LEGO Island Wiki - User contributions [en]

Weaver

2026-03-05T19:16:30Z

PawPatroler (2025): PawPatroler (2025) changed the content model of the page Weaver from "wikitext" to "JavaScript"

The [[Weaver]] was an internal tool used by [[LEGO Island]] developers to automate the process of creating [[Interleaf files]].

== Function ==
Not much is known about Weaver outside of interviews with developers<ref>[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1chL_iGfo-h559vnR6ds_ZDnLWicZ48RYxFlf1wmV2aE/edit Interview with Brandon Davis, 3D artist on LEGO Island]</ref> and [[LEGO_Island_Versions#Korean|recovered Weaver input files]]. It can be inferred that Weaver would take *.SS files, descriptors of the files to be interleaved and their parameters in some kind of C-like syntax, and produce "weaved" SI files for optimized streaming from a CD. Weaver, Interleaf files, and SS files all appear to be proprietary Mindscape tools, and while it was initially assumed they were only ever used for LEGO Island, Interleaf files were later discovered on another Mindscape title known as ''{{Wikipedia|Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat}}''.

Weaver could be considered analogous to an archiving program like Tar. It doesn't perform any compression, but does collect several files into one while also structuring them into one contiguous file.

== Example ==
This file is JUKEBOXW.SS, which was mistakenly shipped with the Korean release of LEGO Island. It compiles to JUKEBOXW.SI, which :

<nowiki>#include "..\Include\JukeBoxWorld_Actions.h"

defineSettings Configuration
{
bufferSizeKB = 64;
buffersNum = 16;
}

//=================================================================
// Bitmaps

defineStill Background_Bitmap
{
fileName = "Q:\Lego\Media\JukeBox\backgrnd.bmp";
duration = INDEFINITE;
location=(0,0,10);
extra="World:current";
}

defineStill Right_Bitmap
{
fileName = "q:\Lego\Media\JukeBox\Right.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(145,20,8);
// transparency=FAST;
extra="Visibility:FALSE, World:current";
}

defineStill Decal_Bitmap
{
fileName = "q:\Lego\Media\JukeBox\Decal.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(145,20,8);
// transparency=FAST;
extra="Visibility:FALSE, World:current";
}

defineStill Wallis_Bitmap
{
fileName = "q:\Lego\Media\JukeBox\Wallis.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(145,20,8);
// transparency=FAST;
extra="Visibility:FALSE, World:current";
}

defineStill Nelson_Bitmap
{
fileName = "q:\Lego\Media\JukeBox\Nelson.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(145,20,8);
// transparency=FAST;
extra="Visibility:FALSE, World:current";
}

defineStill Torpedos_Bitmap
{
fileName = "q:\Lego\Media\JukeBox\Torpedos.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(145,20,8);
// transparency=FAST;
extra="Visibility:FALSE, World:current";
}

//=================================================================
// Controls

//
// Volume down button
//

defineStill Voldown_Up_Bitmap
{
fileName = "Q:\Lego\media\jukebox\voldown.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(32,413,9);
paletteManagement=NONE;
transparency=YES;
extra="BMP_ISMAP";
}

defineStill Voldown_Down_Bitmap
{
fileName = "Q:\Lego\media\jukebox\voldownS.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(32,413,9);
paletteManagement=NONE;
transparency=YES;
extra="BMP_ISMAP";
}

parallelAction Voldown_Ctl
{
handlerClass="MxControlPresenter";
Voldown_Up_Bitmap;
Voldown_Down_Bitmap;
loopingMethod=CACHE;
extra="Style:Map, World:current";
}

//
// Volume up button
//

defineStill Volup_Up_Bitmap
{
fileName = "Q:\Lego\media\jukebox\volup.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(558,417,9);
paletteManagement=NONE;
transparency=YES;
extra="BMP_ISMAP";
}

defineStill Volup_Down_Bitmap
{
fileName = "Q:\Lego\media\jukebox\volupS.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(558,417,9);
paletteManagement=NONE;
transparency=YES;
extra="BMP_ISMAP";
}

parallelAction Volup_Ctl
{
handlerClass="MxControlPresenter";
Volup_Up_Bitmap;
Volup_Down_Bitmap;
loopingMethod=CACHE;
extra="Style:Map, World:current";
}

//
// disk back button
//

defineStill Dback_Up_Bitmap
{
fileName = "Q:\Lego\media\jukebox\dback.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(159,422,9);
paletteManagement=NONE;
transparency=YES;
extra="BMP_ISMAP";
}

defineStill Dback_Down_Bitmap
{
fileName = "Q:\Lego\media\jukebox\dbackS.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(159,422,9);
paletteManagement=NONE;
transparency=YES;
extra="BMP_ISMAP";
}

parallelAction Dback_Ctl
{
handlerClass="MxControlPresenter";
Dback_Up_Bitmap;
Dback_Down_Bitmap;
loopingMethod=CACHE;
extra="Style:Map, World:current";
}

//
// disk forward button
//

defineStill Dfwd_Up_Bitmap
{
fileName = "Q:\Lego\media\jukebox\dfwd.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(391,422,9);
paletteManagement=NONE;
transparency=YES;
extra="BMP_ISMAP";
}

defineStill Dfwd_Down_Bitmap
{
fileName = "Q:\Lego\media\jukebox\dfwdS.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(391,422,9);
paletteManagement=NONE;
transparency=YES;
extra="BMP_ISMAP";
}

parallelAction Dfwd_Ctl
{
handlerClass="MxControlPresenter";
Dfwd_Up_Bitmap;
Dfwd_Down_Bitmap;
loopingMethod=CACHE;
extra="Style:Map, World:current";
}

//
// Note button
//

defineStill Note_Up_Bitmap
{
fileName = "Q:\Lego\media\jukebox\note.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(270,420,9);
paletteManagement=NONE;
transparency=YES;
extra="BMP_ISMAP";
}

defineStill Note_Down_Bitmap
{
fileName = "Q:\Lego\media\jukebox\noteS.bmp";
duration=INDEFINITE;
location=(270,420,9);
paletteManagement=NONE;
transparency=YES;
extra="BMP_ISMAP";
}

parallelAction Note_Ctl
{
handlerClass="MxControlPresenter";
Note_Up_Bitmap;
Note_Down_Bitmap;
loopingMethod=CACHE;
extra="Style:Map, World:current";
}

//=================================================================
// StartUp

parallelAction _StartUp Weave
{
handlerClass = "LegoWorldPresenter";
extra="Object:JukeBox";

Background_Bitmap;
Right_Bitmap;
Decal_Bitmap;
Wallis_Bitmap;
Nelson_Bitmap;
Torpedos_Bitmap;
Voldown_Ctl;
Volup_Ctl;
Dback_Ctl;
Dfwd_Ctl;
Note_Ctl;
}</nowiki>

== References ==
<references />

WORLD.WDB

2026-03-05T19:16:17Z

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[[WORLD.WDB]] or '''World DataBase''' is an asset file for LEGO Island. It is one of the few files [[Local Files|copied to the hard drive]] during installation, as opposed to the majority which are [[Interleaf File|streamed from CD-ROM]].

== Overview ==

WORLD.WDB is the only '''.WDB''' file in LEGO Island, unlike the much more common [[Interleaf File]] format. As such, it is generally even less well understood. It does not follow the chunking/streaming conventions of the Interleaf format as it is always read from hard drive.

== Contents ==

It is known that WORLD.WDB contains most of the 3D models used by the game and many of the textures (but notably excluding the [[phonemes]], which are in Interleaf files). There have been successful attempts at ripping and even swapping assets from WORLD.WDB, but no known attempts at reconstruction.

The file contains a list of worlds, where each world references a number of models and parts. After the models exists a list of textures and a single part. Each model and part can also have a list of textures themselves. The textures use a palette and store an uncompressed stream of bytes referencing the palette. Model references also contain a location, direction and up vector placing them in the world.

A model contains an ROI (Realtime object instance), which can contain other ROIs, allowing them to be animated separately as the animation modify a ROI. A part contains a list of ROIs directly although those cannot contain another ROI.

== External Links ==
* [https://github.com/floriandotorg/isle-documentation/tree/master/imhex-patterns ImHex Patterns] to parse several LEGO Island related files with the hex editor [https://imhex.werwolv.net/ ImHex]
* [http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/wiki/Lego_Island_World_Database Incomplete reverse-engineered WDB documentation]
* [https://github.com/LiamBrandt/WDBRipper WDBRipper], unmaintained but decently functional tool for extracting assets from WORLD.WDB

Smacker

2026-03-05T19:15:59Z

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[[Smacker]] is a video format and codec developed by {{Wikipedia|RAD Game Tools}} to assist implementing full motion video into video games. It was released in 1994 at the height of the FMV boom, and succeeded by {{Wikipedia|Bink Video}} in 1999.

== In ''LEGO Island'' ==
Smacker is one of two animation/movie file formats used in LEGO Island, the other being [[FLIC]]. While LEGO Island is obviously not an "FMV game", it does contain a handful of FMV sequences:
* No-CD message ([[NOCD.SI]])
* Opening logos and cutscene ([[INTRO.SI]])
* Character introductions in the Information Center ([[INFOMAIN.SI]])
* Underwater second floor elevator ([[ISLE.SI]])
* Cutscenes that play upon either winning or losing the Pepper quest ([[INTRO.SI]])
* End credits ([[CREDITS.SI]])

== External Links ==
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smacker_video Smacker on Wikipedia]

NOCD.SI

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[[NOCD.SI]] is an [[Interleaf File]] played whenever the game cannot find its main assets, which under normal circumstances indicates that the game CD-ROM is not inserted. It's the only Interleaf file that gets transferred to LEGO Island's install directory, as it naturally needs to be accessible at all times. Its only content is a [[Smacker]] video stream.

== Details ==
NOCD.SI contains one 3-second video, which features the Infomaniac who charmingly tells you that there is no CD inserted:

{{YouTube|vmTF088r2DI}}

When LEGO Island starts up, it checks for <code>Lego\Scripts\Isle\ISLE.SI</code> in either the <code>hdpath</code> or <code>cdpath</code> (set in the {{Wikipedia|Windows Registry}} by the installer at <code>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mindscape\LEGO Island</code> on 32-bit systems, and <code>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Mindscape\LEGO Island</code> on 64-bit systems). If it cannot find it, it plays the Smacker video in NOCD.SI and then exits immediately after.

If it ''does'' find [[ISLE.SI]], it will continue trying to launch as normal, even if the rest of the files are missing. If only ISLE.SI is present, it will softlock almost immediately as it fails to find [[INTRO.SI]] (opening logos and cutscene script) and [[INFOMAIN.SI]] (the Information Center script).

The dialogue in NOCD.SI was originally intended for the CD being ''ejected'' during gameplay, but has been edited and repurposed in NOCD.SI. The original unused voice clip still exists in the game files, revealing the full line to be: '''"Whoops! You have to put the CD back in your computer."''' The version of the line in NOCD.SI crudely edits out the word "back" to change its meaning. A second unused audio clip in the game files says a very similar thing, indicating that this was clearly a planned feature of the game. Instead, in the final release, ejecting the disc during gameplay simply causes the game to crash. Presumably the developers were unable to achieve this functionality before the game was set for release.

None of the other dubs contain any noticeable cut, despite the fact that some of them are indeed worded to imply putting the CD "back" into the computer.

== Language Differences ==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Version (Language) !! Dialogue !! Audio
|-
| Lego Island (English) || "Whoops! You have to put the CD in your computer." || [[File:NOCDEnglish.wav]]
|-
| Abenteuer auf der LEGO Insel (German) || "Hoppla! Leg die CD wieder in deinen Computer ein." || [[File:NOCDGerman.wav]]
|-
| レゴアイランドの大冒険 (Japanese) || "おっと！コンピュータにCD-ROMを入れておくれよ。"<br/>"Otto! Konpyuuta ni CD-ROM o irete okureyo." || [[File:NOCDJapanese.wav]]
|-
| Aventures sur L'île LEGO (French) || "Ouh là là‌ ! Il faut que tu remettes le CD dans ton ordinateur." || [[File:NOCDFrench.wav]]
|-
| A Ilha LEGO (Portuguese) || "Ooopa! Você tem que por o CD no computador!" || [[File:NOCDPortuguese.wav]]
|-
| La Isla LEGO (Spanish) || "¡Eh!, tienes que poner el CD en la computadora." || [[File:NOCDSpanish.wav]]
|-
| Остров LEGO (Russian) || "Опа! Вставь в дисковод компакт-диск с игрой!"<br/>"Opa! Vstav' v diskovod kompakt-disk s igroj!" || [[File:NOCDRussian.wav]]
|}

== Unused Variants ==
As previously mentioned, NOCD.SI's English dialogue was edited and repurposed from a slightly different line telling players to re-insert the CD if they ejected it during gameplay. The unedited line remains in the game files, specifically in Interleaf file [[INFOMAIN.SI]]. INFOMAIN.SI also contains a second recorded (but unused) line that was ostensibly intended for the same purpose.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Dialogue !! Audio
|-
| "Whoops! You have to put the CD back in your computer." || [[File:CDBack.wav]]
|-
| "I just figured out why it isn't working! You have to put the CD back into the computer!" || [[File:CDBack2.wav]]
|}

MxOf

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[[MxOf]] is a data section that appears early in most [[SI files]]. It appears to be an index of the byte offsets in the file indicating the starting positions of each [[MxSt|file stream]].

== Specification ==
{{Incomplete}}

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Bytes !! Offset !! Description
|-
| "MxOf" || 0 || 4-byte data identifier
|-
| Chunk Size || 4 || 4-byte integer specifying the size of this chunk minus the first 8 bytes
|-
| ''Total List Size?'' || 8 || 4-bytes whose purpose may be the total number of indices/byte offsets, but is not entirely clear yet
|-
| Offsets || 12 || The rest of the data are continuous 4-byte integers indicating the byte offsets where MxSt streams start.
|}

MxHd

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The [[MxHd]] section is part of the [[Interleaf File]] standard. It's the global header that defines metadata about the Interleaf file itself.

== Specification ==
{{Incomplete}}

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Name !! Bytes !! Offset !! Description
|-
| "MxHd" || 4 || 0 || A data identifier
|-
| Chunk size || 4 || 4 || An integer specifying the size of this chunk minus the first 8 bytes (usually '''12''' or '''0xC''' for MxHd section)
|-
| Minor version || 2 || 8 || An integer specifying minor version (always '''2''' in retail releases)
|-
| Major version || 2 || 10 || An integer specifying major version (always '''2''' in retail releases)
|-
| Buffer size || 4 || 12 || An integer specifying the size of every data buffer
|-
| Buffer count || 4 || 16 || An integer specifying the number of data buffers
|}

MxCh

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[[MxCh]] is the identifier for a [[Lego Island]] data chunk. They are seen extensively in [[SI Files]] to allow interleaving of several different data types.

MxCh chunks contain partial data of various different data types intended to be joined together continuously to form a complete file (an MxDa section). The chunks can also contain solely header data. A chunk will almost never contain a complete file on its own.

== Specification ==

=== WAV Data ===

{{Incomplete}}

This data is only known to be accurate for chunks that store WAV data.

The MxCh header is 22 bytes long and specifies the length of the chunk with other data. MxCh chunks must start on an even offset or they will not be skipped by LEGO Island.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Bytes !! Offset !! Description
|-
| "MxCh" || 0 || 4-byte chunk identifier
|-
| Chunk Size || 4 || 4-byte integer specifying the size of this chunk minus the first 8 bytes
|-
| Flags || 8 || 2-bytes that appear to have set flags about the chunk
|-
| ID || 10 || 4-byte integer that identifies which MxOb this belongs to.
|-
| Milliseconds || 14 || 4-byte integer that appears to be the chunk's offset in milliseconds increasing continuously (1000, 2000, 3000, etc.)
|-
| Chunk Data Size || 18 || 4-byte integer for the size of the data following the header.
|-
| Data || 22 || Arbitrary data no more than "Chunk Size - 14" in bytes (14 for the 22-byte header minus the first 8 bytes)
|}

=== Flags ===
The full purpose of the 2-byte "Flags" value above is not entirely known, however the following appear to be accurate:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Flag !! Description
|-
| 2 || Chunk is an ending chunk. Chunk size must also be "14" (length of just the header - implies an empty chunk)
|-
| 16 || Chunk is split (see below).
|}

=== Split Chunk ===
In addition to the data being split into chunks, the chunks themselves are sometimes split into two. If a chunk is split, both chunks will have the '''Flags''' section set to 16, and they'll also both have the same '''Milliseconds''' value. The "Chunk Size" will be accurate to each chunk's size (data length + 14), but the "Chunk Data Size" of the first chunk appears to be the total size of both chunks' data. The second chunk's "Chunk Data Size" is accurate to its own chunk data size.

The necessity of the split chunks appears to be due to the way Lego Island streams SI files; it appears to only be able to stream a certain amount of bytes (the buffer size) dictated by the SI file's [[MxHd]] (in the case of [[JUKEBOX.SI]], 20000h/131072 bytes/128 kbytes; in the case of SNDANIM.SI, 58000h/360558 bytes/352 kbytes; otherwise, 10000h/65536 bytes/64 kbytes) at a time and the SI file must conform to this limitation. A chunk can have no data that extends over a multiple of the set buffer size. Doing so causes Lego Island to crash as it tries to read beyond the buffer it's allocated for streaming. Therefore, if a chunk is going to extend beyond a buffer size multiple, it must be split at that point and then another chunk must be written directly afterwards with the remainder of the data. This is a big obstacle to inserting audio that is larger than the existing audio, since literally all subsequent chunks of all subsequent songs must be shifted to fit around the buffer size multipliers or Lego Island will crash. This essentially necessitates a reconstruction of most, if not all, of the file.

There seems to be no hard limit for the size of a chunk, other than having to accommodate these boundaries set by the [[MxHd]]. LEGO Island allows a chunk to be split more than once (possibly infinitely), meaning as long as the chunk is split every set buffer size it may be possible for each song to be read as one large chunk rather than one chunk per second. However, LEGO Island appears to expect each chunk to be one second long and seems to time certain events based on the length of a chunk rather than a length of time.

JUKEBOX.SI

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{{Confused|JUKEBOXW.SI}}

[[JUKEBOX.SI]] is an [[Interleaf File]] containing 60 audio tracks of music and radio dialogue. With a few exceptions{{Citation needed}}, all of [[LEGO Island]]'s music is stored in JUKEBOX.SI.

== Details ==

As an Interleaf file, JUKEBOX.SI is a container for a large number of asset files. Most of these files are background and radio music (including the radio voices) in Microsoft {{Wikipedia|WAV}} audio, however there are also 4 [[FLIC]] video files for each of the building rooms (dune buggy, jetski, helicopter, and race car). These FLC files are the small instructional videos played in the screen and are interleaved together as "movies" that are equal length (thus looping together).

All audio in JUKEBOX.SI (like most of LEGO Island's audio assets) is mono uncompressed PCM. While the majority of tracks are sampled at 11025 Hz/16-bit, a handful are sampled at 22050 Hz/8-bit. These can be distinguished by each track's WAV header (the "fmt " section if you're familiar with WAV headers) left intact in the first [[MxCh|chunk]] of their respective streams.

When replacing, the WAV "fmt " header can be directly transplanted over the existing data in said first chunk. All WAV formats are compatible. The PCM data can be transplanted too, but it must be interleaved into chunks.

== Technical Information ==

Music appears to begin with a <code>MxDa</code> and is split into chunks of <code>MxCh</code>. The <code>MxDa</code> header contains information about the PCM audio in the <code>MxCh</code> chunks. The first <code>MxCh</code> appears to be information about the remainder of the chunks in the <code>MxDa</code> structure.

All bytes are little endian as is normal for RIFF-based files.

=== Extracting Audio ===

* Audio streams can be located in JUKEBOX.SI by searching for " WAV" (note the prepending space).
** A few bytes before the " WAV" will be the original filename of the WAV file prior to being imported into the SI file if you wish to retrieve that too.
* A few bytes later will be "LIST" which appears to specify an array (or "list") of chunks that make up one audio track. The next 4 bytes will by a 32-bit integer for the total size of this "LIST", in other words the total amount of upcoming bytes of the SI file that belong to this particular audio track.
* The first [[MxCh]] after the "LIST" will contain WAV-compatible header data, most of which can be transplanted directly into a WAV file (see below for details).
* Every MxCh after this one will contain PCM audio data (formatted according to the header data in the first MxCh). Each MxCh has a 22 byte header that will need to be stripped out when extracting. After the 4 byte "MxCh" identifier, the header contains a 4 byte integer of the total amount of bytes that the chunk takes up (minus 8 bytes for the "MxCh" identifier and chunk size integer). All data after this 22 byte header is PCM audio that will be exactly "chunk size - 14" bytes in size (14 is the size of the 22 byte header minus the first 8 bytes).
* Each MxCh's data can be dumped until you reach the end of the "LIST" size extracted above. At that point the end of the track has been reached and the process must be repeated to extract the next track.

=== Header ===

{{Incomplete}}

As mentioned above, the first MxCh in a "LIST" contains solely header data. Most of this data is completely compatible with the specification for WAV.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Bytes !! Offset !! Description
|-
| <code>MxDa</code> || 0 || Identifier
|-
| <code>MxCh</code> || 4 || Chunk Header
|-
| Chunk Size || 8 || 4-byte Integer
|-
| Sub-Chunk Size || 22 || 4-byte Integer - The remaining size of this chunk after this value
|-
| Audio Format || 26 || 2-byte Integer - 1 = PCM, others indicate some form of compression
|-
| Number of Channels || 28 || 2-byte Integer - 1 = Mono, 2 = Stereo
|-
| Sample Rate || 30 || 4-byte Integer
|-
| Byte Rate || 34 || 4-byte Integer - is equal to <code>Sample Rate * Number of Channels * BitsPerSample/8</code>
|-
| Bytes per Sample || 36 || 2-byte Integer - is equal to <code>Number of Channels * BitsPerSample/8</code>
|-
| Bits per Sample per Channel || 38 || 2-byte Integer - 8 = 8-bit, 16 = 16-bit, etc.
|}

==== Transplanting the Header ====

Use this [http://archive.is/XXc3O WAV File Format Header Specification] and you'll be able to determine the 16 bytes from "Audio Format" to "Bits per Sample per Channel" are identical. This makes up most of the WAV header data (apart from file and chunk size which cannot be determined from here) and can be directly transplanted to make extraction easier and ensure the sample rate and sample size are correct in the extraction.

Note that the MxCh header contains a few more bytes after "Bits per Sample per Channel" and therefore its "Sub-Chunk Size" is larger than the average WAV file's. These extra bytes should be ignored and not transplanted, though if they are the "Sub-Chunk Size" should be translated too (or at least increased to accommodate for them).

INTRO.SI

2026-03-05T19:14:11Z

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'''INTRO.SI''' is an [[Interleaf File|Interleaf file]] that contains multiple [[Smacker]] video streams, all meant for [[Lego Island]]'s in-game cinematics. It is one of the files that the game attempts to load on start-up; if this fails, the game does not proceed until the space bar is pressed, when it attempts to load [[INFOMAIN.SI]], which contains many of the information center's files. If this fails as well, the game softlocks.

== Details ==
INTRO.SI contains six Smacker videos in total, with accompanying Microsoft WAV audio streams playing alongside them. Specifically, the videos include the Lego and [[Mindscape]] logos, the intro cutscene, an unused outro cutscene, and the good and bad endings.

In the Japanese version of the game, the JustSystems logo is bundled in the same stream as the MindScape logo, leaving the overall structure of the Interleaf file itself unchanged.

Interleaf File

2026-03-05T19:13:53Z

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An '''Interleaf File''' (extension '''.SI''') is a general-purpose asset archive format designed for streaming from CD-ROM. It was developed by [[Mindscape]] for use throughout [[LEGO Island]].

== Overview ==
The Interleaf file format was originally thought to be exclusive to ''[[LEGO Island]]'', but has since also been discovered in earlier [[Mindscape]] games called ''{{Wikipedia|Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat}}'' and ''{{Wikipedia|Chessmaster 5000}}''. Regardless, it remains an extremely obscure format and therefore is not well documented. All information known about this format has been through reverse engineering or interviews with game developers.

Interleaf files are derived from the {{Wikipedia|Resource Interchange File Format}} standard (best known as the basis of {{Wikipedia|Audio Video Interleave}} and {{Wikipedia|WAV}} files). They are comprised of various LEGO Island-specific structures (such as [[MxDa]] and [[MxCh]]), however these structures usually contain standard format file data (such as PCM WAV audio and Windows BMP images).

The primary purpose of Interleaf files is to split various file formats into smaller chunks that are interleaved together so they can all be read as one continuous stream. For example, a chunk of voice data may be followed by a chunk of matching animation data or a bitmapped graphic. This is done to reduce the amount of seeking around the disc for assets since CD-ROM speeds of the era were generally very slow and end-user hard drive space was usually too limited to store much game data.

Interleaf files were produced internally with a tool called [[Weaver]], however this tool has never been publicly released or leaked.

== Version ==
Interleaf files went through a number of revisions, as indicated by this error message that's thrown if an SI version doesn't match:

<center>[[File:WrongSIVersion.png|alt=Error. Wrong SI file version. 2.2 expected.]]</center>

The SI version is set in an SI file's [[MxHd]] section. The version used in both retail versions is 2.2.

Below is a table of known SI file versions:

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Known Interleaf/SI file versions
|-
! Version !! Known usage
|-
| 1.0 || ''Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat'', ''Chestmaster 5000'', ''LEGO Island'' (July 1996 build)
|-
| 2.2 || ''LEGO Island (final)''
|}

== Modification ==
As aforementioned, no official documentation of Interleaf files has ever been released. There are a handful of tools for working with them (e.g. [[LEGO Island Rebuilder]]), but none with a complete implementation. Therefore, manual hex editing is often used to replace or extract assets.

When working with Interleaf files, this interleaving needs to be taken account as it will dictate how the data is both extracted and inserted. One file stream may be separated into several chunks with chunks of other files interleaved between them.

Since audio is stored in PCM, Interleaf files can be crudely listened to using Audacity's "Import Raw Data" feature. SI audio is always uncompressed mono PCM and is either 11025 Hz and 16-bit or 22050 Hz and 8-bit. Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned chunked/interleaved nature of SI files, the audio retrieved through this method will be noticeably glitchy and will require further processing (removal of chunk headers and any non-audio chunks) to extract clean PCM data.

== Extra string ==
Each object in the Interleaf file can have an extra string where additional information is stored. It is a list of key-value-pairs, although some keys do not use values and the keys are case-insensitive. To get each pair the string is split along one of the following characters:
* <code>,</code>
* Space
* Tab
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage_return Carriage return]
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_feed Line feed]
* <code>:</code>

Each item can then either be just present or have a value. In some cases, the value can be further split with <code>:</code> or <code>;</code>.

This is an incomplete list of existing extra information and their meaning:
{| class="wikitable"
! Key !! Description !! Valid values !! Example
|-
! colspan="4" | Images
|-
| <code>VISIBILITY</code> || Makes the image by default invisible/disabled when set to <code>FALSE</code> || <code>FALSE</code> || <code>Visibility:FALSE</code>
|-
| <code>BMP_ISMAP</code> || Does not draw the image and is only used to map a position to an value (e.g. to determine what is clicked) || <code>BMP_ISMAP</code>
|-
! colspan="4" | Sound
|-
| <code>SOUND</code> || Makes the sound by default muted/disabled when set to <code>FALSE</code> || <code>FALSE</code> || <code>Sound:FALSE</code>
|-
! colspan="4" | Models
|-
| <code>DB_CREATE</code> || Spawns the model at the giving location || Name of the model in WORLD.WDB || <code>DB_CREATE:ambul</code>
|-
! colspan="4" | Animations
|-
| <code>PTATCAM</code> || Point given objects to camera (used on the isle so that actors look at the player) || Name of the ROIs || <code>PTATCAM:HEAD;INFOHAT</code>
|-
! colspan="4" | Dialogs
|-
| ''Actor Name'' || Attaches a phoneme (face animation) or sound to the actor (has no key and is then the only content) || Any valid actor name || <code>brickstr</code>
|-
! colspan="4" | Path actors
|-
| <code>PATH</code> || Determines the location of the actor || name of boundary, source edge, source scale, destination edge, destination scale || <code>Path:EDG03_34;2;0.60;0;0.40</code>
|-
! colspan="4" | Controls
|-
| <code>VISIBILITY</code> || Makes the control by default invisible/disabled when set to <code>FALSE</code> || <code>FALSE</code> || <code>VISIBILITY:FALSE</code>
|-
| <code>STYLE</code> || Can specify how the controls handles a mouse click. <code>MAP</code> and <code>GRID</code> support additional values || <code>MAP</code>, <code>GRID</code>, <code>TOGGLE</code> || <code>Style:Grid;2;2</code>
|-
! colspan="4" | Meters (speed/fuel)
|-
| <code>FILLER_INDEX</code> || Used in meters (speed/fuel) to set the color for the fill used from the image's palette || A number between 1 and 255 || <code>Filler_index:160</code>
|-
| <code>TYPE</code> || Determines in which direction the meter is filled. Even though all four directions are recognized <code>RIGHT_TO_LEFT</code> and <code>TOP_TO_BOTTOM</code> are not fully implemented || <code>LEFT_TO_RIGHT</code>, <code>BOTTOM_TO_TOP</code>, <code>RIGHT_TO_LEFT</code>, <code>TOP_TO_BOTTOM</code> || <code>Type:bottom_to_top</code>
|-
| <code>VARIABLE</code> || Specifies the variable which is used || The name of the variable || <code>Variable:jetFUEL</code>
|-
! colspan="4" | Currently Unknown
|-
| <code>World</code> || || || <code>World:current</code>, <code>World:BLDH</code>
|-
| <code>Object</code> || || || <code>Object:Act2Actor</code>
|-
| <code>HIDE_ON_STOP</code> || || || <code>HIDE_ON_STOP</code>
|-
| <code>COLLIDE_BOX</code> || || || <code>COLLIDE_BOX</code>
|-
| <code>Speed</code> || || Any non-negative floating pointer number || <code>Speed:0.0</code>
|-
| <code>Animation</code> || || || <code>Animation:Cm_Walk;1.0</code>
|-
| <code>AUTO_CREATE</code> || || || <code>AUTO_CREATE:Cm</code>
|-
| <code>Mute</code> || || || <code>Mute</code>
|-
| <code>Comp</code> || || || <code>Comp:1</code>
|-
| <code>Map_Locator</code> || || || <code>Map_Locator:Studs_Locator</code>
|-
| <code>Map_Geometry</code> || || || <code>Map_Geometry:-900;1100;480;720;150;118;366;216</code>
|-
| <code>Action</code> || || || <code>Action:openram</code>
|-
| <code>Triggers_Source</code> || || || <code>Triggers_Source:\\Lego\\Scripts\\Race\\CarRaceR</code>
|-
| <code>Must_Succeed</code> || || || <code>Must_Succeed</code>
|}

Note: Action names are case-sensitive and are not cased consistently (e.g. <code>OBject:LegoRaceCar</code>, <code>Auto_create:actor_02</code>).

== See also ==
* [[JUKEBOX.SI]]
* [[NOCD.SI]]

Microsoft Visual C++

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[[Microsoft Visual C++]] is an integrated development environment for writing software in C or C++. It is the most common C/C++ compiler on the {{Wikipedia|Microsoft Windows}} platform.

== In ''LEGO Island'' ==
LEGO Island was developed and compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ 4.2.

== External Links ==
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_C%2B%2B Microsoft Visual C++ on Wikipedia]

MAIN.EXE

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[[MAIN.EXE]], also known as '''ISLEMFC.EXE''' in [[Beta 9.0]], was the original game executable used for ''[[LEGO Island]]'' during its development. It shares all of the features of [[ISLE.EXE]] but includes a number of development and debugging features that were excised from the final release.

== Details ==
ISLEMFC.EXE, like ISLE.EXE, is a frontend to the main game ([[LEGO1.DLL]]). However upon opening, it appears to do nothing. Because of this, it was initially thought to be an aborted attempt to port the main game executable to MFC (which [[CONFIG.EXE]] and [[LEGOISLE.EXE]] are based on). A disassembly of ISLEMFC's main loop appeared to confirm this, since it didn't seem to call any LEGO1.DLL functions automatically. However, further exploration uncovered that ISLEMFC.EXE takes command line arguments and, when used correctly, is actually a fully featured game executable with additional debugging and development functionality.

<pre>
Command line arguments:

/FS - fullscreen (default)
/NFS - windowed
/FLIP - use display surface flipping
/NFLIP - use display surface blit (default)
/SMEM - back buffer in system memory
/VMEM - back buffer in video memory (default)
/D8 - 8 bit display depth (full screen only)
/D16 - 16 bit display depth (full screen only)
/RGB - use rgb color model (software rendering only)
/RAMP - use mono ramp mode (software rendering only)
/USEHW - use 3d hardware if available
/NWIDE - use narrow view angle
/3DSOUND - use 3d sound
/SCRIPT <filename> - auto load startup script
/RAMSTREAM - stream <filename> from ram (default)
/DISKSTREAM - stream <filename> from disk
/ACTION <num> - start action <num> in <filename> (default is 0)
/HELP - display this message

If a 3D accelerator is identified, it will be used if USEHW is specified.
RGB color model is always used with hardware 3D.
Only 8 and 16 bit display depths are supported.
</pre>

Therefore it is now understood that ISLEMFC is actually an ''older'' executable used during development. In fact, it appears to be a direct descendant of the 1996 source leak's [[MAIN.EXE]]. Examining ISLEMFC's resources shows that it contains many of the dialogs, though they seem to be inaccessible now due to the removal of the context menu from MAIN.EXE. It may be possible to access many of these functionalities if that menu can be restored.

The fact that ISLEMFC is an earlier executable is backed up by the [[Beta 9.0|Beta 6.0 changelog]], which makes an explicit reference to it:

<pre>MFC removed from isle.exe - No more debugging dialogs.</pre>

ISLEMFC.EXE may have initially been called ISLE.EXE, and later renamed when the Win32 only ISLE was introduced but kept around for debugging purposes.

ISLEMFC.EXE contains many debugging strings not present in ISLE.EXE. For example, while ISLE.EXE will run with multiple various glitches if the host display is set to 32-bit color while in windowed mode, ISLEMFC throws an explicit error:

<center>[[File:Islemfc-32b-error.png]]</center>

For these reasons, ISLEMFC seems to be a more "complete" executable. It's unclear why it was replaced in the final game. Perhaps a full MFC application with all of their debugging tools was considered too resource and/or storage heavy for a simple frontend.

== Commands ==

ISLEMFC can be made to load the game with the following command line (replace H: with the drive letter LEGO Island is inserted in):

<pre>ISLEMFC /NFS /RAMP /ACTION H:\Lego\Scripts\Isle\ISLE.SI</pre>

ISLEMFC can also be made to run arbitrary entries in any SI file. For example, this will play the first song in JUKEBOX.SI:

<pre>ISLEMFC /NFS /RAMP /ACTION H:\Lego\Scripts\Isle\JUKEBOX.SI</pre>

ISLE.EXE

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[[ISLE.EXE]] is the main frontend of LEGO Island. It contains very little actual game code, mostly handling window initialization and the event loop, and passing off to [[LEGO1.DLL]] for everything else.

Its simplicity is demonstrated in its file size, only 85KB compared to LEGO1's over 1,000 (unless your copy shipped with [[#SecuROM|SecuROM]], in which case ISLE will be much larger). However, it does handle a number of crucial responsibilities that are worth documenting.

== DirectSound Test ==

One of the first things ISLE.EXE does is attempt to create a DirectSound device and then immediately destroy it. If it fails to create one, it will wait for 500 milliseconds and try again. If it continues to fail, it will do this up to 20 times before giving up and showing an error message that it failed to find any DirectSound devices:

<center>[[File:SoundError.png|alt=Lego Island Error. "LEGO® Island" is not detecting a DirectSound compatible sound card. Please quit all other applications and try again.]]</center>

This is a somewhat odd behavior because ISLE.EXE is not otherwise responsible for any sound-related functionality. It simply creates a device to see if it can, and then either destroys it or throws the above error if it can't create one. Presumably this is done because sound hardware was much less reliable back then, so it became necessary to attempt initializing it multiple times before it could definitively be considered a failure. However, it's not clear why this functionality could not be part of LEGO1's sound initialization routine instead, considering that's the code that actually handles all of the in-game sound.

== SecuROM ==

{{Main article|SecuROM}}

In at least one release of LEGO Island, ISLE.EXE was found to be protected with SecuROM. SecuROM is a form of DRM/copy protection, controversial due to its heavy-handed malware-like approach. Additionally, due to improved security measures introduced in Windows 10, SecuROM-protected games no longer work at all on modern versions of Windows, requiring a cracked or patched version to play those games.

Since no other copies that we know of ship with any DRM whatsoever, it's unclear who decided to introduce SecuROM on this specific version. The actual frontend code, as well as that copy's LEGO1.DLL, was unchanged, so simply replacing ISLE.EXE with an unprotected copy from another release will bypass SecuROM entirely.

FLIC

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[[FLIC]], also known by the extension *.FLC or *.FLI, is an animation file format developed by Autodesk. It is similar to an animated GIF but was used frequently in video games throughout the 1990s (as opposed to GIF which was largely adopted by web standards).

== In ''LEGO Island'' ==
FLIC is one of two video/animation file types used in LEGO Island, the other being [[Smacker]]. Since it is similar to GIF, it is largely used for GIF-like purposes such as:
* The small background videos in the building stages
* Registration book animations

== External Links ==
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLIC_(file_format) FLIC on Wikipedia]

SecuROM

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[[SecuROM]] was a copy protection/digital rights management (DRM) product used in PC games from the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s. It quickly became controversial due to its malware-like approach, installing itself with administrator/root permissions on the user's PC and being almost impossible to remove. Many high profile games that included it were heavily criticized including Bioshock, Mass Effect, and Spore; the latter famously culminating in a class action lawsuit against its publisher {{Wikipedia|Electronic Arts}}. It gradually fell out of usage in the early-mid 2010s in favor of newer non-physical technologies such as Steam.

Due to higher security in Windows 10, the majority of SecuROM games no longer run, requiring patches to the game to run without SecuROM.
f
== In ''LEGO Island'' ==
While the vast majority of [[LEGO Island]] copies feature no copy protection or DRM whatsoever, SecuROM was unexpectedly discovered on an Italian copy of the game. These were the most likely to include it, which often functioned as a disc check or an online product activation system with limited installations.

=== Circumvention ===
For versions that implement it, SecuROM is baked into [[Local Files|ISLE.EXE]]. Replacing it wholesale with any other unprotected version of ISLE.EXE or using [https://support.securom.com/removaltool.html SecuROM removal tool] will defeat the protection entirely.

== External Links ==
*[https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/SecuROM PCGamingWiki page on SecuROM]
* [https://www.howtogeek.com/230773/how-to-play-pc-games-that-require-safedisc-or-securom-drm-on-windows-10-8.1-8-7-and-vista/ How‑To Geek article on running SecuROM games]
* [https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/bt6igw/is_gog_selling_fear_with_active_securom_drm/ Reddit discussion about SecuROM in game releases]
* [https://umatechnology.org/how-to-play-pc-games-that-require-safedisc-or-securom-drm-on-windows-10-8-1-8-7-and-vista/ UMA Technology article on SecuROM issues]

Deleted Scenes

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[[LEGO Island]] contains a substantial amount of content that's never used.

== Deleted from all retail releases ==
* The main Information Center room ([[LEGOMAIN.SI]]) contains animation where the Infomaniac turns and looks up to the screen and another where he turns back to the player. It's assumed this animation would be played before and after the character introduction movies.
<center>[[File:InfomaniacTurnAnimation.mp4]]</center>
* Dialogue in the registration book scene ([[REGBOOK.SI]]) indicates the registration book used to be much more complex than it is in retail release.
<center>[[File:DeletedRegBookDialogue.mp4]]</center>
* At the beginning of the car race, an animation of a LEGO character waving a checkered flag, then jumping into the middle of the road and breaking up into pieces. It's unknown why this was never used, perhaps because the "LEGO pieces" would have gotten in the way of racing.
<center>[[File:UnusedRaceAnimation.mp4]]</center>

== Deleted from v1.1 ==
Some scenes were deleted or modified between the two known retail releases.

* In v1.0 after signing in, the Infomaniac exclaims "Good job! Welcome to LEGO Island!" This line was cut in v1.1.

Direct3D Retained Mode

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'''Direct3D Retained Mode''' (also known as '''D3DRM''') was a seldom-used graphics API that was part of early versions of {{Wikipedia|Direct3D}}. Its counterpart is Direct3D Immediate Mode (Retained Mode largely functioning as a layer on top of Immediate Mode as well).

== History ==

Retained Mode functions almost as a minimal game engine on top of Immediate Mode, providing a "scene" that developers can add to and modify rather than making direct graphics API calls manually. Retained Mode handles the actual rendering/drawing of the scene, including any possible optimizations it can make. The modern equivalent is fully fledged game engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine that similarly provide a 3D scene for developers to place objects into. However Retained Mode had only a fraction of the overall functionality of a modern game engine, and at the time the vast majority of game developers chose to forego Retained Mode and write their own graphics engines based on Immediate Mode instead.

The last update Direct3D Retained Mode received was with DirectX 3.0 in 1996 and has been largely deprecated since then. It remained as a legacy component in DirectX until Windows Vista when it was quietly removed (necessitating [[Compatibility Issues#D3DRM.DLL was not found|restoring it manually for LEGO Island to play]])

Other graphics libraries of the era, such as {{Wikipedia|OpenGL}} also feature a "retained mode", however OpenGL's is deprecated too.

== LEGO Island ==

LEGO Island uses Retained Mode extensively for all of its 3D graphics, and is one of only two major commercially successful games known to do so (the other being {{Wikipedia|LEGO Rock Raiders}}).

Retained Mode's age and obscurity initially made LEGO Island's code harder to analyze since (unlike its peers <code>DDRAW.DLL</code>, <code>D3DIM.DLL</code>, etc.) it largely predates online documentation and the D3DRM.DLL provided on disc was too old to have PDB debug symbols available. However, it was discovered that a more recent version of D3DRM.DLL was released in 2001 with Windows XP and also has PDB symbols available, mitigating this entirely. A digitized book from the era was also discovered documenting most of Retained Mode's API.

In many ways, Retained Mode is likely the culprit in many of LEGO Island's [[Compatibility Issues|compatibility issues]] with modern systems. Since Microsoft has dropped any and all support for Retained Mode, it's possible the game's codebase may have aged better had it been written for Immediate Mode instead.

=== "D3DRM.DLL was not found" error message ===

LEGO Island requires Direct3D Retained Mode to play. For instructions on restoring it on recent versions of Windows, see [[Compatibility Issues#D3DRM.DLL was not found]]

== 2001 Version ==

The last known build of D3DRM.DLL was released with Windows XP in 2001. This build is recommended for its improvements over the 1997 build on the LEGO Island disc, including the following:

* PDB debug symbols are available
* Better dgVoodoo compatibility
* Wine compatibility (Wine's D3DRM.DLL implementation is incomplete and older D3DRM versions don't work)

== Downloads ==
* [https://legoisland.org/download/d3drm.zip D3DRM.DLL] - 2001 build of D3DRM released alongside Windows XP, the most recent build known to exist
* [https://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols/d3drm.pdb/3B7D82D31/d3drm.pdb Debug symbols (PDB)]
* [[File:DirectX_3D_Graphics_Programming_Bible.pdf]], a book from the D3DRM era that documents most of its API

== External Links ==

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D#Direct3D_2.0_and_3.0 Wikipedia article on the last Direct3D versions to support retained mode]
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retained_mode Wikipedia article on retained mode graphics APIs]

Local Files

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To accommodate limited hard disk space of the era, Lego Island by default installs only a few files locally and streams the rest off the CD. The locally installed files are as follows:

==ISLE.EXE==

{{Main article|ISLE.EXE}}

The main executable. Creates the window handle, handles window events, and runs the main game loop. A fairly simple application, it largely passes off to the functions in LEGO1.DLL for the bulk of the game code.

==LEGO1.DLL==
The bulk of the game code and vast majority of the functionality. ISLE.EXE can be largely considered an entry point into this library. Due to its importance, much of the modding and research work is centralized on this library.

==CONFIG.EXE and LEGOISLE.EXE==
Bizarrely, these two executables are completely identical despite being used for different purposes. On startup, both of them will check their filename. If it's "CONFIG", the Lego Island Configuration dialog is shown. Otherwise, it launches ISLE.EXE and exits. Their functions can be changed simply by renaming them.

The exact purpose of using LEGOIsle.exe instead of linking directly to ISLE.EXE is unknown, as is purpose of having the two be the same executable. All desktop and start menu shortcuts to LEGO Island actually launch LEGOIsle.exe, despite the fact that its only action is launching ISLE.EXE.

==NOCD.SI==
{{Main article|NOCD.SI}}

The only [[Interleaf File]] installed to the hard drive rather than streamed from the CD-ROM. Contains a video instructing the player to insert the CD if the game cannot find the rest of its assets.

LEGO Island Versions

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Several versions of [[LEGO Island]] are known to exist, either officially released or discovered.

== Pre-Alpha ==
{{Main article|Pre-Alpha (October 1996)}}

On October 31 2023, a prototype build of ''LEGO Island'' was leaked by YouTuber '''R.R. Slugger''. Colloquially, this build is usually referred to as "'''the pre-alpha'''".

== Beta 1.0 ==
{{Main article|Beta 1.0}}

Beta 1.0 was the first beta version of ''LEGO Island''.

== Beta 9.0 ==
{{Main article|Beta 9.0}}

Beta 9.0 was the last beta version before ''LEGO Island'' reached RTM. Its files are dated July 24, 1997, only two weeks before [[LEGO_Island_Versions#v1.0_.2F_August_Build|v1.0]]'s August 8, 1997 date. A [[LEGO Island Changelog|changelog]] was found on the disc detailing all the beta releases leading up to it.

== v1.0 / August Build ==

This build identifies itself as version 1.0.0.0. It's files date to August 8th 1997 making this is the earliest build known to have had a retail release. Both this build and the September build predate LEGO Island's official release date (September 26, 1997), making it unclear why this circulated in retail ''at all'' (considering a newer build was already produced before release). It's theorized that perhaps [[Mindscape]] had already manufactured copies of this build, and the changes introduced in the September were considered too insignificant to discard the already manufactured copies.

This version is only known to have been released in English and Japanese.

== v1.1 / September Build ==

This build identifies itself as version 1.1.0.0. It's files date to September 8th 1997. This is by far the most common version of LEGO Island and the most likely version that any given copy will be, since it existed before the official release date and is the latest official version to be made. The exception is the Japanese version, which appears to have only had a v1.0 release.

=== Differences compared to August build===
v1.1 features a number of largely "quality of life" changes. Not much overall functionality differs between them, nor have many bugs been fixed. The following are the known differences between the two:

* '''Different dialogue:''' After entering a name in the registration book in v1.0, the Infomaniac says "Good job! Welcome to Lego Island! Okay, let's get started...". In the September build, this first sentence is cut and the Infomaniac instead starts at "Okay, let's get started!".

* '''Building:''' During any of the four building sequences, Bill Ding instructs you to click the triangle button when you are finished. However in v1.1, the sequence will automatically end itself once you place the last brick, rendering the triangle button largely unnecessary. v1.0's behavior is accurate to the explanation; you must click the triangle button to finish even if you've placed all the bricks. It's generally assumed testers would miss the opening explanation and become confused about what to do once they'd completed their builds (hence the change in v1.1), But many prefer v1.0's approach since it allows them to continue making changes even after the last brick is placed.

* '''Window title:''' When playing in windowed mode, the August build's window title reads "Lego Island" while the September build's reads "LEGO®". This may be the only time the game uses sentence case for the word "LEGO" instead of capitalizing it as usual.

* '''Character selection:''' In v1.1, clicking a character's icon selects that character even if the icon isn't dragged to a location (v1.0 requires the icon to be dragged somewhere to set the character). This allows players to switch characters and exit the Information Center through other means, such as the back door. However it also necessitates a change in the Infomaniac's animation. In v1.0, selecting Mama or Papa Brickolini ends with him flying offscreen before the game transitions to the selected location, but since players of v1.1 can select a character without actually leaving the Information Center, his animation has been crudely modified to position him back on the floor rather than flying offscreen.

* '''Installer background:''' The background image used in the installer features two flags. In v1.0, these flags have the Mindscape and LEGO logos on them but in v1.1 they're blank white.

* '''Key files have been modified and recompiled:''' This is relevant for any hex editing as the locations of most byte offsets will be different between them. Any specific byte changes will need to accommodate both versions to work correctly for all people.

== Language Variations ==
While all known non-English releases of LEGO Island are v1.1, a few versions feature differences that don't strictly affect gameplay.

=== Korean ===
In late 2019 it was discovered that the Korean release of LEGO Island contains logs and source files for the [[Interleaf files]] on the disc. These files would have been compiled into Interleaf files with [[Weaver]], which would have been a necessary part of the translation process considering the Interleaf files contain the bulk of the voice clips. While the game itself is unremarkably still v1.1 code and the Weaver tool is still unrecovered as of this writing, these files are extremely interesting insights into the development process.

=== Italian ===
{{Main article|SecuROM}}

For unknown reasons, the Italian release features [[SecuROM]] DRM technology. It's unknown whether all Italian copies contain the DRM or whether any non-Italian copies ever featured it.

=== Japanese ===
For reasons that remain unclear, the original Japanese release of the LEGO Island installer includes a strict version check that only permits installation on Windows 4.x builds (specifically Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me).
If the operating system is detected as anything newer (beginning with Windows 2000 and continuing through all subsequent versions), the installer immediately aborts and displays the following error message (as shown in the accompanying screenshot):
“This application is for Windows 95 only. It cannot be used on any other operating system.”
Consequently, attempting to run this particular Japanese installer on modern Windows versions (or even on Windows XP and later) will always fail.
To successfully install the Japanese version of LEGO Island on contemporary systems, it.Marker is strongly recommended to use the community-developed LEGO Island Alternative Installer instead (see: [[Getting_Started#Alternative_Installer|LEGO Island Alternative Installer]]). This alternative bypasses the outdated version check entirely and ensures full compatibility.

<center>[[File:Japanese-installer-error.png]]</center>

== Minor Variations ==
These are versions where the game itself has been untouched, but other elements of the disc have been altered somewhat.

=== Cheez Mania ===
This release was a promotional tie-in with Cheez Mania cheese puffs. The main game is unchanged but the disc contains a Cheez Mania themed launcher, and a Cheez Mania screensaver.

== Future ==

No later versions of LEGO Island are known to exist. Even when the game was re-released in 2001, the September build was still shipped.

Through interviews with the game's original developers, it's claimed that a patch was written to fix the infamous [[Turn Speed|turn speed bug]] but it never made it into any release or patch. If the source code hasn't been lost, it could be possible to produce another version with this (and any other patches that could have been made later on) implemented. But this is only speculation for the time being.

== Languages ==

{{Main article|LEGO Island#Download}}

LEGO Island was released in several languages which are documented [[LEGO Island#Download|on a separate page]]. These have all been found to be v1.1 with only minor changes for localization purposes. Usually this boils down to replacing dialogue in the [[Interleaf files]] with all other files identical to the English release, but a few languages seems to have been recompiled the binaries too (particularly [[Local_Files#CONFIG.EXE_and_LEGOISLE.EXE|CONFIG.EXE]] which contains a lot of display text).

== Identifying Your Version ==

Most of the time you can identify your version by checking the "Last Modified Date" of the files. They'll usually be either '''August 8, 1997''' or '''September 8, 1997'''.

As some language releases required further modification to these files, non-English releases may be dated later. If so, you can check the build version by right clicking LEGO1.DLL, choosing Properties, and selecting the Details tab.

<center>https://i.imgur.com/ai3nBNg.png</center>

The vast majority of the time, your version will read 1.1.0.0 meaning you have v1.1. If your version reads 1.0.0.0 and is NOT English, or reads something else like 1.2.0.0, please contact us with information about your copy.

Mindscape

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[[Mindscape]] was a video game developer and publisher that throughout its history had several parent companies and was based in several geographical locations. From 1995 to 1997, Mindscape developed [[LEGO Island]], then under educational company {{Wikipedia|Pearson plc}} and based in {{Wikipedia|Novato, California}}.

In later years, Mindscape was sold to {{Wikipedia|The Learning Company}}, and then French executive Jean-Pierre Nordman, at which point Mindscape moved to {{Wikipedia|Boulogne-Billancourt}}, {{Wikipedia|France}}. They continued to publish video games until 2011 when the company was dissolved.

== ''LEGO Island'' ==

As LEGO began to feel threatened by the rapidly growing video game industry around the early to mid-1990s, they started to invest in LEGO-related video games. Mindscape was one of the first companies contracted to create licensed LEGO video games, the first of which was LEGO Island.

Development was notoriously tumultuous, largely due to toxic management "politics". Ultimately, LEGO decided to rescind the licensing rights from Mindscape after LEGO Island and Mindscape fired the entire team the day before release to dodge paying bonuses that were promised based on the game's success. A planned sequel/spinoff entitled "Beneath the Phanta-Sea" based on the same engine developed for LEGO Island was cancelled.

== Dissolution ==

In 2011, Mindscape exited the gaming industry and was dissolved having been sold to various companies and moved to different countries over the years. Some regional branches continue to operate solely as game retailers with seemingly no relation to the original company besides the branding.

== External Links ==
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindscape_(company) Mindscape on Wikipedia]
* [http://archive.is/aLwQn Information From The Lead Programmer of LEGO Island (Interview with Dennis Goodrow)]
* [http://archive.is/U76rn An Interview with Wes Jenkins the Creative Director of LEGO Island]

Beta 9.0

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In May 2020, ''LEGO Island'' [[Beta 9.0]] alongside some ''LEGO Island'' source code was released on 4chan.

Beta 9.0 was the last beta version before ''LEGO Island'' reached RTM. Its files are dated July 24, 1997, only two weeks before [[LEGO_Island_Versions#v1.0_.2F_August_Build|v1.0]]'s August 8, 1997 date.

== History ==

Beta 9.0 was the first widely known pre-release ''LEGO Island'' material, having first been discussed in a [[Rock Raiders United]] thread in October 2018.<ref>https://rockraidersunited.com/topic/8354-lego-island-beta/</ref> However, it had been kept private by a select few members of the community until finally being leaked in May 2020.

As of November 2023, Beta 9.0 remains the only beta currently publicly available.

== Changes ==

Being so close to the final release of the game, Beta 9.0 plays largely similarly. However there are some notable differences, the following is a list of all known changes:

=== Gameplay ===
* Players can knock over Nick and Laura Brick while they are riding their bikes on the Island
* The player starts in first place and ahead of the other contestants when the jet ski race begins, rather than starting in last like in retail

=== Visual ===
* A helipad texture can be found by Brickster’s cell where the helicopter rests, which is nowhere to be found in retail

=== Sound ===
* The Infomaniac’s welcome speech includes slightly more sound effects than in retail
* The Information Center music does not play if the room loads with the Infomaniac speaking, the music instead waits for the Infomaniac to finish talking
* The tow truck mission does not play Brick by Brick like it does in retail, it is instead completely silent

=== Misc ===
* You cannot click to skip the logos when you start the game, you must hit space
* NPC turning animations are much stiffer and jittery compared to retail, this can also cause some NPCs to walk directly through the grass in specific instances
* NPC path/movement system reeks of unpolish, creating moments of occasional slowdowns and speed ups in walking speed for seemingly no reason, with no adjustment to the animation speed to compensate either
* You cannot click on the LEGO sets in the score cube room to build them like in the retail version
* Clicking the triangle to finish rebuilding the helicopter after the brick hunt sequence will cause Bill Ding to speak his normal “excellent job” dialogue. This does not occur in retail, as clicking the triangle will immediately send you to Act 3
* The credits are completely silent, the Infomaniac does not even say his speech at the end
* Debug mode is always active in the beta, and as such there is no need to type “ogel”

=== Bugs ===
* The Infomaniac awkwardly floats in mid-air after finishing his speech after you sign into the book. In this sequence of events, the music does not play and does not even start playing after the Infomaniac finishes speaking
* After getting the bad ending, hitting the “i” symbol after returning to the Information Center soft-locks the game
* After getting the good ending, the Information Center still appears to be on lock-down, mistakenly using the red bitmaps, but the full functionality of the Information Center is present. This bitmap mismatch is fixed by simply reloading the Information Center
* The pizza delivery music mistakenly gets louder while the Brickster is talking when delivering to him without building the helicopter first
* During the hospital missions, the game fails to clear out certain assets for some animations (such as the NPC who chokes at the pizzeria) during the transition process. This leaves NPCs who appear for the hospital missions to be left on the island completely dormant until the island is fully reloaded by entering a building
* The score cube is completely wiped when the game is restarted
* If you go to the Information Center during the Brickster chase and then press the “i” to return to where you left off, the game will crash
* If you select the blue book while the Information Center is in its lock-down state, the normal book opening animation without the red recolor will play
* When entering the Information Center while in a vehicle, returning to the island by hitting the “i” symbol will significantly lower the player’s FOV

== References ==
<references/>

== External Links ==
* [https://archive.org/details/legobeytah_202103 Download from Internet Archive]

Beta 9.0 Changelog

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[[Beta 9.0 Changelog]] is a {{Wikipedia|Changelog}} packaged with [[LEGO_Island_Versions#Beta_9.0|LEGO Island Beta 9.0]]. It details various changes made between all the beta revisions leading up to and including this one.

It provides a fascinating insight into what the developers were working on in the late stages of development. Naturally no such changelog was provided in any retail release, so there is no known official documentation for the changes made between Beta 9.0 and the retail releases.

==Analysis==
The changelog is dated from June 3, 1997 to July 24, 1997 indicating LEGO Island's beta phase lasted roughly 7 weeks. The [[LEGO_Island_Versions#v1.0_.2F_August_Build|first known retail release]] is dated only two weeks later (on August 8, 1997).

Despite being in beta, often a stage of software development where the project is "feature locked" and only bugs are addressed, the changelog details some fairly sweeping changes. Beta 5.0 introduced the famous [[NOCD.SI]] animation and Beta 4.0 apparently added much of the HUD to the vehicles (fuel gauge, "i" icon, etc.) It seems the game was still changing rapidly despite being only months away from retail release.

The changelogs for the earlier betas contain information on playing/beating the game, as well as preemptive apologies for crashes and known issues, such as the Pepper mission seeming "a bit too hard to win". The first build's changelog also instructs players to uninstall previous versions of LEGO Island and manually delete registry keys, indicating at least some of the testers receiving the early betas also received even earlier pre-beta/alpha versions of the game.

Occasionally, the changelog lists fixes for bugs that [[Glitches|remain in the retail releases]] or [[Compatibility Issues|have re-emerged in newer versions of Windows]] (particularly crashes involving leaving the game). These sections of the game may have been poorly implemented and fixed via hacks or workarounds that later became incompatible with more modern versions of Windows, causing the original bug to re-emerge.

Since its use was strictly internal, it features several spelling and grammar errors, occasionally to the point of unintelligibility.

==Changelog==
<center>
'''LEGO Island'''

'''July 24, 1997 - Release Notes - Beta 9.0'''

'''Copyright 1997 Mindscape - All Rights Reserved'''
</center>

beta 9.0 bug fixes
* fix buffer return bug in streamer
* fix saving and loading of games
* add credit screens
* handle escape key in more situations
* AT&T networking
* Bump ambient lighting
* Adjust camera triggered animations probabilities
* Refresh Textures on 'T' keyboard command (for s3 driver bug)
* Various bug fixes both art and programming
beta 8.1 bug fixes
* fuel guage now works (refueled by passing gas station)
* escape key is more robust (fewer situations where it can crash)
* delete cached sounds when worlds go away
* clicking on controls should always give visual feedback
* extend collision to boundaries which are neighbors of my boundaries
* skeleton kick sound
* few more triggers to end missions regardless of route taken
* saving and loading of games is more robust
* lower number of error clicks in build guis to 2 from 4
* fix bug that left animation debris behind
* fix static data with critical section object in deconstructor
beta 8.0 bug fixes
* directx5 instead of directx 3
* limit escape handling to known situations
* fix a few transitions
* fix bugs associated with saving and restoring games
* play mission reminder voice overs
* fix bugs associated with background audio
* fix bugs in vehicle banking
* time out of mission now initiates infomaniac voice over
* restore customized vehicles when user restores saved games
* save more game state & advance game file version number
* fix act 2 double click brick bugs
* enable hardware dithering
* reduce memory usage
* config now defaults to low quality if 16 mb machine
beta 7.0 bug fixes
* characters should not accumulate as much. Less getting hung up on vehicles or each other.
* user vehicles should be restored to customization and location when restoring games
* a few screen transitions fixed in infocenter interior
* a few more instructional voice overs added
* ignore user stop action request when action not fully formed. Eliminate some random crashes.
* fix a few camera locations and adjust mission end logic to be triggered from multiple directions
* advance game version number to disallow loading ‘old’ game format save files
* remove obstacle sound effects which were not looping for looping obstacles
* Uninstall now correctly removes all components and saved games.
* Many other bug fixes (see annotated bug report, dated July 17, 1997)
beta 6.0 bug fixes
* Background color and light position saved with game.
* Pause key is now active (not during full screen movies).
* Jetski race voice-overs when colliding with competitors added.
* Act2 interaction with Brickster (brick dropping time-outs, distances) fine tuned.
* Space bar now stops only appropriate animation actions, not game logic actions.
** This should prevent many hard to find crashes.
* Pizza hidden when mission proposal times out.
* Get off vehicle when selecting Pizzeria to start mission.
* Info control button in vehicle builds now stops animations before taking user to infocenter.
* Relative animations are blocked when participant is ‘flipping’ or ‘disassembled’.
* Building and plant state is now saved correctly in save game.
* Save game version bumped -- REMOVE ANY EXISTING SAVED GAMES!! --
* Cursor fixed (now includes pointer, wait, and pause cursor - better art will be forthcoming).
* Escape key is now disabled in critical situations. We may want to queue up the escape request and act on it later
* Characters walking through floor, walls, ceiling in cave fixed. (They were being pointed at the path ABOVE the cave.)
* Clicking in hospital no longer aborts animations.
* Crash do to multiple clicks on red or green brick in infocenter fixed.
* Voice-overs added when dragging character to infocenter icon on infocenter map.
* Arrow and info controls at infocenter revolving door fixed.
* Globe control in observation deck now shows correct initial condition.
* Act2 return to island from infocenter improved.
* MFC removed from isle.exe - No more debugging dialogs.

beta 5.1 bug fixes
* island path data near gas pump improved
* transition to act2 animations re-worked
* game end movies should always work
* entrance to helicopter build fixed (5.0 changes broke this)
beta 5.0 bug fixes
* shut down missions when entering info center or getting out of vehicle
* exit vehicle when entering buildings
* put brickster in jail when user on jetski
* save & restore state of games in act 2 or act 3
* change initial screen to black instead of white
* add screen transitions when entering vehicles
* fix helicopter takeoff and landing bugs
* fix problems where 3d point of view change caused huge doppler shift in audio
* disallow picking of buildings during missions
* stop towtruck from disappearing and blocking pathways
* fix path bug that 'hopped' you to neighboring edge
* reset plants and buildings when restoring games
* disable input in more situations during transitions
* detect CD missing from drive at startup and put up an animation
* put up different background in infocenter during act2 & act3
* get rid of wait flic, decided to use wait cursor instead
* fix palette in outside world to reflect dashboards ,fix palette restoration for dashboards
beta 4.0 bug fixes
* fix act3 ending flyin camera roll
* fix some memory leaks
* add speed gauge/fuel gauge/horn to ambulance
* add horn to bike
* add speed gauge/fuel gauge/horn/’i’ to dune buggy
* add speed gauge/fuel gauge/horn/’i’ motorcycle
* add speed gauge/fuel gauge/horn/’i’ towtruck
* fix bug in radio. was possible to play it while background music was playing
* adjust minimum 3d sound falloff to 15 (was 10)
* fix cache sound bug (it was possible to delete original sound when it wasn’t supposed to)
* advance game state version number (old games are now obsolete)
* stop all plant animations before changing worlds
* fix jetski hide animation
* change jetski race to 2 laps
* align distance indicator with competitors
* slow competitors down less, but make them accelerate
* don't cancel animations when user clicks on nothing in infocenter
* fix infocenter to handle frantic clicking and hitting of the space bar
* hide red and green bricks when user clicks them in infocenter
* make elevator deal with frantic clicking
* avoid running more than one donut animation at a time in police station
* fix jetski race to have lego characters in all animations (some were missing)
* new version of smartheap libraries
* adjusted copter takeoff animation, jetski competitor animations
* merged meshes in many parts and models lowest LODS to save memory & processing time
* adjusted path data for act 1 and act 2
* deleted highest LOD of bank, and a few other LOD’s
* Fixed many obstacles in the missions
* adjusted many realtime animations
beta 3.4 bug fixes
* act 2 bricks failed to make sound sometimes, fixed
* infocenter click was stopping all actions, now only space does this
* infocenter music played while bio played. now bio stops music
* after jetski race, walkers appeared on water. fixed
* act 2, now you can collide with all bricks on path
beta 3.3 bug fixes
* act2, brickster waits at cave to give you 'chirping' 6th brick. nick an laura show up there.
* wait indicator was streaming during act 2 & 3 which slowed performance considerably
* fixed several places where space bar could corrupt application
* fixed several places where controls could respond to input before they were fully formed
* stop animations if start to run pizza mission
* lowered memory usage of cached sounds
* improved obstacle animations during missions
* fixed act3 multi pizza bug
* fixed bug uncovered by directx 5 where picking background was crashing
* fixed helicopter control bug
* allow user to exit helicopter build during act2 without completing build
* don't run two bill ding animations at a time
* release user from 'camera animations' with space bar ends the action in 1 space
* fix bug in g3 where cache sound was missing and caused crash
* it was possible for the gas station and the police station to be hidden

beta 3.0 bug fixes
* fixed a few transitions
* can't cheat in jetski race
* fixed crash when entering jetski race several time
* added airhorn at start of jetski race
* made act 3 work again
* Vehicle dashboards should now reflect customization of build guis
* act 2, all bricks which user has not clicked are left on path until he clicks them
* updated lego game version number so old games won't cause a crash.
* fix keypro diagonal navigation key bug
* delay competitor taunts to minimize playing two at same time.
* revised many obstacle animations
* stop obstacles earlier in pizza missions
* camera should not be hopping around at start of pizza mission
* when exiting helicopter, put it on the ground
* add mama and papa to pizzaria if user starts pizza mission by clicking pizzaria from far away
* deleted some memory leaks
* clean up garage code. (nubby)
* adjust locations of a few plants, buildings.
* when control key is pressed, navigation keys give maximum acceleration
* increase drag threshold to make it easier to 'pick' objects (in case you wiggle the mouse a lot)
* fix jetski racers walk cycles so they don't win in two laps when we have to go three
* disable navigating in garage
* fix problem where characters were not in their animations when entering island
* msfree now prints map.
* improve character creation time.
* made lower quality island use less memory by lowering highest LOD from 3 to 2
* Added Smartheap as memory manager
BETA 2.2 fixes
* Racecar build variations fixed
* Helicopter builds broken
BETA 2.0 fixes
* Install / Map / Start Menu / Uninstall were revised
* pizza sign needs to be misspelled when you are pepper
* configure artwork added & now using release version of config. debug dll's removed
* wait cursor should play a bit smoother
* picking of buildings from observation tower disabled
* should see correct brickster behavior at start of act 3
* a few bugs in saving parts of the game have been fixed
* adjusted hospital mission proposal to have a timeout
* juke box state was uninitialized
* act 3 & act 2 state are not saved with game.
* which act you are playing is now serialized with game
* 3d navigation in interiors has been disabled.
* disabled music triggers during missions
* enable extra creation after pizza mission
* lowered act3 cop attract distance to brickster from 15 units to 12 units
* brickster is a little smarter in act3, avoids the cops a little better.
* act3 special effect when building destroyed
* adjusted hospital mission animation sequencing for smoother playback
* added hospital background music during hospital mission
* adjusted bike height
* get off bike before entering building
* adjust location of user at end of jetski race to view reward animation
* added pizza mission background music
* stopped left over obstacle animation pns050p1 when pizza mission ends
* added customizing helicopter decals
* added animman debug code messages to see reasons for failure to run animations
* added animman debug code messages to see extra character state changes
* fixed animation bounding box test to run animation
** (could cause animations to fire when objects are in the way)
** (may cause animations to fail to run that used to run)
* added visual effect to building destruction in act 2
* fix bounding boxes of character parts to more accurately reflect model
* changed ed-mails chest texture to be correct
* hide characters during creation (also other simple roi's)
* show plants
* show pizzas and donuts in act 3
* changed nicks click on chest to not reset character color. now it affects groin
* adjust act2 plant destruction special effect
* fix competitors position led locations during races
* act3 brickster burp now overrides other voice over that might have been playing
* added code to disable picking of hospital thru window in elevator now
* don't put too many letters out in history book anymore
* turn off radio when leaving infocenter
* turn off music when playing character bios
* randomize builds of race cars (parts should appear on different shelves)
* doc clickit should not 'blink' in and out of existence in hospital now
* regbook & history book animations coming off shelf should transition better
* hardware cursor should be turn on even when user starts with software cursor

------------------------------------------------------- PREVIOUS RELEASE NOTES FOLLOW

<center>
'''LEGO Island'''

'''June 8, 1997 - Release Notes - Beta 1.1a'''

'''Copyright 1997 Mindscape - All Rights Reserved'''
</center>

Incomplete or missing features:
* Wait indicator is not being used in enough transitions & it plays jerky
* Music implementation missing from vehicles, missions
* Mission obstacles sound effects do not loop
* pizza sign needs to be misspelled when you are pepper
* backdrop in infocenter during act 2 & 3 - infomaniac behaves different
* Some vehicle dashboards do not reflect customization of build guis
* Install / Map / Start Menu / Uninstall need to be revised
* Race car 'map' artwork has not been changed to reflect new race course
* hide animation in jetski race not working
* special effect when destroy building in act2 and act3 - vibrate and/or scale
* Need to disable navigation in interiors
* Copter decals are not customizable yet
The following features have been added recently:
* Special keyboard commands have been password protected (password is ogel)
* Replaced bushes with street lights
* You should now receive instructions to get out of your vehicle
* Infomaniac now animates when he says 'now your pepper' in infocenter
* New configuration program
* All screen transitions should now be in place
* Sound effect when LEGO characters disassemble upon collisions
* New mama, papa and brickster wait cycles
* Extras should be present from the start
* Hospital & tow truck missions now 'highlight' map during proposal animations
* Flying and water walking extras should not be created
* Color of light is changed by background control on observation deck in MMX and RGB mode
* Act 3 changes to game play
** Destruction Meter on copter dash indicates number of building remaining
** 3 Random variations on animation at start of act 3
** Brickster eats 8 pizzas before shooting a building, unless there are no pizzas
** Police speed up more for shorter duration after eating a donut
** Brickster says a few more things when he decides to ignore your pizzas
** Sharks eat pizzas away from the brickster
** Cops are attracted to the brickster once they get within 15 units
** Camera 'zooms' in to see last few seconds of capture or last building destroyed
* Races
** Distance meter now shows position of competitors as well
** Sound effect is now heard when the big skeleton 'kicks' you
** More curves in the large tunnels
* Act 2 changes
** "lost, then go to the pizzaria" happens later now!
** The bricks that the Brickster throws at you now block your pathway
** Building have special effect when the Brickster destroys them
** Brickster destroying building sound effect is now a 3d sound
** Alternate version of animation runs when you arrive at residential area 'late'
** More LEGO characters walking around during act 2 in panic state
** Slowed the Brickster down a bit more so user can catch him from behind
** Helicopter is partially built for you at the end of act 2
This is beta software and there are rough spots in the game play. If it crashes on you we are sorry.

<center>
'''LEGO Island - June 3, 1997'''

'''Release Notes for Version Beta 1.0'''

'''Mindscape'''

'''copyright 1997'''

'''all rights reserved'''
</center>

Please begin by uninstalling any previous version of LEGO Island you may have. LEGO Island also uses the windows registry to save a few configuration parameters. For a completely fresh install, these should be deleted (after running the uninstall procedure mentioned above). Use Regedit.exe to locate 'My Computer/HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Mindscape/LEGO Island'. Select LEGO Island and under Edit, select Delete. This gets rid off all the LEGO Island registry entries. Do an install after this. Once you have done a clean install, you should run configure. Then you should execute the program from the 'start' menu.

This is beta software and there are rough spots in the game play.

This version includes the following changes:
* typing g2, g3, g4, g5 plays act2, act3, the good ending, and the bad ending respectively
* animation states are saved with games.
* user character is now highlighted on main screen
* escape key takes you to info center and asks if you want to exit
* more transitions are in between scenes
* MMX RGB colored lighting is available in the observation deck of the infocenter
* More interior music
* Icons on infocenter map now 'glow' when user drags character over it.
* act 3 - pizzas only stick near the brickster. He is not interested in pizzas until after he destroys
* collisions with characters (disassemble and assemble now work better)
* The registration book is now fully functional with loading and saving of game state information.

Problems with this version:
* Act 2 seems a bit too hard to win now.
* Act 3 seems a bit too hard to win now. Pizza's not sticking will be replaced with sharks eating.
* Need new wait cycles for mama, papa, brickster
* certain camera motion is not right.
* transitions between scenes are missing
* Tween camera at start of missions 'hops' back (this is a bug)
* Race car 'map' artwork.
* towtruck is missing from towtruck animation
* races - competitors seem to change speed abruptly.
* takes extras too long to accumulate. want them right away.
* number of 'extras' begins to accumulate, but later they dwindle (bug)
* highlight map in hospital mission & towtruck mission
* flying extras, jetski-ing extras, walkers on the waters...
* Instructions to get out of vehicles are missing (click on your hand)
* Distance meter should show position of competitors
* Wait indicator not implemented
* Mission timing needs tightening. Proposals doesn't work unless you ' '
* kill current animation if new one fires (if user clicks pizzaria during infoman's speech)
* Music implementation missing from vehicles, missions
* Mission obstacles sound effects do not loop
* radio should turn off
* pizza sign needs to be misspelled when you are pepper
* when exiting build gui's we are placed at wrong location
* backdrop in infocenter during act 2 & 3 - infomaniac behaves different
* Some vehicle dashboards do not reflect customization of build guis
* Install / Map / Config / Start Menu / Uninstall need to be revised
* hide animation in jetski race not working
* mama's organ needs to be on island
* replace bushes with street lights
* special effect when destroy building in act2 and act3 - vibrate and/or scale
* need sound effect when people disassemble / reassemble
* races
** other racers interact with skeleton
** sound effect when collide with skeleton
** competitors pathing (face wrong way sometimes)
* people walking around in 'panic' cycles during phase 1, 2 and 3
* add all of act 2 relative and absolute animations
* act 2 bricks that brickster gives you should be placed on paths (for collisions)
* use 3d audio for brickster destruction (let sound carry farther though)
* lost, then go to the pizzaria happens too soon & should not happen in tunnel!

* Art -
** Adjust jsuser decal to not share decal with beach house???
** Giant ghost animation is not turned off in race
** tighten up long transition animations (minimize media delays)
** camera triggers in wrong direction (i've got to move away from the coast)
** have character portraits highlight (scale larger) when infomaniac describes them
** streamed composite artwork for dunebuggy high lod doesn't match customization
** relative animations on bikes and motorcycles need to be Q.A.'d
** transition to act 3 (breaking up 1 to 3 animations for replayability)
** fix hospital mission animations to conform with 'presidence tree'

The following information will be useful to get through the beta.

<div style="margin-left: 1cm;">
There are a number of things to click on around the island. Vehicles, plants, people and buildings. Click on everything. See what happens. If the program aborts, sorry. Plants will change depending upon who you are. People will animate and change when you click them. Some of the buildings animate when you click on them. Some cause you to enter them.

You can also perform several missions around LEGO Island. You can deliver a pizza. Depending upon who you are, when you click the pizzaria you will be asked to take a pizza to different places around the island. Some of these 'proposals' appear strange, and with the animation and camera motion not making a lot of sense. Please ignore these problems. You must click on the pizzaria, and then click on the pizza to accept the mission. Then you will be placed on a skateboard and shoved out the door. Take your pizza to the appropriate place.
* Pepper goes to the jail
* Mama goes to the Police station
* Nick goes to the gas station
* Papa goes to the Race track
* Laura goes to the the hospital.

I'm gonna give you a real big hint. You will discover this for yourself if you have enough time so don't read this if you have enough time... The briskster is at the jail and he will escape if you as pepper deliver a pizza to him and you have already built the helicopter. Once he is out of the jail, he will grab the copter and fly up to the infocenter and grab the power brick. Now it's up to you to capture him. Watch the animations and see if you can figure out what to do.

Hope you are able to see many parts of the game. This product only makes one demand on you. That you explore everything you see. Click on things. See what happens. Since the product is so active, it may crash if you overwhelm it. Please try not to get frustrated. Your input is valuable to us...
</div>

Also, to exit really fast, just hit alt-f4 on your keyboard. Happy 'end'ings.

==External Links==
* [http://archive.is/NCZiZ Original post on Rock Raiders United of the changelog]

Pre-Alpha (October 1996)

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On October 31, 2023, a prototype build of ''[[LEGO Island]]'' was leaked by YouTuber '''R.R. Slugger'''.<ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc7eALXaHbw</ref> Colloquially, this build is usually referred to as "'''the pre-alpha'''".

== History ==

The existence of a pre-alpha build has been known for some time,<ref>https://twitter.com/BenDaviesOrg/status/1239248521968132097</ref> however it had been kept private by a select few members of the community for years. It is currently not known what this release was made for, how it was acquired by the community, or how it was leaked.

The build files are dated between October and November 1996, predating the final release by roughly 11 months.

== Installer ==

The pre-alpha features a completely different installer from the final release. Comparing side-by-side, it's clear that they repurposed the same installer from ''[[Chessmaster 5000]]''.

<center>
<gallery>
File:Cmautorun.png|Autorun comparison
File:Cmdirselect.PNG|Directory selection comparison
File:Cmreq95.PNG|Attempting to launch the installer on Windows 3.1
</gallery>
</center>

This installer is 16-bit only, meaning it will not work on modern 64-bit Windows systems. The installer also requires DOS mode which can cause issues in Wine, despite its ability to load 16-bit executables. As such, it's recommended to use an [https://github.com/Ramen2X/adventures-installer alternate installer] for those platforms.

== Launcher ==

The pre-alpha features a crude launcher called '''STARTUP.EXE''' which launches the available rooms:

<center>[[File:Startup.png]]</center>

This makes sense because [[MAIN.EXE]] does not load anything by default without command line arguments.

== Config ==

[[CONFIG.EXE]] exists as an MFC dialog, much like the final release, however no work has been done on it:

<center>[[File:Dec96config.png|alt=A window titled "Configure LEGO Island". On the left, there is text stating "TODO: Place 3D configuration here". The right side has two buttons labeled "OK" and "Cancel" respectively.]]</center>

Instead, a limited subset of graphics settings are located in the [[#Launcher|launcher]].

== Build Sections ==

The game features incomplete but functional implementations of all four build sections from the final game (helicopter, dune buggy, race car, and jetski).

<center>
<gallery>
File:Dec96jetski.png
File:Dec96racecar.png
File:Dec96heli.png
File:Dec96dunebug.png
</gallery>
</center>

Notable differences include:

* Missing parts are wireframe instead of solid.
* Coloring doesn't appear to work.
* Different music. All stages feature a crude loop of "''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwn9L6-Yc-I Legomania]''", an ultimately unused cue composed by [[Lorin Nelson]].
* Different sound effects.
* Many of the animated sprites glitch and flicker when you click them.

=== Unused Background ===

If you use [[MAIN.EXE]] to load <code>build.si</code> and load the <code>StartUp</code> action, you can find the following screen:

<center>[[File:Dec96buildscreen.png|320px|alt=A screen with text describing the purpose of itself. The text explains the screen will not appear in the program, and that this screen is for the demo. The purpose of the screen appears to be a menu for demonstrating each of the building sections. The screen has several graphics. In the middle, there is a graphic depicting a square green brick with three smaller four by two pieces. The small pieces are colored yellow, red and blue. The yellow brick is upside down, the red brick is up right, and the blue brick is positioned vertically. The text flows around this graphic. Under the graphic is a collage of characters. Only six of these characters are visible with some being obscured by the graphic. On the bottom of the screen are four buttons. The buttons include symbols related to their destination.]]</center>

The buttons are functional and indeed jump to each build section.

=== Glitches ===

Likely the reason these buttons weren't used (and the above [[#Launcher|launcher]] was created instead) is because the buttons frequently have a habit of persisting after loading a new section. Clicking them further can lead to two or more build sections being inexplicably merged, and often causes crashes:

<center>[[File:Dec96btnglitch.mp4|320px]]</center>

== Island ==

The island has progressed significantly since [[Source Code (July 1996)|July 1996]], now closely resembling the layout of the island in the final game. It's still almost entirely unpopulated though, with no trees, NPCs, and very few buildings. The gas station, which was present in the July 1996 build, is present though, as well as three houses in the residential area.

<center>
<gallery>
File:Dec96isle1.png
File:Dec96isle2.png|
File:Dec96isle3.png|Full island shot
File:Dec96hiddenracetrack.mp4|Sections of the race track can be seen at some perspectives
</gallery>
</center>

Collision/path detection is still not implemented, allowing players to walk through buildings and on the grass. Ramps are also not correctly implemented, meaning players must manually adjust their height up or down using the U and D keys (which persisted in the final game's [[Debug Mode]]) to reach higher and lower areas.

== Miscellaneous ==

The main game executable is still [[MAIN.EXE]] and all of its development/debugging functionality is present here.

Turning is noticeably jerky in this version, always turning by a minimum of several degrees at a time. This too is tied to the frame rate and runs too fast on modern computers.

The disc contains both release and debug versions of multiple executables, including [[LEGO1.DLL]]. It '''does not''' however contain symbols. The [[Microsoft Visual C++]] compiler places symbols in sidecar PDB files, not in the executable itself, and no PDB files are present on the disc. That being said, the debug binaries contain much less optimized code and retain debugging features like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assertion_(software_development) assertions] which may help significantly in the [[decompilation]] effort.

== Free Fonts ==

The pre-alpha contains an option to "register" for an array of free fonts. The registration is obviously not possible anymore, however the fonts can be installed by running <code>MSREG\MSFREE.EXE</code> on the CD:

<center>[[File:Freefonts.png|alt=A window titled "Free Fonts". On the left side is a list of font names. Above the list is the text "Select the fonts to install:". Below the list are the number of fonts selected and drive space status. The user has selected all 36 fonts which will use an estimated storage space of {{formatnum:2375}} kilobytes. The right is displaying the letter M for the Antique font. The letter has an imperfect appearance as the lines are slightly jagged. Below the display are buttons labeled "OK", "Cancel" and "Options...".]]</center>

== References ==
<references />

== External Links ==

* [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IpbBqWDVnAYz0VIb-JeDD1lLvzWrauq8 Download from Google Drive]
* [https://archive.org/details/lego-island-alpha Download from Internet Archive]
* [https://github.com/Ramen2X/adventures-installer Alternate Installer for Wine and 64-bit Windows]

Source Code (July 1996)

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{{Stub}}

In May 2020, some ''LEGO Island'' [[Source Code (July 1996)|source code]] was leaked alongside [[Beta 9.0]] on 4chan.

The source code appears to be from a backup taken in July 1996, a little over a year before the final release. It contains several early design and planning documents, a compiled build with a primitive model of the island, and roughly half of the codebase at the time. Sadly, the codebase is too incomplete to make a full build of the game, however some in-house tools can be built (e.g. CONVERT and VIEWER).

== Source Code ==

The code, despite being fairly comprehensive, is missing the <code>OMNI</code> folder, i.e. the entire base engine for the game. This probably constituted roughly 50% of the codebase and without it, much of the necessary code for the game is missing.

== MAIN.EXE ==
{{Main article|MAIN.EXE}}

The build included is the earliest known version of the main game executable.

== CONVERT ==

CONVERT.EXE is an in-house tool whose complete source code is contained in the repository. It builds to a tool that converts 3DS models exported from ''3D Studio MAX'' to a proprietary .mod format packed into [[SI files]] and [[WORLD.WDB]].

== VIEWER ==

VIEWER.EXE is an in-house tool whose complete source code is contained in the repository. It builds to a tool that views the game's proprietary .mod 3D model format.

== External Links ==
* [https://archive.org/details/LEGOIsland-source-June1996 Download from Internet Archive]

Wes Jenkins

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{{Stub}}

[[Wes Jenkins]] was the creative director, designer, writer, and co-creator of ''[[LEGO Island]]''.

The Making of LEGO Island

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''[[The Making of LEGO Island]]'' is an incomplete memoir written by [[Wes Jenkins]].

The memoir details some of the early creation of ''[[LEGO Island]]'', particularly the conception and pitching of the game to [[LEGO]]'s U.S. executives in 1995, as well as an opening chapter recounting LEGO's "Childhood Experience", an internal exhibit designed to evoke the feeling of growing up to new LEGO recruits.

The memoir was never finished before Jenkins' death in 2017, and cuts off shortly before the team travelled to London to pitch LEGO's Denmark executives. The text contains evidence of being a first draft, such as occasional spelling and grammar errors, repetition, and awkward phrasing. These errors remain uncorrected in this reproduction.

== The Making of LEGO Island - Wes Jenkins ==

'''Lego Island''' is a CD designed as a toy with gaming features. It was conceived in 1995 and was released in 1997. It sold over seven million copies, in twenty one countries, and seven languages. It was the first globally-marketed video game in the 100 year history of one of the most recognized brands in the world.

This is a tribute in honor of the team that made it possible. This is the behind the scenes story of the humor, pitfalls and rewards of the '''Making of Lego Island'''.

=== CHAPTER ONE - They Call Me Ishmael ===

Papa Brickolini had just served his first real pizza after years of making plastic ones. '''LEGO Land''' in Carlsbad, California opened a pizzeria in his name. He was one of my first children or at least that's how I saw him when I first saw the restaurant. I felt a certain sense of parental pride. After all, my chiid had become a success serving real pizza to real people. There I was, a 40 year old child with a beard, worn out from several years of late nights and early mornings, trying to hold back a tear or two while standing in the middle of a crowd of hyper-active, excited 6 year olds ignoring their parents' plea to slow down. It was the end of a very long journey. It began in 1995. It was 1997.

I was the Creative Director, writer, and designer of LEGO Island. A year after release, I was subsequently hired by Lego International Media and was asked to develop the Computer
Games Learning Range Division. I was sent over to Denmark with a group of my new colleagues of European Newbies. We were all in for an adventure in the small town of Billund in Denmark. It is an all Lego town. It's miles of buildings that serve every function that a global toy empire needs complete with rouge pheasants and a time delayed sun. The downtown area, similar to the Disneyland Main Street, has shops and restaurants for the residents, visitors, and employees of this well-loved corporation. It is possibly the only employee- friendly corporation in the world. Certainly, the only one I've ever seen. Despite a tad ethnocentric, Denmark itself seems to be a citizen-friendly country from health services to unemployment benefits. I have heard though that this magical town does have a contagious case of Cabin Fever however. There is a nearby airport that is affectionately known as The Worm-Hole and this is where all us new kids arrived late at night. We sat in the Lego hotel bar and talked about things that people talk about after one too many drinks.

The next morning, we were given a tour around the facilities. One of the buildings is an expansive well-presented warehouse with a gallery of innovative Lego art from fine artists. Paintings, sculptures made of Legos and a museum of century old boxes and toys by the original toy inventors, ancestors of the present day owners.

After a really cool tour of the place, It was announced that we would take part in an exclusive, employee only experience: '''The Childhood Experience'''. It is brilliantly designed to Lego-tize or to familiarize the new employees into their 100 year tradition. In the corner of this large warehouse stands a little house, a little white cottage. We gathered around as our hostess explained. We were instructed to go over one at a time to the entrance of this small house and put on a white jump suit and white booties that hung on the front door. Since my last name always begins with a "J", I am always in the middle of any kind of alphabetical order. The A to H people went in one at a time for half hour intervals. The rest of us sat on nearby benches and discussed what possibly could be going on. We watched as one person at a time would walk over and sit back down after their time in the house. They would have these glazed-over stares as if they have just been given a drug or some electrode head gear. They just sat back down. After an odd moment of silence each would say "wow" and "you'll see". My turn was next but I wasn't sure I wanted to become a zombie pod-person. Still, I slowly walked over and put on the requisite outfit. On the wall was a clock running backwards. It made me grin to the Lewis Carol homage. The outside entrance had a pleasing white and yellow-ochre "homey" feel. I felt comfortable. I wasn't sure whether I should simply walk in, knock, or I wait for a go-ahead signal. I stand there in my white costume as I reconsider the options. I decided to just walk in. I am a groan-up after all.

The front door led to a tunnel thich led to a little darkened room. It was suggested by the ambiance that I should just sit down because, at the moment, there didn't appear to be a door anywhere anyway. There appeared to be a somewhat obvious place to sit so I assumed that I should sit and wait. Maybe, like Disneyland, this is the waiting room before the little monorail cars stop and load me on. I anticipated that some kind of disinfectant would start spraying because we must be wearing these HAZMAT outfits for a reason. After a few minutes, I stopped worrying about it. I started appreciated that the floor was covered with waist high ping- pong balls which was rather comfy to sit on so I had no complaint just anticipation of what's going to happen next.

A heart beat rhythm began and the walls started to undulate slightly. When my eyes started to adjust to the dimly lit room, I noticed an opening in the ceiling with some string attached which looked like... hair? Not that I'm particularly slow on the uptake but I finally got that this was a simulation of the womb. Ha! An odd of way of starting anything well, I mean not everything, obviously. Suddenly, a theater- in-the-round began. Small video screens popped up around the ceiling of the room with footage of various scenes of life from play to war. Sound effects and voices started. They were indistinguishable other than they did convey the emotional quality of the scenes shown in this theater-in-the-round. Suddenly some footage of doctors and nurses appear on the ceiling. They are looking studious, pocking around and staring straight down at me. It made me giggle. This is just too silly. The ping pong ball room suddenly increases in its undulation. I had to grin, a bit more. It seemed a bit silly but still it's pretty cool.

Either the room rotated or I did but suddenly a door appeared. It was small door though so I had to kind of squat to get in. Although I know about Great Danes I thought maybe a lot of Danes aren't all that great and are actually small so the door might be the right size. At the entrance to this new room, an oversized mechanical hand descended holding candy in the palm. I took one and grinned. I took one, of course, and thought that was pretty funny. It was wrapped hard candy and not really Danish-like which normally is staggeringly good. The floor in the room was all tilted at random angles. Each black or white tile was tilted in such a way as to prevent me from walking standing up in a straight line. My options were to stagger drunkenly about the room or crawl. I opted for crawling. Randomly placed throughout the room were these tall, very tall, mannequin legs that gave the illusion they had disappeared at the top. Some kind of fog covered the ceiling. The legs were all clothed differently: young women, old women, old men, and young men. When, which invariably happened, I bumped into one of the legs a waft of perfume, or cigar smoke scented the room. I crawled around for a while amused by this engagingly surreal room. There was some unfamiliar soft chatter background sound. It was a comforting sound though with some soft laughter. At the far end of the room, after maneuvering my way through, an oversized mechanical hand and arm came down and blocked the exit. I simply crawled under it but I wondered if I violated some protocol. in fact, I wondered if I was being monitored now with hidden video cameras to check my reaction to things. Am I being scored or timed on how long I stay in this room? Too late now, I guess since I crawled under the arm into this new room. It was a dimly lit muted blue empty room but there was a rope ladder leading up to a room with a light. I paused wondering if I was back stage or in a "no visitors beyond this point" sign. There were no doors other the one I just came through so I shrugged my shoulders and decided to climb the ladder and into this window. Maybe that's what I'm supposed to do. If not, it would be fun to do. If I wandered back stage somehow that's kind of cool. The window turned out to be a window to the kitchen. It was a kitchen but a strangely bizarre kitchen. The faucets were big dripping noses. Oversized pots and pans hung from the walls. The ambient light was warm and inviting. I continued to notice that I'm starting to trigger a memory of being an infant. I was exploring and everything was new, a challenge, and it was fun and I was a tad apprehensive. In brief retrospect, the inability to walk and be somewhat ignored by those big legs was surprisingly fun. I felt like I just entered a new unfamiliar world which, obviously, I had but there was this sense of curiosity. What's around the next corner and in the next door? Now I'm beginning to think if I should have taken some of that candy or was that stranger danger? It couldn't have been. I just came in the room and assumed that's what I should do. Again, I couldn't help but wonder if I was doing this right. Now I'm in this odd oversized kitchen. Can I touch these oversized nose faucets just to see what they're made of? I couldn't stop smiling. In fact, I was anxious to see what the next room was. I didn't touch the nose. I simply have to stop wondering about this "Am I doing the right thing". It's interrupting the joy of this place.

The next area was a very shallow stream hallway with stepping- stones placed at a child's pace. They were painted individually in primary colors. Each step made interesting sound effects when I stepped on them. I just had to walk back and forth and hop from one to another. Some noises were melodic, others not so, and others were even a bit disturbing. I stepped back and forth trying to make a song like in that movie "Big" with Tom Hanks. I couldn't help but try and play a little tune. I'm not a musician so it was just fun making the sounds. After amusing myself for a while, I decided it was time to move on. Although I probably could play here for hours, I wanted to see what was next. This path led to a larger room with all kinds of lights and arcade-like games. The games seemed to have no purpose as I instinctively hit some buttons and watched the effects which were engaging with flashing lights with beeping and swirling sounds. Colors flashed and ball bearings moved around. Push any button and something seemingly random happens but then it snuck in again; this interruptive sense that I might be doing this wrong. I tried to figure out if there was a pattern that I should follow or is a real game. Then I though, does it matter? I accepted that it didn't so I just started hitting buttons and watched as they blinked away. Sufficiently amused, I moved on. The next room was a big living room with oversized chairs. It was a very comfortable living room with a fine Victorian edge, like someone's Grandma's house. As I looked around, a phone rings. I had to laugh again but thought maybe that's a "times up" call so I answer it. Answering it only makes sense after all. The voice on the other end was either talking a made up language or perhaps it was even Danish. Danish to me sounds almost like a David Lynch Movie where everything sounds backwards in English. I hung up after the voice finished, of course. Who knows they could be asking for my imaginary parents. At that exact moment when I hung up, letters came shooting through the mail slot on the door. Again, I had to laugh. It seems like I've been laughing a lot. The envelopes sliding in all had squiggle lines on them. I didn't open them. I didn't want to take a chance but in retrospect maybe I should have or at least take one as a souvenir. Of course, I knew better then. I left them on the table and walked down a hallway. At the end of the hall were two signs. One sign read "Boys", pointing one way and the other read "Girls", pointing in the other. Well, I really like girls so I turned in that direction. After a step or two, I realized that's probably not what this means. I wondered if I was re-experiencing my childhood and I just entered puberty. I wanted to see the girls. After coming to my senses, I headed for where it said "Boys" and it led to a boy's bedroom. It was a hide-away room, an ideal kid's room with a guitar in the corner and all of the stuff that little boy's dreams are made of. It was cool just looking around. A homework table, a cool bed, toys around. Of course some Lego bricks and some sporting equipment like a soccer ball. I'm sorry I mean ''football'' over here. I sat on the bed for a while and remembered what being a kid in his sanctuary was like. I finally noticed a little peep-hole in the side wall. It spied in on the girl's bedroom. Well, I'll be. What a genius idea. I'm sure it was simply designed as an ability to see what the girl's bedroom looked like and not for any nefarious purposes, although that too would be a boy's dream. I then opened the door and stepped on a slide. It slid me to the outside of the house. I grinned like a 13 year old. It felt like I had just revisited my childhood from birth to about 13 years old. It actually felt that way. It was a very refreshing feeling. In fact, it was inspiring and insightful of the experiences of a child.

It was now someone with the letter K in their last name to enter The Childhood Experience. I walked over with the same zombie-like stare as those who had previously entered and with the same big smile that wasn't going to go away that easily. There was a select few of us who now "know". Eventually we've all been there. Eventually we all briefly went back to our childhood. Later that evening we hung out at the bar in the hotel (Lego Hotel) where life sized Lego characters stood around. Paintings with Lego themes hung on the walls. Beautiful Danish waitresses that hadn't a clue what American money looked likes. I purchased a pack of "Prince", the local cigarettes, ordered a beer and we all started comparing notes. We were all inspired. One guy thought that it would be pretty cool to do it being high. Most of us agreed just as a concept though. We all agreed that it would certainly interrupt the effect though. The same guy actually had an opportunity to go in again but of course, not on drugs. The topic was brought up whether you took the candy or not when the big hand dropped down at the beginning. Some of us suggested that they didn't take a piece because of "Stranger Danger". Some of us assumed that the big people must have known us. They had to be uncles or friends of the family.

Next day we attended a few informational meetings and met the amazingly talented people that build life sized models. Barrels and barrels, racks and racks of Lego bricks are all around the room. In addition, along the edge shelf along one of the rooms were samples of the application builds to join the team. They were given a minimal amount of bricks from normal size to those real small ones. They made little scenes with a few characters created with the small pieces and 1 or two standard pieces. Again, it was amazing. One of our collective favorite was a back alley scene with a hooker or two and well defined trash. Not that it was our favorite per say but it was a rather unique solution. The modelers, needless to say, were artists in the most complimentary of meaning. They were also possibly the nicest people one could ever meet. Come to think of it everybody at Lego was with a few exceptions ( I will discuss this later on with names changed to protect the not- so innocent.)

Next day we took a short flight from Denmark back to London. In the lobby of the Danish airport was a rack of schedules. The Danish word for "Speed" is "Fart". We all grabbed a handful of "Fart Schedules". I mean, wouldn't you? I still have a framed "Fart Schedule" hanging in my bathroom. Somebody asked if Americans think farts are funny. Apparently, body sounds are a universally funny to kids everywhere. It's another common denominator of childhood.

Once In London, I packed up and headed for home. What was consistent and slightly humorous was that every time I went back and forth to London, my wife would pack my luggage. On my return trip nothing would fit. She has that magic that only women have. Somehow my clothes got thicker or something. I often found myself having to purchase another cheap bag. The trick is, apparently as I've been told, is to roll up your clothes rather than just tossing them in. This is just a clue if any of the possible readers of this plan on any traveling.

On the plane back, I started reflecting on the amazingly good fortune of finding myself in this position. Not sitting upright but I mean the reality of how did this happen. How did I stumble into what I wanted to since I was a little kid. Did I actually "follow my heart" and I got there? I think I actually did although it happened almost blindly. It happened as a kind of a Forest Gump-like accidental adventure. Sipping a rum and coke in first class, I realized that I should enjoy this now. It probably won't last. Nothing does. Today was possibly the happiest day in my career. It was all because of the making of Lego Island. It was a three year curious challenge from pitching the concept in New York, Connecticut, England, and Denmark to the final release in California. I was lucky enough to work with and be friends with the some amazing and the nicest people I will ever meet. We were a family for a couple years while we did everything we could to make this the best brand specific product that technology and we could provide. It was an immensely dedicated effort. Our spouses even liked each other. We would have BBQ's at our producer's house, meet at a bar and grill across the street from work, and laugh a lot. We had one idea after another. "Yes" meeting they're called where every idea is a good idea. Eventually ends up if it's a good presentation and if it's possible to accomplish. If it isn't, can something like it be done and that's what a team is all about. I never belonged to one like that again.

In November of 2010, after all was said and done, I started getting emails from a few kids and some adults telling me how cool they thought LEGO Island was. Some people actually still play it. I was quite thrilled by these emails and actually quite honored. I proudly reminded myself that I actually designed it, wrote it and was the Creative Director over fifteen years ago when technology was at its aggressive infancy. As explained above, I sure didn't do that in a vacuum but in many ways I was a Creative Director. Everyone on the team were the designers and, in fact, so were the kids that we focus tested with.

In retrospect, I'm stunned. Despite the primitive pixels, limited memory, and polys of the 90's, the product is still around. The product still works and does what it was intended to do.

These Lego Island fans found me through the internet. Over the next few months, more emails came in and they started asking questions. "What's supposed to be behind the door in the
cave?" "Where did the ''Infomaniac'' come from?" "Is another LEGO Island coming out like the first one?"

After a few Email exchanges, they started sending me links to their blogs, their YouTube videos, and their homemade games with "borrowed" Island art and music assets. It felt strange seeing my characters in these other worlds like that. It felt like my children ran away or they were kidnapped. I realized, however, that it couldn't be any cooler. I'm proud that the story of Lego Island lives on and that the residents of the Island still inspire kids to have fun. I started reminiscing about the three year process it took. Although it was a great deal of fun, it didn't happen without the obstacles and the hooey of business. It made millions of profits for the companies involved and once it did, my team and I were thanked, fired and escorted out to pasture.

Towards the tail end of the product release, Mindscape hired a "Hatchet-man" to replace the existing CEO. A colleague brought in an article where the gentleman, the new CEO, had
performed his task of taking apart companies and selling the remaining assets. The article from a Midwest Community paper asked the question: Where is he now? He was here.

One project team of Mindscape after another was "Let-Go". The eventually observable sequence was the company was taken to a free movie day. We began to notice that the next day another team was fired. The Lego team thought that we were protected because the project was looking, feeling, and getting positive feedback from the client and it was, afterall, LEGO.

The day before release, Mindscape fired the whole team. In those days, the industry tradition was that the team responsible for the development of a product would receive a substantial bonus providing that they stayed on until the day of release. The bonus was based on the pro-forma estimate of how many products would be sold. Lego Island sold 7 million units. Normally at that time, a good sale was around 10,000 units to a high of 100,000 units. The bonuses would have been pretty substantial. Firing the team the day before was quite the money saving strategy. There was no worry about bonuses or salaries. They didn't have to pay anybody. It was a brilliant business strategy actually. The day before release was usually a celebratory event for the team. We were called into the conference assuming the administration would say job well done, you guys did an amazing job and here's a gold Oscar- like award and a week vacation in Hawaii. Instead, we were told that we're all fired. I don't think I've ever been in shock but I was that day. All I could do is look at my shoes at first in clear depression. I began to just stare at blank air but my eyes caught this one administrative gent. He was a recently hired. He smugly smiled. I felt duped. I felt mugged. What concerned me the most was that my friends, my fox-hole buddies were now without jobs after a few years of dedicated. and loyal service. I was also hurt, of course, and it actually hurt me more to tell the truth. I was out of a job and had no knowledge what was going on in the employment world. I was busy for a few years.

Later in that year, LEGO Island received a Best Kid Product of the Year Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, Number one product in Family PC, and an award from the Smithsonian for innovation. I even had an interview with the local paper in San Francisco and Marin, a phone interview with People Magazine and requests for interviews from various blogs but nobody except technical or people who are adept at predicting the future took this medium seriously. I was neither a technical expert or could predict the future. I was simply a kid at heart and knew how to play. I was busy so I didn't notice.

After about 6 months of being unemployed and sending out resumes (this was the day of letters rather than E-mail), I got an offer. It was in Seattle, WA. That, of course, meant we had to move away from the city my wife and I loved for 25 years: San Francisco. The interview went great and I was hired. When I started packing to show up, the company, Sierra Online, called and told me that they had hired someone else as the Creative Director even though they had hired me but if I wanted to be, I could be hired as the Director of Creative Services. I accepted the position. It was really too late to say no. The Job itself turned out to be a really ugly mistake and this is a story in itself. Nice people and great company, I'm sure. I just wasn't too familiar with people arguing all the time and nobody on the same team. I guess it works for some companies though. The point of mentioning it was because of my position there, I was sent down to Atlanta for the E3 conference (Entertainment Electronic Exposition). This was the start of one of the best things that happened to my career since- well, since 5<sup>th</sup> grade, I guess. It was one of those "when one door closes, another opens" expressions in process. At E3, I was approached by the aforementioned CEO of Mindscape who explained that firing everyone was just business and that the firing wasn't personal. "It was just good business." He smiled the sparkly smile that only a well-coiffed C.E.O. can give as he fires people. I ran into some of the administrative managers and they gave me a hug. They realized that the product put them on the map for a better sale of the company. The hugs were very nice. Later that day, At the E3 award ceremony, one of the V.P.s accepted the award for "Beat of the Show/Kid's Title". He was not the most gregarious fellow but he didn't have to be. He had good hair and good technical skills. At the award ceremony, he accepts it on behalf of the actual team. He said: "I'd like to thank the team that created this product but we fired them." I like a good joke too.

That weekend in Atlanta when companies display their new products in a circus extravaganza, Lego had a display diagonally from Sierra which was the company that I was misplaced in. What was surprisingly sad but at the same time shockingly thrilling was that on the Lego full sized screen was Lego Island. Circled around their display were shoulder to shoulder desk-top computers all with Lego Island installed. I decided to walk over and have an out-of-body experience. Every now and then, a person sitting staring at the monitor would ask a question to the person sitting next to them "Hey - how do I start this?"..."hey, what's that?" Obviously, having lived on the Island for years, I had to step in and explain the history and the secret spots on the Island. I simply abandoned my post at Sierra. No one noticed or even cared that I wasn't there. Their games were shoot 'em up games, fight the dragons, bomb the bad guys, and the increasingly popular First Person Shooter adventures. The winning difference between two products of the same genre is one has shinier objects, more weapons and grenades that can bounce in real physics. I didn't have much to say at the Sierra display. No one had many questions to ask- just pull the trigger and shoot anybody who pops up on screen. Interestingly enough, video games were developed for military training purposes. It seems to be working pretty well. Surprising how fast kids can learn. I'm more of fan of the "Play to Learn" mission of the Lego Army. I think of a Lego game more of an interactive experience and not so much as a game but a "Play to Learn" experience with the fun to make stuff up (and knock them down.)

At roughly the same time that we began production, Douglas Coupland wrote a charming fictitious story (''Microserfs'') about some imaginary developers working on an interactive product using LEGOs. He was unaware that in reality, someone actually was doing that. Today I decided to tell the real story. The truth is often more entertaining that fiction.

I was part of the non- fiction team of amazing people and artists of all disciplines. I had the honor of being the designer, writer, and Creative director doing everything I could day and night for three years until final release. Despite the fun and comradely of the creative process, it wasn't all a game...

Mindscape on paper looked like they were incredibly successful. The financial charts zoomed off the page. These misleading profits of Mindscape made them look like a pretty good company to buy. The trend at the time was to build up a software company to the point that you can sell it. These guys did a pretty good job at it. They were ready to sell. There was a trail of one company being sold to another: Broderbund, The Learning Company and etc. Allegedly, it eventually ended up with Mattel. The only catch was Mattel was now selling a LEGO product which complicatced the corporate books. Eventually, Mindscape dissolved into a distribution center with a surviving camp in France. I suppose it was a good time to sell off the company.

=== CHAPTER TWO - On Your Mark, Get Set... ===

In 1994, a handful of artists moved pixels around on what was, at the time, some pretty hot P.C's. It had Intel Pentium 1 processors, 75 MHz, 16 Mb RAM, and a CD ROM drive. I actually have no idea what that means really. I just googled what the hot PC of the 90's was. Apparently I had one.

I was on the art staff. Most of us were Techno-Amish at the time. We just knew how to draw. A few of us had previous computer experience but that was never the major qualification for an art department staff in those days. It was more important if you were an artist. We sat glued to our monitors in the Art Cave. The Art cave was a large dark room back in the day when software companies would put artists in a kind of internment camp where management would only approach with great caution. For several years we used primitive art and animation technology that was pretty similar to Grandma's needle point; one stitch at a time, one pixel at a time. We sat in eccentrically decorated cubicles. Strange contraptions from Archie McPhee's novelty store, plastic plants, and childhood toys filled most of our Levittown office neighborhood. There was a starting core tribe of 6 of us. We were a perfect sociological balance according to a theory of group dynamics. A pretty "free spirit" kind of woman, a quiet funny guy, a conservative woman, An excellent artist with a somewhat shady past, and the Art Director who was most charming with a slight hint of dizziness... oh, and me. The department slowly expanded but this was the starting core group. I was the last of the core group hired and I really wasn't too skilled at this new digital format (yet). Irreverent animations of established characters, jokes, and silly over-the neighbor's- cubical conversations were our culture. Artists at the time were the "necessary evil" for most programmers although often placated by some that we had a very important job. Most of the programmers seemed to anxiously be waiting for art-droids to be invented so they could minimize the social contact with some of us. They simply told the artists what to do but always followed it with "but you're the artist". My favorite follow up instructions were "make the colors pop." "you should decide but it should look something like this." In the beginning of video games, programmers designed the concept, the game and would often insert "programmer art" for us to follow. They would leave the production to the artists but really, you couldn't risk the artist to be in charge of anything important. Lord knows what they'd do. It was a cultural issue. Sarcasm was a common language. We could, of course, after loyal service rise to the position of "Art Lead." It was a noble title in lieu of a raise. I was an art lead for a project at the time for a presumably revolutionary product called the 20<sup>th</sup> Century Almanac. It was revolutionary for its time because it was a century of important dates that when selected would have historic videos and film. This was a great gregarious group of programmers and producer, a rarity in the biz.

Around this time, the administration was starting to notice that the industry was evolving. A specialized trend was taking place and there was industry talk of the "Hollywood Model." it seemed to us that the Hollywood Model meant that the directors are now going to start getting new cars, maybe enjoy cocaine, and have greater scandals. Maybe some did, besides it was just our in- joke but on the other hand maybe it wasn't. We didn't really know. We didn't really have many casual conversations with the administration at least I didn't but there was a lot of new cars in the parking lot popping up. The Hollywood Model did suggest, however, that maybe desighers should design, writers should write, and programmers should program. The downside now with this new Hollywood Model was that the Art Cave tribe may be replaced with project teams. Would the two cultures collide? We didn't know yet but we did know that Urban Renewal had just hit our small artist community. It was part of the Hollywood Model, after all, and the company had to keep pace with the industry in order to survive. The game was changing. Nothing fails like success and Mindscape was on the top of the heap for a while. They had to step up the pace. Suddenly a miraculous 3D program called 3D Studio entered the industry. It was a user-friendly (within reason) industry explosion. This was a small step for mankind but an awkward leap for artists. The company needed to get us trained on this system and get new high-profile clients to survive now. The administration decided to start pitching major corporations. Someone in the management back-room clandestine meeting suggested LEGO. Mark was the head of the newly formed Home and Kids division. He asked the guy in the cubicle next to mine, who had just transferred to the art as a former programmer, to make a 3D LEGO brick. Although he was a programmer he desperately wanted to enter this mysterious Druidic world of the artist because he thought it would mére fun than work. He soon discovered that it really wasn't. It's actually a job. He broke in this new technology of 3D software for us since he knew more than <Dir> and save in DOS. He made a rectangle with 6 little bumps on top and it could be moved around like magic! We were blown away. The rectangle just spun around in circles and eventually we just got bored watching it spin but we imagined the cool things that could be done with 3D capabilities. There were, however, 3D systems prior to this but they cost about a half a million dollars or more. I actually did have the pleasure of messing around with one when I had a prior job at stanford University. It was called a Bosch. The same company that makes thé spark plugs but we all assumed it was made by Hieronymus Bosch. It was the most difficult thing to use imaginable, at least for me. There was the Cray also which was legendary and could render things that belonged in science fiction movies. It was used mostly for medical training but it cost excessively more than a half a million. The cool thing about this new 3D system (3D Studio) was that it could be on an individual's PC at a somewhat reasonable price, at least affordable enough for companies to buy. You had to have a dongle though. I'm still not sure what that stands for although I recently heard it simply was the initials of the guy who invented it.

Our department programmer turned "artist" was testing out 3D Studio for us daily. He wasn't the most creative add-on to the computer though. The administration realized that they needed to put together an engaging kid-friendly way to build LEGO things on the computer but a junior Cad-Cam just wasn't it.

The next day Mark approached me with an assignment. Whether it was because I was the next cubicle over from the programmer/artist or else he noticed that I had just finished moving some pixels around for a Mario product or the programmers were too busy and I was available. I like to think because the bosses thought I was the right guy for the assignment. Perhaps they were impressed by my resume and knew that on the weekends I was writing and performing in a local comedy radio show that I put together with a bunch of my friends. It was more fun than funny but we did have it aired weekly. Whatever the reason, I was asked to come up with some ideas on how one could make this LEGO-build project a bit cooler than just a spinning brick. He explained that they were going to try and pitch LEGO as a possible client. I congratulated myself on the way home.

I never had LEGOS as a kid. I think they weren't really around in the states in the 50's, at least in the rural communities in upstate New York which is where as a little kid, I played with every known toy there was. I understood what they were though. We had American Building Blocks then. They were kind of like LEGOS but they would fall apart easily. I had great fun building walls and off-center houses and then knocking them down by throwing clothes pins at them. The war of animals against WWII and Civil War toy soldiers would take place in this tipsy village. It was really cool playing this with someone else because we would each have defensible positions on opposite sides of the room. We called it "Knock-Down Men." That was my gut reaction to playing with pieces that fit together. The ability to build something so you can knock it down was at least half the fun. Maybe that's what you can do with Legos. I'm looking forward to investigating further.

The day Mark assigned me to that speculative project was one of the coolest thing that had happened in my career in quite a while. Today I was allowed to come up with ideas. I felt that I was entering some secret Masonic order called Lego.

I was one of those "creative types" that liked or had to doodle since the first grade. I think I still am. I was never a programmer. I was never really friends with numbers. I think I'm still not. Being asked to have some ideas in this burgeoning video game industry is incredibly rare for someone who didn't even know how to spell C++. I originally wanted a career in Art because I always liked to make up stories and draw goofy drawings. It's what I did and my peers seemed to like them. It was my currency. What a cool opportunity to finally do that now and get paid well for it. Years of doing production for somebody else's ideas may have finally paid off. Now I have the chance to tell a story, a fun playful one. The idea could be like when I was kid playing. It often seems like the best ideas I ever had was when I was in elementary school and it simply took years to articulate those ideas to the adults- the groan-ups as I called them. I can make LEGO a real place and the user could be a LEGO character; a POV. Maybe I could even make a war between animals and Nazis like I did as a kid. Nah, probably not. Just building with the LEGOs on a computer did seem awfully silly to me though. Why would you want to do that on the computer? What, are your hands busted? That's what's cool about the actual Lego pieces. You can just move them around in real time as fast or as slow as you want to and you can invent anything you want with them and knock it down. It needs to have a way that you can only play on the computer not a duplication of what you can do without it.

How would one play with a LEGO on the computer? I thought about that day and night. I dreamt about it. Learning to play seemed counter-productive to playing. I thought that multimedia should use multi media. Not a very radical thought, granted, but it had to be something better than just clicking buttons. I was told that this product is from Denmark. I think that's why they weren't around when I was a kid. I heard that they were just too dang expensive and Denmark was further away in the 50's.

I was given a LEGO catalog showing some character and buildings so I sketched little rough- scenes which simply had a few LEGO guys walking around. One of the managers gave me a box of some of the Lego brocks with a little character, mini-fig. I learned later that that's what they call them: Bricks and mini figs. Quite frankly, I was kind of disappointed with the LEGO characters at first because I was used to playing with toy army men as a kid and they were a bit more anatomically correct than these hunks of hard plastic but maybe it's a Danish-thing. I only knew about Denmark because of Great Danes and breakfast treats so maybe these Lego characters were actually how they looked. I debated the pros and cons of this product as I was busily sketching out more LEGO guys walking down a street. It wasn't really a concept though. It was just an idea to play with them rather than build them. I drew some from eye level, their eye level walking through parks and in buildings. If we could do it in this fancy new 3D it would be extremely cool. It would be much cooler than the ol' standard animation program with pixels the size of your head. After a few of'what I thought were engaging sketches, The Dept. Director came over and he seemed to think we might be ready to at least talk with LEGO. He told his boss who told his boss and so on until I got a green flag of sorts. I was asked, well told actually, to attend a meeting with some of the senior groan-up staff. It was in the conference room and I thought this could be my chance to present myself as one smart guy with great potential as a hero of the company but I think I came across as one of those art people but a little more nervous. I started babbling on about what jobs I had prior to starting to work here, trying to impress the administration. I ended it with some seemingly Shakespearian line "I say this not as an introduction to me but rather to offer some credibility to my uh..." Then I just mumbled my way out of my self- promotional speech. Some guy sitting across from me gave me one of those looks that seemed to have said "what a dork" so I wisely sat and listened from that point on. At the end of the meeting, some guy with a knowing nod and a disarming smile introduced himself and wanted to know if I went to Stanford. I had in my mumbled blabber stated that I worked at Stanford. I wasn't a student there though. This guy went to both Stanford and UC Berkeley, historic rivals of each. I was impressed that he escaped without being shot at from either side. It turned out that he had a Ph.D. in child development. He actually made me feel like a real person and not so much as a fleshy function of a computer which most appreciated. He was the education expert in the building in some secret cave somewhere. He was going to the Toy fair held in New York City to talk with LEGO and I was asked to come along. Nothing was planned with Lego. We didn't have a formal sit down appointment with them as far as I knew. We were just going to try and talk to someone on the floor at a toy fair! I never heard of such a thing as a Toy Fair. It sounds pretty neat though. Incidentally, as a kid I use to say "neat" all of the time when something was cool. Anyway, The Toy Fair is traditionally held in New York City and "if we made it there, we could make it anywhere." - a night in a very plush hotel which is a definite perk of being sent someplace by a business it turns out. Breakfast was gourmet-ish but I discreetly threw up in a napkin because of my nerves. After breakfast we took a cab over to this event. I was blown away by all of the costumed cartoon and toy characters in the front of the building. The place was packed. We maneuvered our way through an enthusiastic crowd of the toy fans, agents, inventors, salesmen, and tourists. We began our expedition for our search of LEGO.

On the second floor, tucked in a corner was a tidy display shelf of pirate ships, little houses, and airplanes in bright primary colors. A contrasting neutral suit man with darting eyes and an apprehensive smile as though he was anticipating a restraining order or a hit man to show up stood nearby. Our educational expert of Mindscape, being the disarming gent as he is, approaches and appropriately introduces us. He explains that we're representing Mindscape from Novato, California. The guy in the suit brightened up and actually seemed interested. He was possibly relieved that we were adults or liked the word California, a lot of people do. He says his name is Chuck and explains that LEGO is not really in the business of making video games and a bunch of companies, hundreds, have already approached them and they have all proposed these building with LEGO programs on the computer. We sell bricks and these toys and he swings a Vanna White arm over the shelves. Paul (Note: I decided to use his name now) explains that we could actually increase the sales of the bricks with this product. He elaborates on "how one cannot replace the tactile experience of the actual brick. This is different. Our idea is more of a story, an interactive adventure." Paul introduces me as the artist and I do my awkward best to add a few nervous statements about enhancing the LEGO experience. Chuck seemed impressed and gives Paul the phone number of the guy at the Headquarters in Connecticut. He suggested we call and set up an appointment. We left on a really positive spirit with smiles that were difficult to knock down, Paul was pleased that we may have scored. I was pleased that I didn't act too much like a goon. We celebrated with a huge sandwich at the Carnegie Deli, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

When we got back to California I was asked to continue the best assignment that I've had in years: to come up with more precise, more immersive, fun ideas. This was an incredibly fun task because this is what I do and now I am free to do this and...get paid. I went to art school because I enjoyed, often to my detriment, making things up and drawing since I was a little kid or did I already say that? I know I did because I say it often. I think to rationalize why I didn't become a doctor, a lawyer, or a programmer. Actually, I spent my childhood doing this in addition to playing guns in the woods. I felt at the time that I was, at best, a mediocre illustrator; maybe enough to get a job though. I didn't have lessons. I just had the passion. I had to go to Art School after an obligatory Liberal Arts degree. I realized one rarely chooses what they are and I was an artist....Finally, after an obligatory two degrees with one at Art School, I was ready to enter the real world. I thought advertising or sdmeplace where I could be creative would be a perfect. It would satisfy my degrees in behavioral sciences and art. It would make me feel almost normal. The jobs I could get was just doing production (back when there was such a thing) and mostly for everybody else's ideas. I tried being a "wrist" which we called a job where one's brain isn't really required. It got to a point when I realized that if one really wants to work in the business of being creative than it's best to go into sales. They seem to have that job of having ideas and telling the art department what they and the client wanted. I didn't though. I hung in there.

I think I just lucked out. I couldn't quite figure out how I ended up in this Forest Gump-like opportunity right about the time I was ready to admit defeat. I was accepting the fact that I'm not really all that good. At best, maybe I'm an average artist but I decided that I should hang on for as long as I can. I'll wait until someone finds out that I'm really not that good and asks me to go home and grow up. At least, I'll have a good story when it's over but really it was just about to begin. I had an amazing almost accidental career start.

Now at Mindscape, the company and its commanders were quite encouraged that we (well, Paul actually) got an inside number to call. I assumed, because of my low self-esteem, thought that I'll be asked to go back to moving pixels around though and they'll take it from here. It was just the way the industry worked and that's the way the game artist's job was in 1995. Surprisingly, I was asked to work on the concept some more while they set up an appointment with the Connecticut offices. I eagerly started out by finding out what these Lego things look like. I started checking out what the Lego characters are capable of doing. I was still kind of stubbornly closed minded about it at first. They just weren't the kind of toy that I grew up with. I mean, they can't engage in any kind of war and you certainly can't chew on these and no way can you set them on fire as easily. These yellow faced plastic guys with happy faces on them can move their arms up and down, which is kind of cool but rather useless, really. You can take them apart and mix up the pieces though which is cool. It is designed for building things. I noticed that I spent an hour or so doing just that and was getting increasing engaged by a handful of bricks. Maybe they are kind of cool after all.

During this time, we moved into a newly constructed, personalized corporate Mindscape building. Not that it affected the project in any way but I did get a cooler cubicle and there were better vending machines available. It was a moral builder.

The race was on. The appointment was set. I had to make the next level of rough ideas to bring to Connecticut. I started expanding on a Lego world. I started sketching Lego cars, people, and the hustle bustle of a Lego town. No game play per say just a place to play around in the computer. Maybe you can walk around and meet some people and buy things or maybe build houses and knock them down. It was ready to go at least for a starting idea. Approved by upper management, I was asked to go to the Connecticut office and present concepts to the North American offices. Our Department of the newly formed "Home and Kids" Director, a rather gregarious V.P., the child development doctor, and me, an artist who finally gets to have ideas take the long flight from California to Connecticut. We got there pretty much in time to crash although I had to order room service and watch TV. The local news had a segment about the Connecticut State Troopers who had just won an award for the best uniforms in a national competition of sorts. On the way out in the morning as we took the elevator, a State trooper gets on the elevator on the next floor. Everyone but me looked down at their feet. I, on the other hand having seen the news, said "hey, nice uniform." He smiles back and said thanks. Everyone else with raised eyebrows looked at their shoes. When we got off the elevator, my colleagues were more than stunned that I had been so bold as to say that to a cop. Another notch in my "should we have brought him here?"

One the front lawn of the North American Lego headquarters was a rather large Lego model of the White House. It was very impressive. The lobby had an oversized Lego Brick about 4 feet high. That was also very cool. With the best confidence we could muster up, we walked into the conference room where several suited people sat somewhat stoically. Usually in most client meetings, the conversation starts with the "how are you's". One suit turned out to be rather cool despite the overwhelmingly corporate grandeur. He was relaxed because I found out later it was his last two or three weeks. He was changing jobs to Readers Digest. Today's meeting, he mentioned Rhinebeck, NY. My grandmother lived there and I use to spend a lot of summers at the Dutchess County Fair as a kid. We immediately bonded with talk of this pleasant town and the fair. The table lightened up a bit. I had few sketches with me but the majority of the conversation centered on previous and ongoing Mindscape projects, facilities, and the quality of the staff. The concept was accepted pretty well. It wasn't a how you build something in Lego on a computer screen. My colleagues at the time explained in managerial terms how this would not compete with their products but, in fact, would increase sales. It was quite an effective pitch. Everybody seemed pleased although I can't really tell with management sometimes. They're usually pretty good actors. The senior staff of Mindscape was quite convincing at this meeting. I would have even hired us to do the project providing we had a good programmer in charge. They seemed like they were very impressed. The meeting concluded with "We'll call you." This, to me, translates to "The check is in the mail." We did get the call, however, and it was a "Go". We were to meet the Lego group in England in 2-3 months. The senior staff was pumped because of the possibility of getting a Lego contract. I was asked to come along again! I was asked to continue working on a concept and roughs. This is getting really exicting. One the VP's involved was really an effective, efficiently grown-up but with a surprising addition of being a human. He was known as Greno. I was obviously thrilled because I get to continue to do what I really wanted to do and, in fact, simply had to do: tell stories and draw silly pictures but you already knew that. I eagerly started thinking of an approach. I decided that it might be cool, given the age it's really intended for, to leave it open like a toy: a toy with gaming features. The program shouldn't have any rules or a specific direction that you have to go to with fear of death. There's no end to the game. You should be able to go where ever you want to and come back. Building and knocking down stuff seemed important. What if you check into a hotel and you can just go into town or the woods and just meet people and- I don't know- do something. It should be a toy because kids just want to play and Lego seems to be about just messing around and making up things.

I enthusiastically spent night and day just thinking about Legos. I started sketching out little scenes and options. Here's how you can knock down things. Maybe a big foot kicks it over, or you can blow it up with a dynamite brick. Then I drew a guy checking into a hotel...No, wait- what if you're the Lego character so you're at eye level and you check into the hotel. Another one was a guy walking along a street with another guy approaches him on a street with part of building in the background. I took these sketches and finalized them with markers on vellum, mounting them on Foam core with the obligatory flap. This was a presentation that varnishes with a coating of credibility. Put a company sticker on the front of the cover sheet and it looks like it's real. In between doing this, I did have other tasks, of course, working on a Mario Deluxe project making little building of different countries which was actually fun. We had to go to the library and find out how different houses and villages looked in other countries. One of my fellow art cave neighbors showed me some cool rendering tricks in the now archaic software. I had fun drawing some cool buildings or at least I was happy with them. It also gave me the opportunity to keep thinking about Lego as well as I moved pixels around. The company started hiring more artists. A new kid in town was hired since the workload was increasing did a really cool couple character sketches. Several more artists joined the core team now. The new kid was pretty cool and really talented. He had a friend from the same art school he went to who was a pretty unassuming kid and then in came a rather peppy girl who was rather a "good- looker" as my Grandfather use to say back in the ol' days. Finally, a really good friend of mine from Art school got hired. I felt rather proud because I recommended him and really proud because he was the best illustrator I ever met. H's name was, or still is, Jim, We called him Jimpy because his E-mail name was Jim P. The guy was great. He still is, I assume. The art cave was expanding.

Sometime in between doing Mario Art, I received the news that we're going to London. I was thrilled and excited since I've never been overseas and there's a possibility we're in the finals and I made the team. I spent some of my summer college years exploring America when most people I knew in the 60's did the European backpacking thing. I did discover that we have actually about 50 countries in our country though.

I was really getting pretty excited that I'm being sent over to Europe. I was beginning to feel special but suspicious because I suspected that a programmer will take over sooner or later. I did know that, at least for now, this is an opportunity. I'm going to England! I did, of course, had to get a passport which was a bit of a wait in line for several hour but I felt like I was a world traveler, a global jet-setter. Consulting my Boy Scout Check List, I started packing days before departure.

A cool administrator ( a rarity ) named Greno, who was one of the two extremely technology, presentation, and charismatically savvy V.P.s, met me at the airport. We were meeting Paul and Mark at the gate.

=== CHAPTER THREE - Across the Pond ===

''Manuscript ends here''

== Gallery ==

''Coming soon...''

The Making of LEGO Island

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Endings

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While ''[[LEGO Island]]'' doesn't have a storyline per se, it does have one canonical mission in the form of [[Pepper Roni]]'s pizza delivery mission, the only mission that affects the island as a whole. This mission has two [[endings]].

== Good Ending ==

This ending plays if the Brickster is successfully caught.

{{YouTube|Erlb5d5FW9Y}}

A [https://archive.org/details/goodend_202407 raw RGB uncompressed render of this video] has been sourced from one of the original developers.

== Bad Ending ==

This ending plays if the player takes too long and the Brickster manages to destroy the entire island.

{{YouTube|fNSDo__LPQU}}

This ending was originally longer, showing more of the island destroyed and dismayed citizens. Supposedly this was intended to be humorous, but was cut down when testing showed it was too disturbing for children.

{{YouTube|iukQ5iWFhVY}}

== Outro (Unused) ==

This video most likely would have played upon exiting the game before the credits. It remains on the disc however it was never used.

{{YouTube|Mv-9-cHxU8k}}

Brickster

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The Brickster is a classic mustache-twirling cartoon villain, and the scourge of LEGO Island. He's also the only occupant of the one jail cell on the island, located right next to the police station. He used to be the [[Infomaniac]]'s friend, and he only started evil-doing when the [[Infomaniac]] wanted to make more friends. His name (obviously) is a pun on the terms "trickster" and "brick". As for his appearance, he's the same height as every other LEGO person on the island. He sports what the manual calls a "bad guy mask", a black-and-white striped prison shirt, black pants, a right white (presumably gloved) claw/hand, and a blue left claw/hand. His insidious plan is to take over the island, whilst also destroying most of the island's buildings and landmarks in the process.

...yeah, not exactly the brightest of plans. It's kinda difficult to rule over a place when there's barely anything left to rule ''over'', which The Brickster himself seems to realize [https://youtu.be/fNSDo__LPQU?t=7 during the bad ending of the game.]

Pepper Roni

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[[Pepper Roni]] is a playable character in ''[[LEGO Island]]''.

While ''LEGO Island'' allows and encourages playing as any one of five major characters, Pepper is the de facto protagonist of the game since the main "campaign" can only be triggered while playing as him.

Pepper is dyslexic, and the game contains numerous subtle references to him being unable to read or spell, most notably the "NO PIZZA" sign next to the jail reads "NO PIZAZ" when playing as him. Canonically, this is the reason Pepper is the only one capable of starting the campaign - he's the only one who is unable to read the sign.

Pepper is voiced by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Morris_(actor) John Morris], best known for playing Andy in the {{wikipedia|Toy Story}} series of films.

The Infomaniac

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[[The Infomaniac]] (shortened in the game files to '''INFOMAN''') is a non-playable character in ''[[LEGO Island]]''. He is arguably the most prominent and recognizable character in the game, appearing several times throughout as the main guide for the player. He is voiced by [[Patrick Hagan]].

== Conception ==

The Infomaniac was conceived by lead designer [[Wes Jenkins]].<ref>[https://archive.fo/U76rn An Interview with Wes Jenkins the Creative Director of LEGO Island]</ref> According to an interview with him, all of the game's main characters were based on {{wikipedia|Howard Gardner}}'s {{wikipedia|theory of multiple intelligences}}, and each character was designed to have definitive strengths that each player could potentially see themselves through. While Jenkins didn't intend it, it is a commonly believed the character bares a strong resemblance to him.

== Model Differences ==

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! [[NOCD.SI]] !! In-Game Screenshot
|-
| [[File:Yellowhands.png|alt=The Infomaniac as he appears in a FMV cutscene. His hands are colored yellow, matching his head.]] || [[File:Ss.png|alt=The Infomaniac is inside the Info Center. His hands are colored white, resembling gloves.]]
|}

The model used in the FMV cutscenes features clear differences from the in-game model. The Infomaniac's hands are different colors, his head and arms are proportioned differently, and his hat is aligned differently.

Curiously, the win cutscene model is much closer to the in-game model:

<center>[[File:Wininfomaniac.png|alt=The Infomaniac as he appears in the win cutscene. His hands are colored white. He is walking to the left.]]</center>

== References ==
<references />

DgVoodoo

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[[File:Dgpanel.png|thumb|right]]
[[dgVoodoo]] is a system library wrapper that reimplements various old graphics APIs in Direct3D 11 and 12. It is often used as a compatibility layer to improve compatibility of older software on newer versions of Windows. It is also used to extend the graphics of an application beyond their original capabilities (forcing higher resolutions, anti-aliasing, texture filtering, etc.)

== ''LEGO Island'' ==
[[LEGO Island]] was written for Windows 95 and DirectX 5.0 using APIs that are now over 20 years old. Over that time, both the Win32 and DirectX APIs have changed dramatically and, despite Microsoft's generally good track record on backwards compatibility, LEGO Island has suffered from various [[Compatibility_Issues|compatibility issues]] that have been gradually introduced over the years. dgVoodoo is commonly used to fix these issues by modernizing LEGO Island's now-antiquated function calls, as well as increasing its internal resolution for a more "high definition" image.

== External Links ==
* [http://www.dege.freeweb.hu/ dgVoodoo Official Website]

Glitches

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LEGO Island, while generally stable, contains various known glitches that have been discovered over its 20+ years of existence. A handful of these glitches were fixed in [[LEGO Island Versions|v1.1]] and therefore pertain only to v1.0, but the vast majority affect both. It is unlikely these will ever get officially fixed since the last official update to LEGO Island was v1.1 built on September 8, 1997.

Note that this list only includes glitches that are always apparent, and does not include the various [[Compatibility Issues|compatibility issues]] that have developed as Windows has seen updates.

== Very Minor ==

These glitches have no effect on the player experience and are usually just interesting quirks.

=== Music does not loop indefinitely ===
{{Main article|Interleaf File}}

'''Description:''' LEGO Island's sound infrastructure (using [[Interleaf files]]) does not appear to have a system for infinitely looping music. Music is instead set to a very high loop count (often 1,000 or 10,000) that would likely never be reached under any normal circumstance, but if the game is left running for long periods of time, it is not impossible to reach the limits of these loop counts at which point the music will stop until the room is reloaded.

'''Steps to recreate:''' The easiest way to trigger this is in the dune buggy building section (aka the Octan building). The music here is only 30 seconds long and loops 1,000 times, meaning it will stop looping after approximately 8.33 hours.

'''Inadvertent Usefulness:''' None, mostly just an interesting insight into the game's inner workings.

=== Vehicles can be made to drive themselves ===
'''Description:''' If you are driving a vehicle and exit it while moving (i.e. don't stop before leaving it), it will continue to drive at the same speed you left it at, auto-piloting itself around the island. It's not entirely clear why this is the case, but it's possible the vehicles are the same type of "entity" as the NPCs roaming around and that vehicle speed isn't automatically cleared when you leave it, causing it to roam around too at the speed you inadvertently set for it. If this is true, there are interesting implications for potentially driving and/or setting the speed of NPCs. Interestingly, the vehicles don't seem to move indefinitely (they don't slow down, but will eventually stop moving) so perhaps some background system on the island periodically tries to ensure vehicle movement is set to 0.

'''Steps to recreate:''' Drive any vehicle outside of a quest (e.g. jetski, skateboard, dunebuggy, or bicycle) and while still moving, click your LEGO hand to exit the vehicle without leaving the main island. You'll exit the vehicle, but the vehicle will keep moving, auto-steering itself around corners. The jetski will drive itself around the outside of the island on the water.

'''Inadvertent Usefulness:''' None, just a mildly fun novelty.

=== Texture error after exiting cutscene ===
[[File:Lego Island Broken Textures.png|250px|right|caption]]
'''Description:''' After exiting a cutscene, the ground textures' appear malformed for a short while. This remains the case, until the player exits the cutscene, or another cutscene begins. Other 3D and 2D textures remain unaffected. The cause of this is unknown, but could be a mapping issue, however this is unconfirmed. It also appears to only effect the dunebuggy mission.

'''Steps to recreate:''' This issue occurs during the dunebuggy mission after the recovery cutscene, but before the return to the garage. The textures will return to normal after arriving at the garage and leaving the dunebuggy.

'''Inadvertent Usefulness:''' None.

== Minor ==

These glitches can affect the player experience, but not in a particularly detrimental way or are not common enough to cause problems under normal circumstances.

=== Race glitch ===
'''Description:''' Races can be glitched by exploiting a bug in the jetski race. Leaving a jetski race just before the race starts appears to set a global variable that leads to interesting behavior if you then try to enter the racecar race or jetski race again:
* If you enter the racecar race in this state, you'll be able to move during the opening sequence (the other racers taunting you and the countdown). You can drive backwards all the way to the exit door (which is invisible as its checkpoint hasn't been reached yet - it can be triggered by driving into it) but you're prevented from going through it. You can also clip between the racers (similar to [[#Clipping past the roadblock|Clipping past the roadblock]]) to start the race early, but the game appears to detect this and jumps the other racers forward giving you no actual lead over them in the race.
* Upon re-entering the jetski race, it will start immediately after the transition (i.e. there will be no countdown where you're unable to move).

'''Steps to recreate:''' In the jetski race, leave the race just before the race actually starts (after the second horn sound). The timing for this is not particularly precise so it's not hard to do. If you've triggered the glitch correctly, you'll hear a boat engine sound very briefly during the transition exiting the race. The game is now in a glitched state and you can enter either the racecar or jetski race to experience either of the above. Entering a race will return the game to normal, the state is not persistent.

'''Inadvertent Usefulness:''' Little, if any. While it ''technically'' shortens race time allowing you to skip the intros of both races, the setup takes too long to be useful in a speedrun. Also, as mentioned earlier, it can't even be used to gain a lead over opponents in either race. There may be a setup where this glitch could help save a few seconds somewhere, but it hasn't been found and doesn't seem likely.

=== Clipping past the roadblock ===
'''Description:''' In some missions, the game intentionally tries to force you to take a longer route by placing a sudden roadblock on what would be the shorter route. In all cases, the colliders of the roadblock are imperfect and it is possible to maneuver through the gaps with little difficulty.

'''Steps to recreate:''' When a roadblock appears, there's a fairly wide gap in between some of the objects. Continue to walk into it, you may have to rapidly press left and right to shimmy though, but you'll eventually slide right through.

'''Inadvertent Usefulness:''' Very. This is a big time save for any speedrun or even casual playthrough, allowing you to get around some forced "difficulty" fairly easily.

== Major ==

These glitches are considered highly detrimental to the player experience, through their severity and/or ease of encountering.

=== Turn speed is locked to the frame rate ===
{{Main article|Turn Speed}}

'''Description:''' One of the more infamous issues plaguing LEGO Island, particularly in the modern era. The keyboard controls can become noticeably harder depending on how fast or slow your hardware is. Since the game turns a constant amount each frame, if the game is running too slow, the turning slows down with it, and vice versa for the game running too fast (which is the case for nearly all hardware today). On many systems, the turning makes the game almost unplayable, particularly for anything time-sensitive.

'''Steps to recreate:''' The turning was tuned for the average hardware of the era (1997). Playing LEGO Island on any hardware outside of that range will demonstate the problem.

'''Inadvertent Usefulness:''' None. This is one of the most irritating issues when playing LEGO Island, particularly on modern systems. So much so that [[LEGO Island Rebuilder]] contains a patch to address it.

=== Glitching and crashing when trying to exit the game ===

'''Description:''' When you try to exit LEGO Island normally, you're teleported to the Information Center, and an animation plays where the Infomaniac bounces into the center of the screen, two LEGO bricks appear, and you're asked to confirm that you want to exit (clicking a green brick to leave or a red brick to remain in-game). Starting with Windows Vista, this sequence has become extremely glitchy due to a bug in the main executable where an uninitialized variable gets passed to WndProc, a standard Win32 function, meaning that whatever was allocated to that memory address beforehand is now the value of the new variable. This means that the value is effectively random and causes major issues. Why this doesn’t happen on versions of Windows before Vista is currently unknown.

The Infomaniac's animation will flicker or jump erratically, and an intermittent buzzing sound will play. Frequently, the game will crash before the user can even select an option, resulting in lost progress since the game only saves when you click the green brick to confirm exiting. Whether the game crashes or not appears to be more or less random.

If the game doesn't crash, it's possible to get chunks of the Infomaniac's dialogue to loop indefinitely, even after moving to different rooms or to the island.

'''Steps to recreate:''' This is a very consistent bug on modern versions of Windows as well as Wine and is extremely easy to trigger. Chances are you've seen it happen already without even trying to cause it. Continuously clicking the door in the Information Center (or pressing Esc key) can make the glitch even more likely, or exacerbate it further.

'''Inadvertent Usefulness:''' The ease of triggering and exploiting this glitch has led to popular memes in the community, including [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulOQeC8p_GU "Are You Ready To Le?"] (a glitched loop of the Infomaniac's question "Are you ready to leave LEGO Island?").

Compatibility Issues

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[[LEGO Island]] was written in 1997 for Microsoft Windows 95. Since then, Windows has gone through several changes, many of which have inadvertently affected the aging LEGO Island code. This is a list of known '''compatibility issues''' running LEGO Island on modern versions of Windows.

== D3DRM.DLL from 2001 "flickers" when rendering ==

'''Affects:''' Windows 7 SP1?

'''Description:''' LEGO Island was written around an now-obsolete DirectX API called [[Direct3D Retained Mode]]. The d3drm.dll from 2001
sometimes flickers with a white screen on my machine and possibly others.
'''Solution:'''
Use the d3drm.dll provided on any LEGO Island disc (yes even the pre-alpha).

== D3DRM.DLL was not found ==

'''Affects:''' Windows Vista+

'''Description:''' LEGO Island was written around an now-obsolete DirectX API called [[Direct3D Retained Mode]]. It was seldom used and quietly dropped in Windows Vista.

<center>[[File:D3drm_error.PNG|alt=ISLE.EXE - System Error. The code execution cannot proceed because d3drm.dll was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix this problem.]]</center>

'''Solution:'''
* Restore Retained Mode manually using either of the following options:
** Acquire the file '''D3DRM.DLL''':
*** The official LEGO Island disc contains an installer for DirectX 5 including D3DRM.DLL. It can be found at <code><CD drive>:\redist\directx\d3drm.dll</code>.
*** Download the most recent version of D3DRM.DLL: [https://legoisland.org/download/d3drm.zip D3DRM.ZIP]. This build is newer than the one on disc (2001 as opposed to 1997) and has generally better compatibility with modern Windows (particularly when using dgVoodoo or if playing in Wine) as well as [https://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols/d3drm.pdb/3B7D82D31/d3drm.pdb debug symbols] that are extremely useful for modding.
** Copy '''D3DRM.DLL''' to either of the following locations:
*** The LEGO Island install directory (usually <code>C:\Program Files\LEGO Island</code> or <code>C:\Program Files (x86)\LEGO Island</code>)
*** The Windows system directory (usually <code>C:\Windows\system32</code>)

* Use a version of Windows older than Windows Vista.

== LEGO Island often crashes upon exit ==

'''Affects:''' Windows 7+ (earlier versions may be affected too)

'''Description:''' When trying to exit, the game may glitch up and crash. The cause of this is due to [[ISLE.EXE]] not initiallizing a variable before sending it to [[LEGO1.DLL]], although it is still unknown why older versions of Windows are not affected.

'''Solutions:'''
* Use an older version of Windows (95/98 are known to not suffer from this bug), either through a Virtual Machine (VM) or through an actual period accurate machine (if you have one at all).

== Save files don't actually save ==

'''Affects:''' Windows Vista+

'''Description:''' LEGO Island saves files into its install directory, which is <code>C:\Program Files\LEGO Island</code> by default. While it was not uncommon at the time to use the install directory for application data, it quickly became bad practice due to security risks. As of Windows Vista, administrator privileges are required to write files anywhere in <code>C:\Program Files</code>, which breaks LEGO Island's saving function.

'''Solutions:'''
* Run LEGO Island as administrator (right click > Run as Administrator)
* Use [[LEGO Island Rebuilder]], which has an option to redirect save data to `%APPDATA%` (the modern day standard location for application data)
* Re-install LEGO Island somewhere with full write access (i.e. not <code>C:\Program Files</code>)
* Manually redirect saves to a writable location in the registry ([[LEGO Island Versions|September build only]]):
** 32-bit: <code>HKLM\Software\Mindscape\LEGO Island\savepath</code>
** 64-bit: <code>HKLM\Software\WOW6432Node\Mindscape\LEGO Island\savepath</code>

== General instability, graphical glitches, driving scenes unplayable, etc. ==

'''Affects:''' Most recent versions of Windows

'''Description:''' LEGO Island was written around a very old version of DirectDraw, including a [[Direct3D Retained Mode|retained mode API]] (D3DRM) that is not only unsupported now, it's also been dropped from Windows/DirectX entirely. Many of its DirectDraw function calls are obsolete, deprecated and/or completely abandoned now. There is one specific case, on some XP computers (around the time of Vista-compatible stickers) AUTORUN.EXE, and ISLE.EXE are shown as non-compatible Win32 applications, and will refuse to run (has not been tested with Rebuilder, that might fix it).

<center>[[File:Screenshot (165).png]]</center>

'''Solutions:'''
* Change to one of the software modes (RGB Emulation, MMX Emulation, or - [[#Textures are heavily glitched|if using a version older than Windows 10 1809]] - Ramp Emulation) in the LEGO Island configuration. These use CPU/software rather than GPU/hardware (theoretically slower, but imperceptible on modern PCs), so hardware/DirectX API differences aren't so impactful.
* Use "Direct3D HAL" with [[dgVoodoo]] installed. dgVoodoo wraps several old DirectX API calls to modern DirectX 11 calls, fixing a huge amount of compatibility issues with modern software and hardware.

== Textures are heavily glitched ==

'''Affects:''' Windows 10 1809+ (October 2018 aka "October Update")

'''Description:''' When using "Ramp Emulation" mode, all 3D textures are heavily glitched. Bitmaps remain normal:

<center>[[File:Windows_10_1809_Ramp_Bug.png|alt=Inside the Information Center. The Infomaniac is centered on the screen and is showing glitched textures. His arms and face are notably distorted and appears as a noisy, static-like texture consisting mostly of yellow, green and black pixels. His legs and hands appear as gray, along with his hat which is momentarily being tossed above him. His shirt only appears discolored, being more yellow than usual. The two flowers sitting on the red railing are also distorted in the same way. The Information Center's background remains normal.]]</center>

This is a DirectX incompatibility introduced in Windows 10 1809. The exact cause is unclear.

'''Solutions:'''
* Use "RGB Emulation" or "MMX Emulation". These modes are unaffected.
* Use "Direct3D HAL" with [[dgVoodoo]] (full screen only). Direct3D HAL is unaffected in general, but it has its own [[#General instability, graphical glitches, driving scenes unplayable, etc.|compatibility issues]] on Windows 10+ without using [[dgVoodoo]].
* Use a version of Windows earlier than Windows 10 1809.

Turn Speed

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[[LEGO Island]]'s [[Turn Speed]] is one of its biggest issues regarding playability on modern computers.

== Background ==

Despite LEGO Island's maximum frame rate of ~91 FPS, at the time of its development, most computers could only reach fairly low frame rates while playing it (often around 10-20 FPS). Due to the relative unpredictability of user hardware, the game automatically adjusts the walking speed based on how long each frame takes to render, effectively keeping movement at a consistent speed regardless of the frame rate. However, due to a code oversight, this adjustment is not made to the turning speed, which infamously makes the player turn faster/slower depending on how high/low the frame rate is. Beyond ~30 FPS, the turn speed starts to becomes too fast to control accurately, and as computer performance has continued to increase, the game has become progressively harder to control. Nowadays, all modern computers can play LEGO Island at its maximum frame rate, significantly faster than computers of the era, and as such, significantly harder to control.

== Oversight ==

According to the game code, walking uses a "velocity" system so that players gradually accelerate to a target speed (maximum speed if using keyboard controls) and decelerate to a stop when controls are released. This system had "delta time" adjustment - adjusting by the time each frame took to render - built into it. It appears developers had initially intended to use this system with turning as well (i.e. turning would gradually accelerate/decelerate) but at some point chose to disable it and instead set the turn speed directly to the target speed with no acceleration/deceleration.

While not using velocity for turning makes a lot of sense (turning that accelerated/decelerated likely would have been unwieldy to play), they neglected to write any delta time adjustment into the new approach, locking the turn speed to the frame rate in the final release of the game.

== Response From Developers ==

An interview with lead programmer Dennis Goodrow reveals that this was a known issue that the developers had discovered shortly after release, once they were able to test on a computer fast enough to reveal the bug. The developers wrote a fix but it was never released since the discs had already shipped and [[Mindscape]] never made any attempt to publish it.<ref>[http://archive.is/aLwQn Information From The Lead Programmer of LEGO Island]</ref>

== Solutions ==

This bug can be patched with [[LEGO Island Rebuilder]] through a number of different approaches:

* '''Unhooking the turn speed''': Rebuilder contains a patch that implements delta time adjustment into the turning to fully address the issue (most likely what the unreleased official patch would have been)
* '''Reducing the frame rate''': Rebuilder can simply limit the frame rate for an "authentic" experience similar to computers of the era.
* '''Reducing the maximum turning speed''': Rebuilder can modify the maximum turning speed. This used to be the main solution to this issue but has been superceded by the unhooking patch. It can still be used in tandem with unhooking to adjust the speed to the user's liking.

== References ==
<references />

Windowed Mode

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''[[LEGO Island]]'' does not officially have a [[Windowed Mode]], however one can be enabled with the use of registry tweaks. The mode is somewhat limited, it seems the feature was either never completed or perhaps only intended for use during development. Regardless, the game is fully playable in it with only a few graphical compromises.

== Enabling ==

=== Automatic (LEGO Island Rebuilder) ===

[[LEGO Island Rebuilder]] allows you to modify the "Full Screen" setting on launch without requiring editing registry entries or adminstrator privileges:

<center>[[File:RebuilderScreenshot.png]]</center>

=== Manual (Registry Editing ===

To enable windowed mode through the registry, you'll need to edit the string value at <code>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Mindscape\LEGO Island\Full Screen</code> to <code>NO</code> using <code>regedit</code>.

On 64-bit systems, this key will be located at <code>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Mindscape\LEGO Island</code> instead.

Note that changing settings through [[CONFIG.EXE]] will always reset this value to <code>YES</code>, so you'll have to change it back again.

=== Limitations ===

While ''LEGO Island'' is fully playable in windowed mode, it requires some specific configuration to work properly:

==== Windowed in hardware mode ====

Ordinarily, if your graphics mode is set to "Direct3D HAL", ''LEGO Island'' will throw a "failed to startup" error. This is actually thrown when the <code>Flip Surfaces</code> setting is enabled, which [[CONFIG.EXE]] forces on when "Direct3D HAL" is selected. If you toggle <code>Flip Surfaces</code> off, either in the registry or with [[LEGO Island Rebuilder]], you will be able to run "Direct3D HAL" in windowed mode.

==== Missing bitmaps ====

''LEGO Island'' only supports 8-bit and 16-bit color modes, however most modern computers run in 32-bit color. The 3D can render here since it's handled by Direct3D, but the bitmaps are handled manually by the game, and since it doesn't support 32-bit they simply don't render.

This results in backgrounds becoming a solid blue color:

<center>[[File:MissingBitmaps.png]]</center>

===== Windows =====

Starting with Windows XP, applications can be individually set to run at a different bit depth. To do so, right click LEGO Island and click Properties in the context menu. Then switch to the "Compatibility" tab.

<center>[[File:ReducedColorMode.png]]</center>

Prior to Windows 8, the only available mode is "256 color" mode and your whole system will be temporarily set to this mode until the application quits. LEGO Island will run perfectly fine in 256 color mode, but you may see some color banding or other artifacts.

From Windows 8 onwards, 16-bit mode is also available providing much more color and the mode is only set for the application rather than the whole system. This is strongly recommended for playing LEGO Island windowed.

Alternatively, you can manually set the bit depth yourself to 16-bit in Display properties (pre-Vista) or Screen Resolution (post-Vista).

===== Wine (Linux/Mac) =====

The same limitations on Direct3D HAL/Flip Surfaces above apply here.

Wine does not have Windows' 8-bit/16-bit color compatibility mode, nor do their host operating systems Linux and macOS. This makes it difficult to address the missing bitmap/blue background issue.

Instead, it can be better to set the game to run in full screen, and then enable Wine's "Emulate Virtual Desktop" feature. This will force any full screen game into a window, but also limits anything else you do in that Wine prefix to that window. There are also known graphical glitches that appear for unknown reasons in this mode, though they are not critical enough to be game-breaking.

For a more ideal solution, it's recommended to look into [[#dgVoodoo|dgVoodoo]] to force LEGO Island into a window (see below). You may also need to install [https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk DXVK] for the game to render correctly.

== dgVoodoo ==

Alternatively, [[dgVoodoo]] can force windowed mode if ''LEGO Island'' is set to "Direct3D HAL" with full screen '''enabled'''. This works on both Windows and Wine and is in many ways superior to the game's built-in windowed mode. It has no limitations on 32-bit color mode and allows (read: requires) hardware mode.

The following images show a dgVoodoo configuration that will force ''LEGO Island'' into a windowed mode:

<center>
<gallery>
File:Dgvwin1.png
File:Dgvwin2.png
</gallery>
</center>

== External Links ==
* [http://www.dege.freeweb.hu/ dgVoodoo Official Website]
* [https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk DXVK GitHub]

Getting Started

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Setting up [[LEGO Island]] is generally straightforward on PCs of its era, however some extra effort and considerations are sometimes required depending on how modern your system is.

== Installing ==

=== Standard ===
The stock installer located at <code>\INSTALL.EXE</code> should run fine on any version of Windows (ignore <code>\SETUP.EXE</code> as it's a 16-bit application that won't run on any 64-bit version of Windows). This will provide a fairly standard install of LEGO Island authentic to the era, with the obvious caveat that it doesn't take into account some extra steps required on modern versions of Windows:

==== D3DRM.DLL ====
{{Main article|Direct3D Retained Mode}}

From Vista onwards, [[Direct3D Retained Mode|D3DRM.DLL]] - a DLL required to run LEGO Island - was removed from Windows itself and has to be manually restored. While the DLL is on the LEGO Island CD (located at <code>\redist\directx\d3drm.dll</code>), it's recommended to use a [[Direct3D_Retained_Mode#Downloads|newer version that was released with Windows XP]] for better compatibility. You'll want to place D3DRM.DLL into LEGO Island's install folder (usually <code>C:\Program Files (x86)\LEGO Island</code>).

==== No-CD Patch ====
{{Main article|NOCD.SI}}

If you want LEGO Island to run without a CD, it's as simple as copying the <code>\Lego</code> folder from the CD to LEGO Island's install folder (usually <code>C:\Program Files (x86)\LEGO Island</code>). You'll want to merge with the <code>LEGO</code> folder that already exists and don't worry about replacing the file <code>NOCD.SI</code> (it's the same file so skipping or replacing it makes no difference).

=== Japanese Version ===
For unknown reasons, the Japanese LEGO Island installer features a version check that fails if the version of Windows you're using is not 4.x (e.g. 95, 98, or Me). This means the installer will fail on any Windows version newer (starting with Windows 2000). As such, for this version you should probably use the [[Getting_Started#Alternative_Installer|LEGO Island Alternative Installer]].

=== Alternative Installer ===
A community alternative installer exists to make up for the shortcomings of the stock installer. It will automatically copy D3DRM.DLL from the CD as well as the LEGO folder if you select a "Full" install. This is generally a much easier and more fool-proof option than the stock installer.

[https://github.com/le717/Island-Alternate-Installer Download on Github]

== Playing LEGO Island ==

=== Persistent save data ===
{{Main article|Compatibility Issues}}

LEGO Island stores its save data in its program folder, which in modern software is a big no-no due to inherent security risks involved. From Windows Vista, access to the Program Files folder was restricted to administrator access only, preventing LEGO Island from saving game data. The solutions are generally as follows:

* Using [[LEGO Island Rebuilder]]. Rebuilder functions as a launcher that automatically redirects save data to a safe location so that administrator privileges are not required. This is the simplest and most recommended solution.
* Run LEGO Island as administrator. Relatively simple by right clicking LEGO Island and selecting "Run as Administrator" or opening "Properties", navigating to the "Compatibility" and selecting "Run as Administrator" so that the game is always run as administrator.
* Re-installing LEGO Island to a non-restricted location. Often this is a second drive on your PC or somewhere in your home folder. This will work, but may get complicated depending on where you choose to install it.

=== Turn speed ===
{{Main article|Turn Speed}}

LEGO Island infamously ties the turn speed to the frame rate, meaning the much faster computers of the day heavily impact the game's controls and playability. It's recommended to use [[LEGO Island Rebuilder]] which has parameters for separating the turn speed from the frame rate as well as changing the turn and walk speeds in general.

=== "To configure LEGO Island" doesn't save ===
This issue is similar to the save data not saving correctly but a slightly different presentation. In this scenario, the data is not being saved to the game's program folder, but rather the registry's <code>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE</code> hive - another section of Windows that has become more restricted in over time due to inherent security risks.

For some reason, running <code>CONFIG.EXE</code> as administrator doesn't seem to address this issue. It seems the only way to make it save configuration data is to set its compatibility mode to "Windows 95" (right click > Properties > Compatibility tab).

=== General graphical glitches ===
{{Main article|Compatibility Issues}}

LEGO Island relies on various dated DirectX APIs that have seen numerous changes over the decades since its release. As such, using Direct3D HAL can result in various graphical glitches and crashes that impact the game's playability. To address this, it's recommended to either use a software mode instead ("Ramp Emulation", "RGB Emulation", or "MMX Emulation") as those are CPU-based and have therefore been largely unaffected by the changes to the Direct3D API, '''or''' to use [[dgVoodoo]] which translates LEGO Island's outdated DirectX 5 calls to modern DirectX 11 calls. This has the advantage of allowing other graphical tweaks too, such as increasing the resolution, adding anti-aliasing, overriding texture filtering, windowed mode, and more.

=== High-definition Patch ===
{{Main article|dgVoodoo}}

LEGO Island was only ever designed to run at 640x480 which was relatively standard at the time. Given the much larger variety of resolution available today, it may be desirable to run the game at a higher resolution. Currently, the best way to do this is with [[dgVoodoo]], which allows users to override the resolution to one of their choosing. Note that this is unfortunately '''not''' a true widescreen patch, the game will still have a 4:3 aspect ratio that will get stretched to whatever resolution you choose. As such, it's recommended to use a 4:3 resolution to maintain LEGO Island's native aspect ratio (e.g. 1440x1080 instead of 1920x1080). Currently [[LEGO Island Rebuilder]] is working on a true widescreen patch to address this issue.

== Running on Linux/Mac through Wine ==

''LEGO Island'' is nearly perfectly playable through [https://winehq.org/ Wine], however some extra steps are required to make it work correctly.

=== Installation ===

Installation should be more or less the same as above - the default installer should run fine, or you can use the "Alternative Installer".

=== D3DRM.DLL ===

Wine, unlike modern versions of Windows, does contain an implementation of D3DRM.DLL. However, it is largely incomplete and will cause the game to crash on startup. As such, you will need to manually replace it with a real copy. The easiest way to do this is to install [https://github.com/Winetricks/winetricks Winetricks] and run the following command: <code>winetricks d3drm</code>

Even though the alternative installer does install D3DRM.DLL, Wine will continue to use its "builtin" version unless told otherwise. The above Winetricks script will do this automatically, however if you'd prefer to do it manually, you can also add a manual override in <code>winecfg</code> after the DLL has been placed in a valid location.

=== Graphics Modes ===

On vanilla Wine, different graphics modes will appear in [[CONFIG.EXE]]. Wine doesn't implement the Ramp/RGB/MMX software modes, instead only implementing one software mode called "Direct3D HEL" (hardware emulation layer).

Currently, unlike modern Windows, hardware mode - aka "Direct3D HAL" (hardware abstraction layer) - appears to work better in Wine than "Direct3D HEL". Currently "HEL" appears to render only a black screen.

=== Windowed Mode ===

{{Main article|Windowed_Mode#Wine_.28Linux.2FMac.29}}

Windowed mode in Wine has various challenges. These are detailed more in detail on the [[Windowed_Mode#Wine_.28Linux.2FMac.29|windowed mode]] article. It's generally recommended to bypass the game's built-in windowed mode entirely and instead use [[dgVoodoo]] to force windowed mode.

=== Clicking 3D objects doesn't work or crashes ===

''LEGO Island'' makes use of an obscure old DirectDraw function called "Pick" which is not implemented in Wine. It is, however, implemented in [[dgVoodoo]], and it's recommended to use it for a complete experience.

== See also ==
* [[Compatibility Issues]]
* [[Direct3D Retained Mode]]
* [[dgVoodoo]]

Talk:LEGO Island Rebuilder

2026-03-05T18:59:56Z

PawPatroler (2025): PawPatroler (2025) moved page Talk:LEGO Island Rebuilder to Talk:LEGO bricks wash up on an Island by a Rebuilderwho was trying to fix his house

LEGO Island Rebuilder

2026-03-05T18:59:56Z

PawPatroler (2025): PawPatroler (2025) moved page LEGO Island Rebuilder to LEGO bricks wash up on an Island by a Rebuilderwho was trying to fix his house

[[LEGO Island Rebuilder]] is a [[LEGO Island]] modification tool and the flagship project of this wiki. The documentation on this wiki can be seen primarily a side-effect of developing it.

<center>[[File:LEGO_Island_Rebuilder.png|alt=A window showing the interface for LEGO Island Rebuilder.]]</center>

<center>[[File:Become a patron button.png|link=https://www.patreon.com/mattkc|alt=Become a patron]]</center>

==Features==
* Makes modifications without altering files permanently.
* Adjust turning speed for better maneuverability on modern PCs.
* Run LEGO Island in windowed mode without needing administrator privileges and editing the registry.
* Redirect LEGO Island's save data to %APPDATA% so it can save games without needing administrator privileges.
* Keep LEGO Island active even when it's unfocused (windowed mode only)
* Extract and/or replace music (which is currently only available in the old .NET Framework-based version)
* Change/uncap FPS limit
* Adjust field of view

==Upcoming Features==
The following features are currently being researched for inclusion in LEGO Island Rebuilder:
* Native high resolution

==System Requirements==
LEGO Island Rebuilder is extremely lightweight and will run on any computer that can run LEGO Island that has Windows 95+ installed.

==Downloads==
* [https://github.com/itsmattkc/LEGOIslandRebuilder/releases/download/continuous/Rebuilder.exe Download LEGO Island Rebuilder]
* [https://github.com/itsmattkc/LEGOIslandRebuilder LEGO Island Rebuilder on GitHub]