JERUSALEM 2002

INTERVIEW

Interview with Psiko, author of TechnoEgyptians Portal (TEP) and Center of the World (COTW) run by eRIC in July 2002

eRIC: “Psiko, do you have enough time to play other's customlevels ? If yes, what is the level made by another levelbuilder you have enjoyed the most ?”

Psiko: “I have sufficiently time to breath... but I play levels whenever I can. Most of all, I ask people to suggest me what to play because I know they have more time than me, they know my taste, so I prefer to be redirect to a good level to play, rather than to be frustrated while searching for something to play. But actually, as normal for each one, I found my favourite levels by myself. :) Sadly the fact that I build myself too, does not help me that much... I think every level is good, because everyone of us puts the best of the effort we can into our levels (but my personal opinion says that there is no end to the improvement.. just study, boys!) :) If I had to tell just ONE level I will say absolutedly "Mirai's Tokyo 9" which is surely the best I played. Never frustrated, always enjoied. This could be strange from a person who likes customization and always promoted that. Well, I always defended even the ***clever*** usage of what we already have :) If I can, I would say some other levels: "The Lost Artefact of Heroic Mainliness" by MULF. One of the best TR-levels ever played. When I will finish my TR-A, it would be nice to ask for a collaboration with MULF (LOL). Then "Return to Jazimija" by Verner (a very young boy from our Italian TR-comunity). Recently I had the chance to play as beta-tester one of the new remastered levels from "Saudi Arabia", and I would name even that one if the author had put more medipacks into my raiding :) Finally, all Inchdix's levels. But sadly they are too full of bugs. One of the things I would like to say about his levels is that they are "fine". I mean, artistically. His style is wonderful, his way of texturing eccellent and completely original.. look on how he textures walls next to stones and grass... if he had put much more attention on the gameplay even to avoid all those embarassing bugs, his levels would have been the best TR-custom-series of ever (well, wait for my TR-A) :)”

eRIC: “How did you began to play Tombraider and began to build your own levels ?”

Psiko: “I began for a case. My brother wanted the Sega Saturn consolle instead than the PSX. And TR was pubblished first of all for SS! Even if that game made the lucky of PSX... Anyhow my aunt and another of my brothers came the same day with the same game: two original copy of the first Tomb Raider for SS (one of them substituted). That was so funny... I played and I stuck really soon in the caves before to climb the low wall, I mean where you see the wolves's prints textured snow squares. Yes, I got stuck really soon and I was repeating myself: "hey, is there SOMETHING to play in this game?" LOL. When I discovered that I could simply press one of the joypad button to go over that low wall, a huge world and a fantastic story revealed to my eyes. Do you remember the cogs puzzle in the dinosaurs level? I was so HAPPY just because that was simply satisfying after a long "walking around" and searching for the right way. Next to TR3 the TR1 is the best for my honest opinion, and that "satisfaction" after a "huge effort" to understand what to do, is what I try to give and put into my levels :) "satisfaction" like after the floating platforms in the COTW, for example :) (tip: start side-jumping) LOL :D. I started building my levels just buying the TR-chronicles PC version. But this is too simple... right? :) I had the internet connection since years but I cannot tell why I never did think to search for any TR-site, apart the legendary "The Croft Times" and official sites. I searched differently for something to use to build tr-games which since tr3 was my deepest desire. I asked around the web and nothing found. If I remember well, I read on july 2000 at "The Croft Times" site that the editor was going to be released with "Chronicles" and when I read that (after desiring that so deeply for so long) I simply told myself: "everything will end now" LOL :) I meant just that one of my desires came into reality, and luckily many of them came into reality in my life, expecially in the last years :)So, to answer to "how I began to build my levels", I can only say: with a deep and ancient desire to build them :)”

eRIC: “The story/scenario of TEP/CotW is quite interesting, here we have a real scenario. Have you been inspired somehow by mythology, history, a book, a film or no ?”

Psiko: “This is a too long question.. more than you can imagine :) When I was younger, I was interested on UFO's and science fiction. I studied fisics by myself and really soon (but this is easy to know) I discovered that we cannot go FTL ("faster than light" this is the usual way to tell this). This meant only one thing: UFO's cannot be real... because (at least an alien civilization found a way to) just to travel from a star to another gets "too long time"... hundreds of years... So, if we saw "some" of UFOs in the sky, where do they come from? Always persons believe they come from the space... the "unknown" comes from the space... but nobody did think about that we cannot go FTL and we are always taken to think that "what we don't know" is not "ours". So, since then, I was thinking that those "ufos" didn't fly in the sky coming from the space... but from "ourselves", this means both psychological, either in reality... I imagined they came from "the center of the world", where we never looked at, I mean an empty Planet Earth: they were on the surface simply to obserb our civilitation and "reveal" to us just when it was the right time...During the years, I lost or forgot this "light" of this idea I had since younger. When they released the TRLE I found out orribly how we could simply build ONLY Egyptian levels, and this was tooooo frustrating for me, who liked most of all the technological TR3. So the same month I had that editor I did build a level (never released) called "TechnoEgyptians Portal" with the EYE of Horus portal, just because we had only Egyptian objects and I did build a techno-raider-level. So "TechnoEgyptian" civilization came out just for that "case", I mean an initial limitation of the released level editor and the attempt to combine egyptian objetcs with techno-locations.Then, I gave up with the level editing because all wrong animations... but suddenly I found out those "revised wads" link at eidos forum and... the very FIRST THING, I wrote into that official TRLE eidos forum when I signed there was something like this: "I am SOO good with the CAD, can someone please create a tool to import our personal DXFs?"I remember exactly that because that was my first post there, and I wrote a mistake, which I didn't know then how to change.. I wrote "so" instead than "too" LOL :) Well, Michiel was building his first versions of tr2wad and wadmerger and told me in that topic: "I know DXF file, so I can put this feature into next version of the wadmerger". But after 10 days or so, an unknown (well, for me and just for then) member of that forum, TURBO PASCAL, went out with his new version of STRPIX 3.0 which gave the chance to import DXFs...

So, I started building the internet-released TEP. One night, I woke up. The "TEP" actually was nothing less than the HORUS EYE DOOR even in the new level, for then. But a sudden night I woke up with those words: "I will open that egg...". It was 4 o'clock in the morning, so dark outside, but I started to build the HUGEST flipmap of ever in any TR-game... a HUGE egg to be OPENED like an ANCIENT PORTAL... symbol of maternity...When realizing that, I exactly understood WHY Core Design NEVER realized a "changed map" like the one I was building.. the reason is that the level gets enormously unstable. So I worked 5 months on the TEP, customizing and trying to make it "stable" previewing EVERY move of the players...Then, I had something like a "blasfemous" idea... to change the 3D shape of Lara.. and I discovered the "skin joints problem", but I won't bore with this.Anyhow, the "quite interesting locations" you refer into your question was because suddenly I decided to set my "TechnoEgyptians" story at the CENTER OF THE WORLD... No game until then was set there... and I had that idea, again, for a lucky case.. the TEP egg room was TOO HIGH! so, missing polygons where showing the SKY where the egg was intended to be... So I had to make a DARK SKY.. and WHERE on the EARTH there is a "dark sky"?... inside the EARTH CRUST, where the TEP was set, before to REACH the "secret" TechnoEgyptians Empire location.As this was a "new" for any game I know and played, I decided to keep this location SECRET until the sequel was finished, the COTW itself. Knowing my skills and my times, I was TOO afraid someone could had the same IDEA of a "center of the world" game since the TEP was released and before the COTW was ready, and release it faster than me...The unusual locations so where inspired my MANY things. First of all I imagined the TechnoEgyptians did put the seeds of the Atlantean Civilization and the "real" ancient Egyptian one. Infact if the ancient Egyptian Civilization had normally developed probably now we will call them "TechnoEgyptians". For all this reason I had to INVENT a NEW architectural style ("Technorganic Style") which presented to the players an ANCIENT civilization who developed since to become futuristic to our times, and inside the Empty Planet Earth.So, what was the science for that time?.. Mankind for that time believed that energy and all, was done by FOUR elements... and how to modernize this? The NEW civilization of TechnoEgyptians would have taken their ENORMOUS energy from the FOUR elements which made possible their superior technology.....It is like the deepest and greatest futuristic technology came back to demonstrate that the previous and ancient belief was correct...But it was not simple. So, I created a "sun", a NUCLEAR KERNEL at the Center of the World which stoked during the centuries this superior energy by FOUR PYLONS founded inside the Earth Crust... One for each natural element... Pylons of earth, wind, water and fire. Those Pylons gave ENERGY to the Central Kernel at the center of the planet and sustained the superior TechnoEgyotians technology for centuries, since when, in ancient age, they closed the access to the Center of the World with a Portal. (But this is a part of the story to be revealed when I will release TR-A).

How comes TechnoEgyptians had to come back to surface? I imagined their Central Kernel was near to be exhausted. So they needed in the 2004 to collect all the Surface energy in order to call another time their Godness."New RHA the Mighty", infact, is going to be called when the New Rha Shining Star, seen in the COTW levels, will fit completely the Embryo seen at the end of the Cathedral level. That God will bring to New Life the TechnoEgyptians Central Kernel and they will definitely rule both the Surface World and the Center of the World Empire. But Lara was advided of all of this by an Ancient Father of Atlantis, in the first CUTSCENE we saw in the COTW. In the 2002, Lara is searching for an Artefact called "Imperial Symbol of New RHA", in Jerusalem. I chosed Jerusalem because Dante's Commedia set the location of the HELL below Jerusalem, and it was reachable from an Underground Passage opening the way to the very famous "leave your hope" Portal. So, the TechnoEgyptian Civilization IS the HELL described there, and TechnoEgypotians ARE those demons, but... Dante "interpretated" that Center of the World Civilization exactly like "demons" and "hell"... but the truth was exactly "a new and unknow civilitation", which eventually came OUT to surface to monitorize us... those UFOs of that idea I had years ago... :p So, the new civilization I am describing, is such powerful that missing Him they are able to CREATE their GOD genetically (as seen in the COTW and revealed in future developments) in order to have always their Kernel/Sun alive. Lara was advised of this in the 2002: this means TWO years before the TechnoEgyptians revealed to the Surface Mankind. But knowing the future before it is realized, is not always as good as we could think... :) So, I was inspired by MANY things, most of them letterary. To realize all of this, I keep in mind "Indastria", the hypertechnological City of "Conan, the future boy", one of the best cartoons of ever: even in that cartoon the "search for the energy" was desperatedly strong both from "good" either for "bad" sides. I fill
every moment of my TR-A with "psychological" and subliminar meanings, and most of them will be revealed at the end of all, with a great message of peace.”

eRIC: “Some Italian builders have began the Stargate project. Are they still active in this project? You have made a demo for them, do you still help them?”

Psiko: “I think I helped them enough, realizing that base for the entire game more than one year ago :) Then, I am always available for technical stuff in our two Italian forums. Then, I wrote the test of the story of the cutscene they are realizing, and well, I even directed by "internet chat" what to show in that cutscene and how to realize it... I hope that will be as fine as it was in my mind when describing it to them :wink: LOL :) “

eRIC: “What do you like the most in Italy ?”

Psiko: “People. I think strong personality is always a good thing. Both the good sides, either the bad sides (oopps LOL), which many times made me to grow up. But if you want, I will tell some of the things I DON'T like. I don't like the fact to consider ourselves "creative". I think "art" is much more than creativeness, it is "sadly" even technics and experience. You can see a picture and love it, but actually the painter knows exactly how to move the brush and this can be reached with many experience to have an "artistic" result, even to go "with the flow" or to go "against the flow". Surely after all of this, the differences are for the personal skills and feelings, but there is a lot of work behind evetything it is created.Then, I know to be probably the only one in Italy, but apart some very good food, I don't like it generally, most of all because it repeats itself. Just few times, it's ok. But I prefer chinese. :)

eRIC: “If there was a symbol that represents the most your personality, what it should be ? (Historical feature, spiritual symbol, flower, etc anything you want)”

Psiko: “I don't think there is something that could represent me with a symbol. I'd like to find it, but as I am thinking about this question for more than few minutes, this means there is nothing to think about it :)”

eRIC: “Is there a sequel to Center of the world ? If yes, when it will be available ?

Psiko: “There is not now, as "my mind" is not available, LOL. It is all there, for now, and I am looking forward to play it :) I hope to be able to realize all what I want to realize with the new animation tool which is going to be released soon, and I hope to be ready for october, but it seems hard. For now (half of july) I am ready with two new levels almost finished, "Jerusalem, the Subdued" set in the 2004 after the TechnoEgyptians conquered the Surface World and the new "TechnoEgyptians Portal": nothing to relate with the previous one. Both of them are before the COTW which was remastered and improved, both for some critics I had and I considered constructive, either for some reported bugs. Many ways are closed now, so there is a little bit less "walking around without knowing what to do", expecially for I added many more cameras to show you where to go. So, follow me, I will guide you”

eRIC: “Are you glad that somebody (Drew_Pizza) has made a walkthrough of CotW ?”

Psiko: “I am exactly happy for this. But actually I have many walkthroughs written by other TR-fans... THREE are for the COTW and another one is for the "old" TEP. All are Italians eccept Drew's one, which is really wonderful. Reading all of them, anyhow, first of all made me to know how players do when they do it differently than me, then I try to "understand" what they feel while playing (to give them what they prefer - players are always right!), and most of the times they felt exactly what I wanted, most of all because I do this because I build with the heart.Drew's one was really similar to some very professional published from official games, so I wondered really often if he wrote some other previously, because that seems "perfect".Reading all of them was like to play my levels again with "fresh eyes": those walkthroughs are a reason to be proud in the good sense of the word, but I take all (always) as an incitament to improve. :)

(The Creator and his Creature: photoretouchs in this page by Roberta Merlini, official testimonial of my "Tomb Raider A") :)