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LEGO Racers Theme Overhaul


Jimbob
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EDIT: Please discuss this community project here. The reasons behind its creation, explained below, still apply (although the theme was originally going to be 8-bit).

 

Community projects are a great way of binding people together. Everyone can be a part of a community project, and the collaboration between people can help build relationships between people. But, perhaps most of all, the thrill of looking at something that

you have worked on as a team is wonderful. Unfortunately, such community projects can be difficult to organise, manage and maintain, and many people may find it difficult to contribute to the project if modding isn't their forte. That is why I have proposed the 8-Bit Racers Community Project, an overhaul project I formerly suggested to , who seconded the idea.

 

This mod would involve all the different aspects of LEGO Racers modding, and is accessible to everyone from beginner modders to experienced pros. Possible areas of modding include: texture modding, which is incredibly easy and fun when you are working with just 8x8 images; power-up layout modding, for those who want to increase the challenge of the game; binary file editing, in which various aspects of cars and such can be re-coloured and more; language modding, whereby the whole theme of the game can be changed perhaps by giving the opponents new identities; and more.

 

In terms of management, I'd be happy to put myself forward to do so. I have good experience in Racers modding, and am also free until the beginning of September (at which point I'll still be very active anyway). All I would do is collate all the bits and pieces that are submitted into the whole overhaul mod. However, it may be also helpful to have a couple of helpers, who would aid with questions and such, although this may not be necessary.

 

As a little preview, I have created a small texture mod to give an idea of what an 8-Bit mod may look like. This is by no means what should be expected of it, and I'm certain many people can do better. This took me just 20-30 minutes to produce, including faffing about with a few errors here and there which I have now resolved (and will make sure to raise awareness of).

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The purpose of this topic is to not only see who would be interested in taking part in this project, but to discuss any potential hurdles in the running of this project, and address any questions people may have.

 

So, RRU, what do you think?

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RobExplorien

Oh, such mockery on the HD mod project for LEGO Racers.  :P

 

I like the idea, but I don't think I will participate in this project. It doesn't really attract me, the 8-bit images in LEGO Racers, and I also have other projects I want to work on.

increase the challenge of the game;

That project, for example.

But I do look forward to see how this project is going to work out.

 

and am also free until the beginning of September (at which point I'll still be very active anyway).

I envy you for that, for me it's another month until I have 'utter freedom' again.

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I was excited to see a collaboration project for LR, then sort of felt let down when I realized what you meant by 8 bit(not that I hadn't guessed... but). I'll help I guess, I need to get used to texture switching anyway for my own project. :)

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lol username

... Meh. I like retro game-y stuff, I even like the visual style of Minecraft, but this just doesn't look very good IMO. It's rather uncanny; it doesn't fit with the 3D model style and just looks kinda awkward. If you guys wanna go for it, I'm not gonna stop you, but sorry, I'm not interested. And yes, I'm aware this isn't what it would look like once complete... But it just doesn't seem like these two things belong together.

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... Meh. I like retro game-y stuff, I even like the visual style of Minecraft, but this just doesn't look very good IMO. It's rather uncanny; it doesn't fit with the 3D model style and just looks kinda awkward. If you guys wanna go for it, I'm not gonna stop you, but sorry, I'm not interested. And yes, I'm aware this isn't what it would look like once complete... But it just doesn't seem like these two things belong together.

I gotta agree, sorry.

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I even like the visual style of Minecraft

Minecraft is blocky like the low-res pixels it's made out of. This is rounded models and pixelation looks.... ehrgh 
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I don't think you should just lower the quality of the textures, lower the model quality as well.

Feel free to try importing your own 3D models. :P

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Seeing as an 8-Bit overhaul doesn't seem favourable, is there an alternative that people would be interested in? As Cyrem said, 8-Bit was chosen because it is accessible to everyone. With that in mind, I would be interested to hear other suggestions people have.

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I dunno if this would really be popular but...

How bout reskinning every thing to different themes, in other words, taking a racetrack e.g. Magma Moon, and reskinning it as Blacktron, another space theme. I was already working on this project(barely got anywhere, been busy xD) and I'd love to see other tracks refitted as different themes. In other words, this would be the "New Themes" add-on pack. Who knows, maybe a bit of fancy cutscreen modding and we'd be able to change the backgrounds in there too!

Some tracks however, I don't think would work well with a theme convert, so perhaps it'd be better to just reskin them with new, more interesting textures, or modify other parts of them. I'd love to see Pirate Skull Pass modded with ghost cars, sort of like a "flying dutchman" sort of thing. Also we could make the ship semi transparent,

 

And who wants to see a Infoderpiac re-skin of Knightmare-A-Thon? I can see the skulls outfitted with Info heads... ooh it'd be creeeepyz. :P

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I wouldn't mind an 8-bit remake myself, but I don't see how making all of the textures 8x8 has anything to do with that at all. Wouldn't 8-bit simply refer to the amount of possible colors? In any case, once I can get hold of a replacement drawing tablet I might make a cartoon-style HD overhaul of the textures. Not like wind-waker cel-shading or anything, but outlines and stuff. Unfortunately, I can't really help with any other project either until that happens, so I'm just going to cast my vote as a yes, as I don't mind the 8-bit idea, except where it makes the game look horrible (character skins, I'm looking at you). Anyway, if you require a fresh idea or have abandoned the 8-bit one, I guess that maybe making sure the Lego Racers HD project doesn't die would be heroic enough for me. 

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Aokpisz, that could be a nice idea. However, again this may make it harder for newer members to get involved, but I suppose there's very little modding that doesn't require experience. plakrast, the HD project is someone else's so I think it would be wrong for the community project to be based off that. But if you do get a drawing tablet then I for one would like to see what kind of textures you can create.

 

Taking on board Aokpisz' idea, what if instead of an 8-Bit overhaul, the community project became a theme recreation? So people can take tracks and skins and remake them into other themes, not necessarily LEGO ones, but certainly themes different to the current ones. I like the idea of a ghost Pirate Skull Pass track, for example.

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-snip-

plakrast, the HD project is someone else's so I think it would be wrong for the community project to be based off that. But if you do get a drawing tablet then I for one would like to see what kind of textures you can create.

 

-snip-

 

I understand. He posted in the topic again recently and still doesn't have time, though. Anyway Aokpisz's idea is probably better, anyway. So, if that's what we're going with, what kind of themes would be good?

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RobExplorien

taking a racetrack e.g. Magma Moon, and reskinning it as Blacktron,

BLACKTRON! You have my vote for that. :P

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Aokpisz, that could be a nice idea. However, again this may make it harder for newer members to get involved, but I suppose there's very little modding that doesn't require experience. Taking on board Aokpisz' idea, what if instead of an 8-Bit overhaul, the community project became a theme recreation? So people can take tracks and skins and remake them into other themes, not necessarily LEGO ones, but certainly themes different to the current ones. I like the idea of a ghost Pirate Skull Pass track, for example.

It may be harder for newer members, but I don't think it will take that long for them to get up to speed. Essentially, the only difference between my idea and the 8-bit one is that it'd be harder to make the textures for mine.(8-bit is about as simple as you can go). other than that... evreything is the same, as far as modding goes. What I'm really hoping is that by the time this gets up to speed, quite a few new things will have been discovered. These past few weeks have been great for LR Modding, with the discovery of how to put models anywhere and such. By the time this project is started, who knows?

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Fluffy Cupcake

Taking on board Aokpisz' idea, what if instead of an 8-Bit overhaul, the community project became a theme recreation? So people can take tracks and skins and remake them into other themes, not necessarily LEGO ones, but certainly themes different to the current ones. I like the idea of a ghost Pirate Skull Pass track, for example.

I think I, and others who are "meh" towards the 8-bit, would like this much better.
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Great, if I could get a little more confirmation from other people that they'd be happy to do this, I'll set up a proper topic for it.

 

If not, again I'm all open to suggestions.

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RobExplorien

Hey guys,what do you use to edit LR1 textures?

where do you find the texture files?

In the .JAM as .BMP files. You cannot open them with something like Paint or Photoshop directly via the .JAM. You need to rip the textures, and there are quite a bulk already ripped. You can download these ripped textures here. Then you can open them (easily) with an editing program. I like to use Paint.NET for editing these textures.

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Hey guys,what do you use to edit LR1 textures?

where do you find the texture files?

In the .JAM as .BMP files. You cannot open them with something like Paint or Photoshop directly via the .JAM. You need to rip the textures, and there are quite a bulk already ripped. You can download these ripped textures here. Then you can open them (easily) with an editing program. I like to use Paint.NET for editing these textures.

 

I realize this is off-topic a bit, but can these be saved just as a completely normal .bmp and still work, or do they need to be a certain bit number? I tried this with my own textures and the program responded something along the lines of "unrecognized bit count."

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Actually, I've been wondering about the bit count meself. I save mine in MSP as 24 bit... but I heard someone say it has to be 8. :S

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Hey guys,what do you use to edit LR1 textures?

where do you find the texture files?

In the .JAM as .BMP files. You cannot open them with something like Paint or Photoshop directly via the .JAM. You need to rip the textures, and there are quite a bulk already ripped. You can download these ripped textures here. Then you can open them (easily) with an editing program. I like to use Paint.NET for editing these textures.

 

I realize this is off-topic a bit, but can these be saved just as a completely normal .bmp and still work, or do they need to be a certain bit number? I tried this with my own textures and the program responded something along the lines of "unrecognized bit count."

I can't remember the bit count, but files with transparency need to be indexed images. I think 24-bit BMPs should work in most cases, but 8-bit may be required in others.

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