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Tomb Raiders Traveler's Guide News
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Bugged
Not much news to report from the Guide. One thing that I've discovered is that in re-writing the original Guide a "bug" has been exposed which caused large portions of the text of the walk- throughs to be hidden when users view them using Netscape Navigator 3.0X versions. It has to do with the way that version of the web browser renders HTML text as well as how it handles cookies. Anyhow, I'm sure no |
one is really interested in the technical details of this problem, but
to make a long story short, the "Secrets Off" feature will not work
properly in Netscape 3.0. I have re-written the offending sections of the guide and everything in any guide should display properly when Secrets are turn ON for all web. However Guide users who want to use the "Secrets Off" feature should use a version 4 browser. There is no general "workaround" for this problem. |
Seek...
...and ye shall find. For those that haven't noticed: There is a little box near the bottom of the Title Page. This is a case insensitive exact match keyword [or phrase] search program where people can enter in a keyword or phrase and get a list of the web pages on this site that contains the word(s). For example, if you type "torch room" in the box, you would get links to those pages that contain that exact phrase. |
That's it. Nothing else of importance to report. In case people e-mail me for help and wonder why I'm not writing back: I will be out of town for a week to attend my cousin's wedding, so I will not be answering any e-mails until I return. (Old articles...) |
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| Jun 12, 1998 14:30 | |||
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Rewrite
There hasn't been much to report since the completion of the Tomb Raider 2 Guide. I've gone back and performed the first major update on the Guide for the original Tomb Raider since I published it. Changes include the "secrets hiding" feature and kill numbering which have been available in the newer guides. I've also added footnotes throughout the web site with reader comments that were too valuable to ignore. |
I've also made some cosmetic changes to the table of contents pages
for each guide, most notably adding a site index at the bottom to
improve navigation. I've also removed that useless "Hey, this is
new..." footnote from the bottom of those pages, since the "secrets
hiding" hasn't been new for several months. There is a paragraph on
the "About" page that describes that feature now. The overall goal is to bring the first guide up |
to par with the newer ones. We'll be continuing to edit the
walkthroughs, so as always, consider everything perpetually under
construction. Have You Heard? In case you weren't following the news from the E3 conference in Atlanta, then you might have missed Eidos' announcement of the next installation in the Tomb Raider franchise. Tomb Raider III:The Adventures of Lara Croft is slated for release this November. |
The game engine has been revamped, and from what I've seen/read, it
looks like we can count on more of the same great game play plus much
improved visual effects. On the downside, the hardware requirements have yet to be announced, and my guess is minimally it will require 3Dfx hardware acceleration. Hopefully it will run on my 100 MHz Pentium, because I seriously doubt my wife will let me buy a new computer just to play TR3. (Old articles...) |
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| May 28, 1998 09:23 | |||
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Veni Vidi Vici
I'm finally finished with all of the Tomb Raider II levels, including The Dragon's Lair and Home Sweet Home. The under construction warning has been removed from the Tomb II contents page, and there should be no more broken links. I plan to play through Tomb II again to insure I've found everything and have discovered the best way to finish each level, so there may be some minor changes, but nothing more. |
Future Plans
If there are more sequels, I will probably play them and write up guides for them. In case you haven't figured it out yet, I really enjoy this game genre. I enjoy the game play, the third person interface, the great mix of puzzle solving and action, and the storylines (I wish there were more "story"). If Eidos/Core release additional Tomb Raider games and the hardware requirements are reasonable, you (and they) can count on my support. |
Other Projects
In case you haven't caught wind of this yet: I'm hoping to sell copies of my guide on CD-ROM for a nominal fee. This is still in the brain-storming and proposal stage. I'm drafting a letter to send to Eidos to obtain their legal permission to do so. There seems to be some interest in this, as suggested on my survey page, as I think there ought to be. Most users access the Internet with 28.8K modems, and that can be really slow if you're trying to download a lot |
of information. Having the Traveler's Guide on CD means no
waiting for the information you need to get to you. I plan to keep
the cost low, to cover the cost of producing the CD and a tiny bit to
cover the cost of my time investment, but I want to keep it as low as
possible. Keep in mind that this is still in the proposal stage. Keep tuned in for updates about how this goes. (Old articles...) |
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| May 15, 1998 18:51 | |||
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Usual Business
The Temple of Xian and the Hive levels are complete and ready for your perusal. Because the Hive is the last of the "Unfinished Business" levels, the under construction warning has been removed from that index page. If you are so inclined, you can read the backplots for the "Shadow of the Cat" and the "Unfinished Business" guides. We hope to provide you with the motivation for why Lara goes to Egypt and Atlantis. |
If you read the backplots, you may want to also read the epilogues
when you finish the two levels to get a sense of closure. E-mail Updates I've set up an e-mail update service on the title page. Submit your e-mail address, and you will receive an occasional e-mail from me when I've made significant updates to this web site. I assure you that the list will not be sold nor will I send any spam. To remove yourself, just submit the |
same e-mail address again. Backward Compatible Based on the responses of our survey, we noted last time that some users were unable to display our new title page. I've done some investigation, testing, and editing, and I believe that our pages are backward compatible with browsers as old as Netscape Navigator 2.02. Please e-mail me at ichou@bidmc. harvard.edu if you are still experiencing |
problems with our web site. Proud Mothers Your mother must be very proud each of you. Although this web site receives approximately 340 visitors per day, I was glad to see in the access logs that on Sunday May 10th, "Mother's Day" we had zero (0) hits. So can we say that "people who visit the Traveler's Guide are are good people?" Yeah sure, why not. *smile* (Old articles...) |
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| Apr 29, 1998 10:42 | |||
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Parallel Progress
Well, I'm making progress here at the Traveler's Guide. The guides for Ice Palace and Atlantean Stronghold have been completed and published. You'll also notice that the Shadow of the Cat guide is also done, so the big "under construction warning has been removed, but because of new Lara Croft pictures that have cropped up, planned revision of the backplot, and the usual on-going changes that happen to this web-site, you can |
assume that all pages are perpetually "under construction". So now it's on to the Temple of Xian, and after that, the last of the Unfinished Business levels. I'm still interested in people's speculations on what the backplot is for the Egypt and Atlantis levels are. As usual, e-mail your comments to me at ichou@bidmc. harvard.edu. I'm Still listening Please take a moment to fill out our survey so we |
can know how we can best improve this web site. Your comments are
important to us, and if you have specific complaints or suggestions,
you are always welcome to send them to the above e-mail address. According to the current results of the survey, five people have indicated that the new title page does not display properly in their web browser (which include Netscape 2.01, 3.01, 4.0 and 4.05), which is peculiar to me, because I've tested |
the page with these browsers. If you have specific details (such as receiving a JavaScript error, missing sections of the page, mangled tables) please feel free to e-mail me about it as well. (Old articles...) |
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| Apr 15, 1998 8:36 | |||
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Ahead and Behind
After a two-week Tomb Raider hiatus, I'm back to work on the guide. The Catacombs of the Talion level guide was completed last night, and the Return to Egypt level guide was completed before my time away. Progress on the guide is starting to slow because the levels are a bit harder and I'm working on the extra "Gold" levels in parallel. I had planned to alternate between Tomb 2 and Gold levels since their |
release, so expect to see slow progress on both guides. Temple of
the Cat the current working level. The reason for this is to keep
my interest, as the latter levels of Tomb 2 can be long and tedious,
but also because there's a need for good guides for the extra
levels. Okay, that's the behind part, but I didn't want to hold up the new title page because of the slow progresss, so in case you haven't noticed or refreshed your browser cache, the new page should |
be up. This page was tested with Navigator versions 2 through 4
and MSIE versions 3 and 4. If you have problems viewing these pages,
please let me know. Call for Ideas I read the notes by the level designer on the Tomb Raider site and I'm not at all satisfied by what's there. Again, game makers have forsaken plot [which I consider the best part of TR] for the sake of game play. If you have ideas for why Lara returns to Egypt or how she learns |
about the alien hatchery, e-mail to:ichou@bidmc. harvard.edu
with them. If we get one we like, we will use it on the backplot
pages, give the author credit, and make you a contributing
author here at the guide. Offer good only for a limited time [until
we dream up our own plot and decide our ideas are good enough] and
contributions we choose to use become property of the Guide. I'm listening... Please take a minute to fill out our survey. Thanks! (Old articles...) |