jamesster

By the way, this may be of interest to y'all - LEGO is still updating and releasing their parts library via Unity packages. The most recent update was less than 2 weeks ago, and there's lots of new parts that could be ported to LDD: Someone I know even found unreleased/unproduced parts from canceled Vidiyo sets in there.

This video was just released today, here's the raw slides: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1028885/What-10-Years-of-Package Of interest here, there's a part of the talk where he shows a public collection of LEGO packages for Unity. This includes some animated LEGO animals/critters, more animated minifig and minidoll samples, and what appears to be a newer or different(?) version of the model importer - I'm not completely sure, but a cursory glance with a file comparison program is showing plenty of models for bricks that I didn't have in my older copy from the microgame. Definitely worth looking into to confirm/deny. Edit - make sure you're on a recent version of Unity to ensure you're getting the most up to date versions of the packages as possible. Latest version of the LEGO Model Importer as of now is 0.10.1, from April 11, not even a couple weeks ago. DEFINITELY has new parts.

Hello all! Me and my partner recently got our hands on a whole bunch of LEGO dealer catalogs. As far as I can tell, none of these particular catalogs have been scanned and put online before - in fact, barely any LEGO dealer catalogs at all have been. So, we've begun the slow process of scanning and uploading them for y'all to read. I think the plan is also to submit them to Brickset's catalog repository. Anyone else can feel free to reupload these scans too or otherwise do what they want; we don't mind. Being aimed at storeowners, rather than consumers, these tend to be a bit more dry than the usual catalogs, but often have information and pictures not seen elsewhere - like details on suggested set prices and wholesale case prices (some of which I think had been lost to time until now?), recommendations and pictures of how to set up aisles and displays, unique set descriptions, occasional pictures of prototype sets and video games, release schedules, and general promotional images/dioramas/etc sometimes not seen elsewhere. The exact formatting and what's included in a dealer catalog changed a lot over time, but there's usually at least something interesting in any of them. Scanning these will be a slow process, and we'll also need to get a bigger scanner to handle quite a few of them, so check back in. I'll update this post as we go. Oh, and there's also a lot of very cool print ads/comics/etc spanning many years I'm including in this post too. SCANNED: Print ads/comics, assorted years 1985 Large US Dacta - The LEGO Educational System - Bricklink entry 1995 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry Not scanned by us, but already available on Brickset and worth checking out: 1982 US Dealer Large - Bricklink entry TO BE SCANNED/UPLOADED: 1979 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry 1988 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry 1989 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry 1990 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry 1996 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry 1998 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry 2001 Dealer Catalog German - Bricklink entry 2002 Dealer Large - Bricklink entry (ours is French) 2003 Dealer US Large - Bricklink entry 2004 Dealer Large UK - Bricklink entry 2005 Dealer Large Canadian - Bricklink entry

Nice find! I'm putting out feelers in a few communities for someone who could make the purchase - I'm totally available to cover costs as well.

I'm a fan of software names that just say what they do - could get more specific with it perhaps, honestly even just LDD Brick Editor works fine IMO. I've heard people use the term anti-studs before. While I can't help with French/German, those terms are correct.

Another website, ObscureGamers, got their hands on a bunch of development material from Data Design Interactive/Artworld UK a while back - the company that did LEGO Rock Raiders, and also the pre-rendered cutscenes for many LEGO games, including Alpha Team. Not a whole lot of Alpha Team stuff was found in the lot, but they did find an early script for the intro animation, and some conversation between Digital Domain and Artworld. They're still sorting through the full lot - I've just been watching from the sidelines on Discord. I'm not sure if it'd be ok for me to post it here, since they haven't "officially" released it themselves yet, but Dirk Brick was a character that got cut entirely. The final game had you, the player, as the Alpha Team's chief. But in earlier WIPs of the story, Dirk Brick was apparently the leader of the team - there's even a specific part in a message from Digital Domain/LEGO to Artworld asking him to be cut from the intro FMV, where he appeared on the map screen sending Dash on his mission. I guess I'll come back here and post the script and stuff once it's officially released...? There's some other fun stuff in there - Dash was named Ray and had a ray gun (potentially also named Bolt briefly), but his gun got cut from the game and his role changed to "motion expert". You can still see a trace of this in the final game data where his textures are named LASERHEAD, LASERBODY, etc. Meanwhile, in the final game data, Radia's textures name her Pip, which is also a name that shows up in the early script. Ogel was named Dr. Ogel, too. They also had a whole car chase sequence planned for the intro, which got nipped in the bud pretty quickly (seemingly before any of it was animated)... Cause Artworld didn't really know much about what the new design for the game's characters, environments, and story were like at the time of writing it, so they just shrugged and put in a sequence that was generally spy-themed. Both parties then decided to cut it as it had nothing to do with the actual game. Unfortunately, we don't know what Dirk looked like, or what his role in the game would've been besides appearing in the intro. There is an unknown minifigure in this footage of the LEGO Media office, though, and it'd be roughly from around the time Alpha Team was going through its redesign. Could be Dirk Brick, could be someone else - who knows. Update - I just got my own copy of the GBC manual, and the story section says the Alpha Team solves problems by "deploying wacky devices that have been built out of special LEGO parts". That text can't be found in the PC manual - maaaaybe it's another holdover? It also says "Skeleton Zombies" while the PC game/manual just says Zombies.

Thank you very much!

Update: https://github.com/Terrev/3DXML-to-OBJ/releases Added the option to group opaque meshes together, while keeping transparent meshes separate for better depth sorting in some programs.

Potentially of interest to this project... LEGO released a Unity toolkit that includes a bunch of official part models we didn't have before:

LEGO and Unity recently co-developed a "microgame"; a tutorial on how to use the Unity editor: It's a pretty cool little intro to gamedev, but it also makes use of some official Unity packages made by LEGO that can import and optimize models. It currently supports .LDR and .LXF/LXFML (but only version 5.6 or higher, which is newer than what the last version of LDD exports, so currently you have to import LDD models into Studio, then re-export as LDR). It has quite a lot of optimization features; too many to screenshot and explain here. You can see some of the menus for them in the pics above. There's even some basic support for snapping pieces directly together in Unity. The brick library contains both "legacy" and "new" parts. These seem to effectively be two brick libraries - the legacy parts are what LDD was using (plus parts it didn't have), with studs and tubes fused to the rest of each brick model. The new parts seem slightly cleaned up, and have studs as separate meshes. The tool is also capable of dynamically adding bevels to all bricks, depending on the LOD setting. Either way, there's a ton of new parts in here, even Duplo elements: I'm not really sure what the rules and limitations are when it comes to using these packages - I think LEGO mostly anticipates them being used along with the Microgame, though you can easily add them to a new project and use them on their own. The included terms of service seem more focused on the Microgame aspect. It's still in beta, so hopefully there's more to come?

Perhaps something else to look into fixing, if it hasn't been already? Simply re-saving the PNGs fixes them not loading. The ones outright mapped to parts incorrectly might take some more poking at.

This is really neat! Would love to see more of this sort of stuff.

I was browsing Brickshelf earlier today when I came across this folder of pics from LEGOLAND Deutschland: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=438680&n=192 Specifically, this image: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=4572402 There's a Blacktron minifigure there with inverted torso colors... I've seen a bootleg torso like that before, though it has some minor differences in the shaping/thickness of some things than the one at LEGOLAND (which seems more accurate to the original print - granted, it's not like bootlegs are known for consistency in quality...). The question is, if it's a bootleg, what's it doing in an official LEGOLAND display? Or is it legit, somehow...? There's also a face towards the upper right in this photo that doesn't look quite like any official print I recognize (the one with the blush): http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=4572400 A lot of the minifigures in these pictures are rather jumbled, anyway... Some of the prints are even worn down. Maybe it was somebody's collection that somehow ended up at LEGOLAND, and some knockoffs snuck in? I dunno. Just a curiosity. A torso like that would be pretty neat...

Which method are you referring to? If you mean 3DXML captures, that's more useful for entire models than individual pieces - it still works fine on Windows 10 (I'm not aware of any method that doesn't, actually), and the software is still available via the web archives; see this topic. When it comes to converting pieces from G files directly - which is what you're gonna want for porting parts to LDraw/stud.io, it's far more convenient than manually capturing each piece as a 3DXML - see the topic I linked in my previous post (other folks have their own converters, as well, mine's just one of them):

People have been using various methods to port LDD bricks over to the LDraw library for quite a long time, and as far as I know, stud.io uses the LDraw library and thus almost certainly already has some LDD pieces in it (see the second half of this post; as of 2017 the LDraw parts library credited LDD in 542 parts files) - so yeah, definitely possible. There's a few options for directly converting the entire LDD brick library to OBJ (here's my tool for it), though of course there's still the task of turning those OBJs into proper LDraw/stud.io bricks. But, yes, should be totally possible.

Here's some clarification on where LDD reads its data from and how it works - in short, when it comes to parts modding, color modding, etc, you shouldn't be touching the Assets.lif file in Program Files at all, it's db.lif in AppData that gets used - be sure to read the full post though: https://www.rockraidersunited.com/topic/7899-ldd-updatingpatching/

Ok, here's my pics of the story books, plus the activity book scans kelcecoe had on their website: https://mega.nz/#F!VjZEjIIB!gvpDQRV5NdunB60WBtphxw If anyone has any other recommendations on where to put them, give me a shout. Again, I'm assuming this is ok to post here since nothing was ever said about kelcecoe's uploads, but if there's a problem feel free to just edit out the link and let me know.

The folder isn't public yet - though when I tried uploading my own pics of the books to Brickshelf years back, they didn't make it through moderation. So I have a feeling yours may not either; you'll probably need to host them elsewhere. (I'll get my own uploads posted soon as well)

I still have all my own scans (well, photos), and I think also the activity book scans from kelceycoe downloaded somewhere. I can get them uploaded somewhere hopefully tonight or tomorrow, if need be. (Assuming that's ok to post here? We allowed links to kelcecoe's scans, so I'm gonna assume it is.)

It seems their main sources of info about all the characters were sites like Brickset, Brickipedia, etc. For starters, here's the internal names for some random minifigures: minifig_johnny_thunder_adv010 (As far as I know he's not actually in-game yet, but there's some data for him) minifig_crusader_axe_cas105 minifig_demolition_dummy_col008 minifig_ice_planet_babe_sp017 minifig_ice_planet_chief_sp019 minifig_spyrius_droid_sp041 AFAIK, the naming system like "cas105" is entirely fan-created and used on sites like Brickset. Here's the internal pirates character names - note there's a duplicate of pi061: minifig_admiral_pi149a minifig_captain_valiant_pi015 minifig_castaway_pi100 minifig_governor_pi117 minifig_governors_daughter_pi121 minifig_green_scar_pirate_pi143 minifig_imperial_soldier_pi061 minifig_pirate_cook_pi164 minifig_pirate_pi041 minifig_pirate_princess_pi165 minifig_pirate_red_pi043 minifig_private_laquay_pi061 minifig_redbeard_pi055 Likewise, the trivia seems to mostly be stuff they pulled from sites like Brickipedia. Here's the trivia text for the Spyrius Droid/Major Kartofski, pulled from Data\Localization\MFSP041SpyriusDroid_en.json: Premiered in 1994. Appeared in 5 sets. Had a speaking role in a LEGO commercial featuring the Spyrius faction. Was the most prominently featured member of the Spyrius faction. One LEGO magazine suggests this minifigure's helmet is magical and can turn the minifigure (but not its hands) invisible. Had a cameo in the Space Police III videos. Now take a look at the Brickipedia page for him: https://brickipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Spyrius_Droid (I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have even called him Major Kartofski if I hadn't added all that to the page, haha - that sort of thing has happened before with DK books pulling info straight from Brickipedia, including mistakes) Characters don't always have the same amount of trivia, for example, there's only two for Private LaQuay: Debuted in 1989. Appeared in 7 LEGO Pirate sets. Thrilling stuff. Here's Redbeard's: Redbeard was introduced in 1989 and initially stopped being produced in 1997. Appeared in 14 sets. Redbeard's first name is Roger. Redbeard was the first-ever minifigure with a hook and peg leg. Redbeard made his triumphant return to production in 1999, 2002, and 2015. Appeared in 3 LEGO games. Again, seems like someone just skimmed over the Brickipedia article: https://brickipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Captain_Redbeard So don't expect anything really new for us hardcore fans, haha. Willa the Witch is a fairly major character in the game, so here's her trivia: Premiered in 1995. (Should actually be 1997) Has appeared in 5 sets. Is also known as Hubble Bubble in the UK. Appeared in the \"Lego Racers\" video game. (They forgot to make LEGO all upper caps there, lolwhoops) Is the first minifigure to use a black version of the Wizard's Hat piece. Her broomstick comes from the Fabuland product line. Is a minifigure only found in the Fright Knights subtheme. Not 100% of that info can be found on her Brickipedia page: https://brickipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Willa_the_Witch So they must have done some other amount of searching elsewhere - perhaps here? http://legosteveblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/lego-fright-knights-1997-1998.html Or perhaps they just looked at her Bricklink inventory, haha. Anyway, you get the idea - so far I haven't found anything really new in the trivia points. I'm pretty sure when the internet didn't have a name immediately on hand for a character, they decided to come up with their own. The game's story and setting is framed as a bunch of minifigures in a real life house, which they of course see as this big sprawling world, and I wouldn't be surprised if the whole story was intended as a LEGO Movie-esque "kid playing with their toys" type thing. So while you have some kinda weird stuff like Princess Storm being a villain (???), it totally makes sense in that context, it's not like kids really care about established story, they just take bits and pieces of it and make up their own stuff. Charming game... Except for the aggressive microtransactions, which kinda ruin it for me... Oh well. Edit: Ok, browsing again now, and the bios are sometimes kind of entertaining, and there are a fair few new names. I'll just dump the full JSON files that store the text for them. Also note there's only 11 of these; minifig_pirate_red_pi043 mentioned earlier doesn't actually seem to be implemented in the game enough to have a text file: MFPI015CaptainValiant_en.json (Captain Valiant - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=PI015) MFPI041RedStripePirate_en.json (Darwin the Pirate - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=PI041) MFPI055CaptainRedBeard_en.json (Captain Redbeard - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=PI055) MFPI061PrivateLaQuay_en.json (Private LaQuay - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=PI061) MFPI100Castaway_en.json (Hank the Castaway - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=PI100) MFPI117Governor_en.json (Governor Tierney - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=PI117 - though this character seems to be unfinished/unreleased, so the name could theoretically change before he's properly added to the game.) MFPI121GovernorsDaughter_en.json (Leigh Tierney - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=PI121 - another WIP character by the look of it... So the name could possibly change.) MFPI143GreenScarPirate_en.json (Scarlett the Buccaneer - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=PI143 - what a strange choice for a minifigure to feature and give a name to, haha, a random figure from a supplemental set...) MFPI149aAdmiral_en.json (Admiral Nonsuch - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=PI149a) MFPI164PirateCook_en.json (Pirate Cook Bart - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=PI164) MFPI165PiratePrincess_en.json (Pirate Princess Argenta - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=PI165) Edit again: LOLWHOOPS it seems somebody got confused by some unspecific wording on Brickipedia and thought "Medieval Mischief and Mayhem" was a video game... https://brickipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Princess_Storm { "Category":"Details", "ChangedStatus":"", "Text":"Appeared in the \"LEGO Island 2,\" \"LEGO Creator Knights' Kingdom,\" and \"Knights' Kingdom: Medieval Mischief and Mayhem\" video games.", "LastEdited":"", "Id":"Trivia_DESC_3" }, The game has an official Discord server where some developers hang out and read bug reports/feedback though, so I'm letting them know about some of the minor mistakes, sounds like they'll be fixed.

Paging @Tazakk - pretty sure there's something about that character maybe having a name in some old marketing booklet that hasn't ever been recovered(?), Major Ursa or something. I think it was only mentioned in some old rec.toys.lego post or somewhere else like that...? I'm more inclined to just rip stuff right from the game data, haha - already did that with an earlier beta release of it. There wasn't a ton to find in it at the time, but perhaps there is now.

Update time: https://github.com/Terrev/3DXML-to-OBJ/releases Added an option for whether to make separate groups in the OBJ for each mesh in the original model, or export as a single group with multiple materials. (This will be useful for a Rock Raiders modding tool I'm currently working on.) Also increased the default resolution to make room for the new checkbox in the UI (of course you can always resize the window yourself or use Shift + R to reset your saved preferences).

Really cool! :D Glad to see more stuff from you.

Would the licensing/ownership of the LEGO Movie characters and such actually be any different from the boatloads of other characters created in the same way? Pepper Roni and the rest of the main cast for LEGO Island, the Alpha Team characters, etc were all solely created by other companies for games they were contracted to develop, LEGO retained all the rights, and then they were used in set lines (and other things) produced after the games, without any involvement from the original creators. I think it may be a safe-ish assumption Clutch Powers came about in the same way - at the very least, LEGO's made further use of him in Ninjago recently... If WB had a deal with LEGO that worked differently than all those, that'd make them fairly unique.

I'm curious what other directions the film may have been going in - the tweet describes it as his take on it, and it'd been in the works for a couple years before then: https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1687930/legos-billion-brick-race-movie-has-a-new-director Those character designs and premise seem like they'd be fairly personal to him, going by what little I've seen of his other work anyway - I wonder how many rewrites it went through? The Ninjago movie went through a lot of story overhauls as well... I wonder if we'll ever get to see more behind the scenes stuff, from either of them. Oh well.