An Interview with Borsato

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Could you briefly introduce yourself (age, location…) and tell us when you were most active in the Q1 community?

I am Rudolf Kremers. 38 years of age and am living in Folkestone in the United Kingdom. Originally I am from the Netherlands however, from a Ducth/Spanish background.

How did you get involved in the community?

I have been creating game content and levels since the early 80s, but things took a real step forward with DOOM maps and mods becoming available on BBSes and on a young and bright interweb. :-) So after some time playing with Doom levels Quake came out and everything changed. Some of the early stuff blew me away, like levels from Dario Casali. Matthias Worch, Marcus Dromowicz (Mexx) and a whole bunch of FANTASTIC Metal map authors. (Still my fave quake textures). A decision was easily made to start making my own. My first level was a horrible failure, nobody knows about it, but my first "known" level did really well. After that I just started to really get into it and become obsessed with mapping :-)

What Q1 contributions are you best-known for? Which of your works is your personal favorite?

I think my two best known levels are the multiplayer Summer (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day) and the tiny single player TSPE (The grinding of teeth: single player edition). I don't actually have a favourite, I love all my babies equally ;-)

What was your initial motivation to work for Quake?

Very simple: The ability to create my own worlds.

Do you still have a website/links where we could check out/rediscover your stuff?

I do, I have a bunch of websites but the one with my quake levels can be found here: http://www.rudolfkremers.com/q/quake.html

What are your best memories about this community?

There was a time early in the quake mapping scene where everybody knew eachother and was willing to help others out. The sky was the limit in terms of creativity and people started to crank out levels of much higher quality than many ID levels. I met mappers and made friendships that last to this day so it was special indeed.

Are you still playing Quake? Are you still trying out mods, maps and engines?

Yeah, I recently got back in and loved the fact that there were tons of new high quality levels.

Have there been other games you have been playing a lot since you left the community (if you did)?

I am now a professional game designer who runs his own game development company so to say that I play other games is an understatement of epic proprtions. ;-) My company webiste: www.omni-labs.com and here is a game in progress I am working on witha friend on the side: http://www.dyson-game.com

How would you describe the Q1 community right now? Is there any contribution that really impressed you in the last couple of years?

It is full of love. It has to be for people to still do quake levels and mods etc. I have been impressed with the renaissance of quake single player level design. Great stuff!

How do you picture the future of the community? Do you (objectively) think that people will still be modding/mapping for it in, say, 10 years from now?

I think it is now a strong enough subculture that people will be doing this for a long time. Look at the quality of levels and mods and engines still being produced. Fantastic labours of love!

Your #1 secret special ingredient to a good map (imagine a newbie asking for your advice)?

Sense of wonder!

What is the question you would have like to be asked (but weren't), how would you have answered it and how pissed are you for me not thinking about it?

"Is there anything you want to contribute to the quake scene now?" You fool, you should have asked me that! Let's pretend you have! Well, yeah. I have this unfinished level on my harddisk, it has been there since 2008 I think, it is a MASSSSSIVE MP level that dies for a conversion to SP. Thematically it is a sequel to SUMMER, and I think it would make a great single player level. The layout and texturing is 99% done in MP terms, but I would like to see if somebody will have a go at making an singleplayer version out of it. :-)