Revisiting Old-School Rendering Tricks In Tomb Raider III

If you're into retro games, game development, or just curious about how things worked back then, ex-Lead Senior 3D Programmer at Ubisoft David Reinig has published an article diving into the technology behind Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft from 1998, which explores how a combination of smart systems, lightweight rendering, and creative tricks brought its world to life. This could be an inspiring read for modern retro-style projects and a valuable resource for developers working under constraints.

In his article, David covers portal-based visibility and room traversal, the use of distance fog for both performance and atmosphere, and texture atlases combined with low-resolution tiling. He also looks at the absence of mipmapping and the visual artifacts it caused, as well as sky spheres and baked sky colors.

The article touches on foliage and transparency, flipbook texture animation for water and fire, vertex lighting, and simple dynamic light sources, along with vertex-based animation used for waves, caustics, and other effects. Check out the full write-up here.

We often share content on 80 Level that retro game fans will enjoy. For example, you can virtually fly through the levels of Sega's Crazy Taxi or explore an online model viewer for the 1999 Dreamcast classic Shenmue:

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