An online community of almost 20 years has created levels for the classic version of Tomb Raider.

About Tomb Raider , probably, all readers of Geektimes heard. A series of computer and video games telling about the adventures of an intelligent, beautiful and talented girl who devoted her life to studying artifacts of past centuries, attracted many gamers at one time. The first part came out in 1996. Since then, a few more parts have appeared, both for PCs and gaming consoles. Based on the game they made films, published novels and comics. Over the years since the release of the first part, the graphics in the game has undergone significant changes. The appearance of the levels and the protagonist itself changed, and the development teams that worked on the game also changed.

But one thing remained constant - the community of fans of the original franchise, who created more and more new levels. We are talking about the Internet community, whose members have created over a couple of decades about 3000 different levels to the classic version of Tomb Raider. They occupy about 200 GB of disk space. It takes a couple of years to go through all the created worlds and their sections. The community consists of about 2,000 people. The forum contains about 50 thousand reviews of completed custom levels. Why do all these people spend so much time creating materials for the game, which was released 21 years ago?

After all, not many people play the original Tomb Raider, most fans of the series are passionate about newer versions. Probably, if community members were asked about this, the answer would be the same as in the fairly well-known Russian comedy of the new time: “Because”. Community members just like it, they like the old “tube” graphics, the angular figure of Lara Croft and the very atmosphere of the old game.
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The ability to create your own levels for the game appeared in 1999, when Core Design introduced the official editor for The Last Revelation, the fourth game of the series.

The level editor appeared just when the game itself was on the rise of popularity, and long before the advent of Angel of Darkness, the next part, which is considered unsuccessful or even failed . After the editor for Tomb Raider appeared, enthusiasts released several additional tools to customize the game. The editor himself was very easy to use, so even people far from programming could create their materials for the world of Lara Croft.

The community in question appeared shortly after the editor. Fans of the game series began not only to create their own materials for the game, but also actively began to share them with each other, discussing the process of creation, problem areas and other moments.

“Sounds, textures, objects, animation, and even the game engine can be changed in the editor,” says one of the community members. According to him, with the efforts of fans of the series, the new levels for the game have reached almost complete perfection, the game engine has also been changed, gamers have improved and added to it. In fact, we can speak of a qualitative transition from the graphics of the PlayStation 1 level to the graphics of the PlayStation 2. This is not so much, but you should understand that the work was done by enthusiasts, and not by the developers of game studios behind Tomb Raider.



For all these people (in the community there are users from many different countries), the editor provided the opportunity to change the game world at will. People were able to increase or decrease the duration of the original game or to do something of their own, with new and old artifacts. Representatives of the community, by their own admission, love classic games. Undoubtedly, one of the most prominent representatives of the classics is Tomb Raider. Everything is good here: there is a plot, relatively good graphics, a combat system and a more or less thoughtful plot line. All these elements attract gamers.

“The beauty is that there are levels for every taste,” said community founder Michael Prager . Most modern games either do not have a level editor at all, or they exist, but they are so complex that only an advanced gamer can use them. In addition, in such games there is a complex interaction of individual elements (the protagonist and mobs), so it is quite difficult to use this in new levels.

New games appear and disappear, but the community of fans of customization Tomb Raider continues to exist. Now this community is a large group of friends who are constantly sitting on the forum. Some of them get married or get married, some children appear, some members of the Tomb Raider fan community occasionally die. But the love of the game and the craving for the creation of new levels of the remaining representatives of Trle remains.


Change the appearance of the heroine from 1996 to 2013

Over the years since the release of the first version of the game, from 30 to 58 million copies of the games in the series have been sold. In 2008, the Chinese company Shenzhen Nanjing Technology Co., Ltd. even released an unofficial version of Tomb Raider for Nes, which was called Gu Mu Li Ying. True, it was sold only within China.