DGC Ep 127: Tomb Raider (part two) - a podcast by Brett Douville and Tim Longo

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where we have been playing 1996's Tomb Raider. We specifically dive into level design, Lara's move set, combat, and a bit about technology here and there. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played:
Through Greece, theoretically

Issues covered: dinosaurs in film in books, level size, level design and events to direct the eye, interconnectedness of areas, distilling the original game to remake it, exploration and order of operations, not knowing when you're done with a puzzle, possibility of going back and forth, looking for secrets and finding a way down to the valley, opening the other two doors, becoming less accepting of more abstract spaces, going for realism vs abstract reality, why you might build levels on grids and with repeated bits, backface culling, lining up animations because the character is on a grid, PlayStation hardware and acceleration, announcing the PlayStation at its price, controls vs fidelity, dropping air steering out and returning it, figuring out the right move to get the right jump, reinforcing character through move set, one-false-move failures, tank controls, trusting the grid, trading fidelity and responsiveness, planting the foot before she jumps, really embodying her in the world, fluid animation, designing with the experience in mind, failure as a valid teaching tool, aligning design and animation intent, increasing realism and trade-offs of feel, introducing procedural approaches to animation, blending in sports games, using inverse kinematics to navigate the world, allowing tech to solve a role, using math to point the head and arms in the right direction during combat, simple gun combat with good character animation, using jump scares to introduce combat, limited AI, limitations in combat systems, auto-lock and camera interplay, lacking sticks, switching lock targets, lack of music during combat, downplaying the combat, good level moments, the T-Rex moment, collision on the T-Rex corpse, pushing scale in environments, correction 0451 code, music genres and game genres, when do game mechanics and narrative mesh together well, "Would You Kindly?", simple stories working better, ludonarrative dissonance, the player being the unique hurdle, comedy in games.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Jurassic Park, Arthur Conan Doyle, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne, Michael Crichton, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, Crystal Dynamics, TR: Anniversary, Jason Botta, Half-Life, Super Mario 64, Nintendo 64, Silicon Graphics, PlayStation 1/2, Star Wars: Starfighter, Track and Field, Resident Evil, The Matrix, Dark Souls, Demons Souls, Assassin's Creed, CORE Design, Steve Ash, Crash Translation, System Shock, Warren Spector, Deus Ex, dcab11, Zimmy Finger, Beethoven, Tetris, Bioshock, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Prince of Persia (2008), Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Far Cry 2, Planescape: Torment, Chris Avellone, Gone with the Wind.

Next time:
Through Egypt, theoretically

@brett_douville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub
DevGameClub@gmail.com

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