Tomb Raider Level Editor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Tomb Raider Level Editor | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Developer(s) | Core Design |
| Publisher(s) | Eidos Interactive |
| Engine | Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation |
| Release date(s) | November 2000 |
| Genre(s) | Third-person shooter/Platform |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows and Mac |
| Media | CD-ROM, the Internet |
| Input | keyboard |
The Tomb Raider Level editor is a tool released by Eidos with the game Tomb Raider Chronicles in late 2000. Since then it has enabled players to design new levels of their own, set in locations from the original games or in new locations.
The original release of the level editor was very limited. Builders could only build Egypt-based levels due to the Egypt WADs included with the editor. Later more WADs were released, and many unofficial tools for the customization of WAD files.
Contents |
[edit] Included files
The following files were included in the release of the Level Editor:
- winroomedit.exe - the program used to create the maps for the levels
- tom2pc.exe - the program used to convert maps into levels
- tomb4.exe - The Last Revelation engine, used to play the levels
- Script utilities - Allows the builders to script their levels
- Samples - All the sounds from Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation
- Audio from Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation.
- WADs and map files - the WADS (object sets) and map files for a tutorial level, the Tomb of Seth, Temple of Karnak, Coastal Ruins, Catacombs, Cleopatra's Palaces and City of the Dead. WADs and maps for Angkor Wat, The Lost Library and Guardian of Semerkhet were released later, as well as an updated version of the City of the Dead
- Spare textures from other Tomb Raider levels.
[edit] History
In the years after its initial release, there have been many programs released by amateurs designed to enhance and expand the level-editor's capabilities. These "tools" enable a designer to create and sort their own texture files, and to change, create, combine, or animate objects and sounds in a level, among other things. Newer tools have been released as the demand for more customizeable levels has heightened - for instance, in 2005, Tomb Raider 4.5 Patcher, a program that could only alter drawing distance and distant fog limits, was released, and this program quickly evolved into the Tomb Raider Engine Patcher (shortly called TREP), with many new options such as climbable pushable blocks, increased memory limits, options to aid realism and built-in special effect and patch editors. As of January 2007, TREP contains almost one thousand patch entries. Another example would be a new unofficial version of the Level Editor (NGLE) which has far more options to choose from, some of which require extra engine modification that is still being worked on and eagerly anticipated, like quicksand, cold water, low-level FMV support and lots more features used in other Tomb Raider games.
Some people are involved with the level editor, but never actually build levels. Instead, they compose high-quality music, provide voice-overs, design outfits, enemies, and objects for use by any level-builder. In fact, modified versions of outfits and objects appearing in the three most recent Tomb Raider games, The Angel of Darkness, Tomb Raider: Legend and Tomb Raider: Anniversary, appeared before the games themselves hit the shelves.
In the middle of year 2003, members of the Eidos Tomb Raider forums held a petiton requesting Eidos to release the Tomb Raider Level Editor source code. This petition, started by the forum moderator, Dhama, was a failed attempt. Even though it was ignored by Eidos, hundreds continued to sign it until the end of 2004.
The Level Editor Community is still very active, and high quality level sets are released every few months. Many have observed that the custom levels look better than the official levels, because they are built with passion by the fans themselves. Currently there are more than one thousand six hundred custom levels released on the internet and there are many highly anticipated levels which are in the making. Level designers often release previews of their levels, using screen-shots and movies.
Each month, the German Tomb Raider community website, Lara's Levelbase publishes an online magazine about upcoming levels and interviews, called the Tomb Raider Tribune.
Even before the official Level Editor was released, an unofficial level editors had been designed by Tomb Raider fans, and primarily by Honduranian programmer nicknamed TPascal. These impressive creations had been growing alongside with the official community, but was sometimes considered forgotten, though there are many custom levels for other game engines, including some for Tomb Raider Chronicles. Latest instance of unofficial level editor called DXTre3D. Furthermore, right now TPascal is developing new, clone game engine called FexEngine designed especially for custom level building. This engine most likely will contain major features from previous Tomb Raider games, as well as scripting language, flexible object editor, advanced geometry and physics.
It is possible to find every enemy or object from all the Tomb Raider games, converted to the appropriate slot.
[edit] Tools
[edit] TRWEST (Tomb Raider Wad Editing Studio)
One of the first WAD Editing utilities. It allowed the combining of WAD objects and the extraction of objects from .TR4 files. It also allowed the user to decompile the "SCRIPT.DAT" and "ENGLISH.DAT" files included with Tomb Raider - The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider Times Exclusive level and scripts made for the Level Editor. It has since been rendered obsolete by WADMerger, which allows the creation of new items and the extraction of any itmes from any type of Tomb Raider level.
[edit] TR2WAD
The first tool to allow the ripping of WADs from Tomb Raider levels. After the release of WADMerger, however, this tool was no longer updated, but is still used by many builders.
[edit] TR2PRJ
TR2PRJ by Aktrekker, is a tool used for extracting the maps from Tomb Raider levels. The tool supports the ability to extract the maps from Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider 2 (but with lighting issues), Tomb Raider 3, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation and Tomb Raider Chronicles (with geometry problems). The tool also allows the extraction of sky textures and textures used in the maps themselves.
[edit] WADMerger
The first tool that has allowed proper WAD customization, allowing users to copy items used in Tomb Raider Levels (.PHD, .TUB, .TR2, .TR4 and .TRC format), and convert the enemies from this format into the correct slot (this is done either automatically, since some object slots in the engine are similar to slots used in former games, or through the use of the AI editor, which allows the user to re-arrange the animations and StateIDs of objects.) Earlier versions of WADMerger had a bug when loading .TR4 levels, which would cause the program to crash. This bug has since been solved. All versions of WADMerger don't load .TRC levels correctly, and the result is partially or completely missing textures on most objects. WADMerger also has a bug concerning levels made with editors used to create "base levels" for DXTRe3D. The levels will not load properly and the textures will be scrambled on all objects.These issues ,as is evidenced by the quality custom levels being created with the assistance of WADmerger,have obviously been resolved- for the most part.WADmerger's latest version is a fully functioning and most commonly used tool in the creation of tomb raider custom levels.It has animation features as well.
[edit] Tomb Raider Engine Patcher
In 2005, a patcher, named Tomb Raider 4.5 Patcher, was released to alter the tomb4.exe file included in with the level editor. At the time, the patcher could only alter drawing distance limits and distance fog limits, but since then, thousands more options have opened up, and the patcher has evolved into Tomb Raider Engine Patcher. There are now many options allowing many changes including various bugfixes, weapon behaviour, enemy damage and HP, inventory and object customizers and much more. More recent versions incluse a DRACO (Dynamically-ReplaceAble Code Organizer) module allowing many more custom "patches" to permit the engine to do much more - climeable pushable blocks, static object hard collision, diary, old Tomb Raider styled teeth spikes and much more.
The drawback with this patcher is that it cannot be used to modify the Mac version of the executeable.
A short list of patches includes:
- Statistics - Kills and Hits were in earlier Tomb Raider games, but not integrated into the engine of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation.
- Pushable Blocks - Pushable objects in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation were never actually climeable, since they came in different shapes and sizes. A patch restoring the ability to climb on pushable blocks extracted from earlier Tomb Raider games and custom-made pushable blocks (taller and shorter than the original "4-click" pushables, as they are known to builders) has been released.
- Static meshes - the number of static mesh slots has been increased. As well as this, statics can now have "hard" collision, as it was in the first three Tomb Raider games.
- Exploding enemies - This patch allows builders to have enemies explode upon the engine sending out the "die" command to the enemies, much like the mutants of Tomb Raider and the statues guarding the Floating Islands in Tomb Raider 2. This patch does not work with all enemies - the SETHA and MUTANT enemies will perform the last animation repeatedly. Other enemies, such as the SPHINX and KNIGHTS-TEMPLAR slots, which do not have their own death animations, will still explode when killed by Lara.
- New moves - A set of patches that unlocks previously disabled or abandoned moves, like crawlspace pickup, roll and jump, as well as adding completely new moves, like monkeyswing turn and water-to-ladder climb.
- Diary - The ability to restore a diary in place of the Load/Save game memory cards. This diary can be used to both save and load the game, as well as recording events down. This is done through the use of an external strings file.
- Additional script file - Allows to use level-specific patches and parameters, like drawing distance and distant fog, gravity and weapon characteristics.
As of March 24, 2007, the Tomb Raider Engine Patcher is now out of development.
[edit] StrPix
This tool, made by TPascal, allows re-texturing of objects in WAD files. It also allows the importing and exporting of meshes in DXF format. It also allows editing of collision for static mesh slots in the WAD. It cannot add new textures to the WAD.
[edit] DxTre3D
The first major "unofficial" level editor that allows the user to create levels for any of the five original games, unlike the official level editor. It uses the actual level files for the objects instead of the standard WAD files used by the official Level Editor. At the moment, TPascal is working on Version 3, which will be used to build custom levels for his FexEngine as well as the original gaming engines.
[edit] Customised engines
Two new engines are being written to further enhance the experience of the Level Editor.
[edit] FexEngine
[edit] Next Generation Tomb Raider (NGLE/NG Tomb4)
Currently, all that is known is that the engine will have new features including quicksand (from Tomb Raider III), rain and snow (from Tomb Raider Chronicles), cold rooms (in normal rooms, Lara's breath will be visible and in water rooms, an additional freezing meter will appear, as in Tomb Raider III) and rooms which will damage Lara. There is also the possibility of low-level FMV support.
[edit] Notable Levels
[edit] Lara at the Movies (TRLE Gold 2004)
Released by TRLE.net, this group of levels recreates certain movies with Lara as the star.
Finally getting a bit of rest from all her adventures, Lara decides to have a relaxing night out at the movies and through the rainy evening makes her way to the local theatre, only to find it strangely empty and deserted…
The movies included are as follows:
- The Treasure Island
- Rebecca
- Psycho
- The Blair Witch Project
- Jurassic Park
- Blood from the Mummy's Tomb
- Alien Resurrection
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Star Wars Episode 1
[edit] Star Wars - Episode I Director's Cut
After the success of the Lara at the Movies project, the author of the Star Wars levels, EssGee, adapted his levels and added features that weren't in the original release of these levels. The most notable change is that the game ends with a cutscene, showing a conversation between Yoda and Queen Amidala.
[edit] Back to Basics projects
Back to Basics is a series of games, each made up of individual levels made by different builders. The rules for the creation of the Back To Basics projects are simple:
- The builders must only use the one texture set and WAD set.
- They must NOT modify the texture set or WAD.
- However, they may make a story themed around the kind of level they wish to build.
From the Back to Basics 2007 readme page:
The "Back to Basics" challenge is to build a single level of about one hour net gameplay with every builder using the provided custom WAD, the given texture set and optionally the provided custom audios.
Currently, there are three Back to Basics level series available:
- Back to Basics 2005: Catacombs
- Back to Basics 2006: Oriental
- Back to Basics 2007: Memories: London
Latest instance of Back to Basics is essentially a collection of levels set in London, each with different stories. As with all other Back to Basics projects, the objects and texture sets in the levels are all the same, but, indeed, these levels are quite enjoyable to play.
[edit] Tomb Raider Remakes
There have been a few attempts at rebuilding the first Tomb Raider. So far, only one builder has been known to succeed.
[edit] Tomb Raider Conversion Project
The first attempt at a Tomb Raider remake was done by a small team lead by a builder named KingSpyder. The group tried to recreate the first game faithfully, including Lara's Home and Unfinished Business, but in the end only created three levels before the project was abandoned. There have been many remakes of single levels since.
[edit] Tomb Raider I: Revised
In 2006, another builder, by the name of Daoine Sidhe, was the first to successfully remake the entire first game. This game was not a 1:1 remake, however, Daoine had created many new expanded areas (the most noticeable being in two levels from Peru: Caves and The City Of Vilcambamba) from scratch as well as faithful levels. Also, unlike the Tomb Raider Conversion Project, most of the enemies in this remake were faithful rather than alternatives from other Tomb Raider games, the only exception being the lions from the Graeco-Roman levels. As can be expected, puzzles in this version slightly differ from the original. However, this game did not include Lara's Home or Unfinished Business. The Unfinished Business levels are currently being remade by a builder named ggctuk.
[edit] Other notable levels and level series
- Aegean Legends by Trix
- Armageddon's Temple 2 by eTux
- A Witch shall be born by Josep Borrut
- Jade Empire by [christoph]
- Neon God by Horus
- The Experiment series by Bojrkraider
- The Last Saga series by Tomo
- Underworld series started by Richard Lawther
[edit] Highly anticipated levels in development
Right now there are several highly anticipated levels in development. Most of these levels were in production for years, and yet these levels are still not ready to be released. One of the reasons why such levels are often delayed is a much more complicated TRLE development cycle (as compared to other popular level editors).
- Himalayan Mysteries by Titak
- Sanctuary of Souls by Piega
- The Beginning by GeckoKid
- The Spring of Eternal Youth by Walrus
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] Tools
- TRLE Search Engine
- The site for Tomb Raider Engine Patcher
- DxTre3D site
- Lara's Level Base Objects and Tools
- Tomb Raider Chronicles resources for the Level Editor
[edit] Levels
[edit] Forums
- Eidos Forums Tomb Raider Level Editor Forum
- TRLE Community forums
- TR Custom Levels - For Builders
- TR Custom Levels - For Players
