What type of levels do you prefer to
build and play?
That's not an easy question to
answer. I mean, I absolutely loved building
Jungle Ruins with Raider X and having EssGee
along for the ride on Jungle Ruins 3 was a real
fun experience. So I could say I love building
temples and jungles. But The Imprisoned Spirits
is as far from the jungle as you can get and I
loved building that as well. Coyote Creek was a
modern day western set around a ghost town and
that was an incredible project to be a part of.
There are two Egypt levels in Flashback, Genesis
and Exodus, and I loved building them, and then
there is The Loch, set around a Scottish Castle
in the Highlands, and I loved building that!
I did try a city level once in
Catacombs of the Guardian, but that was complex
to build and I didn't really enjoy it and I
wasn't entirely happy with the final product.
I'm not too good at building city levels.
However, I often enjoy playing them.
Japan is my favourite level in Tomb Raider
Legend and is in my top ten favourite levels
along with Nightmare in Vegas, which is set in a
hotel.
As to playing custom levels,
the ones I enjoy are levels dripping with
atmosphere, and that embodies a number of
ingredients like suspense, intrigue, story,
immersive gameplay, good audio, well crafted
rooms, thoughtful puzzle design, lighting and
texturing and a few other elements. One thing that
makes me bin levels is poor quality gameplay
that hasn't been properly beta tested. If I get
stuck because of bugs or gameplay killers, into the
recycle bin it goes. I can't believe some folks
still churn out levels without having them
tested. I mean, where is the fun in running
around a level for a couple of hours wondering
what to do only to find out after checking the
stuck threads that you've hit a bug or a gameplay
killer? That's no fun and I refuse to do it
anymore. At the very least a level should
be playable to a
finish trigger, regardless of the quality. Surely that has to be a minimum
requirement for hosting custom levels?
What is your point of view on recent
developments, like TREP and TRNG?
A while back, when TREP first
came out, I decided after much thought to not
use it because I wanted all my levels to be playable
by Mac players. Now that Macs are being built
with Intel processors and Mac owners can boot up
into a Windows environment, that is no longer
an issue so I've embraced the TRNG in a
big way, even going so far as to Project Manage
the writing of the new NGLE Manual.
Paolone has
done incredible things. The guy is an absolute
genius and this gift he's given the custom Tomb
Raider community is priceless. There is so much
to learn and very few of us really understand
the power of this new game engine. As more
builders learn its inner workings, we are going
to see some exceptionally breathtaking levels
being released.
You are not making your own objects,
right? Doesn't that restrict you while building?
Not at all. I'm quite happy to
use other folks objects and showcase them in my
levels. Not everyone builds levels and we have
many, many talented object builders who enjoy
nothing more than seeing their work being
released in good quality levels. I wish
established builders would make more use of the
talent out there. They need to see their work
being appreciated and employed. Where would Po Yu
be without folks using his amazing Lara objects?
I'd rather use the objects of these talented
guys and gals rather than
make my own.
Besides, learning to make objects, good objects
I mean, is a career in itself and I don't really
have the time. I'd rather spend a month building
a level than spend a month making an object to
put in a level.
Having said that, I did reach an
impasse once when I needed a new guide for the
Imprisoned Spirits. On that rare occasion I
couldn't find anyone to build one for me so I made
my own. He was fun to make and fun to work with
in game. He's quite a character and really
brought The Imprisoned Spirits to life and gave
it substance and story.
What inspires you to build?
I suppose it's time to let
out one of my little secrets eh? It's easy
really. While I'm building levels, I always
build one or two areas which I feel could perhaps lead to new ideas.
So I'll take a copy of the areas that
inspired me and stick them in a new project.
After texturing and lighting a room or
two, I'll have a wander around in game
to take a look. I'll then mess around with
textures and lighting until I'm happy. And
then comes the fun bit - I take loads of
copies of these one or two rooms and join them together in weird and
wonderful ways until I've built a large
area. In game I'll have a run around and
take a look at it. If I don't like it, I'll
rearrange the rooms or take them apart and
join them together again. Eventually,
something will take my fancy and a new level
is born.
I got the inspiration for an
entire level this way and it was built
almost entirely from copies of one room.
It's the A Time to Weep level of The
Imprisoned Spirits NG, the huge Temple level
with the massive columns.
This level began life as 64
copies of one room, 16 on each level with 4
levels, plus the shallow lava at ground
floor, another 16 rooms. I suppose some
folks will think this is an easy way to
build, and I guess it is as far as
geometry goes, but it took me over a week
to fix all the portals and texture it and by
a week, I'm talking 7 x 12 hour shifts. I
was ready to scream by the time it was done.
Well worth it though. Sure, it's a quick
level and you can run through it in 15
minutes if you know the quickest route, but
hey, it started crashing the editor so it
was as big as it was ever going to be.
The point is, it was by
simply joining 64 copies of one room
together that gave me the inspiration for
this level. Actually, it was originally 80 copies but I
had to delete a whole layer to stabilise the
level when it started crashing. There is a
single flipmap trigger in this level that
flips the entire ground floor area of 32
rooms when the lava changes to water. I
didn't think it would work, but it did!
I use this technique quite a
lot now, ever since I learned that the
original Devs that worked on the official
Tomb Raider games used it too. It really
does work for giving you inspiration. There
is nothing worse than looking at a huge 18 x
18 click empty blue box in the Editor. That
will certainly drain your inspiration and
make you want to give up! I never
start that way now. Why not try it sometime?
Make copies of a finished room you like and
have fun joining them up in all sorts of
ways. I guarantee you'll find plenty of
inspiration before long.
What are your future plans with the
Level Editor?
Time is proving to be a
growing problem for me now. When I first
started building I had plenty of time. Now,
I don't have much time at all and all my
spare time seems to be directed more and
more towards Skribblerz and maintaining the
site and the forums.
However, I'm not giving up
building, at least not yet. I've been
heavily involved in remaking all my older,
rubbishy games and bringing them up to what
I consider to be a playable standard.
Flashback was, after all, a remake of
Genesis, Exodus, The Loch and The Lake of
Fire. That was a heck of a lot of work. The
Cave is a Next Gen remake of Sheep in Wolf's
Clothing. The
entire Imprisoned Spirits series was
completely remade and repacked and now I'm
working on the entire Jungle Ruins series.
It takes forever. On top of that, there are
other things like the Baptism of Fire
project, helping new level builders to a
successful launch of their first work, and
the Skribblerz Stones, which is now a yearly
event. Once Jungle Ruins NG has been
released, we'll see where we are and take
another look at things.
June 2008
