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Lego Island

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Lego Island
Lego Island cover
Developers
Mindscape
Publishers
Mindscape
Engines
Omni[1]
Release dates
Windows September 26, 1997[2]
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives First-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Action, Adventure, Open world
Vehicles Automobile, Bicycle, Helicopter, Track racing, Truck
Art styles Stylized
Themes Contemporary, Comedy
Series Lego Island
Lego Island on HowLongToBeat
Lego Island on IGDB
Lego Island guide on StrategyWiki
Lego Island on MobyGames
Lego Island on Wikipedia
Lego Island
Subseries of Lego
Lego Island 1997
Lego Island 2: The Brickster's Revenge 2001
Island Xtreme Stunts 2002

Key points

Modern systems need workarounds for some compatibility problems; see Installing on modern versions of Windows.
Keyboard control is extremely twitchy due to the game being programmed for low framerates. Using the LEGO Island Rebuilder is recommended.

General information

Rock Raiders United - A fan forum for all of the classic Lego games.

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
See Run without a CD
Windows
An official release of the soundtrack was never made. A project to restore the soundtrack to 44.1 kHz stereo from the original composer's backup tapes (compared to the 11.025 kHz mono found in-game[3]) can be found on the Project Island website.
The Italian release uses SecuROM DRM copy protection.[4]

Essential improvements

LEGO Island Rebuilder

Allows for frame rate capping, patching the notoriously-twitchy keyboard controls, and music replacement.
Runs on hardware near-contemporaneous with the original release; see Frame rate (FPS).
Works without administrator privileges.
Game freezes when placed on the secondary monitor of an extended desktop. Game continues when being moved back to the primary desktop.

Error: "Lego Island failed to start"[5]

Run the games CONFIG.EXE as administrator.
  1. Right-click on the shortcut CONFIG.EXE.
  2. Left-click Run as administrator.
  3. Set RGB Emulation as Direct 3D Device.

Notes

This fix only needs to be applied once.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Mindscape\LEGO Island[Note 1]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\[Note 2]

Video

External options screen.
External options screen.

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Edit the registry or use ICU Windower. This feature is incomplete; it always uses the same rendering mode regardless of what is chosen.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
See Frame rate (FPS).
High dynamic range display (HDR)

Frame rate (FPS)

The game locks its framerate 90 FPS when exploring the world and either 30 or 90 FPS in certain indoor environments.
Since the game was never intended to run this fast (it was designed with 10 FPS in mind), many timer issues also arise as a result; for example, turning is very sensitive and many of the animations run too fast. A 30FPS cap is recommended, to prevent animations from running too fast.
Cap the framerate
Use LEGO Island Rebuilder
Turning is significantly easier and is restored to the intended speed.
  1. Download LEGO Island Rebuilder and extract it to <path-to-game>, then run it.
  2. Set the option Turning: Unhook From Frame Rate to True
  3. Select "Run" to run the game.

Input

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Danish
Titled Panik på LEGO Øen.
French
Titled Aventures sur L'île LEGO.
German
Titled Abenteuer auf der LEGO Insel.
Italian
Titled Isola LEGO.
Japanese
Titled レゴアイランドの大冒険.
Korean
Titled 레고 아일랜드.
Brazilian Portuguese
Titled A Ilha LEGO.[6] [7] / Also released in Portugal.
Russian
Titled Остров LEGO. Published by Noviy Disk in 2002.
Spanish
Titled La Isla LEGO.

Issues fixed

Installing on modern versions of Windows

Use alternate installer[citation needed]
The full install also counts as a no-CD patch.
Install with workarounds[citation needed]
  1. Install by exploring the CD and running INSTALL.exe (the Autorun menu will crash if you try to use it).
  2. Go to \redist\directx on the disc and copy d3drm.dll into the installation folder.
  3. Run CONFIG.exe in the installation folder.
  4. Click Advanced.
  5. Ensure Ramp Emulation is selected. Alternatively, use Direct3D HAL for better transparency and filtered textures in combination with dgVoodoo 2.
  6. Run the game from the .exe
The game will crash if you exit via ESC but is otherwise playable.

Progress Doesn't Save

Close the game with Alt+F4[citation needed]
  1. Trying to close the game via Esc causes a crash and does not allow the game to save your progress. Instead, close the game using Alt+F4. You should see your progress the next time you play.

Run without a CD

Copy the Scripts folder to the drive
  1. Open the game's disk and go to the Lego folder.
  2. Select the Scripts folder and copy it.
  3. Open the folder the game is installed to and go to the Lego folder there.
  4. Paste the Scripts folder into this folder, merging it with the Scripts folder already there. Overwriting NOCD.SI is not necessary.
  5. Once the files have finished copying, remove the disk.
Change the cdpath registry value[citation needed]
  1. Copy the full contents of the disk to a folder on your computer.
  2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Mindscape\LEGO Island.
  3. The cdpath value should have been set to the cd drive letter by the installer.
  4. Set the cdpath value to the folder where you copied the CD files.

Notes

You can also change the savepath value to change the save game data location.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 5 [8]
Software renderer
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

System requirements

Windows[9][10]
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 95
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 120 MHz
System memory (RAM) 16 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 20 MB
Video card (GPU) SVGA
DirectX 5.0 compatible
Other 4x CD-ROM drive


Notes

  1. Applications writing to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE will be redirected to other locations based on various criterias, see the glossary page for more details.
  2. When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

References

  1. How EXACTLY do LEGO Island's assets work? (LEGO Island Decompilation - Part 2) - YouTube - last accessed on 2023-09-14
    "I also got an email from one of LEGO Island's developers, who I was already in touch with for another project I have in the works. He graciously explained some of the questions I brought up in the last episode. Turns out the game's engine, known as Omni, had actually been around a lot longer than we thought."
  2. The LEGO Group and Mindscape Release the First LEGO CD-ROM Game. (retrieved) - last accessed on 2024-01-18
  3. A Technical Look at LEGO Island's Soundtrack - YouTube - last accessed on May 2023
  4. SecuROM - LEGO Island Wiki - last accessed on 17 May 2023
  5. Github - LEGOIslandRebuilder Issues - Erorr: "LEGO Island failed to start" - last accessed on 03.12.2021
  6. A Ilha LEGO - Game cover. - last accessed on 17 May 2023
  7. YouTube. - last accessed on May 2023
  8. Verified by User:AlphaYellow on 2024-04-06
    dgVoodoo2's API tracing points to D3D5 (e.g: "Direct3DDevice2::SetRenderState").
  9. Lego Island box - last accessed on 2023-06-25
  10. Lego Island cover - last accessed on 2023-06-25