Virtual Lara's Thoughts

A Site Update?

15/3/2025

Hello there, readers!

Now, this is just a little warning about a change of site aesthetics and how they might change frequently for a little while, namely it will be the homepage. The reason for this is because we are aware of how the sidebar on the homepage isn't mobile viewing friendly and we don't like that. We would like this site to be usable by all, no matter the device you use to view it. However, we are struggling to find a workaround that pleases us both here at Virtual Lara.

We've considered a change of theme, one that will allow us to put the sidebar links into a dropdown menu, keeping the plethora of links tidied away until you click on the arrow to view them. The issue with this is that a new theme messes with some coding of many existing pages, pages that took me hours and hours to fix and get right, and I would rather not go through that again.

A second option was to try and add a drop down menu element (with coding) into the sidebar panel, but with our limited knowledge of coding, this hasn't worked out for us.

A third option was to go back to a similar design as when we opened Virtual Lara, and that is to have all of the links listed out in the sidebar panel, grouping them under their categories still, but this would create a looooong list of links that could look unsightly, even if it made them more usable. A variation to this would be listing the categories and have them go to hub-like pages that then provided the rest of the links, so it would look like:
'Main Games' link on sidebar > clicking it goes to a page that lists all the main games.
This is okay, but it seems like an unnecessary addition of pages.

Anyway, this has been an ongoing issue that we are constantly trying to sort. Please bear with us; we may go through some different looks but we are trying to make this site the best it can be and easy to navigate. Thanks for your patience and for also visiting our site, it means a lot that other Tomb Raider fans like to dig into the franchise's history, and also use this place to find any information they may need.

Take care all and have a lovely weekend!

May 2023 Website Updates

3/6/2023

Hello all! Hope you are all well. We're going to hop back in with a round-up of changes on the VL website within the month of May.

New Pages:

Tomb Raider: Unfinished Business, Tomb Raider 2: Golden Mask, Tomb Raider 3: The Lost Artefact and The Times Exclusive Level received a new page each, 'Fan Corner', to feature box art recreations by Stjb17.
Tomb Raider 1 Model Artwork - used to feature imagery of the in-game character and enemy models.
The official live models now have their own individual pages under their respective games' section. Although we liked having one page dedicated to the official models, we felt that it would be better to have a page for each one that didn't take you away from the games' section. This also cut down on how much would need to be loaded on one page.
Tomb Raider: Legend Development Shots - This page features storyboards for the game's story. If any more behind-the-scenes imagery appear, we may have to create individual pages for them (unlike the previous Dev Shot pages we've made) as there are a lot of storyboards on the page and it will just become too long with too much to load.
With the release of the tabletop RPG 'Lara Croft's Tomb Raiders', we were now able to add more to the game's section. A Credits page was added.

Updates:

Tomb Raider 1 Renders - 4 additional renders were added, including alternative background colours to the same poses.
Tomb Raider 2 Renders - 24 renders were added, including the same pose but on different background colours.
Tomb Raider 3 Characters and Traps - this page became 'TR3 Model Artwork', and some model imagery that we had on the page 'TR3 Wardrobe' was moved to the newly named page. We didn't really know where to put these pictures and we didn't really like them on the wardrobe page, so when we created a page for model artwork for TR1, we knew that this was what we could do for TR3 too.
Tomb Raider 3 Live Model - this new page had additional pictures of Nell McAndrew added to it, featuring poses that we hadn't seen before. These pictures came from Archive.org.
Tomb Raider Anniversary Wallpapers - 17 new official wallpapers were added, in various sizes.
Various Tomb Raider: Reloaded pages were updated, with information about the event, the new event weapon and outfit, and 2 new renders.
Lara Croft's Tomb Raiders Artwork - New imagery was added.
The 'Lara Croft' section of the website received a small refresh, with new logos for the banner and sidebar. We had previously used a logo from the Lara Croft series of games that we had modified, but we rather preferred the idea of using Lara's official signature.
Live Models page - we reduced it down, taking out the galleries and leaving only a short bio and one promo shot of each. This should help the page load quicker too.

That's all for this update. Have a great weekend!

April 2023 Website Updates

6/5/2023

April was a quieter month on the website but there were still plenty of pages and updates. Let's get right into them.

New Pages:

We created new pages for several games, called 'Fan Corner', where we featured recreated box art covers by Stjb17, and also classic fonts created by Arsunt. The box art recreations were for the GameBoy games Tomb Raider (GBC) and Tomb Raider: Curse of the Sword, Tomb Raider: The Prophecy, and Tomb Raider: Legend, and the fonts are in Tomb Raider 1 and Tomb Raider 2.
A 'Misc Videos' page was created to point to videos that couldn't be categorised under a specific game/movie.
We also continued work on the comics section of the website, tackling the Dark Horse comics. We have almost completed it; there is text there but we are yet to add pictures. You can still view it though as it will probably take us a little while to take pictures and edit them for use.

Updates:

The wallpaper pages for the games The Angel of Darkness, Legend, Anniversary, TR2013 and Rise of the Tomb Raider were updated so that the imagery now open in their full sizes.
Rediscovered eCards for the movie Lara Croft Tomb Raider were added to the downloads page, and we also added the source to the original page at the bottom.
A couple of trailers and promo videos were added to the Tomb Raider 3 Videos page.
With the 1999 Times Exclusive newspapers coming to light, the 'Down Among the Dead' story page was finally completed, and we added the additional newspaper pages to the, well, Newspapers page on our website.
We added a Japanese screensaver to the Tomb Raider Chronicles Downloads page.
As we progressed in the Tomb Raider Reloaded mobile game, we have been able to keep you updated on events, abilities, gear, etc. We even added a 'Tips and Tricks' section to the 'How to Play' page with advice and help for new players or those who are new to mobile games.
We put out a blog post that linked 8 renders to the Times Exclusive story 'Down Among the Dead'.

One last thing to mention, we have been trying to figure out how to make our website look good on mobile devices. We still haven't been able to fix the home page sidebar (which looks squashed) but we have managed to move the content section back up to the top of the page so that it sits underneath the navigation bar and beside the sidebar. We've tested this with a mobile device held landscape. Hope this helps a little to make the site better to view and use, and we will continue to look into it again.

Thank you for visiting our website and take care all!

March 2023 Website Updates

2/4/2023

Throughout March, we have updated the website with some big things relating to several parts of the franchise. Here is a summary of the additions:

The Tomb Raider 3 Website Revisited - on our website, we have created several of the old official websites, calling them 'revisited' as they can now be viewed in full in modern times. We've changed some of the links so that they either go to archived pages (reviews/previews) or in the case of the 'buy it now' links, they don't work at all since the original link doesn't work anymore. There are some instances where we haven't changed the links as it is also nice to see where they once went - we were a little conflicted on which was the best thing to do with them. As the TR3 website was the last to revisit, we've created a portal page so that you don't have to go to each game's section to find the link, but can see all the revisited websites in one place.
Cancelled Games Category - this was one section that we hadn't tackled until now as we didn't feel like we knew how to present the little content that there was. The 'Lara Croft: Reflections' is the largest section, with thanks to KillerZ for allowing us to use imagery they had unpacked with Blue_Box. Look under the 'Cancelled Games' drop down menu on the home page side bar to view them.
Tomb Raider Reloaded Category - with the release of the latest mobile game, we have been creating, adding and updating pages with a vast amount of images and information, to help players understand the different elements to gameplay. There are details on the abilities, gear and the events, and even a 'how to play' page with some little tips that we have learnt along the way. Since we are updating this section as we play, there may be some blank spaces so bear with us.
Top Cow Tomb Raider Comics - we had made a start on this section quite a while ago but didn't finish it. Whilst we're still a long way off from finishing, we have at least completed the pages for the first series of Top Cow comics. We've yet to start Journeys, one-offs and crossovers, as well as any of the Dark Horse comics, but we will in time.
One other change we have done is to add drop down menus to the side bar on the home page. We felt that this would not only tidy the side bar but also allow us to expand on what we could offer on the home page. You can now clearly see what is present under the category without each new addition making the page longer. Sadly, we're aware that this new layout doesn't work too well with mobile devices. Although our website code is responsive, it still doesn't look great. This is something we'll try to look into in the future.

Thanks to all who have dropped by and visited the website. We are almost constantly working on it, be it with new pages, additions to current pages or correcting errors. It still amazes us that people are interested in the content we have created, and we still get a buzz from creating new content and sharing it. Take care all!