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Paul Douglas

@cnhyv.bsky.social

I developed games and other less serious things. Co-created Tomb Raider half a lifetime ago.

69 Posts402 Follower49 Folgt
Paul Douglas@cnhyv.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Lara's OG motorcycle was a Norton Commando modified like a café racer. Note the distinctive crankcase cover. Was originally just a generic sportsbike but myself and Neal (who really loved his motorbikes too) decided it should fittingly be a British classic instead. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_...

Infinity Tomb Raider@infinitytombraider.bsky.social · 8mo ago

The official TR account has teased a new Dark Horse Direct statue for Tomb Raider I, featuring Lara Croft on her motorcycle, inspired by an original promotional render from 1996 and probably recreated in the TR1 Remastered style. Full reveal coming in the next few days.

Paul Douglas@cnhyv.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Fwiw, Gary Antcliffe was the 2nd programmer on Tomb Raider, starting after Toby and I had done some pre-production. He created the framework for the editors, ported what I had on PC to the Sega Saturn, and helped build the pipeline. He left Core a while after the other programmers joined the team.

Paul Douglas@cnhyv.bsky.social · 8mo ago

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVFy... Stu Atkinson 'demos' the character & animation editor for the OG Tomb Raider games. This editor was used to texture & paint meshes imported from 3D Studio 4 and link, sequence and markup sets of imported animations. Built in-house by myself and Gary Antcliffe. #TR30

Paul Douglas@cnhyv.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Victor wanted us to change in-game Lara to appeal more to a Japanese audience. Huge eyes/head etc. They faxed through examples really late in dev. Toby Gard really didn't want to alter Lara. As a compromise all that was changed was the manuals & guide. Not sure who did that render or illustrations.

NixieTube ⁂@nixietube.eurosky.social · 9mo ago

@cnhyv.bsky.social Hello Paul, do you have any info on this? I've found an old post of yours talking about the illustrations (xcancel.com/cnhyv/status...) but what about the 3D render? Was that also part of Victor Interactive's "suggestions"?

Paul Douglas@cnhyv.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Rawr! She's back apparently. Personally I'd prefer exploring new lost worlds than another remake/remaster/reimagining of something we crafted under intense duress in the 90's. Fingers crossed, eh. Dinosaurs will always be cool though...

Tomb Raider Allosaurus concept artwork by T Gard. 1994
Paul Douglas@cnhyv.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Well done our lass. However, I suspect most of those magazine covers were in the 90s and 00s so it's hardly a contest nowadays. And I imagine Aloy is looking quite large in the rearview mirror too. Let's hope CD and Amazon don't rest on their laurels, eh...

Eurogamer@eurogamer.bsky.social · 11mo ago

As shared by the Guinness World Records, Tomb Raider's Lara Croft now holds the title of the best-selling video game heroine, along with the record for a video game character gracing the most magazine covers. https://bit.ly/3M22Vcj

Paul Douglas@cnhyv.bsky.social · last yr.

Lara's braid was replaced for a presentation at E3 as it would clip right through her back and neck which looked rather grotesque. Then we had a huge list of higher priority tasks to crunch through before launch so it stayed as the temporary bun. Nothing to do with polygon count as stated here⬇️🤦

Tomb Raider@tombraider.com · last yr.

Happy National Video Games Day! 🎮 Did you know that Lara Croft did not have her iconic braid in the original Tomb Raider released in 1996? It was removed because it used too many of the polygons that could be displayed at one time. Instead, Lara's hair was tucked into a bun. #TombRaider

Image of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider I.
Paul Douglas@cnhyv.bsky.social · last yr.

A lot of us from that era honed our crafts on the Amiga computer, before multimedia/game degrees became de rigueur. Eg. Toby Gard's animation portfolio created on the Amiga was featured in one of the computer art magazines a year or two before he joined Core Design too. #Amiga

Picture of Toby Gard with text describing his animation work on an Amiga.Rearview picture of a woman with red hair brandishing a bloodied sword. Caption reads 'The girl looks quite out of place when compared to the others,' reasons Gard. 'She was drawn during my 'Disney' phase'
Paul Douglas@cnhyv.bsky.social · last yr.

The Amiga computer is 40 years old. It was more affordable than PCs and Macs, allowing those of us who had limited means to be creative. I loved that machine, spent so many hours programming on it, building 3d objects for my demos and games, making sounds with a 8bit sampler and so forth. #Amiga

'Lohnar' open world 3d game demo on Amiga 500 by Paul Douglas. Early 1990s.
Paul Douglas@cnhyv.bsky.social · last yr.

The Amiga computer is 40 years old. It was more affordable than PCs and Macs, allowing those of us who had limited means to be creative. I loved that machine, spent so many hours programming on it, building 3d objects for my demos and games, making sounds with a 8bit sampler and so forth. #Amiga

'Lohnar' open world 3d game demo on Amiga 500 by Paul Douglas. Early 1990s. Definition file for a 3d object that kind of looks like a dalek. Really a tapered hexagonal prism with a sphere on top... 13 vertices, 7 polygons, 1 sphere, 1 partitioning plane (for sorting). By Paul Douglas, early 1990s.
Paul Douglas@cnhyv.bsky.social · last yr.

Did you know the original PlayStation had a revision to its GPU and VRAM early in its life? The Initial version had noticeable colour banding on shaded texture maps and slower effects like transparency. Consoles released after tailend of 1995 fixed this.

Noticeable colour banding on Tomb Raider running on a PlayStation with the original GPU. (Screenshot author unknown)Smoother gouraud shaded texture maps on Tomb Raider running on PlayStation with revised GPU and SGRAM.
Paul Douglas@cnhyv.bsky.social · last yr.

We used the same Saturn devkits at Core. One per team. Testers had the hardware address checker. Earlier kits were the Sofia boxes from Japan. We had a protoype the size of a beer fridge with only one SH2. Alas, someone fried the mainboard by introducing it to 240V. It probably ended up in a skip.

Andrew Borman@borman.bsky.social · last yr.

Some of the Sega Ssturn equipment used for the never-released version of Descent from the Volition donation to The Strong.