Fact Checking Two Things About the Nude Code

[The Great Chi]

I noticed the April fools article of the game magazine in Ausie500's message 15 above, and I was taken aback about the mention of the Disco mode initiated

Funny thing was, back in 2008 I decided to make a 'Times Disco Exclusive' video.

I had never seen the magazine before till now, but shows you how others were thinking the same way before me, which in this case was a Disco Lara level

Maybe after all, I did find the elusive disco cheat code, and its not an April fool joke

[aussie500]

An extended version of the Phil Campbell interview.
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/h...nded-interview
noticed it on Phil's twitter page

[Ward Dragon]

Originally Posted by aussie500

An extended version of the Phil Campbell interview.
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/h...nded-interview
noticed it on Phil's twitter page

Awesome, thanks for finding that interview It's cool to see Phil Campbell speaking. It's clear he really loved building levels, and now I want to replay the Gold levels again. Also, I went to download the TR4 Gold custom level that he mentioned only to find that it was already in my TRLE level folder. I need to play more of the levels I've downloaded O_O

[aussie500]

Phil's Design site seems a bit slow at the moment, but we first saw the story for the cancelled TR4 Gold levels over there.
http://www.philcampbelldesign.com/in...y/tomb_raider/

Or at least that is where I first saw them, never noticed them any where else back then.

[Dustie]

Thanks for these links, I've never read the Tomb Rader 4 Gold synopsis before! I knew the fan-made Gold was based on the designers' actual idea, but I never saw it until now.


As for the extended interview, it's not available for watching on Gametrailers anymore. You can still, however, use the Download button below the video to download it... Shhh!

[rr_carroll]

Great to see the interview, thanks. I especially was fascinated by his remarks of how the proportions of Lara and the environment were designed to fit together, making it hard to construct an unworkable environment. Maybe this is part of why TRLE is still going strong - the Level Editor is "pre-engineered" for success, and builders don't have to keep re-inventing wheels.

[Blackmoor]

Wow, interesting interview.

As a side note, when I was a regular member of the Eidos forums (under a different name) there was a guy on there who was fairly regular too, and he was one of the designers for the Gold games. He was just an ordinary member like the rest of us, not an "official rep" or anything. I've been scratching my head trying to remember what his name was, but I'm wondering if it's this fellow. Maybe someone on here knows.

[Dustie]

Originally Posted by rr_carroll

I especially was fascinated by his remarks of how the proportions of Lara and the environment were designed to fit together, making it hard to construct an unworkable environment. Maybe this is part of why TRLE is still going strong - the Level Editor is "pre-engineered" for success, and builders don't have to keep re-inventing wheels.

I was happy to hear him talking about it too. I wasn't sure if Core designers were aware of what they had brought up to life, but Philips remarks in this interview show they very well knew what they were doing when they invented the block-square system for the 3D environment in the game.

Originally Posted by Blackmoor

Wow, interesting interview.

As a side note, when I was a regular member of the Eidos forums (under a different name) there was a guy on there who was fairly regular too, and he was one of the designers for the Gold games. He was just an ordinary member like the rest of us, not an "official rep" or anything. I've been scratching my head trying to remember what his name was, but I'm wondering if it's this fellow. Maybe someone on here knows.

I can recall someone in the modding section posted a link to a thread (either active or archived) from the Eidos forums, from the Level Editor section to be specific, with a message from someone in the Gold design team. Not sure if this was Phillip though - that person, at the time of posting (it was 2002-03-ish?), seemed very pessimistic about the perspective of giving people any other of the design tools than the Level Editor, supposedly because they were too complex for people to figure out... as much as we only recently got some more of them, I'm glad that assumption never turned out to be true, seeing how much of the game's design has been decoded and how many tools have been made from scratch! My guess is that could have been someone else from the Gold designers.

[Blackmoor]

Originally Posted by Dustie

I can recall someone in the modding section posted a link to a thread (either active or archived) from the Eidos forums, from the Level Editor section to be specific, with a message from someone in the Gold design team. Not sure if this was Phillip though - that person, at the time of posting (it was 2002-03-ish?), seemed very pessimistic about the perspective of giving people any other of the design tools than the Level Editor, supposedly because they were too complex for people to figure out... as much as we only recently got some more of them, I'm glad that assumption never turned out to be true, seeing how much of the game's design has been decoded and how many tools have been made from scratch! My guess is that could have been someone else from the Gold designers.

It's possible more than one of them visited the board. The one I'm thinking about would been there around 2002 / 03 too because when I was there, so we could be speaking about the same person. He didn't just go to the LE bits, but I do seem to remember him talking about writing the handbook or instructions for the LE, he was heavily involved in it. As I wasn't very into the LE I would have missed anything about tools and things, but it's interesting how they underestimated the skill and will of the LE community.

[MMAN]

Originally Posted by aussie500

An extended version of the Phil Campbell interview.
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/h...nded-interview
noticed it on Phil's twitter page

This is really interesting; since everyone with Core seems to have pretty much disappeared completely from the industry it's cool to hear a modern interview from one of the people that worked on the series. Especially as it confirms that much of the design of the originals was very deliberate, and also that at least some Core employees still look at custom levels today.

It's also funny being reminded of how sublimely stupid a lot of the old advertising was. Since it was very intentionally played for horror in the actual game it's almost surreal to see the undersea parts of TR2 promoted as "wet and wild!" Like it's the setup for a porno (although, to be fair, that seems to be magazine quotes rather than what developers/marketers actually said).