A2MT

A2MT or "A Second Mario Thing" was the second major Super Mario World collaboration hack done by the Talkhaus. As its predecessor, it features alien cyclops Demo, who goes on a mission to do work for her master, who captured her from her original creator, the Artist. Advancing the story from ASMT, it introduces many of Demo's new siblings, as well as other new characters and locations.

As of January 24, 2014, the project was officially canned, with the current ROM downloadable in its unfinished state for interested parties. The hack was about 95% done at the time. The latest prospective release date was aimed for late 2013. The let's play for the A2MT materials went on from June to mid-August in 2014.

= History =

First Steps
The idea for A2MT was first born during the finalization of its predecessor, ASMT. Production of the inital hack had only taken a few months and had drawn many new members into the Talkhaus during late 2009, many of whom wanted to work together on a new project. After ASMT's release, its popularity skyrocketed, motivating the team even more to start production on a sequel.

The first A2MT thread was originally opened by chdata on the 7th of April 2010, and level submission started on the 27th of May, just little over a month after the official release of ASMT, under the eyes of then project leader flameofdoubt. As many submissions and questions quickly poured in, he was soon joined by Tails_155 as Baserom-Coordinator.

Tails_155 (June 2010 - July 2011)
Development went quickly during the first few months, but the A2MT team soon realized that the scope of the project was rapidly becoming bigger and bigger, and that the story was perhaps demanding more of the team than they could provide. Especially the inclusion of all of Demo's 8 siblings is to blame here - from very soon in production, story writers Chdata and Rubberfishy came up with the idea of giving each of them their seperate boss fight, and there were simply too few people whose knowledge of ASM was advanced enough to code bosses.

As the scope of the project became more and more unrealistic, progression slowed down with every week, and eventually came to a halt in early 2011. During the first few months of that year, practically nothing was done - and to make things even worse, flameofdoubt stepped down as project leader during this time [when exactly?], leaving Tails_155 to manage the project alone - a responsibility which would soon prove to be too big for him. In fact, he did so little for the project that another forum member, limepie20, decided to take the management of the baserom upon himself, simply because things weren't moving along.

Diortem (August - November 2011)
Upon seeing this unfold, raocow himself decided to take matters into his own hands and advertise for A2MT in his videos, hoping to draw new people into the project, especially the very much needed ASM coders. However, his videos (called “A2MT - A heads up”) only mostly addressed the people who had claimed a level and hadn't finished it yet, failing to mention the dire need of ASM professionals. Meanwhile, Chdata in the forums was the only ASM-savvy guy working at implementation of various game-central mechanisms - one of them was a “treasure chest” that would be placed in each level, replacing the “Dragon Coin” mechanism from Super Mario World. He was eventually joined by a new forum member called “Diortem”, who joined after seeing yet another one of raocow's A2MT update videos, called “a2mt rebirth". Immediately after joining, she started working on her level and was, for a few weeks, pretty much the only person commenting on other people's level submissions. What's more, she had prior knowledge of ASM and, having started out as a helping hand for Chdata, quickly became more than that - the project's first proper ASM coordinator, and, after Tails_155 resigned during the end of July 2011, project leader.

But even for Diortem, there is a limit as to how much a single person can do, and even though she tried bringing new wind into the project, after the few new submissions prompted through raocow's video had been progressed, A2MT died down into silence again at the end of the year, with Diortem leaving her leading position around the same time.

SyStemkraSh (February - December 2012)
And in silence, it stayed. Despite (or maybe because of) forcing the few left-over contributors to deliver weekly updates on their level progression, practically no work was being done from November 2011 to February 2012. Looking at the A2MT forum in January 2012, no new posts had been made for more than a week. With only 66% of the levels done, and no one to do the baserom management, the project was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

It was at this point that raocow decided he couldn't take it any longer. He wanted clarity on the project - either by having it finished, or by declaring it cancelled. And so, on the 10th of February, he made this thread, asking one last time for people to either finish or abandon A2MT. It was in that thread that SyStemkraSh's name was first mentioned as a potential new leader by Cup. Two days later, SyStemkraSh himself offered to become the new baserom manager, and was quickly appointed as such. On the 13th of February 2012, he opened a thread tracking his progress on the A2MT baserom - and somehow, the project slowly started picking back up. Noone really knows the reason behind this, but under SyStemkraSh's management, the project went from 66% done to ~80% done. Not only that, but former project managers and ASMers came back after absence in 2011 as well - the project slowly regained its professional creatorbase that it had lacked for so long. Diortem and Chdata came back (the latter after being banned in 2011) to work on the ASM, limepie20 started helping out with the baserom again (and continued handling it after SyStemkraSh suddenly disappeared in December 2012), and the project slowly started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

The period under SyStemkraSh's management was especially important for the project since many of the much-needed bosses were coded during his time - one of them being the very ASM-heavy Science (see "Characters").

However, his management ended as abruptly as it had begun - he just flat-out disappeared from the forums after his last post on the 27th of December 2012 and was never seen again (until the A2MT LP). After that, it was mostly limepie20 handling the BaseROM and Cup and Jesuiscontent coding the bosses.

alex2 (February 2013 - January 2014)
limepie20 acted as the manager from then on, but in March, he stepped down as the leader. He asked alex2, an ASMer, to replace him as the leader. Soon after, raocow uploaded a new A2MT announcement "the state of beings" for the purpose of going over a checklist of what needs to be done, and reminding potential contributors to assist in the remaining tasks.

For the time being, alex2 helped bring in a new surge of momentum for the project. He was more assertive in getting people to show progress and in checking the content to see what needs to be fixed, bringing the project a bit closer to completion at a faster rate and with more willingness to see it done.

But alas, this new enthusiasm would not last long. alex2 stepped down from the project late May of the same year and quit talkhaus for a few months, leaving limepie20 to manage the project once again. Since then, there has been no signs of a new drive to bring more enthusiasm for the project - if there were any posts in the A2MT forum, they were just the same usual notices of gradual progress and minor discussions. Alex (under the account alex3) did return later that year to continue contributing to the project.

The activities on the forum (and the rest of the board) have been stalled for a month during the The Talkhaustrophe, from early October to early November. Despite the loss of 4 months of data, A2MT forum is believed to have lost only a few posts. Subsequently, Alex (now alex2 again) once again became a manager of the project. Most of the work on the romhack was reportedly being conducted outside the forums by this time.

End of the Project
As the new year of 2014 approached and came, several observers noted that the interest in A2MT had faded and the community at-large were paying more attention to other collabs, particularly A2MBXT, a derivative game under development using the Super Mario Bros X. engine.

Some suggested that talkhaus members get in contact with people elsewhere (such as SMWC) to help finish the "last bits" of the project, but respondents quickly pointed out that only a couple people were doing, and likely capable of doing, the necessary work. At this point, even the few collaborators didn't know what was going on anymore.

After some private talk, alex2, the last manager, has decided to bring the project to an end on the 24th of January, 2014. Announcement threads were created to report the news and discuss the project in hindsight, and possible plans to release at least what is available. Repeated change and shortfall in leadership, excess hype, and the daunting complexity of the current baserom were part of the discussion.

The Zombie A2MT Let's Play
After cancellation of the hack, raocow has expressed interest in playing the baserom in its unfinished state. And so, during May, raocow announced in the request grab-bag thread the idea of playing A2MT as the next let's play, to serve as a prologue to A2MBXT, its SMBX counterpart. He asked for people's thoughts on the suggestion; many people were in favor of the idea.

However, there was a problem. In the discussion, he was informed that the completion of A2MBXT (A2XT for short) was imminent, having been in testing phase for a while; raocow did not foresee this. There was a heated debate on whether raocow should go with the original plan of A2MT, or proceed with A2XT upon release, or look for alternatives (for instance, playing the two concurrently). Faced with a dilemma, and wanting to let the talkhausers decide, raocow opened a poll called "M vs X" to get a piece of popular opinion. Seeing A2MT consistently favored by a small margin, raocow decided to play A2MT first, while the release of A2XT was pushed back to after the A2MT LP, providing time for additional testing.

The let's play of A2MT baserom began on June 3rd, lasting for about two and a half months. Colloquially called "Zombie A2MT", the hack was originally played in a "fish market" baserom with the levels laid out in a simple, open grid. Minor adjustments were made and sent to raocow as the LP progressed: for instance, yogui and shdwdrgnix provided a version with a partial overworld implemented, albeit with most levels not functioning in this version, though this was afterwards fixed by worldpeace125. Some of the level creators sent raocow their levels in individual .ips files, since some levels were missing or not working properly in the ROM. Several old contributors that were absent for a while, notably Diortem and SyStemkraSh, returned to share their thoughts about their levels and the game. Discussions about the hack and its past development continued in the LP thread over the course of the let's play.

The sibling halls were planned to be played alongside A2XT: as raocow formally introduces each of Demo's siblings in A2XT, he would then play the A2MT level associated with that sibling.

= Further reading = A2MT forum announcement thread

A discussion during July 2011 about need for management for the project

raocow's proposition in February 2012, when progress was near-zero, to make up the collaborators' minds about what to do with the project

Thread announcing the end of A2MT in January 2014

raocow's LP of Zombie A2MT, started in June 2014

= Story =

Following the end of ASMT, Demo returns to her master's spacestation, only to find that an enemy fleet attacked while she was gone, leaving the station destroyed and ravaged. Luckily, everyone inside survived, but there's massive amounts of repairs to be done, so Demo is sent out once again to work for her master.

While this is her initial mission, Demo will later on meet some of her siblings who are being mind-controlled by their creator, the Artist, and have only one goal - bringing Demo back to him. After she has beaten all of the other siblings, Demo fights her sister Iris. The fight ends, and Demo is able to destroy Iris' mind-control cap. Iris reveals to Demo that the attack on her master's spaceship had been the Artist's attempt at retrieving Demo and bringing the entire family back under his control. They agree on freeing their other siblings as well and escape in Iris' escape pod before her ship is blown up.

After entering the Artist's lair, Demo and Iris free all of their siblings and then go on to fight the Artist.

= Characters =

Demo
Demo is a very introspective and silent cyclops. While originally having been created by the Artist, she was later captured by her current master and is now serving him together with Iris. She doesn't talk a whole lot, but enjoys calm sceneries and being surrounded by cats. She's also very goal-oriented, which is why her master holds her in very high regard - she'd do almost any job right off of the bat and doesn't pay much attention to anything besides her current objective.

Iris
Sneaky, intelligent, but physically weak. To make up for her lack of muscles, she uses advanced technological equipment, often in the form of weapons, but sometimes also other things like jump boots (in ASMBXT). She loves fighting with daggers and throwing knives.

Calleoca
The only other sibling besides Iris that was also featured in ASMT. Calleoca is a shapeshifter, however, she doesn't have full control over this ability of hers, so she can easily become quite hectic and stressed once something goes wrong. Normally, she takes the form of Rumia from Touhou (pictured above). Big fan of Nue Houjuu and Yoeko Kurahashi. She can be slightly impatient at times and hates not being entertained.

Mishi
Creepily calm, cold, apathetic, and nihilistic. The downer of the bunch. She has psychic powers that can manipulate other people's minds - for example tricking them into feeling pain when they aren't. She can also levitate objects and attack with purple spheres shooting out of her head.

Nevada
A shy and very jittery guy. He's obsessed with plants, and touching him is poisonous. Hates being close to people he doesn't know. Someone who steps too close to him or his plants is most likely to end up dead and devoured after a few seconds.

Pily
Fearful and paranoid of almost everything. Jealous that she didn't get Demo's place as the protagonist, and constantly wants revenge for this. When she's not obsessing with how the government wants to steal her vegetables, she likes taking a bath in hot, melty lava. She's also the only ASMT character to have been featured outside the ASMT story - in Raocow's hack “What the Hell”.

Pandemona
Despite her appearance, Pandamona is actually an insanely powerful being. She's also very power-crazed, but her box acts as a “limiter”, similar to Rumia's bow. She's the worst combination imaginable - powerful and incredibly paranoid. Will shoot at anything and everything moving in her direction.

Science
One of the first cyclopses created by “The Artist”. Perhaps Demo's oldest brother. He was initially built as just a curious floating eyeball and was later upgraded by the Artist so he could ask questions to satisfy his curiosity. Since then, he's built up a sizeable amount of knowledge, but his hardware isn't developed enough for him to speak more than a few broken words at once. He attacks using glitches and savestates, sometimes even floating text.

Garish
The self-pronounced “leader” of the siblings. He has a big Napoleon-complex, but noone really pays attention to him and his senseless orders. His ability is to melt and solidify any part of his body at will.