Quake Map Magazine - Pete Burrows

Having completed the unusual Quake I level "From Hell" (which took its inspiration from a serial killer), find out why this level artist may continue to work with Quake I only, for some time to come.

My family and I moved from London to Seattle Jan 96 (my kid Sally was 2 weeks old at the time!) to work for a company called Mackie Designs they make stuff for recording studios.
Its cool we live in suburbia central, the place always makes me smile. It's just like the neighborhood in the movie Poltergeist. We have another kid coming in April (a boy this time) luckily for him he will have duel nationality and wont have the nightmare I had in getting a work visa. I am 38 but my wife Niki is 23 so she keeps me young.

The inspiration for my first Quake level (From Hell) came from being homesick, just before moving to the states I had been involved in a musical based on the Whitechapel murders (can you believe someone wrote a musical about a serial killer?). I was asked to design the stage set and ended up taking a major role in the play as well. Most of all I wanted to create a place that was totally believable with tough but fair combat. I wanted it to feel like you were in real streets at night so I took the bold step to restart half way through and replace sky texture With totally black texture and use light that fades away to pitch black. This made the level fairly unique and gave the atmosphere I was after.

Screenshot from "From Hell" for Quake I

Pete Burrows

The level Designer that most influenced me is Dario Casali, after playing
Prodigy one I decided I was going to have a go. I think a sense of really being there came from that level. A strange coincidence is that Dario also moved from England and now lives about a mile away from me in Washington
State. He is working on Halflife for Valve software.

Q2 is cool but it only took me 4 evenings to beat the thing and from a level designers point of view Q2 only has futuristic monsters and textures leading to less variety in add on levels. I won't be making base levels but that does not mean I have ruled out doing
a Q2 level.

Since I moved to the states my hobbies have changed. They use to be motorbikes, loud car stereo and drinking beer. Now I spend far too much time at the computer but I do get to go snowboarding, as the mountains are only an hour away.

All the relevant Quake sites.

I have only just started a new level after going to a turn of the century
theatre in Seattle to see "Penn and Tellar" gave me new inspiration, but that will stay in Q1.
I have also been toying with doing a level based on the movie "A Clockwork Orange" after finally getting to see it in the states (it's banned in Briton). I think that project will be my first step in to Q2.

I think a strong theme and sticking to that theme creates the best kind of
gaming environments and to Q2,s credit it works great because of that, but the different styles in Quake lead to a multitude of designers coming up with different types of places to explore. All the Q2 add on stuff I have seen is just more base levels.

Pete's web site.