Hello there, SJ. The time has finally come to have this interview with you. It's an honor to do this. But first of all, can you please introduce us a little bit about yourself?

Let's see... I'm Kacper, although I generally go with Kasper. I’m 20 and a college student in Poland, studying Computer Science. I plan to work in cybersecurity or anywhere my degree takes me.
Aside from TRLE, I am also a creative writer who has a text roleplay history on Discord, and I have been in some modding communities in the past, for example Celeste where I made a Madeline re-texture and a really small map, and where I am now making a remaster of said map.
I've also mingled in modding Stardew Valley and experimenting with RPG Maker, although nothing came out of either... yet.
I've got a crippling energy drink addiction and I have put 4K hours into Steam games altogether, and even more on consoles.
Some of my favourite games have to include Survivalist, Call of Duty, Tomb Raider [obviously], Resident Evil, Stardew Valley, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and some more, but that's enough of a list. All in all, that should give a perspective on who I am as a person. Ah, and I am more fluent in English than in Polish, a quirk of having lived in Britain for a few years as a teen.

Gee. That's quite an impressive resume to start this off. So, since you have played a lot of games, what made you become interested in Tomb Raider and TRLE community?

My journey with Tomb Raider began around... 10 years ago, with me playing Tomb Raider 2013 at the age of 10 or so. Ever since then, I have begun with the reboot trilogy, though it was before Shadow of the Tomb Raider, then moving onto the Legend-Anniversary-Underworld trilogy a few years later. It's how I became a huge fan of Tomb Raider and Lara Croft, with Rise of the Tomb Raider becoming one of my most favourite games of all time.
But my journey with TRLE itself didn't begin until around 2022. In fact, it was SteveOfWarr and Kubsy that I can remember were the main reasons I managed to get into TRLE in the first place. From one of the streams of SteveOfWarr, while the details are lost on me now, I can recall it was about a custom level, and well, I ended up fiddling with the original level editor a little before I was given the suggestion to go to Tomb Editor, a superior level editor at that moment.
With the original, I only ended up making test rooms: a large room with pillars in it, and a room with a crawlspace and light shafts in the desert rock. With me going into Tomb Editor, that sort of snowballed into my involvement with TEN [minorly so] and TRLE as a whole.

I see. It's unusual for a TRLE builder to start their TR journey not with the first 5 games, but as mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm said, "life finds a way". Speaking of TRLE, which engine(s) you'd prefer to build with, and why?

Over the course of 3 years of building with all the main engines, I've come to appreciate each one for various reasons. Yet, when it comes to my favourites, I have to say that I have 2:

In spite of its flaws, TRNG, the Tomb Raider Next Generation engine, has to be my top favourite simply for the variety of things it offers for you to create with it. TRNG showcases the widest array of features and assets for you to make your own level. "Special Ops - Operation Desert Temple" showcases how far you can take it, as it has a radio system and many minor quirks that are unique to TRNG, like the unique background and font that you can adjust on your own, mainly thanks to ChocolateFan and all the people who contribute to TRNG's development.

My favourite part of the engine is, without a doubt, the amount of animations and interactions you can code in—it's by far the engine in which you can make nearly any move, only beaten by TEN's built-in mass array of interactions right out of the box. I also appreciate how flexible it is, and how TRNG has become about the builder and what they want to shape their level to be like with the amount of options that TEN doesn't quite end up offering. There is no denying that making your own flares is fun, and in spite of TRNG's flaws with some clunky mechanics and features you have to deal with, I'll stand by it as my favourite at the moment.

Tomb Raider 2, on the other hand, is what I would consider the current best engine to build in when it comes to Classic Levels—at least, until TR3X comes out and completes the Trilogy, which is hopefully a long way away so TR2 can stand supreme for as long as possible—that is indeed a joke, but for me, TR2 offers a lot of unique features not mentioning TRX for a second, such as objects not found anywhere else in the series, the first introduction of vehicles into the series, the location of Venice, the combination of colourless lighting and a 16/32 bit colour palette, and most important of all: the M16, which is by far my most favourite weapon in the classic games. I have made many levels with it, and I regret not a second of having experimented, played around, and given the engine my time. It's also the engine that was there throughout my 3 years of building, and my TR2 levels show the progression from newbie to adept.
TRX, on the other hand, makes the engine even more fun to build in with the amount of features you can mix from TR1 and TR2, the options to add and remove certain tweaks that the amazing TRX dev team has added in, and finally, the lack of limits when it comes to texture sheets. It's truly an amazing engine, and TRLE's building scene is seeing major enhancements in builder QoL in terms of engine flexibility.

Wow. Looks like you're a quick learner, since in just 3 years of levelbuilding you managed to understand a lot of it. With that in mind, how did you manage your time between daily activities and building TR levels?

You might be surprised: aside from spending social time with fillia and friends on Discord, attending work and school, alongside basic human things like sleeping, cleaning and errands, my main hobby or use of free time is TRLE. It's a good explanation as to why I have released 20 or so levels with various ranges of quality: some took me a day or two, others a considerably longer time. Whenever I have nothing more important to do, such as cleaning, school, or such, I would generally do TRLE as long as I am not burned out at that moment in time.

Do not be fooled by my release count versus my statement: the releases that I have posted are only the majority. I have made projects that never saw the light of day, which account for about 30% of my TRLE stuff, but that's a different topic entirely.

I'm glad you still have a good life to live normally. That's a very important thing to have. Speaking of life, do you have any real-life friends who are also a member of TRLE community, or have you met any of TRLE builders in real life?

While I hadn't ever met anyone from TRLE in real life, I do plan to do so one day perhaps, and I had become friends with some of the people from the community. The closest to meeting a TRLE Builder, however, would have to be Mahetus, someone I consider one of my greatest friends and who has been a genuine rock throughout my TRLE journey and is a reason I am in the spot I am now. I've got little else to say on this topic, unfortunately.


Ah, Mahetus. No wonder he can be an adviser for you in TRLE, because of how experienced he is in the TRLE community.
Now back to the topic of Tomb Engine, I see that you have a hand in developing it. How did you become a member of the Tomb Engine developers, and how does it feel for you to be involved in such a great project?

A correction: I am not a TEN developer, but rather someone who was active through some points of its existence. You'll know me as the first person who released a TEN level, right before JesseG would release his "Arms Race" level. I also contributed by creating an enemy sheet in the earlier days of the engine's lifespan, but I never quite contributed code. I have, however, meddled with the source code to add an enemy health bar, but unfortunately that ended up going nowhere. That's about my contributions to TEN that are meaningful: Ah, I also made some LUA tutorials, and I developed a text-based menu that was one of a kind at the time, as well as meddling with the randomisation of key items in my "Sectored Rig Remastered" level in TEN, which was unfortunately flawed in its execution.

As to my feelings on the project? I regret nothing, and I am proud to have done anything of meaning for the project even if my feelings on TEN are mixed, and I hadn't always been supportive; I think the project is a great stepping stone for the future of TRLE as a whole, and it might eventually become the ultimate engine given enough time.
One thing is for sure, alongside TRX and TRNG it completes a trifecta of TRLE engines that the builder can choose from in my personal opinion. While TEN has some unstable steps, its offering in terms of features unseen anywhere else in TRLE is something to genuinely consider—simply look at Gecko's levels and how they use the advanced features to blend the classic engine with a modern-esque look not even the remasters can muster.
All in all, the engine has promise should it be led in the right direction.

Interesting perspectives there. Although I don't know much about TRNG and TRX, I think I can agree that TEN could be the ultimate TRLE engine, given enough time. So, how far do you think Tomb Engine can go, and how it can help both new and old builders out there?

Ideally, TEN becomes the ultimate engine offering the most features out of any engine, with the widest scripting potential that means you can make a TRLE level that contains any feature from the classic games as well as custom ones you make via Lua. We can only hope that the developers stick around and make it as good as possible while staying healthy and content with their work without burning out, and that the project doesn't take any nasty turns, including TIDE and TE as they are so closely knitted together as a package for TRLE development.

In my opinion, TEN can be helpful for both old and new users, as the limits don't really exist unless you push the engine to the extreme, and the flexibility with many features encourages experimentation with what you can do and what you cannot within the TR engine. For example, you can have a lot of dynamic lights in a single room as well as larger rooms overall, which means it is easier to make geometry as opposed to classic engines where the learning curve was more punishing because of the older engine's limitations and what you had to keep in mind when using them.
TEN, in essence, offers you a lot while not demanding as much from you in terms of what you have to pay attention to, and for the most part, I consider that a good reason to use TEN as your first engine, moving on to the other engines when you get a grasp on TRLE and you want to use the other engines for their unique quirks.

Another interesting perspective there, to make TEN as the introductory engine and other engines as specialised interest for those looking for the engines' quirky uniqueness.
That's it about TEN for now. Now, are there any other dream projects you'd wish to make in the future?

Let's see... I have about 2 or so that I can talk about in some detail:

"Heavenly Warfare - Sanctuary of the Shaduf"
- This is a major level that I have in the works, acting as a direct sequel to "Special Ops - Operation Desert Temple", continuing with the plot I wrote for the Advent Calendar 2025 in order to clean up the messy plot I myself created. The project will be set in another desert temple, the name is a play on my nick as "Shaduf" is a lift to extract water from a well and similar to my nickname. The level itself is planned to have more dialogue via radio calls, with an operator, aka Commander Karim Whitaker, as your guide/buddy as you explore the temple. I am debating adding a sanity mechanic alongside some other ideas, though proper development won't start until 2026, and it will go by slower now that I have college. However, I have faith it will be one of my best projects yet.

"Heavenly Warfare - One Shot, One Kill"
- The original continuation to "Special Ops - Operation Desert Temple", it was going to be, and still probably will be, a level set in the depths of Russia, Pripyat, and Karim Whitaker and Lara Croft explore the ruins and assist the local militia in fighting off the anomalies and demons that have opened up due to the strange occurrences in the remnants of Chernobyl, related to the incidents previously talked about in the "Heavenly Fallout Retrospective". Gameplay-wise, it would be set in the TRNG engine and would feature Karim in the Von Croy slot, an ally in your journey as you wander and piece together the truth of what happened in Pripyat as well as assisting the Contingent in their mission to secure the perimeter of Chernobyl from the forces of the Syndicate.

"Modos O Vita"
- Translated from Latin to "The Way Of Life", this is a TR3 level that's going to be set in Nepal, following Lara's journey as she ventures into The Warp, a hostile dimension that links alternate realities and dimensions together in order to get the forbidden fruit of knowledge to grasp the truth of what she has experienced so far, knowledge leading her on the path of self-destruction she has to break out of in order not to lose her sanity. It's going to be an hour or so of gameplay across three levels, from a Nepalese monastery to The Templus Of Shaduofus and finally into The Void Realm, also known as a sector of The Warp. There is more to the story, but that's what you'll learn when you play the level... when it gets made, that is.

Those projects sound interesting. I wish all of them can be realized, although don't forget to take your time to make the level as good as possible.
Thank you so much for taking your time in this interview.
Now, as a closer, what advice can you give to aspiring new builders out there?

Taking all my experiences into account? I'll say this:
You might face critique and a lot of doubt, but it's really important to NEVER forget this is a hobby you should be having fun in.
Regardless of critique, your fun is the most important part of the process, and you should never lose sight of that.
Aside from that, I can suggest investing in learning about game design if you want your levels to be fun and to look good, as level making is basically game making but in lite mode. From colours to gameplay theories, I may suggest watching or reading articles/videos on the topics for fun and applying concepts if you feel like it.
I do want to offer that you keep a balance between making the player feel comfortable but also enforcing choices you want for your game—if you need to have a specific type of bilinear filtering, it's good to consider all perspectives to decide the best course of action. Finally, I want to say that being open and never shutting out critique—critique, not hate, is a vital process in both improving and feeling good about your work.

Remember—this is a hobby, and you should be having fun improving and spending your time. I have made the mistake of being harsh on people who clearly tried, and I hold that regret still. I can only give you the suggestion to stray from being too harsh and to keep your critiques based on the level alone. We're here to have fun in the community, and I want to spread that kind of message to all who wish to stick in this community for some time.
Oh, and this one is a personal one—don't rush your levels, or you end up with releases such as "Sectored Rig", "Poosay Temple", or "Shadowy's Cringe April Fools Level". Build fast, but make sure to test your level as much as you can, unless you wish to end up with a myriad of bugs and several post-release patches to amend issues. There will always be issues, but ironing out everything before releases makes your product that much more quality.

Regardless, I just have one more thing to say before ending off:
Enjoy the rest of your day, and stay frosty, yeh?