Re: Tomb Raider 2 Gold Torrent
Donald
The first chapter of the game takes place in Egypt, and occurs several months after the events of Tomb Raider. The story sees Lara returning to the City of Khamoon to investigate a mysterious statue of the Egyptian goddess Bast. This leads to her discovery of an entirely new temple dedicated to the cat deity, which includes a giant gold statue several stories high. The second chapter takes place before those of the first chapter - quite literally straight after the events of Tomb Raider. This chapter starts with Lara sliding down the same slope as in the final level of the original game, and finishes with her destroying the last remnants of the Atlantean Race.
The initial concept was created by Toby Gard, who is credited as Lara's creator and worked as lead artist on the project. Production began in 1994 and took 18 months, with a budget of 440,000. The character of Lara was based on several influences, including Tank Girl, Indiana Jones, and Hard Boiled. The 3D grid-based level design, innovative for its time, was inspired by the structure of Egyptian tombs. The music was composed by Nathan McCree, who took inspiration from English classical music. Originally announced in 1995, the title went on to receive extensive press attention and heavy promotion from Eidos Interactive.
Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game in which the player assumes the role of archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft, who navigates through a series of ancient ruins and tombs in search of an ancient artefact.[9][10] The game is split into four zones: Peru, Greece, Egypt and the lost continent of Atlantis. A training level set in Lara's home of Croft Manor can be accessed from the start menu.[11] The game is presented in third-person perspective. Lara is always visible, and the camera follows the action by focusing on Lara's shoulders by default, but the player can take manual control of the camera to get a better look at an area.[9] The game automatically switches to a different camera view at key points, either to give the player a wider look at a new area or to add a cinematic effect.[12] In the Sega Saturn and PlayStation versions, players save their progress in a level using Save Crystals, while in the PC versions the player can save at any point.[13] If Lara is killed, the player must restart from a previous save.[14]
The object of Tomb Raider is to guide Lara through a series of tombs and other locations in search of treasures and artefacts. On the way, she must kill dangerous animals and creatures while collecting objects and solving puzzles.[9] The emphasis lies on exploring, solving puzzles, and navigating Lara's surroundings to complete each level.[12][15] Movement in the game is varied and allows for complex interactions with the environment. In addition to standard movement using tank controls, Lara can walk, jump over gaps, shimmy along ledges, roll, and swim through bodies of water.[14][13][16] Certain button combinations allow Lara to either perform a handstand from a hanging position or execute a swandive.[11]
Archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft is approached by a mercenary named Larson, who is working for businesswoman Jacqueline Natla. Natla hires Lara to acquire the Scion, a mysterious artefact buried in the tomb of Qualopec within the mountains of Peru. After recovering the Scion from Qualopec's tomb, Lara is ambushed by Larson, who reveals after his defeat that she is holding merely a piece of the artefact, and Natla has sent rival treasure hunter Pierre DuPont to retrieve the other pieces. Breaking into Natla's offices to find out Pierre's whereabouts, Lara discovers a medieval monk's diary, and learns that the Scion is a powerful artefact composed of three pieces, which were divided between the three rulers of the ancient continent of Atlantis, and one of these pieces is buried alongside former Atlantean ruler Tihocan, beneath an ancient monastery, St. Francis' Folly, in Greece.
Navigating the monastery, and following several firefights with Pierre, Lara locates the tomb of Tihocan, where she kills Pierre and recovers the second piece of the Scion he had taken. From a mural, she learns that Tihocan unsuccessfully tried to resurrect Atlantis after a catastrophe struck the original continent. After combining both pieces of the Scion, Lara is shown a vision that reveals the third and final piece of the Scion was hidden in Egypt after the third Atlantean ruler, a traitor who used the artefact to create a breed of monsters, was captured and imprisoned by Tihocan and Qualopec. Making her way through Egypt to the lost city of Khamoon, Lara kills Larson and recovers the third Scion piece.
From the game's earliest stages, the team wanted the title to involve tombs and pyramids.[11] In the early story draft, Lara would be confronted by a rival group called the "Chaos Raiders". During the Greece levels, Lara and Pierre were to have been less hostile rivals, helping each other with puzzles in the first level. Larson evolved from an Afrikaans character called Lars Kruger, who shared a similar role in the original plot.[22] The script itself was written by Vicky Arnold, who joined in 1995 and would work on later Tomb Raider titles.[22][32] Gard and Douglas created the basic story draft alongside the initial game design, then Arnold turned it into a script after joining the project.[22] It was Arnold's job to write the dialogue, and create a cohesive narrative around the locations selected by the team members. While Lara's character design and Gard's initial concept were present, much of the additional detail was worked out by Arnold.[32]
The level editor program was designed so that developers could make rapid adjustments to specific areas with ease.[22][29] Another noted aspect was the multi-layered levels, as compared to equivalent 3D action-adventure games of the time which were mostly limited to a flat-floor system with little verticality.[29] The interlinking room design was inspired by Egyptian multi-roomed tombs, particularly the tomb of Tutankhamun.[23] The grid-based pattern was a necessity due to the d-pad-based tank controls and the Saturn's quad polygon-based rendering technology.[22] Levels were first designed using a wireframe construction, with each area at this stage having only links to other areas of a level and walls. The team then added architecture and gameplay elements like traps and enemies, then implemented the different lighting values.[33] Due to time and technical limitations, planned outdoor areas had to be cut.[28]
An infamous part of Tomb Raider's history is a fan-made software patch dubbed Nude Raider. The patch, when added to an existing PC copy of a Tomb Raider game, caused Lara to appear naked.[60] In 1999, Core Design considered taking legal action against websites that hosted nude pictures of Lara Croft, stating that "we have a large number of young fans and we don't want them stumbling across the pictures when they do a general search for Tomb Raider".[60] Eidos sent cease and desist letters to the owners of the "nuderaider.com" URL that hosted the patch to enforce its copyright of Tomb Raider. Sites depicting nude images of Lara Croft have been sent cease and desist notices and shut down,[61] and Eidos Interactive was awarded the rights to the Nude Raider domain name.[62] A rumor stated that the game has a cheat code for Lara's nudity. Management did suggest adding it to developers, but they refused.[63] As a response to the controversy, Core Design included a secret code in the sequel; allegedly a similar nude code, it in fact blows Lara up.[63]
- The Golden Mask: it is a free expansion to TR2 and introduces an entirely new adventure. It is my favorite of the gold expansions. You get to discover an ancient city with rivers of gold and it is really gorgeous.
Shadow of the Cat: After recent floods in Khamoon, Lara returns to the local tomb to make further studies of the mysterious cat statue. When she returned, she saw that the main chamber was completely flooded - making more areas accesible and opening new opportunities for exploration. Lara explores new areas of the city and eventually uncovers the existence of a temple dedicated to the cat-goddess Bast, which houses a huge golden cat statue.
So I figured this was just the Demo's problem and maybe the full game doesn't have this issue, but... it does. More specifically, to enable 3Dfx you have to copy the tomb.exe from the "3DPatch" directory on the CD, and there's one directory for 3Dfx and another for Voodoo Rush (plus three others I didn't look at). I tried the 3Dfx one, but I got precisely the same result that the demo always gave me. At that point I was reluctant to try anymore because I was afraid all this crashing and restarting might be harming my computer.
Spoiler-free Synopsis: These bonus levels comprise two mini-adventures designed to challenge both novice and expert raiders. In the first two levels, "Shadow of the Cat," Lara returns to the city of Khamoon in search of an undiscovered tomb dedicated to the Egyptian cat-goddess, Bastet. In "Unfinished Business," having learned of the existence of a hive of surviving creatures guarding an alien hatchery, Lara returns to Atlantis to destroy the mutants before they invade again.
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