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You may not be familiar with it, but in 2003 (supposedly), a Galidor game for PC/PS2/GameCube (supposedly) was released. If you're wondering what it's like, its own lead designer called it "Possibly the worst game ever made" in a gameplay video description. There's also a GBA game but it was by a different studio and is unrelated to all this. While looking for more info on the canceled PS1 version of LEGO Stunt Rally for PS1 - which was being developed by Asylum Software, who also made the PC/Console Galidor game - I found this article: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/asylum-entertainment-clears-up-closure-rumours As I started reading I was thinking it was about the cancellation of LEGO Stunt Rally for PS1, which was supposed to be released in March 2001 (the PC game was September 2000)... Then I noticed this article is from September 3rd, 2003. Wat? I then had the following conversation with Pereki: [10:06 AM] Terrev: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/asylum-entertainment-clears-up-closure-rumours [10:06 AM] Terrev: Hang on [10:06 AM] Terrev: That's from 2003 [10:06 AM] Pereki: Yes [10:06 AM] Pereki: The galidor pc game was cancelled [10:07 AM] Pereki: Then got put out in it's incomplete state by people who obtained rights to Lego games later on [10:07 AM] Terrev: wwwwwwwwhat [10:07 AM] Pereki: That's the best I can figure, anyway [10:07 AM] Pereki: Never seen an actual 2003 release copy [10:08 AM] Pereki: Just the one in the TT four games pack and another 2006ish one that I have from a publisher I don't recall (Note: Around 2007-08, TT Games Publishing re-released older LEGO games in various 2 and 4 packs, distributed by ValuSoft, including a LEGO Creator/Drome Racers/Galidor/LEGOLAND pack in 2008, which is what's being referred to in that last line. It had Galidor and LEGO Creator on the same disc, and the other two games on their own discs.) Google then led me to the resume of Leigh Christian, who worked at Intelligent Games from 1997 until 1999, when he moved to Asylum Entertainment, where he remained until 2003. This is pretty interesting as Intelligent Games was the developer of LEGO Stunt Rally for PC and the original developer of the PS1 version, but then the job for the PS1 version was transferred to Asylum Entertainment due to IG not having the manpower/resources to tackle both versions at once. Of course, the PS1 version was then canceled entirely. It seems reasonable to assume he moved from IG to Asylum along with Stunt Rally PS1, but there's no mention of him working on Stunt Rally while at Asylum in his resume - so who knows. He's listed as an "Additional Artist" in the PC credits and has the game listed as "Lego Racers" in his resume under the Intelligent Games section - given that Stunt Rally was originally called LEGO Moto, and the game actually called LEGO Racers was released right in the middle of Moto/Stunt Rally's development, it's easy to see how you could get names confused (who knows, maybe he moved on to other work at Asylum before the Moto/Stunt Rally name change and wasn't entirely aware of what happened to it, or something - just a guess). But here's the really interesting bit: The only thing he has listed for his time at Asylum Entertainment, 1999-2003, is "Galidor (unfinished)". Unfinished. More conversation with Pereki: [10:11 AM] Terrev: This guy worked at both IG and Asylum [10:11 AM] Terrev: And lists Galidor as unfinished [10:11 AM] Pereki: welp [10:11 AM] Terrev: What the hell lol [10:15 AM] Pereki: well [10:16 AM] Pereki: we know the console versions for sure never made it out [10:16 AM] Terrev: 56 listings for the galidor game on ebay [10:16 AM] Terrev: All but 3 are gba [10:17 AM] Pereki: yeeeeep [10:17 AM] Terrev: And the 3 that aren't are PC in the four pack with other lego games (Note: I was on mobile and only viewing listings in the US, there's more besides the TT Games 4-pack currently available on eBay but from other countries, not to mention other sites like Amazon... The takeaway here is that 53 out of 56 current listings in the US are for the unrelated GBA game, the 3 for PC are in TT's 2008 bundle) [10:18 AM] Pereki: Also [10:18 AM] Pereki: The copy I got [10:18 AM] Pereki: From another publisher [10:18 AM] Pereki: Advertised an independent galidor release [10:19 AM] Terrev: ??? [10:19 AM] Pereki: But my actual copy was in a two pack with bionicle the game [10:19 AM] Pereki: Iirc [10:19 AM] Terrev: How deep does this rabbit hole go [10:20 AM] Pereki: here we go [10:20 AM] Pereki: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/gameseek.images/products/380/lego_bionicle_lego_galidor_pc.jpg [10:20 AM] Pereki: Focus is publisher [10:26 AM] Pereki: https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/lego/images/e/e1/Galidor_video_game_PC.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111025081214 [10:26 AM] Terrev: Hmm [10:27 AM] Pereki: http://img.brickowl.com/files/image_cache/larger/lego-pc-cd-rom-game-galidor-defenders-of-the-outer-dimension-25.jpg [10:28 AM] Pereki: Ok so it's a real thing [10:29 AM] Terrev: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?G=DCG902790#T=S&O={} [10:30 AM] Terrev: 2005 listed here So... I went digging through online listings. Here's all the releases of the PC Galidor game I could find (as far as I've seen the PS2 and GameCube versions were never released at all). The 2008 TT Games 4-pack mentioned earlier This other 4-pack with a hilarious choice of games, from 2006, which also had TT's involvement This big box of 10 games which is from 2007 according to the Amazon listing (there were some listings for the games from this pack in their individual sleeves too, in case you want a better look at the simplistic packaging) The Bionicle the Game/Galidor combo released by Focus, in 2006 according to Amazon. It also seems they may have released the game individually, probably around the same time, but I can't find any real photos of the box, just what seems to be a scan of the cover (same as you can see on the Bionicle combo). And the earliest release that I've found, and the only one not to be in a combo (aside from the possible individual Focus release)... This release by Dice, from 2005. TL;DR: Asylum Entertainment had a LEGO project canceled in 2003 and people working on it lost their jobs. The only known LEGO project they had at the time was Galidor for PC/PS1/GameCube; their PS1 port of LEGO Stunt Rally had also been canceled but that was 2 years prior. A developer who worked on Galidor lists it as "unfinished" on their resume. There's no evidence of the game being released in 2003 as planned, or the PS2 and GameCube versions ever being released. However, the PC version was mysteriously released in 2005, 2 years after the cancelation and layoffs, and the game was included in several LEGO game bundles/packs in the following years. Galidor for PC essentially seems to be a zombie, resurrected to haunt game shelves years after its death. My question now - besides why/how the hell this all happened - is if the game was fixed up in any way for its releases from 2005 onwards. Asylum Entertainment was still around, so they could have in theory... But did they, or did LEGO release a blatantly unfinished, previously canceled game? The game's splash screen still says 2003 from what I've seen in videos. It'd be easy to tell by looking at file modification dates, but I don't own the game myself. Update - @Tweesee has the individual Focus release - the folders on the disc are from late March 2004, the files are a mix of things from 2002 to 2004, and the copyright date on the back of the box is "2003-2004". So that makes it the earliest release of the game, though still quite a while after the cancellation article.

Hang on this isn't a PM

Okay, first this blog is overdue. About half a year overdue. I meant to type it up at the beginning of the year, then two weeks in, then at the break, and now I’m finally stopping procrastinating & am actually writing it up. Anyway, the reason I have not been around here nearly as much as a) I was and b) I would like to be is because last year I was at high school = not fantastically amazing and plenty of free time except for the infamous fifteen exams in two-and-a-bit months. Now, my life has taken a most interesting turn and I am at University! I’m studying Mechanical Engineering and have decided to skip the first year and launch straight into the second (it’s a four-year degree). After talking to many people it’s become apparent that by skipping the first year the only thing I’ve missed is large quantities of boredom. Naturally, this is extremely busy, as Engineering is widely viewed as one of the most time-consuming of the degrees. There are two types of engineering students: drunk dropouts who get C’s and D’s, and people who turtle in their studies and work hard. While that’s fairly accurate of any subject, for Engineering the gap is even more pronounced. As such I can’t come over to this wonderful place as much as I’d like. But that is less than half the reason. An important part, yes, but less than half. The other half of the reason lies in the fact that I have never had a social life before. Never. My maximum number of friends at school hit a top of about three, and was usually two. This was because I was at a small school (400 student spread all the way over from 5 year olds to 17 year olds) and there were very few people who were as dedicated to their studies as I was. (The few that did do a large quantity of work were in different years, and they were my few friends). About half of my class wouldn’t mind failing the final year. This made me incredibly lonely – but because I’d never known anything different, that was the status quo and I was fine with that. I’d never known anything else to exist. Then I found RRU and I found a whole bunch of other intelligent gamers (let’s be real, this is a nerd community. I mean that in the nicest way possible. ) Well, you could say that RRU became a very rudimentary form of my social life. I enjoyed chatting to you all even if I was a jerk on multiple occasions (as well as a… uh… rather bumpy introduction…). So for… it’d basically be the past five years, my social life has been non-existent and my friends included two people at school and RRU. Why is this important and why am I ranting to you about it? Because you lot are my friends, in that I can rant to you (and you can just block your ears, that often happens ). I don’t want to name anyone because then those that don’t get named don’t feel so happy, and that’s not the point – the point is that you lot, in a wide sense and with a variable continuum, have been my friends over the past years where I can just come and hang out in the empty, desolate shoutbox. Now University comes into the picture and I have found that there are actually other intelligent nerds that aren’t just on the internet. This is… actually somewhat of a surprise. Not really a “surprise,” just a departure from the status quo for the past thirteen years. As a result, I can now actually say that I have more friends than I can count on one hand for… well, to be honest, the first time in my existence. In fact, more decent friends than I can count on two hands – which is a huge deal for me and you can scoff at it if you like. Go ahead, I’m used to being scoffed at. Story of my life for the past sixteen years. This means… that I don’t need to spend as much time on RRU as normal, because my “socializing” is actually done with people in the real world – yes, that’s phrased awfully, but that hasn’t really happened before. It’s almost as if I don’t need RRU anymore, but that sounds too harsh. It’s just that I now actually have friends in the real world that I can talk to, and RRU is no longer my sole social outpost. This isn’t a farewell letter by no means – rather, it’s a long-overdue explanation of why I’m late. I’ll be around, if I can and when I can to chat with all you wonderful lot (for a given definition of wonderful ). See ya around!

Oh geese I don't know how to do this but these are the file dates listed: Most of the final files such as support and the manual are listed as being from 2004 but the setup.skin is from 2002 Edit: This is from the 2003-2004 copy of the game (Focus Release): Edit 2: A date found

According to the case of the PC game that I have, which was distributed by Disc Multimedia, the game was released 2005. For some strange reason, it is also one of the few LEGO games from that era that was not dubbed or translated into other languages when it was localized. The other one that comes to mind is that Bionicle game.

I can't imagine they'd do that as a design choice; I'd bet it was just how things were at that point in development for whatever reasons. Also: Turns out this is its own weird story... Made a separate topic for it:

The topic title is simplified a bit... But that's the most noticeable effect, anyway. First, in case you wanna try this yourself, it might be handy to know that the X and C keys control the camera pitch - you don't have to use the mouse. What's happening here is the game is taking the direction the camera is pointing, and trying to move Pepper in that direction by a certain amount. This amount actually changes depending on the FPS, such that Pepper's speed won't increase/decrease if the game's framerate increases/decreases... But let's just say it's trying to move Pepper 1 unit in the direction the camera is facing. If the ground is flat and the camera is facing straight forward, this will just result in Pepper moving forward by 1 unit. But let's say the camera is facing mostly downwards. This also means the game wants to move Pepper mostly downwards - but there's ground in the way. So what happens? Welp... This. He doesn't move as far/runs more slowly. Of course, the ground in LI2 isn't perfectly flat, so the same happens when Pepper starts climbing slopes. And as you can see in the second video, some slope + camera angle combos are enough to not only make Pepper slow down or stop, but start going backwards while still walking forwards. Needless to say, this isn't really the best way to calculate these things.

Hey. So I got this game a couple of days ago and after seeing the tool/devices that your minifig uses I decided to build them in LDD so I could eventually buy the pieces and build them IRL. I also built the Bazooka as I was intrigued to know what parts it used. Link to .lxf files here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9QJgNN0txXaUW1KQjZPb1Y0czQ?usp=sharing

Correct. LDraw is made by fans, so while it's less accurate than LDD it's fine to use. Funnily enough, the LEGO Universe team once provided some official LDD geometry to the fans working on LDraw: http://wiki.ldraw.org/index.php?title=L(EGO)Draw_Parts So by using LDraw, you'd end up occasionally using altered versions of LDD brick geometry. LEGO explicitly gave out those particular bricks though, so it's fine. It's weird how they gave some parts to LDraw but are so concerned about people using any more than that... Who knows what the reasoning was. Probably comes down to different people at LEGO/NetDevil being involved over the years, with different ideas of what to allow.

LEGO doesn't seem to care about people using assets from old video games and such. But they do care about LDD's brick models/geometry. It's of much higher importance to them. For example, see the LDD to POV-Ray Converter: http://ldd2povray.lddtools.com/ http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/71654-software-ldd2povray/&do=findComment&comment=1333651 LEGO isn't likely to care about, say, a Rock Raiders remake using assets from the original game. They are likely to care about LDD brick geometry/models being made publicly available, especially in such mass quantity. I'd recommend contacting them first, or you might just end up with them contacting you and telling you to stop after you've already put a lot of work into it.

i mean i guess it is just an opinion that unseen polygons are a waste of resources but. really? i mean does LDD hide all covered studs and tubes and stuff? i dont really know but there's bound to be some waste even if it does, it's not intelligent. but it's certainly not an opinion that these models aren't completely accurate. if you want something that's actually my opinion, i think that just straight-up converting LDD models is kinda lazy and I distrust the quality of any project that just does that. honestly i don't really know who rogod is and haven't really payed attention to their posts, i dunno what's going on here sorry. i guess considering the nature of these projects in the first place yeah the copyright thing was a bad point that i said without thinking as an attempt to emphasize my thoughts about it being lazy as far as just taking other people's work that was meant for much more primitive systems. i dunno about the texture things, i guess if you're going for a straight-up rock raiders clone i can see the biome textures maybe being re-used - but for most things ehhhh why upload packs of other people's LXF files in the first place tho

no

its way more unstable and hard to run on newer PCs than LI2

By the way, I managed to make the Rocket Racers Cars.

...the Archbishop of Canterbury?

Wow, it seems to be a common* theme in LI2, that A depends on the variable B-surprise. P.S.: "Bonus" points, if a wheel of fortune was used to determine, which things should depend on each other. *okay, I only know two cases so far, but those seem to be already confusing/annoying enough (the pizza rotation & loading time madness and the camera angle-walking speed issue presentend in this thread)

As far as I've seen this happens occasionally if the camera is held all the way up with X, no cheats needed - though it is slightly inconsistent. It only happens when you're holding up or down, though - Pepper starts running again if you go left/right or diagonally. Actually, it's kinda hard to tell with the camera rotating, but I think Pepper's speed might be slightly increased when going left/right/diagonally...? I'd say it's just the camera rotation making it feel that way, but the fact that it makes his running animation start playing again (which seems to be tied to speed), I wonder... Not really sure how to test it though. OH, I have an idea, but I can't try it at the moment. Will update later.

The question is, will Pepper go to space if the camera points towards the sky? Hypothesis: Pepper won't fly.

Holy crap, who programmed this game? Movement speed dependent on the camera?

I'm speeding through LI2 on the ePSXe emulator right now. I managed to reach Adventurer's island and find the islanders. For some reason, they're all redheads... The tribeswoman's speech glitch doesn't occur until after Mr. Hate's Camp IIRC - I'll definitely post a video for that later.

I was about to say "Oh, right, I remember seeing this texture but hadn't made the connection with the PS1 Ogelites, though now that you mention I do remember one with a face like that..." Then I looked at my screenshots of the Ogelites and uh... None of them have that face, exactly. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Though when you're running at the game at its native resolution, a few do look quite similar (those screenshots I took were on an emulator running at an artificially boosted resolution). EDIT: LOL I TOTALLY MISREAD YOUR POST (it reminded me of the Ogelites I suppose) and I have no memory of what the PS1 Islanders look like anyway (besides them having plain yellow posteriors). Though, now I'm curious...

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.

It wasn't much worse back in 2002. The load lengths don't get much better with fast SSDs or worse with slow HDDs. They seem to be artificial load lengths, and have been accidentally broken by messing around with the game. I think jamesster said that he broke the loading time delays by alt-tabbing out of LEGO Island 2.

Just as a general note on UVs; they're really simple. What you're trying to do is break your model down into flat pieces, similar to when you make the net of a 3D shape like a cube or pyramid. You need to think in terms of how an artist is going to texture your model, so its best to keep similar-coloured areas together. As a general rule (not necessarily important given most engines work out lighting independent of the texture UVs), you also want to slice parts that have different lighting.

Probably not. It's more likely to do with weird vertex normals or just plainly bad shading. (Assuming you're talking about the stuff you were in the other topic - the weird shading here)

Could it be possible that the layout of the UV is what causes some minifig parts to receive odd lighting? (although its possible it has nothing to do with the UV)

This write-up was perfect. Entertaining, informative and concerning. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!