LEGEND SECURES STREAMING TECHNOLOGY
Copyright 2005 www.tombraiderchronicles.com

[ August 1st 2005 ]

Jason Bell, lead programmer at Crystal Dynamics, has spoken to Softpedia about the technical hurdles faced with developing Tomb Raider Legend. "The streaming technology we're using in Tomb Raider: Legend sets this title apart from previous Tomb Raider games." Bell says. "For example, it gives us the ability to create a much more finely detailed world.

"The content creators can spend as much effort in a few rooms that previously would have been spread over an entire level. It also eliminates load times by continually rotating relevant data into and out of the console's memory as needed.

"In Tomb Raider: Legend we're using streaming technology for more than just textures, animations, sounds and logic. We've improved the resource sharing and added several new types of resources that can be streamed, including cinematic data and physics information. This is important when you consider that a typical TRL level requires 5-times more memory than the PS2 console offers.

"One of the hurdles we faced with TRL's streaming technology was with the memory management system. It became more complicated, since more data is moving in and out of the console's memory. Developing automated tools that could tell content creators exactly how much memory they are allowed to use in a particular section was key.

"Legend's streaming technology helped us close the gap between the original concept of Lara Croft and how she actually expresses her personality in the game. And it allowed us to make each environment much more detailed, interactive and realistic."