LEGO Rock Raiders (video game)

LEGO Rock Raiders is a 1999 video game developed by Data Design Interactive and published by LEGO Media International for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation. The game is based on and was developed alongside the LEGO theme of the same name. It features a team of space explorers mining for energy crystals on a hostile alien planet.

Gameplay

Windows version

The Windows version of LEGO Rock Raiders is a real-time strategy game.

PlayStation version

The PS version is an action and strategy game.

Missions

Missions are divided into different screens (or "levels"), with each screen having five open missions and one locked "boss" mission. Completing missions will give the player a bronze, silver, or gold medal, depending on how many objectives they completed. When the player has earned enough points (a minimum of five bronze, four silver, or three gold medals) the boss mission opens, which will unlock the next screen when completed.

One-player mode has eighteen missions divided between three screens. The missions are completely different between the European and North American versions. The European version also has three bonus missions, each one unlocked by getting gold medals in all missions in one of the three previous screens. The European missions were designed by Data Design Interactive and David Upchurch, while the North American missions were designed by Gameworld 7.

Two-player mode in the European version also has eighteen missions, five original ones and thirteen modified one-player missions. The North American version only has one level of six original missions. Boss missions start off unlocked in two-player mode.

In total, the two versions of the game have fifty unique missions between them, and sixty-three total missions, listed below:

	Europe (PAL)		North America (NTSC-U/C)
Level	One-player	Two-player	One-player	Two-player
1	Easy Pickings Water Ways Rescue Mission Ore-some! Blown Away Crystal Crazy (boss)	Easy Pickings Air Racing Team work! Lava Jumps Rescue Mission Whale World	Jet's Mission Axle's Mission Docs' Mission Bandit's Mission Sparks' Mission Trapped (boss)	There and Back Again Departure Web of Fire Building Bridges Crystal Isles Heavy Weights
2	Hot Scoop! High Flyer Slug Lake Into The Spiders' Nest Rapid Rush Trapped! (boss)	Blown Away Into The Spiders' Nest Crystal Crazy High Flyer Water Ways Trapped!	Supply Base River Run Thawed Out Web Space Move On Up Hot Rocks (boss)	–
3	Express Delivery Dozer Daze Smoke On The Water Ring Of Fire The Maze The Last Stand (boss)	Formula 20,000 Hot Scoop! Hop To It! Ring Of Fire Ore-some! The Last Stand	Fire Canyon Fire Down Below The Lair of the Rockwhale Trouble Down the Mine Scarce Resources Last Man Out (boss)	–
4	Transport Crisis Whale Song Hop To It!	–	–	–

Development

For the first time in Lego history, children can play with the toy and then hop on the computer and play within the same Lego universe there. We hope that what they see and experience in the CG version will inspire them to go off and build and play with the toy, and vice versa.

Tomas Gillo, Computer Graphics World

LEGO Rock Raiders was the first LEGO video game to be developed concurrently with LEGO construction sets. The LEGO Rock Raiders theme followed a new policy where development of the construction sets and the tie-in video game would influence each other, creating a larger universe for both products. LEGO Futura, the product development division of the LEGO Group, co-created the theme's concept with LEGO Media International, the company's software publishing branch. Development of the game began in October 1997, shortly after the release of LEGO Island, when LEGO Media approached British video game developer Data Design Interactive to create the game. LEGO Media presented concepts for the then-upcoming LEGO Rock Raiders theme to the developers at Data Design, including ideas for the theme's characters, buildings, vehicles, creatures, and story. Data Design had recently finished development of Conquest Earth, a strategy game for Eidos Interactive, and decided that the LEGO Rock Raiders storyline would work best as a strategy game as well.

LEGO Media was heavily involved in the development of LEGO Rock Raiders. Tomas Gillo, the head of concept development at LEGO Media, became the game's senior producer. David Upchurch, a producer from LEGO Media, frequently visited Data Design for a week at a time to play through the game and give feedback.

The unified development process of the toys and game led to some design issues, according to head artist Rob Dorney. Early in the game’s design process, LEGO Futura would send storyboards and prototype LEGO models to the game developers, who would give feedback on what worked with their vision for the game and make suggestions when ideas didn't work. Both groups often did not receive finalised model designs from the other until late in development. Although the LEGO Rock Raiders sets took only eight months to develop, the game's design process ended up lasting for eighteen months, longer than usual for Data Design Interactive, as both groups had to adjust elements on their ends to create a cohesive product between the video game and LEGO sets. Despite these issues, the "parallel" development of the project was considered a success.

The developers at Data Design and LEGO Media both spent some time trying to balance the gameplay of LEGO Rock Raiders to be challenging and fun while still being easy and accessible for children to play. The inherent complexity of strategy games and the younger target audience of both the game and LEGO sets made finding this balance a difficult task. The game was designed to introduce the player to new features gradually enough that they could improve and prepare for later challenges without feeling overwhelmed. Levels start out being simple mining missions early on, gradually introducing creatures, natural hazards, and larger maps as the player progresses through the game.

The game's atmosphere was inspired by Scandinavian mines.

The developers could not make the game too creepy or violent, and made sure to not show any serious injuries. “We were very aware of the audience and of how violence is seen within the LEGO world,” developer Karl White said in 2021. Entities in the game have health indicators, and minifigures and vehicles are safely teleported out of the level and back to the LMS Explorer when their health runs too low. Despite this, players still felt a sense of attachment and a fear of loss, according to White. Creatures were also designed to never be killed or destroyed, and instead can be pushed away and will eventually leave. Many creatures were revised multiple times.

Graphics and animation

A scene created using virtual LEGO pieces and characters

After LEGO Media International approached Data Design Interactive to develop LEGO Rock Raiders in 1997, the studio set up a sister company, Artworld UK, to serve as a dedicated graphics and animation team for the game. A team of twelve artists and animators at Artworld created most of the game's 3D models and animations with LightWave 3D, using a number of third-party plugins and running on high-end Windows NT workstations. Adobe Photoshop and Kai's Power Tools were used to create textures for the models. Rob Dorney headed the art department at Artworld, while Dave Garbett was head of animation.

An artist at Artworld recreating a LEGO model in LightWave 3D

The virtual LEGO models used in the game were required to appear identical to the physical LEGO Rock Raiders sets. Artists took apart physical LEGO models and recreated each individual piece in LightWave 3D. The completed virtual LEGO pieces were added to a database, which LightWave could access using a set of plugins created by Artworld programmers. The colours used in the LEGO Rock Raiders sets were also programmed into the database. When artists needed to create a virtual LEGO construction, pieces from the database could be selected and coloured as needed. Once all of the desired pieces for a model were selected, another Artworld plugin generated a LightWave Scene file containing all of the coloured LEGO pieces, which the artists could assemble in the scene like a physical LEGO model.

The LEGO Rock Raiders sets used in the game were designed at LEGO Futura in Billund, Denmark, as were parts of the LMS Explorer spaceship seen in the game's FMV sequences. While the sets were limited by the number of pieces that could be included and sold, the virtual world of the video game allowed for the creation of additional characters, buildings, vehicles, and environments. Artists working on the game designed a number of game-exclusive buildings and vehicles, using the same LEGO elements as the Rock Raiders sets did, to create a more in-depth gaming experience and expand the Rock Raiders universe.

The characters in the game each had unique animated facial textures and movements to give them all distinctive personalities. The animators initially found it difficult to make the inanimate LEGO toys feel alive, particularly due to the stiff nature of LEGO minifigures. LEGO Media reluctantly allowed the animators to deviate from LEGO toy design rules by making the virtual minifigures more flexible. Minifigures were given elbow and knee joints and torsos that could twist to allow for more realistic character movement.

As the completed 3D models each contained thousands of polygons, which computers at the time running the game could not have handled, simplified versions had to be created for in-game use. Artists created new models with lower polygon counts, and used extensive texturing to maintain the appearance of LEGO pieces. Reflections, shadows, and lighting effects were used to make objects and textures appear more detailed than they were. Once completed, the LightWave models and animations could be directly loaded into the game's engine. The game would still end up requiring a 3D accelerator card to run on Windows.

Prior to the release of LEGO Rock Raiders, Data Design Interactive also completed FMV animations for two other LEGO video games: LEGO Chess, which released in November 1998, and LEGO Racers, released in August 1999.

Sound and music

The characters in the game were voiced by Data Design Interactive employees. Chief was voiced by the game's project manager, while Jet was voice by the studio's office coordinator.

The three music tracks that play during levels were composed by Marl Boonyer and produced by Alan Boorman in 1998.

PlayStation revamp

In early 1999, six months before the PlayStation version of LEGO Rock Raiders was supposed to be submitted to Sony, the head of LEGO Media International decided that a real-time strategy game would not sell on the PlayStation. The game was ordered to be changed to an action game. As senior producer Tomas Gillo did not have time to rework the PlayStation game while finishing the Windows version, David Upchurch was made the producer for the PlayStation version in March 1999. Upchurch had previously worked as producer for LEGO Chess and early versions of what would later become LEGO Island 2.

...every night I’d retire to my hotel room, exhausted, thinking to myself “That was a good day, we made good progress… but the game’s still going to crap.” All in all, it was a depressing and demoralising experience that soured my attitude towards working at LEGO Media.

David Upchurch, dupchurch.com

After many strategy-focussed elements were removed from the PlayStation game, the developers were left with a 3D rendering engine that could deform terrain, some vehicle models, and small minifigure sprites. Upchurch enjoyed controlling the vehicles and suggested making the game a hybrid between Gauntlet and Blast Corps, where the player could complete missions either on-foot or in vehicles, and could construct vehicles and decide how to best use them to traverse caverns.

As the game's submission date approached, Upchurch spent nearly two months living in Birmingham while he worked on it with Data Design Interactive, playtesting and designing levels for it. After finishing work on LEGO Rock Raiders in August 1999, Upchurch left LEGO Media, going on to launch PlayStation World magazine for Computec Media in 2000. He later cited his negative experience producing this game as a major reason for leaving.

Release

LEGO Rock Raiders was first announced on 10 February 1999, along with LEGO Racers, LEGO Friends, and LEGOLAND. It was initially scheduled for release on Windows and PlayStation in September 1999, with a planned retail price of US$40–$45. In May 1999 all four titles were displayed at E3 1999 in Los Angeles, at the LEGO Media booth #1524 in the South Hall. A large LEGO model of Jet on a Hover Scout was built by model designers from LEGO Systems during the event. LEGO models of Rocket Racer's car and of PlayStation and Nintendo 64 controllers were also constructed before the event; the controllers were given to the winners of a contest involving the car.

Soundtrack

An extended play soundtrack, RockRaiders Music, was released on Marl Boonyer's Bandcamp page "Temple Sound" on 23 August 2022. It was originally priced at £4, later lowered to £3 by December 2022. The album contains the original masters of the three tracks that play during missions.

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Rock"	3:03
2.	"Ice"	3:26
3.	"Lava"	3:05
Total length:		9:35

Reception

The game received mixed reviews.

Legacy

Write something about the game's modding scene, with links to pages about mods and modding.

In 2012, Data Design Interactive founder Stewart Green announced plans to develop a Rock Raiders sequel.

Manic Miners

External Links

• Lego Rock Raiders at Wikipedia