Have you noticed how a lot of textures in classic Tomb Raider games are recycled?
 

Gold expansions notably tend to do this a lot. For example, remember the green, jade-like rock textures from Floating Islands? (the rock that compose the magic islands from this realm). They are reused in the Kingdom level, except they are recolored yellow, so that they resemble gold instead. Kingdom seems to recycle a lot of textures from Floating Islands; the other rock formations, sand, and the red wall from the buildings. They are all modified to resemble an Alaskan setting instead of a Chinese one. Many of those textures also get primitive art added to them.

Other notable examples: Fool's Gold reuse a lot of textures from the Platform, Maria Doria, and Tibet levels in TR2. They are all mashed up and modified to create an entirely new set of textures for this level's setting. Notably, many of the metal textures are modified to appear rusted compared to the original. Nightmare in Vegas reuse some textures from Venice and Lara's Home, but it also has many original textures.

Recently, however, I also have noticed there are more recycled textures than I realized, even from non-gold levels. For example, remember the rock textures from the Egypt levels from Tomb Raider 1? They are also used in other settings, for example: Rome from TR1 (I've played TR1 for years and only recently I realized those textures are the same!), China from TR2, and Alaska from TR2 Gold. In Alaska, those rock textures are recolored to red and blue, and in China, there are two variations of those rock textures; one that is not modified (compared to those used in Egypt) and one that is recolored to green, added some spider webs, and is used in the big spider cave.

TR3 doesn't seem to recycle textures nearly as much. It contains a lot more original textures than the first two raiders. That said, some doors in the Nevada levels contain textures from the Platform levels in TR2, and Lud's Gate uses some textures from Lara's Home.

Of course, this isn't a bad thing at all, it is actually very interesting to see many of those textures being reused, since it means they are versatile and fit in a lot of different level themes. I wonder how many of you already have done this before; to create your own textures by recoloring, and/or combining, and/or otherwise modifying some original Tomb Raider textures, to use in your custom levels.

I've recently done this, for example, combining textures from Furnace of Gods/Kingdom with the TR1 Egypt textures, and with the Lost City of Tinnos textures.

The gold levels were made by a team of two or three people who were handed the game assets, which is why they reused so many textures. Tr1 is in greece, not rome btw.

Laras home is in England, so it makes sense to share some textures with the london levels. The most recycled textures in a main entry appears in chronicles though, by far. Rome uses lots of lost library textures and some tomb of set ones. Ireland uses a lot of coastal ruins textures and some tr3 ones. (One from the south pacific, amusingly enough)

The TR1 and TR2 ones make sense since they were all designed by Heather Gibson who did the textures for all levels on the first two games. Her sources were really limited as mentioned in interviews. It wasn't as easy as getting textures as today. Internet wasn't used but second hand books that were scanned.

Off topic, but this is actually up for debate. It was only locked in place as being Greece once TRA came out in 2007. Before that it was an ambiguous mess and no one knew for certain. Both Core's official map of Lara's travels from 1998 and the original Sega Saturn release (the first of the first) say that it is Rome. Lara's Book by Douglas Coupland (1998) also calls that section "Roman civilization" in his walkthrough. The timeline in the AOD companion book says it's Greece though. :ponder: As I said, it was either/both before TRA 'pretended' it was always meant to be Greece without question.

I've never noticed this. Will have to pay attention next time I play. The only re-cycled stuff in TR5 that I can think of are the rock textures by the frozen water in The Base, which come from TR4's Giza levels (which makes sense since both Russia and Giza were built by Joby Wood). And then for Ireland there's textures reused from TR4 Cairo Trenches in the Old Mill oddly enough - it's the texture of the little bags piled on top of each other to form WWI style trenches for the TR4 level, reused to be little bags of grain (I'm assuming) being stored in an old windmill. Oddly enough it works well though. This repurposing also makes sense since both Cairo and Ireland were built by Andy Sandham.

I have to agree with this. A year or so ago I was experimenting with TRC gallows tree textures, and noticed most of the outside textures (terrain in general) are just recolors of TR4 Coastal Ruins. VCI also has quite a few textures from TR3.

Btw, nice thread!

I honestly haven't seen any Lost Library/Tomb of Set textures in the Romes levels? Any examples?

Some of those textures may just be common stock textures - the level designers may not even know they were used in a previous TR!:p

A lot of the Russia & VCI textures were 'reused' from a canceled game called Golgotha - it's textures were released to the public on a cd called Lightwave back in 2000.

https://imgur.com/dyH8Wah - most of these 'TR' textures are 512x512

This is pretty cool. Where can I find them in their 512x512 format though? This is link just one image of all of them together.

I can't think of any either from Lost Library. For Tomb of Seth though it's the lava/fire textures used in Colosseum. That's the same as the burning oil the Guide sets on fire in Tomb of Seth.

Oh that was just a pic of the ones I got so far as an example. Although some of those images I gathered from other sources to help me remake the texture set. Some textures require cropping so it won't be possible to make them all 512x512.

The link is on archive.org

https://archive.org/details/light-rom-08

^^ there's a lot of other crap on that cd but it's possible you'll find something I missed.

The marble floor textures mostly. Plus the 'lava' pointed out already. I think some of the grass and rock textures are re-used as well. But it's the marble that's most distinctive.

I know this thread is about the classics, but I've noticed sometime ago watching some Legend alpha gameplay that it seemed to me that Crystal reused some classic textures for Legend at first (they probably didn't end up in the finished product I guess, but I thought that was funny).

In the below video at 4:29 when Lara is grabbing the ledge :


Am I the only one seeing a TR3 Area51 texture on top of this ledge, or am I completely imagining stuff here ? xDD It really struck me when I saw it for the first time ^^