Leaderboard

Despite the fact that Alpha Team has a built-in puzzle editor, activated by hitting ~ N I B L I K <ENTER> (there's no need to use capitals, that's just there for clarity) and then clicking on the LL icon to change it to PE, and it runs fine-ish on Win10 (unlike LRR), I'm surprised at the lack of level creation there's been. This is for a couple of reasons. One, loading custom levels is a pain. Secondly, the puzzle editor is not the easiest to use... Thirdly, the PAC Extractor seems to have mysteriously disappeared off RRU, which is a shame, although not neccessary for designing levels. I hope this will clarify the first and second points. As for the first, I noticed that custom levels, despite hanging around in the Alpha Team directory, show up quite happily in the Puzzle Editor's "Load Level" menu. This means that if you have a custom mission, you can plonk it down in your directory, boot up Lego Alpha Team, activate the Puzzle Editor with the key combo above, and load that level. As for the second.... well.... Here's a list of important key controls I've found. F2 - opens Place Objects menu F3 - opens the Select Mission File menu To navigate these menus, use the arrow keys. You can also press the first letter of what you're looking for; eg press U and it will jump to the first thing with a letter that is U, or after U. F4 - save the current stuff in the editor Del - deletes the selected object. You can select the 'world' and delete that, if you want. Here's a list of other controls which aren't so useful: F12 - turns on some information in the HUD which isn't all that useful (eg FPS, animation states of the object you have selected) U - Do not press this key - having any object selected (even the world!) it will freeze, then bork its graphics to something else. This is usually solvable by selecting the offending object and pressing Del. Hammer U enough times and you will get absurd quantities of lag. Q,W,E,S,D, some other keys around there: Other camera controls R - Rotate. Usually rotates in 90 degree increments but can also be used to rotate objects at funny angles, eg 10 degrees. (Team Members that run onto a Direction Tile facing 10 degrees will run off at 10 degrees). Some key I pressed turned off the snap-to-grid placement. I highly recommend you don't use this, because it makes fitting 2 direction tiles on something that is only 8 wide very difficult. However, while we have a puzzle editor and can place anything we like, we're still quite restricted... I have not managed to get the game to accept 'another new lock.' There is always one objective and no matter what you add, you will not change that objective. I cannot move Evil Orbs around to.... anywhere useful. Placing new Team Members is wonky with the Play hud - it doesn't seem to think they're there. I can't get the game to accept a new bomb & plunger. Hints + modded levels = kaboom Other useful notes include: The game handles Trouble Tubes, Radia's Launcher, etc etc all the same way. Place the object down and then drag-n-drop a Team Member into there. You can place Dash on Crunch's Rolling Bomb, for instance. This is also the case for seesaws. It appears to be impossible to create new pathable terrain, except for the 'second' biome - the one where you find Radia, are introduced to sharks and Crunch's bombs, and board the Trouble Train - accepts Platforms being placed on the ground below the water. Jump tiles can be placed on top of stairs, and Team Members will climb the stairs, reach the top, then do their jump off it. Regarding the Objects menu, which you open with F2... it's not very neat. But if you wander into Etc.pac you will find a useful file; CATEGORYUNITS.txt. It is a list of what all those numbers actually correspond to. (Okay, not all. There are a couple that aren't mentioned, like Flex's Hangar and some stuff in the tutorial down the bottom at U208ish. But it's most of them. For instance, anything under B is "Baddies." U is "Lego Units" and all the fun stuff like Direction Tiles, Motors, See-Saws, etc etc. Anything with the prefix OG is an immovable Ogel object, like the laser beam, the blocks, the doorway, locks, etc. T is Team Members, and oddly has the heading T.I.L.T. - probably from when this was still called Lego Logic. This means that whenever I want to place a direction tile, I hit F2 -> U (to move it to Units) -> Down x 20ish until I hit U0179, which the file tells me is "Dir Tile"-> Enter. The game then spawns whatever I've selected at what one might guess to be 0,0,0. I can't seem to force it to place anywhere else. This is highly inconvenient if the world is in the way. There is a little workaround, but it requires a Platform being present. Take note of what level you opened Select the world and hit Del Spawn your item now, or earlier Move it on top of the Platform Hit F2 and select e_____ to reload the world object back Not ideal by any means, and there's probably a better solution. Fortunately for most levels where objects spawn is in sight / under the water a bit, and you can move it to pathable terrain. Using this knowledge, I've made a custom level. Unzip into your LAT directory, boot up LAT, open the Puzzle Editor ( ~ n i b l i k <ENTER> then click on LL), open any level, then hit F3 to bring up the 'Open File' message, and then open AP_LEVEL1. (You can open AP_LEVEL1_SOLVED if you want, I guess. ) Also included in that download is CATEGORYUNITS.txt, which is the list of what all those numbers you see upon hitting F2 correspond to. Here's a screenshot: The level mostly revolves around AI-abusing the Lurchers. I've given you a lot more than the minimum you need to get this level done.

I was building a Rock Raiders power plant, but I was wondering if I should make the walls 2 studs wide. I'm sure it will have to be smaller if I make it 1 stud wide, so I hesitated. Other than that, I won't be able to put the crystal processor in. ? The suspense of building is killing me.

Hitting ~niblik <ENTER> and then playing around with the puzzle editor... .... this happened. oops EDIT: screwing around again: This was definitely caused when I hit U. Tapping U a few more times results in insane lag aaand... stuff like this. Oh and Q and W are a great way to rotate the camera!

IXS is the most polished game of the bunch. It's tighter and less buggy than the others and has a lot more cohesiveness. It's easily my favorite. Just a whole lot of fun in general, great minigames or whatever they are called. Lots of stuff to do, things to collect, and island to explore. You get to skateboard against a skeleton! LEGO Island has a lot of really neat stuff and the nostalgia is very strong for me but it's not nearly as much fun to play just for the sake of playing. It's fun because of the flavor, the music (good for all the games), and the nostalgia. It's the quirkiest of the bunch, without a doubt, and it is unique. I'd love to see a slightly more polished version but that won't ever happen. LEGO Island 2 is a game that did a lot of things and did them about as well as is necessary for a children's game. There's a lot I love about it - sure, it's silly, kinda cringey at times, weird, and buggy, but there's a lot of good flavor. More interesting gameplay than LI, for obvious reasons. It's a fun adventure with a lot of really neat stuff all around you that captures a lot of themes from my early childhood (nostalgia is fun). And Ogel is just awesome. Sure, it'd be crap in any context other than this but within the context of LI2 it is perfect. It's a mess, but a glorious one.

YES, thank you. I agree. LI1 is less of a game and more of an ... experience. LI2 has a story, but controls badly, has bad graphs and the minigames are not very fun. Ixs has good skateboarding, is pleasant to look at and the minigames are all right. Yes, the "Xtreme stunts" part is pretty shoehorned in, but the same can be said for the story in LI2. I think it's miles better than the first two games, but LI1 certainly had more character/charm.

if you didn't know Notepad++ existed you'll make me sad Excellent Find and Replace box, line number, sensible indenting, and is generally much more powerful than the low-key uses I have for it. My #1 modding tool.