Tomb Raider: Underworld

Although I've not played any of the previous versions, I'm going to buy this game for the simple reason that SMM has made such excellent contributions to this forum. He has openly and honestly discussed various aspects of game development and the industry in general. And he has some funny stories about dinosaurs and chrome.
I guess that's one way to sell more games. Hmmm... chrome dinosaurs with flying Harley-Davidsons... Of course!! We still need to make Lara's bike fly and have photon torpedo launchers aside the headlight! And they both need to fire from the same point.

Is the swimming animation (the speed she swims at) going to receive some more attention too?
Honestly, no clue. Not my area, and AFAIK, it's not specific to animation, either. There were apparent state-control glitches even within the gametrailers swimming video, not that one would immediately know that w/o having some codebase familiarity. Ultimately, I think, playability will still end up taking precedence.
 
The gameplay and graphics here is meaty enough (I think the "beauty" of TR lies in the interactive exploration aspect). It's good to see platforming elements after so many FPSes at my end.

I think it was this footage, or something else of high quality, that resold me on the lighting, which I'm starting to dig.
 
Whelp, I think the game's pretty unique in its own right.

Lara is probably a little overplayed, but I will always welcome a competent, demure and curvy female lead.
 
Nice, to kill a god eh ? I don't see how she can swing Thor's hammer :p

Would be great if TR supports treasure, like Uncharted. Or at least make the trophies look like ancient treasures. They look so beautiful and fitting in TR's story.
 
Lara is probably a little overplayed, but I will always welcome a competent, demure and curvy female lead.
Demure? Competent and curvy, sure, but I'm not sure I'd refer to Lara Croft as a "demure" female lead character.

Nice, to kill a god eh ? I don't see how she can swing Thor's hammer :p
It's all mythological stuff, you can do whatever you want with it. Thor's hammer can be bigger than a mountain or smaller than a flea and anywhere in between. Moreover, you don't necessarily just have to swing it. You can also fire lightning bolts from it.

Unfortunately, unlike a "functional" lightning gun, it doesn't steal lightning from the sky and fire it from the enemy into the hammer. Likewise, we totally disregard Newton's 3rd law of motion with Lara's pistols and SMGs... They are kind of messed up in that the bullets don't hit the target and come back into the barrel after hitting the target... no equal and opposite forces here.

In any case, things are a little hellish at the moment as submission concerns are basically eating up everyone's time.
 
i never played any of the iterations in the Tomb Raider franchise. this latest release will change that because the it looks rather intriguing. i had a great time with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune on the PS3.
 
i never played any of the iterations in the Tomb Raider franchise. this latest release will change that because the it looks rather intriguing. i had a great time with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune on the PS3.

Same situation for me and of course since SMM posts here :)
 
FDJV: TRU Gameplay

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_7135_en.html

it's still the old and buggy build of the game shown at Leipzig

In the video above, first there is popping up the Y button from Xbox 360 to express/teach actions, then only a few moments later, there is popping up the PS3 TRIANGLE button, later the PS3 SQUARE button to express/teach actions.

Is this a known bug of this build ;)?

And could it lead to the presumption, that the PS3 version is a port from the Xbox 360 version as they maybe forgot to replace all button images for PS3 in this build?

Is the Xbox 360 the lead platform for this game?

And is the engine the same as in Tomb Raider: Legend and Tomb Raider: Anniversary? By the way, what's the name of this engine?

Another video:

FDJV: TRU presentation

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_7138_en.html
 
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at neogaf, they said it is the ps3 version, but i think they said its an older build.

any confirmation SMM?

Yes, haven't had any real doubt, that it is the PS3 version.

But as there were buttons popping up from Xbox 360 (probably through an oversight) in this so called old and buggy PS3 version, it was asked if the PS3 version is a port from the Xbox 360 version and if Xbox 360 generally is the lead platform for this game and so on.
 
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Is the Xbox 360 the lead platform for this game?

...

And is the engine the same as in Tomb Raider: Legend and Tomb Raider: Anniversary? By the way, what's the name of this engine?

Already discussed in this thread. I would recommend reading/skimming the rest of the thread for other bits too that might have been missed. :)

Regarding who's the lead:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1172401&postcount=29

Regarding the engine:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1126271&postcount=21
 
So as far as the wrong button icons popping up, that has to do mainly with the way it was authored. Most of the text popup windows were done using our localization system which overlaid strings that would automatically switch languages and so on. Within that would be escape characters that correspond to the button icons... which is why the same text will switch based on the platforms as well since the font data for that platform will have different button icons.

In that build, for some reason or other, the pop-up grapple icons were still being done using textured billboards rather than text. As with any and all gaming events that will ever occur until the end of time, the demo discs were readied in a frenzied rush with mere hours to spare, and so things like that get overlooked, and we hadn't really checked the content against the PS3... The in-game UI this time around is completely content-driven, so it's really a content issue. The discussions on the tombraiderforums about the PS3 build of the Leipzig demo being a "port" of the 360 demo are based on a massive confusion about what the person was talking about -- it was the content, and not the code where the rush ended up putting it in a state of "it's working on 360, build the disc images!" I know that the difference will be completely lost on the visitors of a more generic gaming forum, but hopefully not here.

In any case, that was long since rectified, but it's really an absurdly nonsensical waste of resources to be building new builds for every single event unless each and every one exhibited some new major showstopper bug (in which case, that's a sign you shouldn't have been showing it in the first place). And when those events are going on during submission crunches, that's all the more reason to prioritize something else since not hitting the window to get into the queue for first and second submission generally means not getting the game out.


On a side note about the name of the engine, our internal name is "CDC" (Console Development Common), but there's been discussions and things going around about putting an official name on it. It doesn't really have one yet, and I have no idea what it would eventually be called. There are a number of legal hassles associated with that, of course, but that's another story.

It's funny how the whole "lead platform" subject comes up. Really, when people are asking that sort of thing, there's at least a tinge of (if not a massive brazen showing of) fanboyism that underlies the question, and we all know what they're really asking... If they'd just phrase the question honestly, what we'd have instead is "Is the rendering component of the engine poorly and ineffectively ported from 360 to PS3 or the other way around?"

BTW, the two videos posted earlier... I found them on another site, this time with the video and audio properly in sync (at least it is for me, anyway) --
http://blip.tv/file/1295286
http://blip.tv/file/1295265
 
The discussions on the tombraiderforums about the PS3 build of the Leipzig demo being a "port" of the 360 demo are based on a massive confusion about what the person was talking about -- it was the content, and not the code where the rush ended up putting it in a state of "it's working on 360, build the disc images!" I know that the difference will be completely lost on the visitors of a more generic gaming forum, but hopefully not here.

Thank you for your reply.

Didn't know about that discussion. Just noticed that 'bug' by my self. The question if the PS3 version is a port of the Xbox 360 version led from that.

On a side note about the name of the engine, our internal name is "CDC" (Console Development Common), but there's been discussions and things going around about putting an official name on it. It doesn't really have one yet, and I have no idea what it would eventually be called. There are a number of legal hassles associated with that, of course, but that's another story.

Thank you for the explanation ;).

It's funny how the whole "lead platform" subject comes up. Really, when people are asking that sort of thing, there's at least a tinge of (if not a massive brazen showing of) fanboyism that underlies the question, and we all know what they're really asking... If they'd just phrase the question honestly, what we'd have instead is "Is the rendering component of the engine poorly and ineffectively ported from 360 to PS3 or the other way around?"

The question had nothing to do with fanboyism. There's nothing reprehensible in being interested in if there is a lead platform and if yes, which one is the leadplatform. And there is nothing reprehensible in being interested in which platform looks the best or what ever, too.

BTW, the two videos posted earlier... I found them on another site, this time with the video and audio properly in sync (at least it is for me, anyway) --
http://blip.tv/file/1295286
http://blip.tv/file/1295265


Is this console rendered (ingame) footage?
 
emacs said:
i never played any of the iterations in the Tomb Raider franchise. this latest release will change that because the it looks rather intriguing.
At first glance, I wasn't immediately interested in the original Tomb Raider per se. But when TR first came out was around the time that there was such hullabaloo about quaternions as the next big thing in representing transformations, and although it had been done in other contexts, TR1 was lauded as the first game to use it for the camera (more accurate would have been first game "noticed" to have used it...), and with that I became interested. Yep... that's geekdom for you. It wasn't the triangular boobs or the idea of controlling a buxom female lead character... it was the 4-dimensional imaginary numbers.

The question had nothing to do with fanboyism. There's nothing reprehensible in being interested in if there is a lead platform and if yes, which one is the leadplatform. And there is nothing reprehensible in being interested in which platform looks the best or what ever, too.
Yeah, I got that impression looking at the earlier posts. I was just still carrying on about the way people tend to comport themselves on more generic gaming fora.

Is this console rendered (ingame) footage?
Yes. Of course, being captured for a vignette, we did little things the gamer can't do like shutting off the UI and cut separate clips together just so, but otherwise, it's all active gameplay.
 
1.jpg

3.jpg


http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=13060991&postcount=1


Some Really Cool Screenshots :) !!!!!!
 
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