Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 8hWe did briefly discuss Lara's decision to 'off' a kid on a skateboard, so the player is given the choice of running past and leaving him to his skating. But hardly anyone took that option. So you're all just as culpable as Lara. He *did* shoot first though... 😉 0100
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 8hWe really should have spent more time on creating Natla's minor sidekicks but they were created in haste before the VA session. I'd vetoed the Atlantis pyramid being a geoengineering machine which meant we needed some story changes for it being an incubator instead. Was the right decision though. 1100
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 8hThe skating area was meant to be part of the concrete and pipes of Natla's excavation work but the engine never depicted that well so it feels incongruous, but that's part of TR's aesthetic. I gave him that catchphrase as nod to Taxi Driver, a classic movie about isolation (one of our themes too). 190
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 8hCant remember exactly whose idea it was to make one of the goons a skater. Not mine. Probably Toby or Vicky, possibly Stu Atkinson who was enlisted to make his model and animations. X Games had started around that time and skateboarding was everywhere. He is *so* 90s coded... 190
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 8hThe idea for 'Skatekid' came when brainstorming Natla's goons. The male characters in OG Tomb Raider were deliberately created as quite buffoonish (except PD of course). The encounter a means to recover the Uzis and for some silliness to lighten the mood before the tension ratchets into the finale. 1308
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 18/05/2026No, I dont have a copy. Almost certainly lost to time, like FMV source files etc. 000
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 12/02/2026Lara's OG motorcycle was a Norton Commando modified like a café racer. Note the distinctive crankcase cover. Was originally just a generic sportsbike but myself and Neal (who really loved his motorbikes too) decided it should fittingly be a British classic instead. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_... 1288
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 07/02/2026Not really surprising is it? With a few exceptions, entertainment press has always been more adjacent to PR than news journalism. 000
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 04/02/2026Fwiw, Gary Antcliffe was the 2nd programmer on Tomb Raider, starting after Toby and I had done some pre-production. He created the framework for the editors, ported what I had on PC to the Sega Saturn, and helped build the pipeline. He left Core a while after the other programmers joined the team. 0213
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 01/02/2026This editor was also used on Core's Blam:Machinehead game as that shared some character/animation tech I had created for first Tomb Raider game. It could also import from Alias/Wavefront programs on SGI machines as an original design feature but TR only used 3DStudio on PC for modelling & animation. 0130
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 01/02/2026www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVFy... Stu Atkinson 'demos' the character & animation editor for the OG Tomb Raider games. This editor was used to texture & paint meshes imported from 3D Studio 4 and link, sequence and markup sets of imported animations. Built in-house by myself and Gary Antcliffe. #TR30youtube.comInside Core Design Studio In 1997YouTube video by This Week In Gaming 1258
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 18/01/2026Victor wanted us to change in-game Lara to appeal more to a Japanese audience. Huge eyes/head etc. They faxed through examples really late in dev. Toby Gard really didn't want to alter Lara. As a compromise all that was changed was the manuals & guide. Not sure who did that render or illustrations. 621651
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 09/01/2026It has been snowing in the UK. So an excuse to post this wonderful short from 1963. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl4p...youtube.comSnow (1963) - Geoffrey Jones | BFI National ArchiveYouTube video by BFI 040
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 07/01/2026Some intriguing casting for live action TR. Is the Sasha character a doppelgänger? Dead ringer for Lara... 070
Reposted by Paul DouglasThe Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 31/12/2025Fireworks at the Ryogoku Bridge, by Utagawa Hiroshige, 1858: publicdomainreview.org/collection/u… #fireworks #NewYearsEve 013427
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 31/12/2025I look forward to reading that. The ports cant have been too difficult. More lucrative for them than me by sounds of it ;) 010
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 30/12/2025Lara / Laura - even the publishers sometimes get it wrong 😏 5254
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 14/12/2025There needs to be another 90%+ TR after all this time... I'm quite looking forward to seeing both new games now. Visually they are stunning, something we only dreamed of 30 years ago. We will have to wait and see if the gameplay and resulting feelings of exploration and adventure are as good. 1171
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 11/12/2025Rawr! She's back apparently. Personally I'd prefer exploring new lost worlds than another remake/remaster/reimagining of something we crafted under intense duress in the 90's. Fingers crossed, eh. Dinosaurs will always be cool though... 62910
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 27/11/2025Well done our lass. However, I suspect most of those magazine covers were in the 90s and 00s so it's hardly a contest nowadays. And I imagine Aloy is looking quite large in the rearview mirror too. Let's hope CD and Amazon don't rest on their laurels, eh... 0218
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 07/11/2025Bon sang, ça fait 31 ans pour moi et 29 ans pour toi. 010
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 17/10/2025A new book about Tomb Raider to peruse whilst interminably awaiting further adventures. 🇫🇷 1112
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 25/09/2025The braid joints were animated via a rudimentary physics engine, rather than hand animated like rest of Lara. The physics engine used spheres and boxes to represent solid objects like her backpack and neck to collide the braid against. Ergo, independent of polygon count. It just needed tuning... 171
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 24/09/2025Lara's braid was replaced for a presentation at E3 as it would clip right through her back and neck which looked rather grotesque. Then we had a huge list of higher priority tasks to crunch through before launch so it stayed as the temporary bun. Nothing to do with polygon count as stated here⬇️🤦 66624
Reposted by Paul DouglasThe Associated Press @apnews.com · 24/09/2025The apparent use of artificial intelligence to clone an actor's voice for video game character Lara Croft has fans and actors up in arms.bit.lyAI-cloning of Lara Croft's voice has 'Tomb Raider' fans and actors up in armsIn France, the apparent use of artificial intelligence to clone an actor's voice for video game character Lara Croft has fans and actors up in arms. 19729
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 26/07/2025A lot of us from that era honed our crafts on the Amiga computer, before multimedia/game degrees became de rigueur. Eg. Toby Gard's animation portfolio created on the Amiga was featured in one of the computer art magazines a year or two before he joined Core Design too. #Amiga 1102
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 26/07/2025The Amiga computer is 40 years old. It was more affordable than PCs and Macs, allowing those of us who had limited means to be creative. I loved that machine, spent so many hours programming on it, building 3d objects for my demos and games, making sounds with a 8bit sampler and so forth. #Amiga 082
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 22/07/2025All of videogaming history fits into 4 Duke Nukem Forever dev cycles. 052
Reposted by Paul DouglasBitmap Books @bitmapbooks.com · 19/07/2025Happy 40th Birthday to the Amiga 🎂 Grab a copy of our book - Commodore Amiga: a visual compendium: www.bitmapbooks.com/collections/... #bitmapbooks #books #retrogaming #gaming #birthday #ocs @rachelsham.bsky.social 083
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 18/07/2025media.tenor.coma man in a blue shirt is sitting in front of a brick wall and looking at the camera .ALT: a man in a blue shirt is sitting in front of a brick wall and looking at the camera . 010
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 17/07/2025My experience was the classism was pernicious. Quite a few working class in the trenches but rarely in positions above that; "Congratulations, here's a job on the production line but don't get ideas above your station" It's been similar outside gaming, just with less exploitation and abuse. 020
Reposted by Paul DouglasRichard Moss @mossrc.bsky.social · 15/07/2025The feature-length first episode of @terrorbytesdoc.bsky.social is now free to watch on YouTube. Dozens of interviews digging into the history and evolution of horror in games, written and directed by me. And if you like it, you can buy the whole series from terrorbytesdoc.com. youtu.be/TA2aZVn9FvEyoutu.beTerrorBytes Ep. 1 – Enter the Survival Horror | Full Documentary Episode (FREE)YouTube video by CREATORVC LIVE 11710
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 18/06/2025From when Sega had arcades. Pretty sure I got this card from the one in Irvine, CA. 1990s. More standard arcade than the theme park like attraction that SegaWorld at the Troc was. #Sega 130
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 14/06/2025In 1994 a group of us would go play Virtua Fighter in the arcade on Derby's Cornmarket during our lunchtimes. The fluidity of the characters' motion was mightily impressive at the time and hugely influential. 1100
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 21/05/2025My PC ISA devkit had the first GPU as did the blue debug stations, so we were used to the extra jankiness during development. The later green debug stations had the revised GPU as did Yarozes. Retail consoles with the first GPU are rare, anything much after Western launch is revised version. 1100
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 21/05/2025Technically the original GPU truncates the values from the gouraud shader DDA to 5 bits before modulating texel colours, whereas the revised version uses 8 bits resulting in visibly less quantisation noise. Changes were also made to speed up transparency and frame buffer effects. 1100
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 21/05/2025Lara's arm had a tiny 1x1 (!) texture map so it clearly illustrates the banding but so does her backpack and torso. It's also very apparent in Tomb Raider's first level entrance with the snow that has the wolves footprints. Many other games demonstrate it too. 190
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 21/05/2025Did you know the original PlayStation had a revision to its GPU and VRAM early in its life? The Initial version had noticeable colour banding on shaded texture maps and slower effects like transparency. Consoles released after tailend of 1995 fixed this. 59521
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 17/05/2025My understanding is the extensive playfield compositing features of VDP2 were added later to augment VDP1 which renders sprites/quads to framebuffer. This was due to VDP1 having lower throughput than the (also in development) PS1 GPU. Exactly when this happened in development process I dont know. 000
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 15/05/2025Just improper use of step-down transformers. We only had a few transformers so they would often be swapped around the building and hence voltage outputs not switched correctly. AIUI the extra VDP came later. We had final hardware docs in summer 94. Before that I dont know timelines. 100
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 12/05/2025We used the same Saturn devkits at Core. One per team. Testers had the hardware address checker. Earlier kits were the Sofia boxes from Japan. We had a protoype the size of a beer fridge with only one SH2. Alas, someone fried the mainboard by introducing it to 240V. It probably ended up in a skip. 39227
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 11/05/2025The player can toggle the underlying grid (spaced in yards because, well, it's golf) with 'G' key on PC which aids visualising the contours of the course and depth perception. This formed a starting basis for the game mechanics design and prototype of Tomb Raider, which I worked on next. 050
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 11/05/2025The PC version fitted entirely in a few megabytes and came on 2 floppy disks. A CD-ROM version was also released. Like most Core games of that era it could have done with plenty more time & polish but 'bish bash bosh' was the order of the day. 130
Paul Douglas @cnhyv.bsky.social · 11/05/2025A Sega 32X version was planned for but Core only had the one devkit which was used to port BC Racers. By then 32X had flopped so was abandoned. Later ported to Saturn and PlayStation (as 'Tournament Leader' in Japan). With addition of female avatars, that were missing on PC due to space and time. 150