chromatic9
Member
That was a great rundown of Tomb Raider. Never knew how bad the sound was on the Saturn.
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DF Retro: Tomb Raider - PS1/SAT/PC
- Thread starter Self_Destructive
- Start date
I always thought the texture warping and "swimmy" vertices of the original title added to its charm, but seeing the modded pc version (for the first time thanks to DF), it looks like how it should ave always been played.
It's interesting that the ios/android ports look like they still possess some of the texture warping of the original console releases. What version are those ports based on? pc? I might want to buy it just to have in case I feel nostalgic.
As always, thanks John, good work.
It's interesting that the ios/android ports look like they still possess some of the texture warping of the original console releases. What version are those ports based on? pc? I might want to buy it just to have in case I feel nostalgic.
As always, thanks John, good work.
Just a question: like I said on the last page I'm a huge fan of the first game but never really checked out the sequels (apart from maybe the first half of the 2013 reboot). I'm fixing up the mods now to replay the first one and I think I'll go through the series after that. I know the last (couple of?) the Core Design games were supposedly pretty buggy. Were they buggy to the point of being unplayable or did fans fix them in the intervening years?
Sorry if this is common knowledge, even though I replay TR almost once a year I never really looked into the rest of the series.
Sorry if this is common knowledge, even though I replay TR almost once a year I never really looked into the rest of the series.
These DF Retro videos are some of the best on YouTube. The Daytona one actually got me to buy it again on PS3, and the Symphony of the Night one was just superb. I'd only played a little bit of the Saturn version, and always knew it was inferior... but didn't know by just how much until I watched their video on it. The TR one is just crazy seeing where the series has gone. It was so cutting-edge back in the Saturn days, even though I completely sucked at it, and don't think I made it much further than the first cave after the tutorial/gym thing. LOL
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
Another great episode. I love when you "pull back the curtains" with some of these older games and show different layers before the final presentation. It was really cool seeing both the wire frame mode and how the textures are assigned (that was pretty trippy). I find that your pacing of the episodes is pretty spot on for me as well, the 15 minutes went by like a breeze.
HomerSimpson-Man
Member
I didn't realize the PS1 Tomb Raider had ran that game so well at 30 fps, for some reason my memories it more like the framerate of the Saturn version as I tend to associate some of slower framerates from that generation despite me playing the game on my PS1. The game being a more puzzle heavy slower game than I thought it would be playing it as a kid skewing some of my perception.
Quite neat how the devs handled the polygons and texture effects on the Saturn trying to come to grips with the hardware and quads.
Quite neat how the devs handled the polygons and texture effects on the Saturn trying to come to grips with the hardware and quads.
MrCunningham
Member
The modded version seen in the video is really just based on the old ATi 3D Rage Pro patch that was originally released in 1997 (I think?) by ATi. I think ATi recompiled the Tomb Raider .EXE (via Core) to run on Windows 95 natively, and it is the only patch that was released back in the day that supported Direct 3D.
The original Tomb Raider on DOS is a bit of a mess when it comes to 3D acceleration. It came out during a time when OpenGL didn't really exist on the PC and when Microsoft was trying to establish Direct 3D. So the game has multiple 3D acceleration patches from different video card manufactures. 3DFX, Matrox, S3, PowerVR, ATi and others (though no Nvidia support) all had their own unique drivers and it was a pain in the ass to find these files online (if you were lucky enough to have an internet connection in 1996-97) if you owned one of those cards. The PowerVR patch could support up to 1024x768 resolution, which was pretty impressive for its time.
The original Tomb Raider was a pretty big contributor to the popularity of 3D acceleration back then, before GLQuake hit the scene. .
Yep, it would, PS1 games look great on PSP.
Best version, go for it!
Emperor Bohe
Member
They probably just added it later, the PS1 version came out after the Saturn version
The controls are pre-analog, and are basically "tank" controls, where you have left and right turning with forward and back motion. You can also do sidesteps and such. It feels most like a 3D version of the original Prince of Persia game, where all the movement is very deliberate and kind of stiff, but also precise. You'll find yourself doing platforming where you'll make a jump, then take some time to turn and position yourself before making your next move. Once you get used to the controls, they're fine.
Do the mansion tutorial before you play the game and you'll be set.
I don't think the original is quite as good as Anniversary, but they're both great games and both worth playing. If you have absolutely no patience for old pre-analog 3D controls, maybe just skip to anniversary though.
MrCunningham
Member
Yeah, it is pretty cool to see the Saturn render quads in wire frame mode. As explained in the video, you can see how the quads sub divide to help reduce texture warping when they move closer to the player.
Another great episode dark10x . Thank you!
Wonder if anyone tried to mod the aniversary game to be more like the original?
Maybe even export the 3d models to the new ROTTR engine...daft as it sounds, I Love things like that ie Vice city map exported to the gta5 engine, or Sonic levels transferred to Sonic generations.
Wonder if anyone tried to mod the aniversary game to be more like the original?
Maybe even export the 3d models to the new ROTTR engine...daft as it sounds, I Love things like that ie Vice city map exported to the gta5 engine, or Sonic levels transferred to Sonic generations.
I followed the instrunctions at pcgaming wiki and the game is working great on Windows 10, wide screen and all! Too bad it seems that it's impossible to make Steam recognize that I'm playing it, so I don't get the Steam functions like the community modes for the Steam/DS4 controllers and the play time in my profile since it runs another executable file, and a simple shortcut won't give me all those options.
I used this guide from the Steam community, god widescreen, music, visual improvements, and Steam still launches it when I click play in my library.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/224960/guides/#scrollTop=100
Schopenhauerian
Member
ICYMI, some earlier posts on this subject from MrCunningham's 20th Anniversary thread:
Also, was wondering: has anyone here tried any of the existing texture packs for the PC version of TR1?
Since a few people in this thread have asked about the recent iOS/Android versions of TR1 and TR2: "For the PC version of TR2... it looks like someone actually went to the effort of introducing the textures from the recent iOS/Android version (differences shown in this video)..."
It's CALLED A HANDSTAND and it is the most important difference between the two versions!!!
Also don't count on it but I THINK you also can dive in the PS1 version and can't in the Saturn
MrCunningham
Member
Here is the Tomb Raider Forums link for those who are looking for it: http://www.tombraiderforums.com/showthread.php?t=214779
Dragon1893
Member
Fantastic video. Man, the PSone version runs really well.
sixteen-bit
Member
cool episode. loved the trippy emulator effects, lol
It's faithful in spirit...mostly. The level design is redone in a lot of places and kept in a lot of places. Overall, they are very thoughtful about how they redo things. If you don't mind that the complexity of platforming is not there (the CD games are pretty fluid), you'll really love it.
They ruin a few key moments (the poor T-Rex), and they merge two levels later in the game, but it's still just a really fun game that captures the spirit and tone of the original in an era when most games are like Press A to move forward. And SOME of the remade levels are brilliant in how creative they are with their license.
DF Retro is the DF content I'm most interested in. Finding how developers squeezed power out of these primitive machines using genius programming and clever graphical tricks is way more interesting than "this game runs 3 frames slower on XB1 than on PS4", but I get there's a market for that stuff.
I'd never play Tomb Raider nowadays due to the controls, which I remember struggling with even at the time (and I loved Resident Evil) but it's definitely an important game. I used to just mess around in the mansion, where I didn't have to deal with all the impossible-to-hit animals
I'd never play Tomb Raider nowadays due to the controls, which I remember struggling with even at the time (and I loved Resident Evil) but it's definitely an important game. I used to just mess around in the mansion, where I didn't have to deal with all the impossible-to-hit animals
Auto correct?
Not sure which version they're based on but I do know that they don't use the original textures but rather remade higher-res ones. IIRC, though, they aren't 100% faithful to the originals.
It's a reimagining and a rather poor one at that IMO. The only level that they managed to somewhat improve upon was St. Francis' Folly and even that suffers from their overuse of ledge-hopping and the general lack of substance to LAU's traversal mechanics.
I see. My fear was that they took a game with a substantial amount of exploration and, as is sometimes the case with remakes, replaced it with something more linear. Sounds like that didn't happen, and the complaints from series fans are more focused on the controls, which were always a turn-off to me in the original games.
Schopenhauerian
Member
RagnarokX noted some other changes to story/characterization:
R_thanatos
Member
Another excellent video .
I had a Ati rage pro + voodoo 1 back in the days with a pentium celeron 333 and my first PC game was tomb raider .i Have plenty of good memories with that title.
I had a Ati rage pro + voodoo 1 back in the days with a pentium celeron 333 and my first PC game was tomb raider .i Have plenty of good memories with that title.
R_thanatos
Member
They kept this effect for tomb raider 2 as well . I recall they only changed it in TR3 or 4
It goes to the Steam guides tab, not to the guide itself.
On the other hand, I found out there's a braid mod for TR1 because of that, which is cool.
Also, saturn was weaker with 3d we know, but this much worse? Could it be that the graphics processing unit(s) had to distort the textures to get them to...you know, resemble flat surfaces and that distortion takes up gpu (if you could call it that i guess) time? I've never actually see this square stuff WRT saturn games before. It's cray.
edit: Also why does Lara appear taller in the PS1 version? She seems thinner and taller. Is this a resolution issue?
edit: Also why does Lara appear taller in the PS1 version? She seems thinner and taller. Is this a resolution issue?