LEGO Rock Raiders The many unused content of LRR

[lego hotdog]

Hey, I am a long time viewer of the RRU forums as I am a fan of Lego Rock Raiders. A Lego maniac if you will . I am a first time poster so if I do some mistakes, sorry!

Anyways, over the years I have noticed there is not a lot of talk of the many unused content and other unused ideas in Lego rock raiders and thought I would change that.
 

I will mainly look into the file of LegoRR0 as that is where many of the unused content are located. ^{If LegoRR1 have any unused content please let me know!} 

The files I will not look into:

• Buildings ^{(I can't tell what is unused or not)}
• MiscAnims ^{(Animations, I cannot open these with Blender as I do not know how to)}
• Vehicles ^{(Too complex and confusing!  )}

I've made attempts into these files to see if I can find anything odd, however right now it's a little too much for me. Especially the vehicles files, I don't even.

Also I will list out the file path if other people want to find it as well. 

Of course I won't look into every detail of Lego Rock raiders, right now I don't have the time for that, but I can keep updating my finds in here. 

NOTE: I will not post any links to the album (Imgur) as I am unsure if it is allowed, however if I can I will edit this post to include them.

 

Alright, onto the juicy bits.

LegoRR0 / Interface / Reward / Wallpaper.bmp

I have seen other wallpapers before but I've never seen this anywhere on the internet before. I am also confused about the reinforcement at the background because they do have 3D models for it. I wonder when this was rendered? All the other stuff are used in this folder are used... I think?

 

LegoRR0 / Interface / InfoPanel

This contains a whole folder worth of unused content, I will only post a few interesting bits from the folder. This appears to be a very early hud, I think it was seen on some prerelease screenshots of LRR. Within the files is something called HOLO.FLH, I have no idea what this is and if anyone can look into this and see what it is that would be cool!!!

https://imgur.com/a/OPZI468

LegoRR0 / Interface / Icon

 

Now this is getting interesting, there are two new sets of unused buildings. Judging by the names, PSnarkbar ^{(Also known as "Canteen")} and ICBuildtool, we can assume one was meant to give food to the rock raiders and the other was meant to give the rock raiders tools to build with. I still find the ICBuildtool a little confusing though, hopefully we can get conformation on what it both did at some point. 

Underneath all that are the original rock raiders. Maybe at one point you could summon them?

https://imgur.com/a/QJ0vtzp

BONUS ROUND

LegoRR0 / Interface / FrontEnd

 

That's right! A bonus round! While I was looking around to see if I missed anything I came across these pictures, possibly early version of the level select screen. I think they look very cool.

https://imgur.com/a/lCKtBt9

That's it from me for now, I tried picking the most interesting unused content from there so I hope you enjoyed it. I hope nobody posted this before me too!

If you found anything that is interesting please share it with us .

 

P.S and yes, I like hotdogs 

Edited February 13, 2019 by lego hotdog
added links

[lol username]

Welcome!

 

2 hours ago, lego hotdog said:

NOTE: I will not post any links to the album (Imgur) as I am unsure if it is allowed, however if I can I will edit this post to include them.

Totally allowed.

 

2 hours ago, lego hotdog said:

Within the files is something called HOLO.FLH, I have no idea what this is and if anyone can look into this and see what it is that would be cool!!!

It's an early UI animation of the Chief, similar to how he appears in the final game, but it's a hologram of him and it's pre-rendered. Seems it dropped down from the upper left corner, going by early screenshots. Here's the tool we have for working with the format:

 

2 hours ago, lego hotdog said:

Now this is getting interesting, there are two new sets of unused buildings. Judging by the names, PSnarkbar ^{(Also known as "Canteen")} and ICBuildtool, we can assume one was meant to give food to the rock raiders and the other was meant to give the rock raiders tools to build with. I still find the ICBuildtool a little confusing though, hopefully we can get conformation on what it both did at some point. 

Underneath all that are the original rock raiders. Maybe at one point you could summon them?

Much of this was cleared up by Karl, one of the game's programmers, in this thread - this post explains the plans they had for the multiple raider types, and there's discussion of some unused/revised buildings throughout the thread, would recommend taking a read through the whole thing, it's pretty cool:

 

2 hours ago, lego hotdog said:

BONUS ROUND

LegoRR0 / Interface / FrontEnd

 

That's right! A bonus round! While I was looking around to see if I missed anything I came across these pictures, possibly early version of the level select screen. I think they look very cool.

I heard the game has some old test levels (one per biome?), but their formats are outdated and can't be loaded. Don't know any details myself, would be cool to see them though.

 

Edit - Yeah, they're at Data\Levels\TestLevels. Dunno if anybody has ever tried figuring out what they look like, or adapting/remaking them in the final level formats.

 

Edit again - @Slimy Slug says the test levels can be made to work with some tweaks to the cfg, might be uploading a video of 'em.

[lego hotdog]

Thanks for the welcome!

1 hour ago, jamesster said:

It's an early UI animation of the Chief, similar to how he appears in the final game, but it's a hologram of him and it's pre-rendered. Seems it dropped down from the upper left corner, going by early screenshots. Here's the tool we have for working with the format:

Oh sweet! I didn't even know that existed, must have missed them from the early seceenshots. Thanks for the tool, I'll try to upload it in here if i can get it to work.

1 hour ago, jamesster said:

Much of this was cleared up by Karl, one of the game's programmers, in this thread - this post explains the plans they had for the multiple raider types, and there's discussion of some unused/revised buildings throughout the thread, would recommend taking a read through the whole thing, it's pretty cool:

Oh, i remember reading at some time ago, must have forgotten about it. Oops.

1 hour ago, jamesster said:

Edit again - @Slimy Slug says the test levels can be made to work with some tweaks to the cfg, might be uploading a video of 'em.

I would love to see it in action, I've always wondered what it could look like.

 

Unused content is one of my favorite things too look at in video games, so I hope these kind information becomes easier to find. 

[ShadowDraikana]

I'll link to the vids here on the forums once they're uploaded. 

 

As for the unused content, I actually have a complete list of the unused files in this game.  How I did this was through the use of a memory program to log what files were accessed on startup, during gameplay, etc.  I never got around to uploading the archive of the unused stuff but now seems like a good time for me to dig that out.

 

Edit: made a topic for the test level vids here https://www.rockraidersunited.com/topic/8455-test-levels/

 

Edited February 13, 2019 by Slimy Slug

[aidenpons]

Take a look at this: https://tcrf.net/LEGO_Rock_Raiders_(Windows) while it couldn't be considered a complete account it's got a decent amount you might find of interest

7 hours ago, jamesster said:

I heard the game has some old test levels (one per biome?), but their formats are outdated and can't be loaded. Don't know any details myself, would be cool to see them though.

 

Edit - Yeah, they're at Data\Levels\TestLevels. Dunno if anybody has ever tried figuring out what they look like, or adapting/remaking them in the final level formats.

 

Edit again - @Slimy Slug says the test levels can be made to work with some tweaks to the cfg, might be uploading a video of 'em.

The level files themselves are 100% functional. You need to do some cfg editing, of course. They're mostly just notable because they contain the line InitialCrystals and InitialOre, which can be of great use in certain maps. They're really not interesting Grab this, point it to Levels\TestLevels\FOLDERNAME and voila!

There are also outdated level files, like .blx, but those are entirely unnecessary.

[lol username]

17 minutes ago, aidenpons said:

There are also outdated level files, like .blx, but those are entirely unnecessary.

Ah, this must have been what led to whatever chatter I heard about them back then. Would still be curious to know what those files were for though.

[aidenpons]

41 minutes ago, jamesster said:

Ah, this must have been what led to whatever chatter I heard about them back then. Would still be curious to know what those files were for though.

IIRC they were map data in some other obselete format. For instance, here are the contents of Levels\GameLevels\Level01:

 

Spoiler

01.npl
01.nrM
01.nrn
01.ol
01.ptl
01.txt
Cror_01.blx
Cror_01.map
Dugg_01.blx
Dugg_01.map
High_01.blx
High_01.map
Surf_01.blx
Surf_01.map
tg01_map.txt
Tuto_01.blx
Tuto_01.map

Given they all have the same filenames as the map files, it's fair to guess that they were map files

Unnecessary files include:

1) .nrn and .nrM files, non-compiled scripting code (the stuff that says "you got five energy crystals, you won;" very handy leftovers mind you)

2) anything that ends in .blx, which is fairly clearly map data (in a totally different format though; also considerably larger, 11 kB as opposed to the .map's 2 kB

3) tg01_map.txt, which says

Notes on tg01 map

 

The win condition for this map needs to be set to five crystals collected.

 

This map is the proposed level one map for Rock Raiders.

 

All the other files are needed. although interesting the .ptl file doesn't have to be in the level's directory and since all of them are basically identical in the .cfg you can just point to one PTL under Levels (you'll have to have put it there, first). There is also some unused stuff in the PTL:

;    CollectCrystalComplete        CrystalToRefinery

;    CrystalToRefineryComplete    GenerateRockMonster

presumably gauging by the way PTL files work this would make a Rock Monster come out every time you deposit a crystal? There's also some stuff about PickRandomFloor turning up in one file somewhere (no clue where, you'd have to poke Cirevam about this)

 

 

.... in short, there's unused data everywhere you look XD even inside the .map data, if you set it to values that aren't otherwise used you'll get Soil, some glitchy water that looks like it might have been used for flooding... there's "this wall contains 25 ore" which is never used anywhere (the "25 crystals" is in one level - Hot Stuff - the crystal seams that are about to get gobbled by lava)...