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I colour matched the roads and trees a bit while I was at it too. Download: http://oresome.rockraidersunited.com/download/379

bad

[4:21:28 AM] Terrev: EVERY TROPHY [4:21:31 AM] Terrev: YOU SEE THAT ONE? [4:21:38 AM] Terrev: THAT'S A CHILDREN'S BASKETBALL TROPHY [4:21:39 AM] Terrev: I STOLE IT [4:34:52 AM] Terrev: ah yes my favorite character, generic lions knight with krisalis face

WOAH this looks so much better, I've always hated the bright blinding grass texture they used. maybe there's still hope for this game (to an extent).

Look ma, no hands! The best part is probably 0:52 when papa is watching it move.

Let's start this off with some beta UI stuff. Take a look at these beta screenshots: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=468828 Some of the textures for this early UI seem to be lurking in the final game, in ART0001frontend. For example: Still going through stuff. Will update this post if more is found. lol Looks like characters were going to have in-game text describing them at one point; there's placeholder text files for that.

was messing around with cutscenes tonight and decided to test the limits of the FOV setting stuff let's just get the best results out of the way first if somebody could please figure out how to use cheat engine to lock the camera to this FOV outside of cutscenes and thus put everything in low poly mode all the time that would be great god knows WHY that's the result for... whatever value I used for this (I wanna say 999.9, if that doesn't work try adding or removing 9s lol). but. that's the result. and it's glorious. if you wanna do that I'd recommend modding a cutscene to just change the camera FOV over and over so you can use cheat engine on it as it does that. remember that with windowed mode enabled you can press F9 to bring up a window that, among other things, lets you select and play any currently loaded cutscenes. ALSO if you've never modded a cutscene before - have the game running from an extracted folder instead of the bob/bod pair for the level. make your desired edits to the cutscene's .txt file, then delete/rename the .cut file for that cutscene. the game will rebuild a new one from the .txt file. ANYWAY THE REST ^ 0.1 I think? ^ 0.0 (lol... I don't know what I expected) ^ 9.9? maybe? I forgot whoops ^ from this point onwards I was just increasing the number of 9s over and over to see what would happen ^ ... this is what happened I should have probably just kept adding 9s until it crashed or something even though I'd already added a lot HOW FAR CAN IT GO maybe I'll poke at it more later it's nearing 6 AM again hahaha whoopsies

An image of the next Winter Village set has appeared online - it's a train! Again!

yeah i don't know what happened there to bug out the audio, but it was very fitting because playing that game with that FOV felt like trying to land on an ant from 10,000 feet up

1st video, 0:28: "Land safely on ants!"?

Another update! I'm out of town until Wednesday and then I leave again on Friday so I'll try to have v0.9.3 out sometime between then. Just gotta fix a few small things when I get back home.

[2:59:47 PM] Bug Catcher: DAMN YOU RINGTAIL NOW I HAVE MUTE CITY STICK IN MY HEAD THIS IS YOUR FAULT a few hours later [5:28:43 PM] ♥ringtail♥: >>DAMN YOU RINGTAIL NOW I HAVE MUTE CITY STICK IN MY HEAD THIS IS YOUR FAULT :D [5:29:09 PM] Bug Catcher: f**** IT WAS GONE AND YOU PUT IT THERE AGAIN

pepper's telekinesis becomes stronger every day. how long before even the infomaniac can't stop him?

[03/08/2016 22:32:42] The Ace Railgun: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/130941 [03/08/2016 22:32:48] The Ace Railgun: WELCOME TO JAPAN [03/08/2016 22:33:25] Stan McStudz: COME ON AND SLAM [03/08/2016 22:33:28] Stan McStudz: AND WELCOME TO JAPAN

LEGO Island 2 has some unused higher quality trees almost the quality of LDD. Unfortunately due to their sad unfortunate life they got drunk and decided to get down with font. Fortunately, I was able to help them recuperate and they are now contently living their own independent lives in flat world. http://oresome.rockraidersunited.com/download/378 (not for original LI2 game use)

[1:10:53 PM] Will: so I built Arno from Assassin's Creed Unity [1:13:14 PM | Edited 1:13:33 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: If you finish it, I'll send it to my boss [1:13:23 PM] Will: what are you talking about [1:13:27 PM] Will: that is finished [1:13:35 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: OH YOU MOTHER f****ER

mistakes were made:

[5:49:35 PM] Will: • • • • • • − [5:50:42 PM | Edited 5:51:05 PM] Jim Brickkeeper: Your morse code is terrible. [5:50:56 PM] Jim Brickkeeper: “?????????????” [5:50:56 PM] Will: no it's just a very very abstract joke [5:51:07 PM] ♥ringtail♥: f**** YOU [11:02:33 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: FUUUUCK [11:02:34 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: ]f**** [11:02:35 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: f**** [11:02:37 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: f**** ME SENSELESS [11:02:39 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: OH f**** [11:02:40 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: [11:02:42 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: HELP [11:02:43 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: SOMEBODY [11:02:47 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: SEND THE COAST GUARD [11:02:51 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: SEND SCOTTLAND YARD [11:02:54 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: WHAT THE f**** DO I DO [11:02:56 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: IT'S EVERYWHERE [11:03:02 PM] noghiri: qhat [11:03:05 PM] Stan McStudz: First off, what the f**** DID you do??? [11:03:06 PM] noghiri: what the [11:03:08 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: I'VE GOT f****ING LIQUID ALL DOWN MY f****ING CARPET [11:03:22 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: THERE'S SUPER GLUE FUMES EVERYWHERE [11:03:25 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: I'M GOING TO DIE [11:07:47 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: MY HANDS [11:07:48 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: MY PANTS [11:07:50 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: MY FLOOR [11:07:52 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: ALL STICKY [11:07:52 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: f**** [11:07:56 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: THIS IS f****ED [11:08:07 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: DID A f****ING MEXICAN SIESTA HAPPEN AT MY HOUSE OR WHAT [11:10:25 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: THERE'S f****ING DROPS ALL OVER THE HOUSE [11:10:25 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: GOD [11:10:28 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: IT'LL NEVER BE CLEAN [11:11:34 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: IT CAME OUT FULL FORCE [11:11:37 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: STILL CLEANING [11:11:43 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: IT ALMOST RUINED MY TAX FILES [11:39:19 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: So uh. [11:39:22 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: Allow me to explain. [11:39:33 PM] Terrev: yes [11:39:38 PM] noghiri: please do [11:39:41 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: 4 years ago, it was my 18th birthday. [11:39:44 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: I got a special present. [11:39:50 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: It. [11:39:55 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: Otherwise known as [11:40:01 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: The Alien Easter Egg [11:40:30 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: The ingredients of this egg were topic secret, but I intended to find out. [11:40:43 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: My autopsy was conducted on the night I got it at the cinemas. [11:41:05 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: Inside was 6 mini-cans of coke. [11:41:07 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: Superglued together. [11:41:13 PM] Terrev: oh god [11:41:16 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: Alongside a pony with a hole in its arse. [11:41:29 PM] Terrev: oh [11:41:33 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: They were wrapped inside a spool of bubblewrap. [11:41:35 PM] noghiri: oh [11:41:46 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: Which was held together with 3 different reels of tape. [11:42:03 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: Now uh. [11:42:12 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: It seems that when I did the autopsy to save the pony [11:42:21 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: I may have accidently broken one of the cans. [11:42:31 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: The result was that the egg filled with coke for 4 years. [11:42:36 PM] Terrev: oh my god [11:42:36 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: Eventually it busted out of the egg. [11:42:38 PM] Pereki: pfffffft [11:42:54 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: And slowly it headed towards my tax information and important project files. [11:42:54 PM] noghiri: AMAZING [11:42:55 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: Now. [11:43:03 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: In feat. of pure amazingness [11:43:32 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: This morning for my interview I needed paper. [11:43:40 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: So I took out the files in order to get some paper. [11:43:47 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: Then later I came back [11:43:54 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: I was doing an episode of Cooking With McJob [11:44:02 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: And I needed to grab something from the cupboards [11:44:06 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: When I noticed an odd smell [11:44:10 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: I opened up the cupboard [11:44:16 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: and then it all came undone. [11:46:22 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: So now I have coke all over my floor [11:46:36 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: I have a giant f****ing colostomy bag of coke in my sink. [11:46:53 PM] Hugh Wotmeigh: And my hands are stickier than a f****ing dart to Trump's head. Edit: McJobless just did a live autopsy on Discord's voice chat. I recorded it, will post later. POSTED: http://oresome.rockraidersunited.com/download/374 Here's pics:

I was really curious about the number of people on LEGO Island in the GBA Port of LI2, so I ripped the sprites and grouped characters together. Rhoda Hogg, Technician Bob, the injured guy, and vehicle drivers were also counted. UPPER SECTION (34): MIDDLE SECTION (50): LOWER SECTION (38): MISCELLANEOUS (10): Boney Hawks/Gnarly Bones is also mentioned, but never seen ingame. With him included, the estimated total is 133. It interests me how IXS and this port of LI2 depicted LEGO Island more as a small town.

LEGO Island 2 is a hilariously strange beast under the hood. Here's some fun things I've noticed while poking around. First, the game is hardcoded as hell. All the assets themselves are stored in the bob/bod files, but absolutely all of the information linking them together in any way is in the exe. The exe is filled with huge lists of file paths for every asset in each bob/bod file. The exception seems to be textures - these are stripped of meaningful names and referenced by number (like, say, text420.tga instead), and all the info on what textures go on what models, where those models are located, etc is all in the exe. But each level in the game seems to be pretty much entirely isolated from the rest. There's a small amount generic assets shared around, but 99% of the time, if an asset - a texture, model, whatever - is used in multiple levels, it's just duplicated, saved in each bob/bod individually. You know all the different hats the NPCs have, and how you can swap them around in any level with NPCs? And how trees/plants/sign posts can be swapped around in the same manner? And how there's usually 3-5 levels of detail (LODs) for each of these? Those are hundreds and hundreds of models, collision files, and textures - and that's fine, but all of that is entirely duplicated for every scene that uses them. Duplicated in the bobs/bods, taking up hard drive space (and what was likely not an insignificant amount in 2001), and of course that means a lot of duplicated stuff in the exe too. This also means the game wastes a lot of time re-loading assets that already had their duplicates loaded for the previous level. But wait, there's more silly duplication of assets! There are some exceptions like the standard minifigure model, but generally, if two models are identical, but merely have different textures, the meshes and collision files are duplicated anyway. So for example, every minifigure has a unique model for their head, as they have unique face textures... And each of those has several LODs... And alllllll of those are once again duplicated per level they're used in. Minifigure heads alone account for hundreds and hundreds of duplicate files. But there's sillier examples. There's two switches you flip in the Brickster's Palace minigame - and they account for four models. Wait, what, four? Yep - switch 1 up, switch 1 down, switch 2 up, switch 2 down. Because apparently sharing a model and then changing its rotation when it's flipped is too hard. There's plenty of other silly things like this, but I think one deserves special mention... Every single asteroid in the Asteroid Belt minigame is its own 3D model. I'm serious. There are 235 3D models for asteroids, and 235 corresponding collision files. They're divided into three sets/variations - 66 copies of asteroid variation A, 70 copies of asteroid variation B, and 99 copies of asteroid variation C. But it gets better, variations B and C are identical! (Thanks to Will for using a tool of his to automatically check which of the asteroid files were identical to each other.) So instead of just having two asteroid models (with collision files) for a total of four files, there are 470 files being loaded to achieve the same result. There's also a lot of inefficiencies in the models themselves. Excess polygons, using a bunch of smaller textures instead of a larger atlas... But here's my favorite. You know that skeleton in the desert on Adventurer's Island, holding a gem? It's a pretty low poly model (though it could be lower poly and look identical), with 1416 triangles... And 3065 vertices. Wat. Let's take a look at the UV map... The face is the only part of the model that's properly UV mapped. The rest is just given the plain white texture (text027.tga if you wanna try swapping it out), and while it's UV mapped, it's done in a pretty horrible way. If you're curious about the details, read this article, originally published in 2003 (two years after LEGO Island 2 was released) but still relevant today: http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/provost/byf1.html http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/provost/byf2.html The bits relevant to the vertex count are explained in part 2. In short, splits/seams/breaks in UV maps split/duplicate vertices... And the UVs for the skeleton's body are doing more splits than a masochistic gym instructor. What you're seeing in the first image there are all the triangles for the body UV'd on top of each other. If you lay them out separately (and I've moved the face elsewhere as it's not relevant), it looks something like this... This is a UV map straight out of hell. Just by fixing it up I got the vertex count of the model down from 3065 to 1686. And as you might expect, that's not an isolated case... Lots of models are like this. More coming, maybe. I think the point has been made.

Will ran his tool on a completely extracted LI2 install, and it seems that there's 178.21 MB of redundant files in total.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGRO5Pub0bs Made this for 2 reasons: 1 - I was bored. 2 - I wanted to see your reactions. Anyways, what do you think?

He has recognised the Power Miners version is bad and thats why he re-designed it. Had LEGO actually used a design like his with better colours I would say the Power Miners Granite Grinder was a decent set, unfortunately the LEGO designers like creating ugly sets or sets on things we don't care about (Ben10? really? come on... thats a cheap move by LEGO to score some extra $$$). Additionally making a website like that would serve no purpose as it is not an old set, it is not a good set (though the die-hard 8yr old LEGO fans wouldn't know that)... they'd be nothing worth discussing besides .. Oh No! the ground is rumbling!

Actually, they have ball joints at the hips and ankles - much more freedom of movement. ;)