Various LEGO Island Links and Resources

A place to discuss playing and reverse engineering the 1997 video game LEGO Island.
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MattKC
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Various LEGO Island Links and Resources

Post by MattKC »

This is a collection of various resources around the internet - feel free to suggest more in the replies.
  • Modding Tools/Community Sites
    • LEGO Island Rebuilder - A launcher for LEGO Island providing multiple fixes, features, and improvements.
    • libweaver - A comprehensive SI file editing tool (for both extraction/repacking) currently being developed by me.
    • lierip - Formerly the most reliable SI extractor, however its functionality has been superseded by libweaver.
    • WDBRipper - Currently the only tool somewhat capable of extracting assets from WORLD.WDB (e.g. the model data for the island).
    • LEGO Island Wiki - A counterpart to this forum and work-in-progress documentation of all aspects of the game.
    • LEGO Island Video Game Flashback - A fansite containing a lot of interesting information, by le717, one of the earliest modding contributors to LEGO Island.
  • Development Materials/Unused Assets
    • Behind the Scenes of Adventures on LEGO® Island - A promotional video created some time during development showcasing its progress. Notably contains a completely different racetrack and shows that most developers used the mouse controls rather than the keyboard, potentially explaining how the turn speed bug wasn't caught until too late.
    • Leaked 1996 source code - An early partial backup of the game's source. Unfortunately, it's incomplete; all of the code for the underlying OMNI engine is missing, so most of the source cannot be recompiled as-is. Some tools and builds are available though.
    • Leaked beta 9.0 - The final beta build compiled around 1 month before the 1.0 release (and 2 months before the more common 1.1 release). Plays largely the same, but contains several minor differences, as well as a changelog documenting various changes over the various beta releases.
    • LEGO Demos - A collection of demos for LEGO games, including a Japanese demo of LEGO Island.
    • The Cutting Room Floor - A good collection of assets included the retail release that never get used.
    • Project Island High Quality Music / A Better Organized Playlist - A re-digitization of most tracks from the LEGO Island soundtrack by its main composer Lorin Nelson.
  • Interviews
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Infomaniac95
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Re: Various LEGO Island Links and Resources

Post by Infomaniac95 »

Hey, this is a nice collection of resources! I might also recommend linking Brickstobytes, which is the source of stuff like that Behind the Scenes video that leaked a long time ago: https://brickstobytes.org/

It's worth noting this website only came out a few months ago. Documents and such were scanned for ages, but release was held off for a long time. Not sure if anything there will be interesting technically, but it should at least provide fans of the game some neat stuff to look at.
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GenericObjectShow
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Re: Various LEGO Island Links and Resources

Post by GenericObjectShow »

I have a feeling that the leaked source code will come in handy later on in the development of this project.
GenericObjectShow
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Re: Various LEGO Island Links and Resources

Post by GenericObjectShow »

I looked at OMNI Demo and realized that it's probably an older version of ISLE.EXE
In fact, there's a DLL that aligns with that assumption (kinda)
"LEGOOMNI1D.DLL" - probably an older version of LEGO1, might be easier to decompile.
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MattKC
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Re: Various LEGO Island Links and Resources

Post by MattKC »

It's certainly useful as a reference, but so much of the code is missing (I estimate more than half), and what is there is over a year prior to the final release (i.e. it's missing a whole year's worth of work/development), so it's probably not as useful as might be expected. But having it is definitely better than going in completely blind.
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