Readme File v1.0
11/12/98

Please read through the DirectX 6 section of this document. This section has information that is vital to successfully running Tomb Raider 3 on your system.

DirectX 6

Tomb Raider 3 is one of the first games to use Microsoft's DirectX 6. In order for you to play the game, you may need DX6-compliant drivers for your video card and sound card. Your video and sound card must be 100% compatible with DirectX. Please note that although DirectX 6.0 is installed with the game, your video and sound card drivers will not be upgraded to DirectX 6 drivers. You may need to obtain the latest DX6 drivers from your card manufacturer. If Tomb Raider 3 does not run properly on your video card, and there are no DX6 drivers available for your video card, you will have to run the game in software mode. Keep checking your manufacturer's web site for new drivers, they may correct problems you are experiencing, and may even help the game run faster on your system. There are various web sites listed in the Driver Information section of this document.

Signs indicating that you may need an updated driver:
DirectDraw errors being displayed.
Game crashes or hangs.
Graphic glitches and other graphical problems appear during the game.
Sound squeaking or crackling in game.
Windows desktop is distorted or corrupted when exiting the game.

Please refer to the Technical Help section for more information.

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Prepare Your Hard Drive

To best prepare your system to run the game, please follow this procedure:
1. Run ScanDisk on your hard drive. This program is found on your Windows Start Menu, in Programs/Accessories/System Tools.
2. Run Disk Defragmenter on your hard drive. This program is also found on your Windows Start Menu, in Programs/Accessories/System Tools.
3. Run a quality virus scanner on your hard drive.

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Installation

To install Tomb Raider 3 to your hard drive:

1. Place the Tomb Raider 3 CD in your CD-ROM drive.

2. After a few seconds, the Autorun Menu will come on screen. Select the Install option. If this menu does not appear, click the Start button, select Run and type D:\autorun (where D is the letter of your CD-ROM drive), then click OK.

3. During the installation, the program will detect whether you have certified DirectX 6 drivers which allow Tomb Raider 3 to run properly under all configurations. Your current drivers may be updated as necessary.

4. The Tomb Raider 3 installation routine will then install the game files to your hard drive. At the end of the installation, you may be prompted to Restart your computer.

5. Upon completion of installation, run Setup to make sure your graphics card is configured properly.

6. Click the Play button on the Autorun Menu or select Tomb Raider 3 in the Core Design folder on the Start Menu to begin the game.

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Setup

There are a large number of options available in the Setup window, which allow you to configure the graphics, sound and controls within the game. You may need to change some of the graphics settings to achieve the best possible performance (frame rate and detail level) on your particular graphics card. Please refer to the Technical Help section for more details on graphics configuration.

The Setup window is accessed by clicking the Setup button on the Autorun Menu, or by selecting Tomb Raider III - Setup from the Start menu.

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Hardware Requirements

MINIMUM SPECIFICATIONS:
Without hardware acceleration: Pentium™ Class 166MMX MHz or 100% compatible processor
With hardware acceleration: Pentium™ Class 133MHz or 100% compatible processor.
Windows® 95 or Windows® 98
16 MB RAM
4MB SVGA card 100% Windows® 95 or Windows® 98 compatible sound and video card
4X CD ROM DRIVE
DirectX 6.0 (included)
Keyboard

RECOMMENDED
Pentium™ Class 200MHz (or greater) or 100% compatible processor
32 MB RAM
3D acceleration recommended (100% Direct3D compliant accelerator cards supported)

NOTE: It may be necessary for you to update your hardware drivers to run this game.

Tomb Raider 3 will not run on Windows NT 4.0, and was not designed to run on Laptops.

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Final Controls

A couple of Lara's controls were changed slightly late in the development process and we were not able to update the manual accordingly. Here are the final control settings:

In-Game Controls (DEFAULTS)

Lara

Hot Keys

Vehicles
During her travels, Lara will come across a number of vehicles, here’s how you control them:

Underwater Propulsion Unit

Quad Bike

Note: Holding the Handbrake, pressing the Accelerator several times, then releasing the Handbrake will provide Turbo-Boost. You’ll need this turbo boost to make certain jumps!

Kayak

Boat

Mine Cart

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Joysticks & Gamepads

Tomb Raider 3 supports a wide variety of Windows 95 compatible game controllers. However, there are no default settings for the joystick buttons, so you will need to assign the various controls to the joystick buttons yourself.

At the Main Title screen, highlight Controls (cursor keys icon) and press the Enter key. The Default Keys should now appear on screen. Press the right cursor key to bring up the User Keys screen. It is here that you will be able to assign the joystick buttons. Highlight the particular control you want to assign by using the cursor keys. Press the Enter key to select that control, and then press the joystick button you wish to use. The text will flash on and off if you have assigned two controls to the same button. Once you have assigned controls for all of the joystick buttons, press the ESC key to exit the Controls screen.

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Exit the Game

There is no hot key to exit Tomb Raider 3. To exit the game, you can press ALT-F4, or do the following:
Press the ESC key, press down arrow, press the Enter key on the Passport (Game) icon, press right arrow twice (Exit to Title) and press the Enter key. Once you are at the Main Title Screen, Press Enter on the Passport (Game) icon and right arrow twice (Exit Game) and press the Enter key.

Screen Grabber

Tomb Raider 3 has a built in screen grabber for your viewing pleasure. Hitting the " key during gameplay will snap a screenshot called TOMB0000.TGA and place it on your hard drive in the C:\Program Files\Core Design\Tomb Raider III (or wherever you installed the game). The files will be numbered incremently as you snap them. Please do not try and map this key to one of Lara's in-game controls.

Uninstall Tomb Raider 3

In the unlikely event that you actually want to uninstall the game, there are 2 easy ways to do so:
1) Go to the Start Menu, Core Design/Tomb Raider 3 folder, and select Uninstall Tomb Raider 3.
2) Insert the TR3 CD, and then click on the Uninstall button on the Autorun menu.

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Technical Help

There are many 3D accelerator cards available on the market, and they all will perform differently under the same conditions, depending on the chipset, amount of video memory, and drivers installed. The key to getting the best performance out of your graphics card is to set the card to a higher resolution, while maintaining a good frame rate with no texture loss. Many accelerator cards will run Tomb Raider 3 very efficiently at 640x480, 16-bit color.

If you notice texture drop out or texture corruption - white blank spots or bad textures on menu text, objects, terrain and characters including Lara, you will need to lower the graphics resolution. The card has run out of texture memory. You will need to lower the graphics resolution to a setting where the texture corruption disappears. The graphics resolution can be changed in the setup window, and can also be changed in-game by selecting the Sunglasses Icon. Turning off Z-Buffering may help to fix this problem as well. If the results are unsatisfactory, you can run the game in software mode by running Setup, and selecting Software Mode.

If you are experiencing very low frame rates, you may want to lower the screen resolution. You can also reduce the screen size, which will leave a border around the viewable area. The "-" key on the keypad will reduce the screen size (while in-game), and the "+" key on the keypad will increase the screen size (while in-game). Reducing the resolution and screen size will help Tomb Raider 3 run faster.

When using the Sunglasses Icon in-game to increase the resolution, you will have to be a little careful. Some of the graphic options such as Z-Buffering can be supported at lower resolutions, but may not be supported at higher resolutions. If you increase the resolution in-game to a resolution which does not support the currently selected graphics options, the game may crash your system. For example, the 3Dfx Voodoo1 cards will not run the game with Z-Buffering on in 800x600 mode. If you have Z-Buffering on, and increase the resolution in-game to 800x600 the game will crash. If you wish to run the game in 800x600 mode on a 3Dfx Voodoo1 card, make sure Z-Buffer is turned off.

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DirectX Installation
If there are any problems installing DirectX 6 when the game is installed, DirectX can be installed directly from the CD. To install DirectX 6, go to the "DirectX" directory on the game CD, and run the "dxsetup.exe" program.

Sometimes DirectX will replace your audio or video drivers with drivers that do not work with your hardware. If you suspect DirectX has messed up your system, you should be able to restore the original drivers by going to the ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS section in the Windows 95 CONTROL PANEL. This can be found on the Windows Start Menu, under Settings.

When you double click on the ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS icon, you should see a list of all of the programs that are registered with Windows 95 in the Add/Remove Programs Properties panel. If you see a listing for "DirectX Drivers", double-click it to open the DirectX Setup window. At the bottom of this window, there should be a button labeled Restore Display Drivers. Clicking on this button should restore the original video drivers. Click on the Restore Audio Drivers button to restore the original audio drivers. Though DirectX will remain on your system, the restoration of the older drivers may then allow you to run the program. If not, you should probably contact your system vendor for 100% DirectX 6 compatible drivers for your video and/or sound cards OR visit the web site of your hardware manufacturer and download the latest drivers. There are various web sites listed in the Driver Information section of this document.

Additional help with DirectX may be found on the Microsoft DirectX web site:
www.microsoft.com/directx/

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3D Graphic Cards

Tomb Raider requires that you have at LEAST 4 Mb of VRAM on your 3D card. We do not support any 2 Mb cards.

3Dfx cards
If you have a video card that uses the 3Dfx Voodoo1 or Voodoo2 chipset, and you are using older DX5 drivers, you may experience problems such as graphic glitches. Please visit your card manufacturer's web site to check if there are new DX6 drivers available for your card. Just in case your card manufacturer has not released DX6 drivers yet, we have provided 3Dfx reference drivers for Voodoo1 and Voodoo2 cards on the CD, in the Support directory.

To install them, double-click on the executable file and follow the instructions. Please note that installing these reference drivers will deactivate any manufacturer-specific applets or control panels provided with your card. You will therefore want to visit your card manufacturer's web site to see if they have DX6-compliant drivers available, before installing the reference drivers we have provided on the CD.

S3 Virge VX/GX/DX & GX2
You may be able to play Tomb Raider 3 on S3 Virge based cards in hardware, but Tomb Raider 3 is not supported on these cards. If you experience any problems running the game or viewing the FMV's on an S3 Virge card, we recommend you play in Software Mode.

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Audio Issues

If you find you are not hearing any sound within the game one of the reasons might be that when Windows 95 or Windows 98 was installed on your PC the ability to play the Microsoft Audio Compression files was not selected.

To check to see if this is the problem, please follow the following steps:
[You will need your Windows 95/98 CD]

1. Go into Control Panel and open the Add/Remove Programs applet.
2. Click on the Windows Setup tab.
3.: You should see a selection item called Multimedia which will have one of the following 3 next to it:
- A check in a white box
- A check in a gray box
- No check in the box

If you have the first of these, then this technique is not the solution to the problem. Please refer to other areas of the document or our on-line support.

If you have a check in a gray box, then please click on the Details button and place a check in the box next to the "Audio Compression" entry.

If there is no check in the box, then simply click in the box to check it.

Press OK to all the dialog boxes and Windows Setup will copy the necessary files to their hard drive.

There is also a driver issue with some sound cards and Microsoft's Compressed Audio Format. If you experience any 'skipping or stuttering audio' please try the following to clear up the problem:

1. Exit out of the game and run the TOMB3 Setup Option from the Start Bar.
2. Look at the Sound Adapter Check Box.
3. Switch from Primary Sound Driver to the other available device (most likely Yamaha).
4. Click OK

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Driver Information:

EIDOS Interactive maintains a web page with links to all major video and audio card manufacturers, which is a good first stop if you're looking to upgrade your drivers. You can reach this page at: http://www.eidosinteractive.com/techsupp/ts-links.html

Most common 3D Card manufacturer's Web sites:
3DFX
3D Labs
ATI
Canopus
Creative Labs
Diamond Multimedia Inc
Matrox Graphics Inc
Nvidia
Power VR
Rendition
S3
STB

If you experience any problems with the drivers installed by DirectX, we have included drivers on the CD that have been confirmed by the manufacturers to work with Tomb Raider III.

The latest drivers (as of 11/12/98) for the following hardware can be found on the TR3 CD, in the "Support" directory:
Matrox products
ATI products
Creative Labs products
PowerVR Products

Always follow the manufacturer's instructions for installing their drivers.

If you continue to have problems, the EIDOS Technical Support information is listed below.

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Technical Support:
EIDOS technical support worldwide:
EIDOS Interactive UK
EIDOS Interactive USA
EIDOS Interactive Germany
EIDOS Interactive France
EIDOS Interactive Japan

If you need technical assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us, after reading the manual fully, and of course this Readme file. For your convenience, if you cannot get through to a representative by phone and you have access to a fax machine or the Internet, please consider contacting us through one of these alternative methods.

When contacting us, please be sure to provide us with as much information as possible. Make sure to note the exact type of hardware that you are using in your system, including: your sound card, CD-ROM drive, amount of RAM present, speed and manufacturer of your processor, and the specific type of modem that you are using (for questions involving multiplayer gaming). Also, make sure to include the title and version of the game, and a detailed description of the problem.

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EIDOS Gameplay Helpline:
Need any help? why not call our recorded gameplay helpline on 09067 535050
*Please note that this call is more expensive than a normal call and at the time of publication
is charged at 75p per minute at all times. Callers must legally be aged 16 or over. This service
is provided in the UK by Eidos Interactive Limited, Unit 2, Holford Way, Holford, Birmingham B6 7AX.

Register Tomb Raider 3 Online
When you register 2 or more Eidos Interactive products, you are automatically entered into the Eidos Club. The Eidos Club includes a quarterly newsletter, special offers, rebates, updates on Eidos products and more!
http://www.tombraider.com/tr3/reggame.html

Eidos Interactive Company Store
For the latest and greatest Eidos merchandise, you can now visit the Eidos Interactive Store. You can go to the web site at http://www.eidosstore.com

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Earthlink
Earthlink is a great way to connect yourself to the internet. The Earthlink ISP software is included on the TR3 CD, in the Earthlink folder.

EIDOS / Core Design Web links:

Official Tomb Raider Site
Official Tomb Raider Lara © Merchandise
Core Design Ltd
EIDOS Interactive UK
EIDOS Interactive USA
EIDOS Interactive Germany
EIDOS Interactive France
EIDOS Games
EIDOS Store

Unsupported sites:
Here are a few links that can give you everything you want to know about the Tomb Raider Universe:
Tomb Raiders
Tomb Raider's Travellers Guide
Tomb Raider Archives

Happy Raiding!!!

Click this link for information on

For the Sony Playstation

Be sure to check out the EIDOS Store, EIDOS TV and the many other EIDOS related web sites by visiting
either of the EIDOS / Core Design Web links above.

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Tomb Raider III & Lara Croft © & TM 1998 Core Design Limited. © & Published 1998 by Eidos Interactive Limited. All Rights Reserved.

HFCIT!