I have good news and bad news. I'll be extremely brief about it saving you people the story. You can read it in more detail inside the readme file.
Good news: Sanus 4 is released. Get it at trle.net
Bad news: It is only two levels instead of four. And with this I also put an end to my building career.
It has been 9 years since I touched the level editor for the first time. I have been a member on various forums. One I forgot the name of, it was one of the oldest. After that I had found trle.net and larashome.com. How ever, Lara's home dissapeared so I ended up between trle.net and tombraiderforums.com. Even then I had my fun and met various members.
Enjoy the levels and happy raiding. Screenshots section will contain unfinished business shots in case you are curious.
Well second level is almost near it's completion. I am building a dozen of final rooms to connect the gameplay and major rooms with each other. Then some personal alpha testing will begin in order to test level functionality and mechanism. If the testing is complete it will be MAC tested to see if the ammount of objects / rooms do not crash the game, else splitting will occur just like the first level.
Instead of Tower of Eyes I'll focus on the Emperor Palace level. I already have a layout on paper for it with some great ideas for traps/enemies. Custom objects will be the main focus for the last two levels because I want to decorate it as fitting as possible.
Also, I came up with a new secret system which will be implemented over all the levels. What it excactly is and how it functions will remain a secret. All I can spoil as a teaser is that upon succesfully collecting all secrets, you will be rewarded with a bonus level (Original huh?). But aside that, the secrets have a 2nd meaning aswell, which will be original. But mind you =P No further spoilers about those.
I wish I could show you screenshots of the 3rd and 4th level. But since the construction is extremely poor it would be blatently stupid to show unfinished stuff. I prefer to show something when I got something to show.
Mere project update, nothing else. Mainly building on Tower of Eyes level due to inspiration. The reason why I stalled the 2nd level for now. And oh, Happy New Year all.
Sadly Lara's Home had to close down which due to that the fanhosted sites were all offline. In mean while it took me some time to find a suitable place to start hosting it myself. So at the end it succeeded and the site is back online.
Though I haven't fully stopped while being offline, building did continue at a certain pace. Mainly creating custom objects as usual and building few rooms.
Custom object building has resulted in three updated screenshots for the City of Sanus level. My imagination goes wild and already have newer ideas for the Emperor Palace level aswell. See the screenshot section for the new shots.
Currently I have halted all room builds and focussing fully on object design for a while to decorate the level.
Just keeping you people up to date with the current status and progress.
City of Sanus level is taking more and more shape. I builded a few custom objects which will decorate the dullnes and emptynes of the level. I mean, a few laterns does not make the level look good. I am currently also focussing on the enemies which is a hell of a task. I am adjusting their animation and sounds to make them fit inside the theme.
Also I am making slight start with the Tower of Eyes and Emperor's Palace level. Depending on my mood and inspiration I will be buildings rooms randomly for each level. I always find this pleasent so it does not frustrate one to continue building rooms for one level.
Also I noticed that the screenshot from Beyonder's Hand is outdated. Due to harddisk crash before I had lost some files. So the correct screenshot is placed.
Sometimes certain discissions have to be made, such as now. Don't worry, it is nothing bad or something that endangers the project. It is about the 2nd level and the playable "cutscene" level. Originally the idea was to make Lara travel between the Emperor Palace and City of Sanus and a Sewer based area. However this gives alot of problems with the actual level design. And I also fear it would make the level extremely non-linear and confusing. Also keeping in mind it would give the MAC version alot of trouble to realise. So this will be changed:
Level 2 going by the name City of Sanus will be truely a single level, the 2nd part which was originally Emperor's Palace will act as the 3rd level. In total Sanus4 counts four playable levels and one small "cutscene alike" level which is very short.
That's all for now.
Don't think I achieved website design skills past summer holiday. No, I found a standard free template on the internet. But the colours were totally greenish. I opened up photoshop to change the colours of certain images. Eventually it resulted into this. I hope to update this site whenever I got some news/updates.
Now then, my holiday was so so. I enjoyed a 5 day hotel and visited some relatives in Turkey. During my stay at our "hometown" I played around with my laptop ( which I took with me to not to get bored ). I practised a bit meta design skills and builded a few extra rooms. But yea, since it is holiday, most of the time I spend outside doing activities and such. All in all it was a great summer for me (mainly because I have not been outside Holland for three years).
About Sanus4 itself, well it is slow paced, school started again so I will be building in my spare times. Don't worry, the project is not dead nor I will let it die twice.
Enjoy the new looks.