                            *** Dxtre3d version 2.0 Revision 2 ****
                     By Turbo Pascal. Tegucigalpa, Honduras,
                                  January-2005.


This is my unofficial Tomb Raider Level editor, It build levels for Tomb Raider 1 (*.phd, *.tub),
Tomb Raider II (*.tr2), Tomb Raider III (*.tr2), Tomb Raider 4 (*.tr4) and Tomb Raider Chronicles (*.trc).

You need to be an owner of any of those games CD, coz custom levels are built using objects, 
models,sounds etc found on the original game Cd and copyrighted by Core design and Eidos.


What is capable to do:
----------------------
It is provided with most important features and options to build a great and enjoable level for tr1-trc games version, 
however it is not yet 100% featured, mean that few Game engine features are not suported.

Also some others externals tools need to be used to prepare and/or include your own material (models, textures sounds) in 
your home made levels.

This editor is not a clone of the official One, so some rules can be broken, for example max 5 textures breaks section per wall, 
diagonals walls, and few others cool features not posibles with the oficial level editor.

Dxtre3d is a totally new and very different editor from oldest opengl Tre3d 4.x, the interface was redesigned and now it
use Direct3d 8.1 API. The internal scheme used in custom levels is improved allowing to build biggers levels and making 
enemies works best inside rooms.

Externals textures files are used in Tga, jpg, BMP etc file format, and you are allowed to retexture and light your rooms 
within the level editor.


Requeriments:
-------------
- You need to have a hardware accelerated directx 8.1 compatible videocard, runing at 1024x768 16bit color screen resolution.
- At least 500mhz processor running on win98, WinMe, win200 or Windows XP.
- Miminum 64mb Ram, (256mb Ram recomended).
- Recomended 500mb free hard disk space availible for windows virtual memory.


How to Learn Dxtre3d and built your home made levels:
-----------------------------------------------------

There is included an updated PDF manual, it is recomended that you learn from that first, after that you can check the reference.txt 
wich cover almost every option in the program.


Go regulary to the forum at http://pub19.ezboard.com/ftreditingzonefrm2. there you will found tips and trics, hints etc 
about some topics.

You need to gets some externals tools to edit some isues on your level, most necesary tools are:

- Fexmerger or trviewer. - Allow to combine objects from different levels (our trwest tool).
- PIXSTR2.-  Allow to retexture objects in your base level. (our strpix3 tool).
- TBUILDER.  Allow to built your own textures sets.
- TOMBPCEDIT. Allow to edit tombpc.dat file and define our levels names.



How to Play your home made levels.
=================================
Before you can start using the editor you will need a way to play custom tomb raider levels from your hard disk instead 
from CD, this can be done in several ways, using patched game versions, cd emulators, or using some demo versions.


Final words.
----------------
I am not claiming that Dxtre3d is better that the official editor LE, my intent was not to compite with it, my intent 
about coding this tool was to provide a way to build home mades levels for Tr1, Tr2, Tr3 and Trc levels, the official editor 
is unable to do that, it's only capable to build Tr4 levels and there are thousand of them availibles, they are so great, the 
tr4 engine is far supperior than tr1-tr3 however i am a die hard Tomb Raider fans and i like to play those old engines, i even
enjoy so much playing original Tr1 in 320x200 x 256 color mode; So i did my best coding this tool to keep those old engines 
alive, I don't pretend to convince LE users to switch to my editor or that mine is better,

"Dxtre3d is not best or worst, it is just different"

Please, respect this tool for what it does (not for what it doesn't), realize that it was done using zilions lines of 
codes, using unoficial info file specs, every feature added took lot time and effort for be done, this is not a easy task, 
several people tried to code an unoficial tr editor since 1997, and so far this is the only one that was succesful, several revisions and 
bug fixing are always under construction.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Turbo Pascal. May-2004.

