LEGO Alpha Team Alpha Team and the Case of the Missing Pricks

[lol username]

I noticed a while back that the Alpha Team character models underwent a suspicious change during development.

 

 

Let's look at our buddy Flex here. This is a screenshot from the released game. Like all other minifigures in the game, his legs protrude directly from his body. There's no hinge holding them to the inward sides of the legs like on real minifigures.

 

Let's look at some beta screenshots.

 

 

 

Ah.

 

Tonight I noticed something more - if the game is loaded without any textures (aside from lightmaps in this case, though it can do without them, too)...

 

 

... Well, would you look at that.

 

Curious if part of the body texture was simply turning it transparent (it didn't seem so, as there were no transparent pixels whatsoever on, say, Dash's body texture), I loaded the game with only Dash's body and head textures.

 

 

Nope. The geometry in question has actually been given a different texture called NoPrick.tga. It's a 4x4 fully transparent texture that renders the pricks nixed.

 

Sadly this texture is shared between all minifigure models, the original UVs have not been retained, and it's also used for some mysterious invisible trapezoidal geometry on a few baddie models. Furthermore, all the prick's materials have a slight greenish tint for reasons unknown.

 

So, loading Dash's body texture in the place of NoPrick.tga results in this:

 

 

 

 

It appears as though if one wanted to restore the pricks, one would have to wrestle with the models fairly extensively, in addition to the question of why they're attempting to do such a thing in the first place.

 

That's all for now! Tune in next time for "Wait, why does mf_main_loc.nif in LEGO Universe have nodes named loc_lt_nipple, loc_rt_nipple, loc_bellybutton, loc_naughty, and loc_butt...?"

[Lair]

41 minutes ago, Terrev said:

one would have to wrestle with the models fairly extensively, in addition to the question of why they're attempting to do such a thing in the first place.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

 

41 minutes ago, Terrev said:

http://i.imgur.com/0pwdkCf.png

[Wirza]

Quote

NoPrick.tga

Beautiful. This game should be considered art.

[emily]

well, at least they realized their mistake

[Zed]

square pricks: the most disturbing thing in AT since deformed legs

[McJobless]

At least they didn't call it something like testercall.

[Cirevam]

LRR with testercall
AT with NoPrick.tga

 

What other surprises lay dormant in other LEGO games?

[Lair]

oh my god i've been wondering why you all kept repeating that testercall thing like i thought people found it funny cuz it was just a weird way of spelling the testlevels code that worked or something but i just now f****ing got it god damn it god damn it god damn it  im so stupid

[lol username]

 

BTW:

On 12/28/2010 at 1:18 AM, rrcoder said:

-testercall = Oh dear... not sure if I should admit to this one... It was never, ever, ever meant to see the light of day. It has the same functionality as -testlevels, however just say it aloud quickly as one word. I shall say no more.