LEGO Alpha Team Alpha Team puzzle editor, and ~niblik?

[lol username]

Two things here, not sure if they're related.

 

Alpha Team's designer (that awesome Tom Mott fella) showed up on Eurobricks recently and, among other things, said this:

 

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=85196#entry2457898

 

Quote

Boot up LEGO Alpha Team and type ~niblik

Let me know how it goes! :-) 

 

I've tried it and a thousand variations and have yet to get anything to happen. I'd say exactly what I've tried, but without any hint as to what it should do, who knows what might be relevant. I think it'd best if people messed around with it themselves.

 

If you want to investigate the game up close, be aware that most of Alpha Team's logic is made up of DLLs, both sitting in the same folder as the EXE, and inside the Bhvr.pac file. The EXE contains relatively little. Bhvr\PE0300.DLL especially might be of note?

 

Also while poking around I noticed UI stuff that seems to show there is/was an in-game puzzle editor. From Etc\UILAYOUT.TXT:

 

//**************** Puzzle Editor Buttons *****************

ToggleButton LockButton 0.95 0.7583 0.05 0.066667
{
    State UnLocked
    {
        Neutral "Unlocked.tga";
    }
    State Locked
    {
        Neutral "Locked.tga";
    }
}

ToggleButton ModeButton 0.0001 0.7583 0.05 0.066667
{
    State GameMode
    {
        Neutral "GameMode.tga";
    }
    State PEMode
    {
        Neutral "PEMode.tga";
    }
}

Button TBLeftArrow      0.070313 0.091667 0.05 0.066667
{
    Neutral   "ToolboxArrow.tga";
    MouseOver "ToolboxArrow_roll.tga" Sound ButtonOverSound;
    Depressed "ToolboxArrow_selected.tga" Sound ButtonDownSound;
    Faded 0.333;
}

Button TBRightArrow     0.882813 0.091667 0.05 0.066667
{
    Neutral   "ToolboxArrow.tga";
    MouseOver "ToolboxArrow_roll.tga" Sound ButtonOverSound;
    Depressed "ToolboxArrow_selected.tga" Sound ButtonDownSound;
    Rotation( 180.0 );
    Faded 0.333;
}

NoClickButton TBoxBGBut 0.121875 0.010417 0.760938 0.145833
{
    Color (0.0, 0.012, 0.549, 0.8);
}

Group TBArrows
{
    Draw TBLeftArrow;
    Draw TBRightArrow;
}

The images for the buttons are still present too. I haven't looked into it much, but perhaps there's a way to enable it?

[Fluffy Cupcake]

Typing ~niblik (+hitting enter afterwards) makes a blue box with the LL in white letters appear on the left side of the screen. Clicking on the LL turns in into PE - developer mode. I'm not sure what you can do with this, but certainly not things you can do normally!

[aidenpons]

5 minutes ago, Xiron said:

Typing ~niblik (+hitting enter afterwards) makes a blue box with the LL in white letters appear on the left side of the screen. Clicking on the LL turns in into PE - developer mode. I'm not sure what you can do with this, but certainly not things you can do normally!

 

Wait, when do you hit Enter? Randomly? Spam it?

[lol username]

5 minutes ago, aidenpons said:

 

Wait, when do you hit Enter? Randomly? Spam it?

Right after typing it. ~niblik activates a bunch of stuff including the puzzle editor UI stuff mentioned in the OP (LL = game mode, PE = puzzle editor). So far I've managed to break things horribly and create infinite TeeVees.

[aidenpons]

Is there any way to run AT in any form of windowed mode?

 

update - got extractor working

 

update - hacked save file

 

How can I place the blinking red orbs for the plungers? They refuse to go anywhere

 

Alt+F4 brings up a save dialog...

[lol username]

3 minutes ago, aidenpons said:

Alt+F4 brings up a save dialog...

As does F3. I'll post a list of buttons + combos that do stuff once I've mashed them more.

[aidenpons]

F allows you to rotate things.

 

QWASZX seem to be a rotating camera - worse than the original. IDK if it was there.

 

Space brings up a big blue box with two ghostly arrows to either side.

 

H resets the level.

 

Normal rules for Shift apply... EXCEPT if you have 2+ objects selected & press F.

 

I managed to turn of the collision.... somehow. I could put things on the edge of other things and generally break the collision detector.

 

How do you place multiple actors?

[lol username]

Those camera controls were always there. The function keys do a bunch of things - might be good to note now that F12 lets you view which object you currently have selected, which is handy. C adds a new position for the camera to cycle through (via pressing the arrows in normal gameplay or tab), but I'm not sure how you might work with them further.

[Fluffy Cupcake]

37 minutes ago, Terrev said:

 

Quote

Alt+F4 brings up a save dialog...

 

 

As does F3. I'll post a list of buttons + combos that do stuff once I've mashed them more.

F4 is for saving, F3 is for loading - who knows how to delete saves from that menu though.

 

Also F9 is for wireframe whoever wants it, and F11 toggles object lighting.

[lol username]

It just saves .PUZ files in the game's main directory.

For anybody thinking "awesome, now we can easily make custom levels!"... Yes, we can. Except the environments are all big, single objects in big, single files. The files beginning with "E" in Fin.pac, if you're wondering. For example, E0000.FIN is the environment for the main menu, and everything in the main menu environment - the animated spinning Earth, space station interior, and the animated skydome. Also, there can only be one environment per puzzle/level/scene. So until we crack the FIN format we can't do anything too exciting. (Remember, Alpha Team runs on NetImmerse, and FINs are NIFs, but there's a lot of custom stuff for the specific needs of this game.)

[Fluffy Cupcake]

I don't see any new .puz files...? (There is just the M1010.PUZ I had out to unlock all)

[lol username]

Are you running as admin? They might be getting sent to the VirtualStore.  Here's one I saved: http://oresome.rockraidersunited.com/download/308 Also, you already know this, but F7 cycles the currently selected object in the scene.

[Fluffy Cupcake]

Yeah, I just tried having admin permissions for the directory as you wrote that and it saved to the game's folder. Just checked VirtualStore, and that was indeed where it went prior.

[Ben24x7]

Could someone provide at least a picture of this 'Level Editor'?

 

I'm sorry, but I don't own a copy of Alpha Team, and I'm curious as to what this unearthed tool looks like.

[lol username]

It runs in-game, you can toggle between game mode and the puzzle editor at any time. It doesn't really look any different unless you pull up some specific menus or UI things, but I'll get some screens of that.

Edit:

 

Another edit: G toggles whether or not object movement is aligned to a grid, L toggles whether or not the camera does weird stuff with rotation. U does hella weird stuff to models. If you select an animated object you can type the number of an animation to play it - the zombie type that patrols around has an unused idle animation, as does this one (unless there's some situation where they play in-game that I don't know of):

 

 

Still trying to figure out how to raise/lower objects, or not keep them from having to snap to the ground like units do in normal gameplay... There must be some way, for example, evil orbs are always floating.

[McJobless]

It'd be nice to try this all out for myself, but my copy of the game refuses to run. Wonder early-2000s programming

[lol username]

Looks like the artists cut out the polygons under Dash's head on lower LODs since there's normally never a situation where you'd see them:

 

 

(None of the other main characters are like that)

 

Also, the things listed in Etc/CATEGORYUNITS.TXT don't seem to match up with the units/actors that are actually in the game. Not sure what's up with that.

 

Edit: Results of pressing U with an object selected:

 

 

 

[Cirevam]

I finished building my 2003-era XP computer, so I'll install Alpha Team on that soon and try it out. I'm always up for new research opportunities.

[aidenpons]

Is there any way to disable the startup videos? AT will crash / I want to check something and can't use Alt+Tab, and I'd like to disable those videos... they take ages..

 

(the Lego Media one in particular, you can skip the AT cutscene with Esc)

[mumboking]

1 hour ago, aidenpons said:

Is there any way to disable the startup videos? AT will crash / I want to check something and can't use Alt+Tab, and I'd like to disable those videos... they take ages..

 

(the Lego Media one in particular, you can skip the AT cutscene with Esc)

What if you just delete/rename them? Or does it complain if they're missing?

[lol username]

Aidenpons: http://www.rockraidersunited.com/topic/3916-blank-intro-video/ The videos are loaded off of the CD, so you have to add blank videos into the installed game data (it'll load them instead).

 

Also, N and M boost the volume of sound effects and music, I think B might boost volume of voice clips. Shift + one of those buttons lowers the volume instead.

[lol username]

 

A little video showing some stuff off.

[eagleeyedan]

This was a feature I always wished was a part of this game! Too bad I don't have a computer old enough for the game to work anymore to try the command on. Maybe time to invest in a '98 again  

[lol username]

2 minutes ago, eagleeyedan said:

This was a feature I always wished was a part of this game! Too bad I don't have a computer old enough for the game to work anymore to try the command on. Maybe time to invest in a '98 again  

The game works great on Windows Vista, 7, and I think 8 - no idea about 10 though. What OS do you use?

[aidenpons]

On 16/03/2016 at 9:26 AM, Terrev said:

The game works great on Windows Vista, 7, and I think 8 - no idea about 10 though. What OS do you use?

 Works fine on Win10 here for me if in compatibility mode.

 

Terrev, in that video... How do you open those menus? I didn't even know they existed & could only drag objects around.

 

Can you make that list of controls and buttons? I'm rather clueless on what can be done.

 

edit: whoops