View Full Version : Lost Valley in a Cave
Some people actually thought the valley was INSIDE a cave. http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc80/Phlip_03/Icons%20and%20Smileys/chuck.gif
I find this fact very humorous.
dexter void
16-07-09, 12:48
I can kinda see why as there is no skyline in that level.
It's just black (i think). I don't think there was enough polygons to create various textures for skies in the original Tomb Raider as you'll notice most of the levels are inside a building or have a roof.
I actually thought The Lost Valley was a huge cavern but then it would have to be called The Lost Cavern i suppose...
LOL.. this is kinda old news for me, but thanks for sharing :)
:hug:
Palace Midas
16-07-09, 12:55
Maybe it was allready night when Lara entered the valley. Night..with too much clouds to see some stars. Same with Colosseum. Core was a genius...they invented the night & day cyclus even before Ocarina of Time was out :P
Maybe it was allready night when Lara entered the valley. Night..with too much clouds to see some stars. Same with Colosseum. Core was a genius...they invented the night & day cyclus even before Ocarina of Time was out :P
Well, we can realize that a place where the past touch the present have some diferent time rules, where the nigth and the day dont have the same limits they have on regular places...If this place still have raptors and t-rex...
pizzabob18
16-07-09, 17:03
It was hard to tell. Some people still think that Sanctuary of the Scion is outdoors, when it is in a cave.
The TR engine could not render true outdoors sections, that feature was included for TR2. The only clearly-outdoor sections are in UB, and they show normal textured squares with a black texture with some stars to try to fool you.
I always thought that the lost valley was intended to be outdoors. The lack of skyline is just an engine limitation.
Same with Colosseum.
How it's the same with the Colosseum?
From what i understand the Colosseum was supposed to be beneath St Francis Folly (more or less.) :confused:
TheCookieTheif
17-07-09, 00:12
I always thought the lost valley was outside but the black skyline was very confusing for me :(
silver_wolf
17-07-09, 01:50
hey! I'll have you know I was 6 when I first saw the Lost Valley! How was I supposed to know it was outside when the sky was black and the whole place was lit up like Times Square?!
iamlaracroft
17-07-09, 02:02
Uhm, I totally still see it as being 'indoors' as opposed to it being underneath a pitch-black night sky :pi:
Honestly, until recently I didn't even know it was 'outdoors'. Same with the Colosseum.
I mean...there are waterfalls and rivers and pools and foliage and fauna everywhere else in the previous levels, and those are undisputed caves...:confused:
I think it's quite easy to understand how someone could make that 'mistake'.
PoseidonsDeath
17-07-09, 05:01
It's understandable... Although the Level is Called The Lost Valley
Tombraider95
17-07-09, 13:12
If the valley was in a cave, it wouldnt of been textured black :)
Uhm, I totally still see it as being 'indoors' as opposed to it being underneath a pitch-black night sky :pi:
Honestly, until recently I didn't even know it was 'outdoors'. Same with the Colosseum.
I mean...there are waterfalls and rivers and pools and foliage and fauna everywhere else in the previous levels, and those are undisputed caves...:confused:
I think it's quite easy to understand how someone could make that 'mistake'.
How could you think that? It's not as if there was a cave coloured rocky roof above. Infact you come from the inside of a cave to lost valley.
Changeling
17-07-09, 13:39
The clue is in the title really: The Lost Valley. :whi:
The TR engine at that time couldn't create horizons (something which was implimented in the future games), so they just made the sky black. The valley is outdoors, I don't think it's a time rift as someone said before. I just thought that Qualopec, using his piece of the Scion, created the dinosaurs and the valley with it to guard his tomb.
Tomb Raider Master
17-07-09, 13:48
The whole TR1 has an "indoor" feeling IMO.
The Great Chi
17-07-09, 13:54
The lost valley and the colosseum are both outdoors and it is night.
When this game was made there was no skybox as like TR2 onwards, which encompasses the background with wraparound sky.
BUT.....There are ways TR1 lost valley and colosseum could be made daylight with clouds in the sky using a thin skin of wiremesh attached to the roof and sides of each TR model room that should have contained sky.
This can be done by means of a 3D moddeling tool and then retexturing, and this has been discussed in my thread on how to modify skyboxes.
My origonal thread below was about 'how to modifying existing skyboxes for TR1 to TRC', but as it was pointed out in the thread there is no skybox for TR1, but it should be possible to do a skin method instead.
I have not had time to experiment with my 'wiremesh skin' idea but it should work, if interested, see link to my modding section thread for details.....
http://www.tombraiderforums.com/showthread.php?t=153578
Liquid Fire
17-07-09, 15:32
Maybe it was allready night when Lara entered the valley. Night..with too much clouds to see some stars. Same with Colosseum. Core was a genius...they invented the night & day cyclus even before Ocarina of Time was out :P
Erm no they really didn't. OoT has a working day/night cycle with every stage of the day, TR has a permanent time of day that is assumed to be night because their software wasn't powerful enough to do skylines back then.
Just because they couldn't do something back then, the fact they didn't doesn't mean they had a genius alternative, just means they didn't have the resources to do it.
Palace Midas
17-07-09, 16:41
Erm no they really didn't. OoT has a working day/night cycle with every stage of the day, TR has a permanent time of day that is assumed to be night because their software wasn't powerful enough to do skylines back then.
Just because they couldn't do something back then, the fact they didn't doesn't mean they had a genius alternative, just means they didn't have the resources to do it.
I was just joking :P Both games are masterpieces in my opinion. TR had black ceilings/sky's and OOT had 2D sections (Hyrule Market). But it isn't a isue at all.
Palace Midas
17-07-09, 16:50
The clue is in the title really: The Lost Valley. :whi:
The TR engine at that time couldn't create horizons (something which was implimented in the future games), so they just made the sky black.
But Super Mario 64 and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter came out in '96...and they have 'real' sky's. Any way, the dark sky fits better in TR. It created a eerie and isolated atmosphere.
http://www.mywii.com.au/img/game/large/Super-Mario-64-11.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/screenshots/9/199129/turok_screen004.jpg
The valley is outdoors, I don't think it's a time rift as someone said before. I just thought that Qualopec, using his piece of the Scion, created the dinosaurs and the valley with it to guard his tomb.
Good point:tmb:
Changeling
17-07-09, 17:01
But Super Mario 64 and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter came out in '96...and they have 'real' sky's.
I said that the TR engine at that time couldn't create horizons. ;)
The TR engine at that time couldn't create horizons (something which was implimented in the future games)...
Someone had made a thread saying that the greek levls could be based on "Utopia", but on the lost valley Core Design also was inspired by a book, even on the name of the level : "the lost world". Even the entry to the places are identical, a big cave... We can also see here a reference to Jules Verne book, the one they made a movie recentely, in 3d. Jules Verne also describe some caves underneath with some unexpected inhabitans, and there is no sky on these places...
What I don't get is why they left the "sky" completely black instead of simply texturing it blue with some cloud shapes. Yes, it would have looked very fake, but surely that would have been an improvement on a pitch-black roof which we were somehow supposed to imagine was the sky?
It's stuff like this which makes me roll my eyes when people start going on and on about how wonderful TR1's graphics were for that time. Maybe they were to an extent - but I'm pretty sure that there were plenty of mid-90s games which didn't expect players to believe that a black void is the sky. That just stretches my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.
It's stuff like this which makes me roll my eyes when people start going on and on about how wonderful TR1's graphics were for that time. Maybe they were to an extent - but I'm pretty sure that there were plenty of mid-90s games which didn't expect players to believe that a black void is the sky. That just stretches my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.
Believe me, when Tr1 came out we could hear a Wooowww on every game or pc store, the graphics were something unbelivable at the time, just look at the pictures that Palace Midas showed before and tell me if they are as pretty and complex as the ones from Tr1
I'm not saying that TR1 graphics weren't advanced for that time - what I am saying is that not including anything that even remotely resembles a sky was a major mistake, especially given that other games at that time were perfectly capable of including one.
Uzi master
18-07-09, 03:36
perhaps they couldn't meet the deadline if they made skies? I think it would be pretty silly to only use a sky once or twice in the game.
Some people actually thought the valley was INSIDE a cave. http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc80/Phlip_03/Icons%20and%20Smileys/chuck.gif
I find this fact very humorous.
Well you can understand why people think this, because you kind of enter a cave before, but what people don't realize is that you come out of the cave upon entering the valley.
I thought it was as well. I like the black top. It looks creepy. Plus I like the idea of her being killed and then lost inside a cave where nobody is ever going to find her ever. Complete and total isolation. :D
If you play through The Lost Valley level in Tomb Raider Anniversary with commentary on I think they discuss this issue. Something to do with the draw distance being too short, and they would have had to compromise a lot of other stuff to be able to create a true sky.
Palace Midas
19-07-09, 12:31
perhaps they couldn't meet the deadline if they made skies? I think it would be pretty silly to only use a sky once or twice in the game.
I'm not sure but Doom (1993) didn't have that much outdoor sections either. But there where some nice sky-textures to be found.
http://toastytech.com/dooma/sky1.gif
Any way, i still love TR1. My favorite game in the series and one of the best videogames ever made!
All old games came with sky on but you forgot one thing... Just check the Doom picture... We are not talking about the same complex graphics that tr1 have... Yes, indeed they could do better that the pitch black sky but maybe that dont was so simply at the time...
mizuno_suisei
19-07-09, 15:56
I always wondered why they didnt just rise the ceiling more (the sky) and put some different textures to give it an outside feeling, It always confused me. Is the Sanctuary of the Scion supposed to be outside? or the whole thing a cave :confused: its hard to tell because its using such dark themed textures which somewhat blends with the black roof texturing making it look like a fully closed in cave.
The engine of the Original Tomb Raider had pretty bad draw distance. And the people at Core only had ONE fog color whcih was black so that's why it looks like it's in a cave. :)
I always liked the idea of The Lost Valley at night, and I always supposed it was an outside area, though they could've put a few white dots in the sky to sort of imitate stars but maybe even that wasn't feasible.
Palace Midas
19-07-09, 19:22
Like this?
http://i25.tinypic.com/2iswo4g.jpg
I always wondered why they didnt just rise the ceiling more (the sky) and put some different textures to give it an outside feeling, It always confused me. Is the Sanctuary of the Scion supposed to be outside? or the whole thing a cave :confused: its hard to tell because its using such dark themed textures which somewhat blends with the black roof texturing making it look like a fully closed in cave.
Precisely my point. Texturing the ceiling of the valley - or the sphinx cave in SotS - to look like a sky would have been so simple. Yet they apparently didn't think of it. :rolleyes:
I always liked the idea of The Lost Valley at night, and I always supposed it was an outside area, though they could've put a few white dots in the sky to sort of imitate stars but maybe even that wasn't feasible.
Of course it was feasible. A "true" sky like the one from TR2 onwards was not possible, but simple sky textures - daytime ones or nighttime ones were definitely possible.
It would have looked so bad. Clouds or stars scrolling alongside the rest of the background doesn't look good. In one of the egyptian levels in Unfinished Bussiness this is used (using a black texture with a few dots to cover squares in the ceiling) and it looked so bad.
xXhayleyroxXx
20-07-09, 12:29
I thought it was an open-air valley inside a cavern, like a rock cavern with the sky visible at the top of it.
It's an easy mistake to make, I know a LOT of people who thought it was in a cave, due to the two previous levels being inside.
Like this?
http://i25.tinypic.com/2iswo4g.jpg
WOW, did you make that? It looks so much better! :tmb:
Uhmmmm, I found out it was supposed to be 'outside' when I played Anni, same for the Colosseum...:o:o:o
I always thought it was a huge cavern. :)
Palace Midas
21-07-09, 14:02
WOW, did you make that? It looks so much better! :tmb:
Uhmmmm, I found out it was supposed to be 'outside' when I played Anni, same for the Colosseum...:o:o:o
I always thought it was a huge cavern. :)
Thanks:) I haven't Photoshop so i used a video-edit programm and put the Valley screenshot over an overlay of a sky at night. Then printscreen and voila!
Changeling
21-07-09, 16:08
I think there's a possibility of The Sanctuary of the Scion being outside. Remember the concept art for TR:AE? It had a picture of a sphynx with sky around it, same with the Colosseum.
It's difficult to say, though. When you get to the top of the Sphinx, Lara can't jump and high and she hits a ceiling. Whether or not that's intentional or just the limits of the game, I think it makes it a cave whether it wants to be or not. I don't think it would make sense if it was outside. Why would they have the ONE thing standing between you and the Scion outside for the world to see? Why wouldn't Lara have just...taken a helicopter and bypassed Khamoon entirely?
I never thought if the valley was inside of the cave or not! :p
Nitro Typhoon
21-07-09, 22:41
Some people actually thought the valley was INSIDE a cave. http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc80/Phlip_03/Icons%20and%20Smileys/chuck.gif
I find this fact very humorous.
Well aren't you the smart one.
Some people actually thought the valley was INSIDE a cave. http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc80/Phlip_03/Icons%20and%20Smileys/chuck.gif
I find this fact very humorous.
I don't, cause it's ligical to think that way when the game doesn't show any sky, and even when is supposed to do so, it's just "pitch black" like everyone calls it. What does the sky would have implemented at the time anyways, the game was indeed very atmospheric, and even that black madness makes it creepier and out of place, so we did get something close to what would happen... After all, "as black as night" isn't just some poethical phrase, but a clear phenomenon too that happens everytime the sun hides ;).
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