Hello everyone!
So, some time ago I purchased Tomb Raider 1-2-3 here on GOG, since I had never gone past the second game back in the day. Having finished the first, it's time for 2. But here's the problem: I have a crippling arachnophobia. Do you know of any way to mod the eight-legged buggers out?

"Crippling" may be an exageration, but spiders or insect-like crawly multi-legged things that make creepy noises are and have always been a huge problem for me, in real life as well as in video games. Half-Life, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force and Dungeon Siege I straight-out abandoned; Silent Hill, Doom 3 and others I somehow overcame but it wasn't easy, Halo I had a friend help me out.

Now, I know that there are spiders in only two levels of TR2: the 1st and the 15th. Back in the day, I had a friend beat the spidery parts of the 1st level, and when the infamous cave came by I abandoned the game there and then and never picked it up again. Being older and a lot more controlled now, I may be able to make it through (if I mute the volume), but a mod like the one for System Shock 2 would be much, much appreciated.

Thank you all in advance.

Do yourself a favor, DON'T PLAY LAST REVELATION!

Huh? Why so?

(*google*)

...scorpions, giant scoprions, scarabs, giant scarabs and giant wasps. Bloody hell.
...and then Underworld. With giant spiders that JUMP.

...sigh. Damn it.

Well that too but I was more talking about the scarabs. :D

The spiders are tiny and can barely be identified as such. Just imagine you're being attacked by pieces of dirt or whatever.

I've found size is moot regarding phobias. I myself love spiders but when someone has a fear of them, it's ALL OF THEM. :D

Even if they can barely be recognized? The sheer knowledge that it's spiders suffices?

UGH. Crawly little bastards making ticking squeaky noises. >___< As tinyE mentioned, size doesn't matter (that's what she said) in terms of my phobia. Of course, IRL I can cope much better with the tiniest spiders than I can with the larger ones, but in videogames, believe it or not, I can handle better giant spiders than lifesize ones. A, say, 10-metre-tall spider in a videogame is normally less realistic in its behaviour, sound, and movement, besides its size, so I can make an effort to "detach" myself from the situation and make it through. Realistically-sized ones are a different matter. I can force myself to watch Shelob's scene in LOTR, but with the tarantula scene in "Dr. No" (first James Bond film) I have to shut my eyes. Well... in my case, it's not a matter of knowledge as much as a matter of behaviour. When, in a videogame, small creepy-crawly slimy buggers move fast, creeping by unnoticed until they're right at your feet or appearing out of nowhere, bonus points if accompanied by ticking and squeaking sounds and pizzicato strings in the soundtrack, I tend to freak the hell out. ESPECIALLY in a first-person game. It doesn't even have to be an actual spider, it just has to behave like one and kinda-sorta look like one. I couldn't get past the headcrabs in Half-life or the Facehuggers in Alien vs. Predator 2.

But in the end you're right...sigh. Well, I have to at least TRY to face my fears sooner or later, don't I? I just won't be playing those levels before bedtime. XD

Well it is proven that confrontation helps getting over phobias... Arachnophobia can also be overcome by hypnosis, but I don't trust that kind of thing. It's just a too strong too sudden change to not have any drawbacks, this just can't be healthy for the mind.
How about the frostbite spiders in Skyrim? They are huge but still realistic. Can you handle them?

I haven't played Skyrim, so I wouldn't know, but judging from the pictures I googled... it depends. They look pretty darn realistic, so in first-person view you'd see me screaming like a little girl (and I'm 23-year-old, long-haired, bearded, 1,80 metre tall metalhead XD); in third-person view, I might actually make it, depending on the sound they make and their behaviour. For example: have them move in plain view from a reasonable distance, and I will at least try; have them surprise-drop from the ceiling or appear out of nowhere in a tight space (say, a air duct), and I will pull the plug and never play that game again. Probably THE thing that terrifies me most about real-life spiders, is their ability to crawl on walls and ceilings: even IRL, if a see a spider on the ground I have no problemsquishing it; if it's on the ceiling, I will physically shudder.

I agree with you on the hypnosis. It may even work, but that sudden a change... I don't think it can be 100% permanent or drawback-free. :/

Aren't there spiders in metal music videos? I recall having seen some in the recent Betraying the Martyrs clip. But that's more deathcore, I think.

If we didn't have spiders where we live we'd be screwed. We need them and the bats to keep the flies from taking over. If you are seen taking after either, that's your ass. :P

I guess there are some music videos with spiders in them... I don't watch many though, as a musician I am more interested in live videos and stuff. :P

That's also true of where I live: without bats and spiders, it would be mosquito hell. I still kill spiders that come inside my house, especially my room (I'd hardly be able to sleep otherwise), but those outside in the garden, can do whatever they want. XD

Makes sense; we both live on peninsulas.

Hello! Believe it or not, I found a way to mod the spiders out. It took me a while to post because I wanted to actually finish the game before celebrating, but now I can say I made it. In case anyone else reading is interested, here's how I did it:

First of all, bear in mind that this is not an actual "mod" as much as a rough, makeshift fix, but it gets the spiders out of the way, and in the absence of a better solution I believe an arachnophobe will find it good enough. Secondly, if you have any save file in the levels which need to be modified, those savefiles won't work anymore after applying this fix.

1) Go to this website (http://www.aspidetr.com/tools/fexmerger/) and download the FexMerger tool. You don't need to install it, just download it, and unzip it wherever you prefer.

2) Go to your Tomb Raider 2 directory and make a copy of the whole "data" folder (Tomb Raider 1+2+3/Tomb Raider 2/data); place the copy wherever you see fit; this copy will be your SOURCE, so rename it accordingly. If you'd rather test this fix before actually modifying your installation, I suggest you then make another copy of the whole "Tomb Raider 2" folder, and apply everything I'll say from now on to that. In either case, the folder we'll be going to work on will be your TARGET folder, and I'll be refering to it as such.

3) Open FexMerger.exe. Click on the "File" menu, then "Open Source": go to the SOURCE folder, and select the file of the level you wish to mod. For example, the very first level of the game contains a bunch of spiders, so select WALL.TR2. The other one is the 15th level, "The temple of Xian", which is EMPRTOMB.TR2.

4) Now, click on the "File" menu, then "Open Target": go to your TARGET folder, and select WALL.TR2 (or whatever other level you chose to edit).

5) Now, you will see two lists of objects in the two colums of the FexMerger tool. From the right (target) column, select the spider or whatever other enemy you wish to replace; then, from the left (source) column, select whatever object you wish to replace it with (for example: a small medpack). When you've selected both, click on the "Merge--->" button. Of course, for EMPRTOMB.TR2 you'll also need to replace the giant spiders. Brrr...

6) Save your changes to the target file: click on the "File" menu, then "Save As...", then select WALL.TR2 in your TARGET directory and overwrite it.

7) Finally, launch the game from your TARGET folder. As I mentioned, any existing save made in the level you just modified will not work; in the example of this guide, selecting "New Game" will be good enough. You will find that whatever enemy you have selected as the target for the merge, has been replaced by...
a disembodied Lara butt.
Yeah, I'm not sure why, but in my tests the object that I've actually selected as replacement never showed up: all I got were these disembodied, floating Lara Croft butts. Creepy in their own right, but hey, at least they're not spiders! They don't move, they don't react to anything, they just... float there, where the replaced object was supposed to spawn.

As I mentioned it is a very rough solution, but it's all I could find after a whole day of hard googling. It doesn't look too pretty, but it effectively deletes the spiders from the game, which is an improvement for any arachnophobe like me.