Navigate
News Archives
(June 1998 - October 1998)

Tomb Raiders Traveler's Guide News

>>>>> Read Current News <<<<<

Oct 26, 1998 12:30
Don't Be Sad...

"Have you heard? CORE's lawyers beat up on some poor teenage boy who was just a 'hard core' Tomb Raider fan trying to write a freeware level editor to make the world a better place for all Tomb Raider fans."

That's all I seem to read about in the news group or on the Tomb Raider web sites that carry news items. Before you join the ranks of the raving lunatics, send hate mail to CORE or join the boycott Tomb Raider 		3 coalition, I implore you to examine the facts.

First of all, if any of you have read the legal statement when you first fire up Tomb Raider 2, you will note that reverse engineering or decompiling the game is strictly forbidden under their license agreement. This means that though you own this copy of the game, you do not own the "know how" that went into making this game. This act is illegal regardless of who you are. You live in a society that is kept in order via laws. 		Secondly, CORE has not taken "legal actions" against Chris. They have merely sent Chris the classic "Cease and Desist" letter, which basically says, "Stop your illegal activities or we must take legal actions". That letter was sent after Susan H., of CORE, asked him to cease development and Chris refused. Prior to arguing the reasons why CORE would or would not want a third party editor, CORE has the right take legal action. They didn't. Instead, they merely sent a C&D letter. As for the tombraider dot net domain name stink, CORE's issues with Chris involve copyright infringement. If Chris uses the "tombraider" name to "market" his editor, though free, he has abused the "Tomb Raider" trademark. If CORE chooses not to defend their trademark, they may forfeit it. (As Bayer did with "Asprin".)

As for the rest of Chris' woes, they are the result of his parents dissatisfaction with the situation. CORE is not to blame for that either. (more...)
I am not an employee of CORE or Eidos nor do I have any stake in this ridiculous debate, since I'm not interested in the release of any level editor for TR. (In fact, I'm biased against the release of any editor, but don't get me started on that.) Although it means that CORE can ask me to remove the "Tomb Raider" or "Lara Croft" names from my web site at their choosing, I support them in their actions. I do not fault them for Chris' miseries. This is just so you know where I stand on this issue. Quick Answers

With that nonsense off my chest, I'll let you know a few other tidbits. I've compiled a "Frequently Asked Solutions" file using the same format "snark^" uses in his FAQ file. This file can also be found on the Frequently Asked Questions page near the bottom.

Plot Arc

In other news, if you're having trouble following the plot in Tomb Raider or Tomb Raider 2, I suggest you read the 		backplot page of the respective guide and click on the "follow plot" links to jump to the next plot detail.

The $150 Question

In the past couple of weeks, I've started receiving e-mails asking me that question. Which question? The one that is burning in the minds of fans of this site. The one that I got when Tomb Raider 2 was nearing release. The question is: "Will you be coming out with a Tomb Raider 3 guide?" You want to know whether 		you will be able to get help when or if you need it when you play TR3.

Well, I'm flattered that you think my guide is worthy of such a high praise. The answer is a resounding "Yes". But as with the last game, I will not buy a copy of TR3 until it arrives at my local Sam's Club sometime in January of 1999. I will likely get a 3Dfx card before that point. The non linear game play will present us with new guide writing challenges, but I believe we're up to the task.(Old articles...)

Oct 22, 1998 17:45
Tech Questions

The Traveler's Guide has always been here to answer game play related questions, but we've not been terribly helpful when it came to technical questions. I've compiled a pretty comprehensive list of "Frequently Asked Questions" web pages for you to consult if you have technical questions about any of the Tomb Raider games. Included in the list are links to Snarkamedes' alt.games.tombraider FAQ. I even wrote a little script to parse the 		FAQ into separate sections on-the-fly. Why all this trouble? Because we care.

Odds and Ends

Are you sure you've seen everything there is to see in Tomb Raider? Brian reported a tiger in TR2 that I certainly didn't find in any of my trips through TR2. Read the walkthrough for the Temple of Xian and look for kill number 16.

While I'm mentioning odds and ends, you should check the end of the Tomb of Qualopec in 		TR, look for pickup number 8, which is a large medi pack that you can only get if you don't kill Larson right away. In the Cistern look for pickup number 25, a small medi pack in one of the pits near the end of the level. In the Obelisk of Khamoon look out for pickup number 38, which are shotgun shells tucked away where few would venture to look.

Read the footnotes for Temple of Xian and let me know if you can figure out how to get the large medi pack at the 		top of the ladder without hacking your saved game. The ladder is fake, but the medi pack is real. (Old articles...)

Sept 21, 1998 16:30
Normal Operations

I installed the new RAID controller this past weekend, and have about fully recovered from the disaster that I described last time. The outage held up our OS upgrades, so keep in mind this site may still go up and down over the upcoming months. Here's another link to the mirror site.

Repost

While browsing the USENET newsgroup alt.games.tombraider I came across this post 		which was too funny not to share:

"Young Miss Croft - Tsk Tsk"
From: "Charlie" on 1998/09/12

Sir,
  Having reached the conclusion of what has proved to be a quite entertaining diversion, I feel I must comment on the concluding events.
  It is all very well taking pot-shots at foreigners and dumb animals when abroad. After all, we British built an empire that way. It is quite another 		thing to do it on one's own doorstep, especially in one's night-gown. This kind of behaviour might be acceptable to our American cousins in their "Big Apple" but here in Blightie it is considered beyond the pale, even if the gentlemen in question appear to be "European". It sets a bad example to the servants and may well mean answering some tough questions from the constabulary, not to mention causing considerable damage to a property that has stood for generations. The correct course of action when confronted by the lower social orders intent on mischief is to ring for one's manservant (making sure that as a Lady one is properly attired first) and instruct him to summon a Constable forthwith. I shall put this regrettable incident down to Miss Croft's youth and lack of proper parental guidance but I strongly urge her to enrol[l] at one of the better finishing schools without delay.
  Yours etc,
  Colonel Blimp VC, KFC, PCTV.
(Old articles...)

Sept 14, 1998 08:00
Hobbling

Due to a power outage over this past weekend, the Traveler's Guide (along with many other things) was down Friday night. Although we expected the power outage and powered down our severs, when I powered them up on Saturday, somehow two of our RAID controllers got fried.

The good news is that one of them has a redundant power supply and is still running, so the 		Traveler's Guide is still available. The bad news is that the other one doesn't, so my web server software didn't come back on-line. I quickly downloaded and installed a new web server but many of the Traveler's Guide's features are down because they're on the dead RAID array, and won't be up until a replacement RAID controller arrives tomorrow. Please bear with us as we hobble along.

While I'm at it, I might as well let you know that 		we have been and will continue to be upgrading the hardware and operating system of our severs over the next several weeks, so expect the guide to be up and down over the next month or so. Not wanting to leave you without any options, I've set up a mirror of this web site. If you find that this server is down you can also visit the mirror of this web site at: Please bear in mind that the mirror server is meant to be used only as a backup server. Many features of the Traveler's Guide will not work there. Do not bookmark that web site. If you find that this web site is down, simply change the "if" to "else" and try to visit that web site.

Kudos to BoxHill Systems, the manufacturers of our RAID controllers and arrays, for their expedient and competent tech support. Thanks to them for keeping our down time to a minimum. (Old articles...)

Aug 24, 1998 10:30
Note Worthy

As you'd expect, not much is going on here at the Guide. We've made minor updates as always. Since I have nothing else to talk about this month, and I didn't want to go a month without news, I thought I'd list a few minor newsworthy site updates for the month's news.

Most notable is a tip, sent in by Mike David, describing a way to obtain, the small Medi Pack in a trap in the Temple of Xian level -- 		what we thought to be a fool's errand. We were able to nab the pack using the his tip, so we have updated the walkthrough to include his suggestion. It was most satisfying to grab this Medi Pack and make it out alive.

Another less difficult to obtain, but difficult to find item was reported to us by Albert Llena for the Living Quarters level. He found a pair of shotgun shells (pickup 5 and 6) which lay innocently in an alcove but became deviously hard to find after a		 block is pushed into the alcove. Thanks Albert for being even more compulsive than we. Unfortunately, now we'll be losing sleep over what other pickups we might have unwittingly pushed blocks over.

Further back, we added a footnote to the Temple of the Cat walkthrough that described a method to set off and survive the "Death Skull Room" trap. That information, as far as I know, first appeared in Theresa's UB Walkthrough, but we tried it, succeeded, refined it, and have included 		it. Completing this trap does not change the statistics for the level.

Finally, I'd like to mention a fairly old item since we're talking about these things now. There is a large Medi Pack sitting on top of some stone blocks in the room with the five switches in Palace Midas level. There is no legitimate way to obtain this Medi Pack, except to employ the infamous "corner bug". If you don't know about this bug, then you can read that footnote which documents how to nab (more...)
this Medi Pack. Thanks go to Robert H. and also Joanna H. (no relation) who each described to us how to get the pack.

Thanks to all who sent in suggestions and corrections. They are too numerous to name individually. (Old articles...)




Jul 27, 1998 11:20
Silent and Silence

Things have been quiet here at the Traveler's Guide... too quiet...

In case no one noticed, we've made some updates here and there. The most notable is the "walkthrough" of sorts for the Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider 2 Training Levels that Brian wrote.

As always, we're still in the process of editing the walkthroughs, adding details, and fixing minor errors.

Still no word from Eidos 		about whether or not it would be okay for me to sell CD-ROM copies of this guide. Funny thing is that it seems that GameSpot has started to sell their own Tomb Raider Guide.

 Upgrade Fever

Well, all this quiet just wouldn't do. So in order to spice things up, I decided that it was high time to upgrade my 100MHz Pentium. I had kicked up the RAM from the original 16MB to its current 48 MB, but with the new hardware requirements that we're 		pretty sure Tomb Raider III will need, I decided that my CPU wouldn't cut it.

I've already failed at an install of Intel 166MHz MMX OverDrive ® in my PC about a year ago. Later inves- tigation revealed that my PC was incompatible with the upgrade. Trying again, a few weeks ago I bought Evergreen Technology's MxPro 200 Upgrade kit, and installed it. Although the installation should have been simple, but because of the nature of my PC, the actual 		installation was fraught with problems. Kudos to Evergreen's great tech support who managed to get my PC running with the new 200MHz Cyrix 586MX processor. Even though now my machine boots with an EISA error and Windows95 freezes once in awhile (usually caused by Netscape), it's infrequent enough that the noticeable new speed is welcome well worth it in the end. If you're thinking about CPU upgrade, I'd recommend Evergreen's. (Old articles...)
Read Archives
>>>>> 2000 (Apr-Dec) <<<<<
>>>>> 1999 (May-Mar) <<<<<
>>>>> 1998 (Nov-Apr) <<<<<
> Reading: 1998 (Jul-Oct) <
>>>>> 1998 (Apr-Jun) <<<<<
>>>>> 1998 (Jan-Mar) <<<<<
>>>>> 1997 (Nov-Dec) <<<<<