CREATING A LEGEND – The Making Of Tomb Raider 1 – (1996)
by Damian Butt & Stuart Wynne (Paragon Online)
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For mainstream pundits, Tomb Raider was a classic overnight sensation. One day there was Mario and Sonic The Hedgehog, the next there was Lara Croft - pointy-breasted herald of the 32bit generation. Even within the industry, no-one knew just how big a sensation it would be. But when Play visited Core Design's office in mid-'96, the potential was as obvious as the enthusiasm of its creators.
Resident Evil? - PAH! Core Design has a new game and it's going to wipe the rabid froth from RE's lips and then kick it into touch. To understand why you should be getting excited over this hitherto unknown game, consider this:Tomb Raider is bigger, faster and cleverer than Capcom's spooky classic. It contains more traps and puzzles, has a better looking central character, and is as playable as Mario 64. HELLO, BOYS! Tomb Raider is a 3-D adventure game featuring Lara Croft, an English explorer whose lifelong quest is to find an artefact called The Scion. To do this she must explore ten labyrinths located around the world, ranging from Aztec jungles to Egyptian ruins. It's no place for a girlie you might think, but Lara's made from tougher stuff than most. She also has a pair of rapid firing pistols, a torch and quite the most lethal pointy breasts this side of Madonna. |
Behind this stunning project are a surprisingly small team: Toby Gard (lead artist/originator), Paul Douglas (PSX programmer), Neil Boyd and Heather Gibson (maps, level design) and Gavin Rummery (level editor), all of whom are currently working late nights to finish Tomb Raider by August, a tough task, as (a) it is only about 50-60% complete, and (b) they are all perfectionists.
GOLDEN MEMORIES Toby Gard explains the inspiration for Tomb Raider with commendable bluntness: "I wanted an alternative view to all that first person Doom shit of which there is far too much. Tomb Raider is a cross between Prince of Persia - which is an excellent game for traps and pitfalls - and the Indiana Jones films." The 3D engine built to execute Gard's aspirations is one of 1996's major events. The third person perspective and 3D graphics combination has already been popularised by Delphine's Fade To Black, but Tomb Raider is the first PlayStation project to open up such a viewpoint with the free-flowing, dynamic platforming action only previously seen in Mario 64 previews [at the time of the visit, the N64's launch on June 23rd, 1996 was still a few weeks away.] Despite his own, comparitively recent entry into videogame design, the 23-year-old Gard turns out to have a considerable knowledge of its history, including the 'Golden Age' of 8bit, back-bedroom programming. I ask whether Tomb Raider had been influenced by Pyracurse, which also featured explorers solving puzzles and avoiding traps in a large temple. |
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"Not at all – everything was contemporary, although there was a game on the Spectrum that actually used the same perspective as TR. Imagine that, a first person perspective game in the mid Eighties."
"No way," PlayStation programmer Paul Douglas exclaims. "Yeah. It was called, Mask of something. (I Of The Mask was developed in 1985 by Sandy White and Angela Sutherland) Amazing idea, haven't seen it for ages though." |
ZIGGURATS R US
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The walls in the programming den are plastered with hundreds of sketches, photos and photocopies of many different temples, ziggurats and pyramidal structures spanning every conceivable ancient civilisation. These are the basis of inspiration for the complex labyrinths that make up Tomb Raider's ten levels. The ideas behind Lara Croft are, however, somewhat less elevated. Gard admits one drawback of the game's perspective is "that for most of the game you are looking at the character's backside. I thought it would be more preferable to look at the rear of a nubile young woman than a muscley bloke [hoots of agreement from the rest of the team] and I also wanted the game to stand out from the crowd."
Core Design executives initially resisted this idea- aside from short-skirted, high-kicking beat-'em-up babes, the number of female videogame characters is not extensive - but Gard aped his heroine and stuck to his guns. It was a crucial victory, but what of the inspiration for the look of his fiesty, pointy, athletic woman with a pair of cripplingly tight hotpants and a crop-top. Surely there are hints of Pamela Anderson in there, or even Tank Girl perhaps? "Lara's not based on anyone in particular," explains Gard, "certainly not Pamela Anderson or Tank Girl, although the similarities are there because she's a fit looking girl. I'd say she's more Sandra Bullock than Pamela Anderson; feisty, but with a brain." |
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DEAD HEAT IN A ZEPPELIN RACE
One unique aspect of Tomb Raider is the way Lara uses her weapons and how they target the enemy. When you start the game you are in a small cavern which is suddenly full of ravenous wolves leaping in all directions. If it was a Doom-style perspective, all you would do is back yourself into a corner shouting macho obscenities and keep pumping away whilst side-stepping from left-right. But because you play TR from behind and above the character's line of sight, it would be nigh-on impossible to shoot at a moving target with any degree of accuracy. As Gard explains, games like Bioforge and Fade to Black, which use the same viewpoint, can be frustrating when the situation requires a clinical finish. TR solves the problem with a clever targeting system which means that Lara automatically lines her sights on anything in front of her, and follows its movements wherever it goes. If, for example, a wolf or grizzly bear stands directly in front of here, both pistols remain fixed on the target, Reservoir Dogs-style. But if the enemy moves to Lara's left, you do not need to turn to face it because she instinctively drops her right arm and the other keeps the target in its sights. What this translates to is that you can leg it into a room full of wolves, leap, somersault and roll all over the place whilst shooting madly, and your bullets will always find their mark as long as you are vaguely facing the enemy. It's clever; meaning you can have fun duckin' and a divin' to avoid slavering jaws, and yet still feel like a crack shot. After all, it's not Lara's fault that you are controlling her from this perspective, so why should she be penalised for it? LARA LAUGHS |
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Apart from the 3-D engine, which conveys the depth and menace of the levels perfectly, the most impressive thing about TR is the animation on Lara and the many creatures/characters she faces. I'm told that the polygon count on Lara is upwards of 4,000 which certainly accounts for the detail and number of moves she seamlessly breaks into, but what's really amazing is that she is not motion captured – it's all animation. Toby Gard started with Lara first and it has certainly paid dividends because the animation is so smooth, you'd swear that it was done using the old ping pong ball in a laser beam trick.
"She doesn't do things that look wrong," Gard is proud of his work, with good reason. "All the animation is entirely realistic. I wanted to give her grace as well as include all the frenetic action of a John Woo movie." Lara runs, side-steps, somersaults, backflips, dives, falls, grabs onto ledges by the tip of her fingernails, and swims with all the fluidity of a real person. Words cannot describe how sensational the effect is, you really have to see it in action to believe it. It all goes to make Tomb Raider one of the best looking games there is. |
MAPPED OUT
A custom 3D editor allowed Gavin Rummery to manipulate the levels in real-time, constantly experimenting to create the most fiendish and challenging puzzles. |
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SCION ORGANIZER
Tomb Raider is one of the first games on PlayStation that has actually impressed us. Oh sure there has been the odd level or graphical effect that has elicited 'oohs' and 'aahs' from the PLAY team, but this is the game that has everyone fired up at the moment. Given Core Design's long association with Sega, it's no surprise the game will first appear on the Saturn [October '96]. The PlayStation will follow a month later, however, and from what we've seen its 3D is a lot smoother and more robust. |
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