Tomb Raider level editor

The Tomb Raider level editor, Room Editor, is a tool released by Eidos Interactive with the video 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.

History

Even before Room Editor was released, petitions were created and a website specifically devoted to unofficial level editors and utilities was created in order to further Tomb Raider level editing and reverse-engineering of the series. In mid-2003, members of the Eidos Tomb Raider forums held a petition requesting Eidos to release the Tomb Raider Level Editor source code. Even though the petition failed to attract the attention of Eidos, hundreds continued to sign it until the end of 2004.

Unnofficial level editors were designed by Tomb Raider fans, and have been growing alongside with the official community. Other members of the community contribute high-quality music, voice-overs, design outfits, enemies, and objects for use by any level editor. 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 years after the initial release of the level editor, 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 customisable 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' (abbreviated to 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.

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.

Tools

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 include a DRACO (Dynamically-ReplaceAble Code Organizer) module allowing many more custom "patches" to permit the engine to do much more - climbable 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 executable.

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.
* Bink Video Playback - Returns the ability to play Bink videos and adds the ability to play them any time in a level.

On March 24 2007, the Tomb Raider Engine Patcher temporarily went out of development. On April 13 2007, development began again. The authors stated:
TREP and add-on module support will continue at least until first NG Tomb4 version release. The creator of NG Tomb4 executeable has stated he will try to make the executeable compatible with TREP.

After a long hiatus, patches allowing the recording of 'Demos' (Which play after the title is inactive, like in earlier Tomb Raider games), the playing of Bink FMVs and more have been released.

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.

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.

Metasequoia

The only vastly used tool in the TRLE world, created by Mizno Labs allows import/export of AutoCad files (.DXF) and the creation of meshes that can be used in the levels using Stripix/Pixstr that allows the texturing of the meshes created in Metasequoia (Meta for abbrev.)

Customized engines
Three new engines are being written to further enhance the experience of the Level Editor.

FexEngine
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.
IrisEngine
A completely new engine and level editor that mimic the Tomb Raider games and will be completely open-source. The IrisEngine will also be cross-platform so it will run on Windows, Linux and Mac.

Notable Outfit Designers

*In the TRLE world, ever since modding tools were available, people have attempted to create their own versions of Lara, and other characters, with high polygon meshes and high texture detail.There have been many successful outfits makers including Trinity, PoYu, TRangel, MaskedRaider, and White Tiger.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu