going to screw this up in the last round?" and laughed. I really didn't see any way of crashing at the end horribly. The game had the last laugh though. I got launched into the air and was already reaching for delete when, all of a sudden by some crazy miracle, I was behind the finish line. And with a decent time to boot! I am still happy with it
11. Describe yourself with four words. you only live once (I'm sure I am the first one to come up with that) 12. Your top 3 websites, games, songs & movies. Websites: 1. TMX 2. esreality.com (a site with old-school community revolving around my second favourite game, Quake )
3. reddit.com Games: 1. Trackmania (hasn't lost its touch even after almost 8 years for me now) 2. Quake Live (it's a free and amazing shooter with long history and also is my favourite e-sport to watch) 3. Gothic 2 (nostalgia, also felt like including something singleplayer) Songs: 1. Daft Punk - Touch (a truly transformational song for me, but might be hard to tune into it on the first listen) 2. Madeon - Icarus 3. Justice - Planisphere (to add some grit) This was incredibly hard to pick. I could probably go on for hours here ;p And yeah, I'm truly a fan of the french sound. Movies: 1. Breaking Bad (yeah yeah, it's not a movie. Shut up and watch it.) 2. The Shawshank Redemption (a true classic for me) 3. Mega Piranha (you will explode watching this) Here are the questions asked after ESWC. 13. So, ESWC is gone and you become 6th. Tell us about your races there. Going into the tournament, I felt really confident. I even placed exceptionally well in Time Attack (4th), which surprised me, since I always mess up TA somehow. Unfortunately, this is what made me play my two teammates, kubayz and hakki, and acer's Tamarillo in the very first round. I was playing my best though - despite hakki's final pressure, I made it through along with Tamarillo. My next match was on a sidestage against CarlJr, Bergie and Koenz. This felt amazing - even though Carl Jr won, I placed 2nd and felt good about my performance. This was a wrap for day 1. The second day started by the unfortunate news that both my teammates were knocked out. I tried to take it as motivation and went into the Winner Bracket Final match. This is where I see the biggest flaw I've made - I underestimated this last step to get to the Grand Finals. My ego was high from the previous day, but my driving just didn't do it justice. CarlJr stomped us and TaLa also played well and made it through. The pressure was on me now. I was in the Lower Bracket Final and it was one of the tighest matches I've played to date. I remember the scores were 118, 118, 112, 112. The next round there were three finalists - me, Bergie and Koenz. However, I couldn't keep up with those two. Bergie made an amazing comeback and Koenz played his game well. I was out. 14. The winner was dominantly Carl Jr, followed by TaLa, Koenz and Bergie. Were the results surprising? Undoubtebly. CarlJr became the world champion very convincingly - almost too much. I feel like TaLa and Koenz could have threatened him more, but they were less experienced with the huge stage. I really liked TaLa's mindset overall - just smiling all the way through after the entire arena sang Happy Birthday to him
15. It was great indeed. How was the LAN overall? It was great. Compared to previous years, things happened more on time and they were also less anal about letting players in the area to practice. There were also more people from Trackmania that I wanted to meet than previous years, so I got my chance. I also encountered no problems whatsoever with computers or anything - which is a miracle. Despite my disappointing placement and not being able to go to the party (18+  ), I lived the gamer's dream.
16. Well, you can party next time! Which events are you looking forward to take part as next? This year is probably over now for me. I'll focus more on real life and school. But of course I'll keep playing - there are rumours about a next District Prague LAN happening January/February, so I'm definitely hyped to take part in that. 17. Will we see more eSuba in online events in the future? Hopefully yes. We still need to pick ourselves up from the recent TmTournament fiasco, but I think we just need to realize we've made a mistake and move on. We're definitely more offline people and are very fortunate to have a scene as vibrant as here, but online play also shapes us. At the very least, you're going to see me in online solo cups. 18. If you have something else to say, please write it here. It's cheesy but I don't say it enough. I feel so privileged to be able to express this part of me, and not only that, but meet amazing people and travel a bit while doing it. It feels a bit surreal when I think about it. Also I'd like to thank everyone who follows this brilliant game in any fashion, the TMX crew for keeping people's experience of the game fresh (for quite a long time now!) and also you, wormi, for having me here Peace out!
Thank you too, tween, and good luck in those cups!
See you guys next time
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| wormi writes ... | 15, Dec, 2013 |
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Thanks to eSuba.RedBullRacing for linking this in their Facebook
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| Minato writes ... | 23, Nov, 2013 |
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Tween seems to be a nice person, I like that.
Great interview! |
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| tcq writes ... | 15, Nov, 2013 |
Very nice interview. And the video, I just know how you feel But glad that you made the jump 
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| Sky.wp writes ... | 15, Nov, 2013 |
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nice interview
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