The true story of the Hungarian Tomb Raider community, or the year of 2022 in review

Írta: OBig | 2022. február 04.

Only those who are interested should read it, obviously there will be few of them. :)

Proofread by five people, including current, old, and very old admins and fans.

Justice is here!

I thought that before I step down, I write the history of the Hungarian TR community. I don't intend to be personal, but I don't want to keep quiet, neither about the good nor the bad. I don't want that after this, the likes of Roli self-aggrandize themselves and deny what they did to the community.

I only write the facts, not my opinion. If anyone wants to respond, they can do so here, in a normal tone, with constructive criticism :) https://tombraiders.hu/forum/showthread.php?24-Off-topic

Anyway, my intention was to let anyone, who is interested, know how and what has happened over the last 21 years. And the internet will preserve this, even if it is deleted at some point. It will be preserved for posterity. :) You can find old versions of these pages here: http://web.archive.org/web/

Just a few examples. http://web.archive.org/web/2013*/tombraider.extra.hu

http://web.archive.org/web/2013*/tombraider.hu

Let's get started :)

Back in 1999, we met on the Supergamez.hu (now sg.hu) forum. Unfortunately it's gone now, the topic consisting thousands of pages is gone, only one page is left. https://sg.hu/forum/tema/944072967

Hamster, and OBig, met there for the first time, (back then with a different nickname :) (bogi) There were plenty of users, playing through TR4, helping each other to get through. And then, Hamster had the idea to make a webpage for this game. And so it happened, TR.hu was created in 2000 as a sub-site of tar.hu, and after a while it got its own domain. Slowly and gradually people found us. We also expanded our editorial team, with great people. Hamster and OBig the admins, SYS who knows everything about TR, Bodlac the scriptwriter, Extasy the designer, Petúnia the translator, Credo the news hunter and tester, Lacek the AOD grandmaster. We could have changed the world with so many great people. :) A year later we also organised smaller 1-4 day-long meetings, in addition to the one week-long camp at Lake Balaton in the summer. They year 2019 marked our 29th meeting. https://tombraiders.hu/rajongok/tomb-raider-talalkozok

Soon after expanding our team, we created a bug site, a bug collection of old Tomb Raider games, still unique in the world of TR sites, https://tombbugs.treditor.hu/index.html

And also the site about user-made levels came to life, TREditor.hu which is one of, if not the largest collection of such levels in the world. https://treditor.hu/

In between the release of main games, the site has always been kept alive by the fans of TR Level Editor. That's how it was in the past, and that's how it is today.

The year of 2002 marked the most TR meetings, that was the heyday. In the summer I was having 16 TR fans over at Lake Balaton for a week. It was free, almost, :) and I was even able to pay for most of the food and drinks back then. We collected 500 Ft a day for the expenses (about the cost of a Big Mac) from those who could afford it. :) Those who didn't, have been owing it ever since. :) Hamster collected it, more than 20 grand, and with this money he was able to finance the web costs for years.

In 2003 we also had a fan meeting at Balaton with only 8 participants. Something happened there that determined the future of the site. One of the fan boys deeply humiliated the girl who had been drunk, and all of this happened in the other room next to my family. (I also have video of this event, as I have of almost every meeting.) I hadn't made a move there, I didn't even know what truly went down, but there was a sequel. The boy, like about a great feat, told another enthusiastic girl the story, at Pest, during a lightning-meeting. And she was rightly, very upset about it. Well, after the problems emerged, I didn't let it go without a word, so the tension on the site and in the forum was constant. Anyway, the boy was bulldozing everyone who didn't agree with his opinion. Unfortunately, Hamster considered this guy his friend at the time, and subordinated the majority of the community to keep this friendship.

At the 2004 Városlőd meeting, we welcomed many new fans, all were fans of the level editor. This blood refresh was not welcomed by some. This unfortunately foreshadowed the split, they could not adapt to accept new people, new fans.

There has been a persistence of contempt, of domination, in form of discrimination on the basis of sexual identity and skin colour.

In 2005, 4 of the 7 editors decided they wanted to take a different path. We couldn't accept that guy's attitude and the other admin, Hamster took his side.

TombRaiderS.hu was founded and is still active today. The original site slowly died out, the fans came over to us along with an editor (Zsolt). With permission we got the material that only existed there, so it belongs to us. So today, we can say with confidence that we have one of the most complex and complete Tomb Raider sites not only in Hungary, but in the world, TombRaiderS.hu with its own server. Crystal Dynamics contacted us, so we became the only official Tomb Raider site in Hungary. I personally paid for the hosting servers and domains, and I have been paying for it since then, although it is getting harder and harder. :)

10 years of relative calm waters greeted us.

In the meantime, the youngster Roli joined us, who had been banned from the site several times before for stealing stuff, but I still thought that everyone deserved another chance. I wish I hadn't. With him lot of new, young people arrived. Unfortunately, however, there were many arrogant young people among them who caused tension from time to time with their racist manifestations, and were unable to accept diversity. But the fault was mainly with them. Unfortunately, I had blind faith in them, thinking that the future belonged to the young. Well, I was wrong. It escalated to the point where the others persuaded Roli to leave us and form another site. And it appalled to him, because he'd longed for power. It got so bad that I, the owner of the site, got locked out from my own site, and by copying the database, they created a mirror site. Fortunately, the master code and the domain were in my name, so their plan didn't completely worked out.

The ridiculous thing is that I was going to hand it all over to him within a few months. Thankfully, I didn't. :)

Since Roli was also managing our Facebook page, by changing access rights, he took it away before I knew it. I had to create a new Facebook page, all the followers and acquaintances were lost. Moreover, since Roli was in contact with Crystal, he told them that his new page is now the official Hungarian page. He also fooled Crystal Dynamics, Meagan Marie. (Author & Sr. Community and Social Media Manager at Crystal Dynamics) It took a long time before we became an official site again. He even had one of his friends (hanna, real name) call us, pretending to be a lawyer, trying to convince us to give up our rights. He didn't know that the company phone had a recording machine, so I kept the recording. Of course, I have the data about everything, the normal names, addresses, pictures, videos, but I don't write it down here for obvious reasons. Well, that's what happened in 2015. He dates their site from 2000 (this is the original site I was talking about earlier, before the first split), even though he was barely 9 years old at the time. LOL Obviously he couldn't have been an admin. :) I tried to buy the other site from Hamster, but he didn't give it to me. Obviously not, as those who revived it, picked up where he left off. True, I didn't have much money to offer from my disability benefits at the time. 100 grand. The ridiculous thing was that the year before, I had registered Roli in my business, which was still operating at that time, so he remained eligible to receive his governmental allowances, because he could not work in any community. So this was the gratitude. :)

He was so grateful that they even optimized my distorted image to the search engine, so anyone who googled my company, came to the image. And it's still there.

So he alone got my personal data, name, address etc. And used it to send me a product sample. A Tena Lady product sample. You can laugh, I don't mind, but think about what kind of people these are. No regard for age, gender or affiliation! I must point out that he was the only one who knew my real name and address.

And these people with their methods were accepted by Hamster by giving them the old TR page. It is on his conscience.

Of course they continued from where they left off. They have also trashed our forum with their sick posts. I have deleted them, but only by "soft" deletion, I can always restore them for anyone to see what they have done. They did the same thing on their forum, it was closed down after a while. Since then they have had no meaningful communication anywhere.

You can check out their site, they have a page for the Rise of the Tomb Raider, which in a big part got copied from us, as usual from them, but they have almost no material for the Shadow of the Tomb Raider, not to mention the translation of it which is only available in our site (and some other sites that got permission).

4 years of calm came, luckily Matie helped, she was the soul of the site, and Mrique also fixed what Rolie had destroyed, the joomla site, and the forum. By the way, it was Mrique who created Roli's original site before he hit us. :)

Sadly, Matie also left in 2019, and her departure has affected the site even more than the Roli's actions, since then, with Thak's help, I've been running the site pretty much on my own, along with the

editor.hu, https://treditor.hu/

the bug site, https://tombbugs.treditor.hu/index.html

the facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/TRShungary

the Twitter page, https://twitter.com/TRShungary

and the instagram page. https://www.instagram.com/tombraiders.hu/

oh, and also this: https://tombraider.lap.hu/

I'm barely puffing, I can hardly go along. :) Unfortunaetly, Matie has left. I understand her decision, but I can't replace her. And I don't understand joomla or forum php, and I don't even know a word in English.

Eventually, I have to quit, losing 22 years of work. Thousands of endless playthrough will go to the oblivion. I really want to pass the baton to someone, but I can't find anyone. And Roli and his malicious, community-destroying friends are not fit for it, they would just ruin it!

Perhaps this is an alarm call. If you have an urge to help with something, don't keep it to yourself. :)

I don't mean financial help, I mean the rest. Joomla, php, English, news hunting, translation.

I would like to thank all our editors, past and present, who have contributed to building and improving our site! Thanks to OBig, Extasy, Bodlac, SYS, Petúnia, Credo, Lacek, Wyc, gaabr, zsolt, mrique, Matie, Thak, OSZRichard, and many others.