March 31st, 1998

This is a sub-page of Proto:LEGO Racers (Windows, Nintendo 64, PlayStation)/October 20th, 1999.

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The first ever concrete evidence of something playable! The game is the very early stages of development and the team was getting ready for E3 1998, some developer documents suggest this was not the first ever build to be compiled, probably the first one to be actually playable though.

General#

Dev Log#

A dev log for this build was made by the developers, which gives quite the insight into the game's early development stages. The document is dated March 31st, 1998, which gives this prototype its name.

3-31-98

LEGO Racers submission

submission includes:

Programming
1. **NEW** Car collision code modification. This was complete in the last submission. But there are bugs to address and new elements to add. Bug: cars "pop" when collisions occur. New features: car tipping on turns, spin outs.
2. Power ups Functional (no special FX). This will include a visual representation of the power up on the track, in the power hole, and the projectile, mine, turbo or shield physical representations in the world. Special FX (trails, explosion volumes, etc) will not be implemented in this milestone. Power ups will include Blaster beam, electromagnet mine, turbo and Shield only.
3. In Game Screen elements. This includes lap counters, lap timers, power up hole/icons, speedometer, and position in race. All items will be functional.
4. **NEW** Camera AI implemented. This will include code that will keep the camera more stable and therefore improve visual quality and gameplay. Camera should also follow the car properly through a powerslide and provide proper FOV to see the new direction the car will head in. There will be 3 camera views and one "in car" view.
5. **NEW** Menu Scripting. This will not provide a visual change in the menu screens. It is an internal tool to help speed up the menu screen creation process. It allows you to set the composition of the menu screens quickly. The visual change in this demo will be the use of 3D cars and Characters in the racer select screen. They will be placeholder 3D models to show the 3D functionality of the menus.

Art
1. **NEW** 8 Cars and Characters. Cars were submitted in previous milestone. They will be the 8 cars used for the E3 demo. There will also be 8 Characters built that correspond to the cars that will be used on the menu screens standing next to the cars. Cars and Characters are: King Kahuka, Capt. Redbeard, The Admiral, Majisto, The Pharaoh's Mummy, Ann Droid, Nova Hunter, Basil the Batlord. Note: These cars will have textured nubs on them in the menu screen, the final game should use the polygon nubs for Racer selection/car builder.
2. **NEW** Space Track complete. This will include the track display model, collision model, AI spline path, track elements such as trees and buildings, and power ups on the track. This will be the complete version of the E3 track without hazards, without special effects.
3. Power up art (icons, projectiles). Power ups will include Blaster beam, electromagnet mine, Turbo and Shield only. The art will be placeholder or we may give more than one version to see which works best.
4. In Game Screen (timers, lap counters, power up icons, etc.)
5. **NEW** LEGO Racer's Logo revision, different versions to choose from.

Sound
1. Power up sounds. Including power up acquisition, activation, impact/explosion. Sound effects redone for collisions and Powersliding.

Deliverable: Demo for N64/PC with power ups functional, In Game Screen displays functional, Camera views functional, and sounds for Power ups (sound changes/additions on PC only).

Note for N64 Sound/menus: The Sound APIs from Nintendo have completely changed. This means that we will submit the N64 demo with NO SOUND. Latest report from Nintendo is that there is a newer version of the API coming out in a few weeks. We will attempt to use this latest version for the April submission. The menus will not be updated on teh N64, only on the PC (as in last submssion).

Note for PSX: We only wanted to deliver a faster rendering engine, we have done that but also have more to show. Most of the code has been ported for the power up system/activation. The PSX demo still has the old track but the most recent power up code.

Characters#

As stated in the dev log, 8 cars and characters were made for this build, in preparation for E3 1998. Included were early versions of King Kahuka, Captain Redbeard, The Admiral, The Pharaoh's Mummy, Ann Droid, Nova Hunter and Basil the Batlord; additionally, a scrapped character was featured, called Majisto, a wizard minifig. Some of them would changed/get replaced by other drivers for E3.

Menus#

To do: Wait for other things to come up.

Based on the dev log, menus have already been implemented in some form, and a scripting system have been put in place for easier coding during development. The racer select screen is present and it features placeholder 3D models to show off the 3D capabilities of menus.

In Game#

Gameplay#

The race has all the 8 available drivers, and it lasts 6 laps. At the end of the race a debug message showing the average frames per seconds, after which the game closes. No proper start/end of race sequence is present.

Track#

The prototype only features one track, referred as "Space track" in the dev log. It shares many similarities with Magma Moon Marathon in theme and gimmics, being set in a space-like environment, with blue terrain and lava. This very track would go on to be used for the game's box art.

The track features two shortcuts, the first one is placed right at the start with a skull that opens and closes its entrance repeatedly. The second one is a very early version of the combination lock shortcut: its doors open and close rather than depending on a combination lock like the one in the final game, and once entered the player goes through a space base-like hallway that leads to the end of the track. The end of the hallway also has two doors that repeatedly open and close horizontally.

For the most part the track's geometry doesn't have textures and only uses vertex coloring. Various decorations are placed along the raceline, none of which (except the door for the space base shortcut) made it for the final release.

HUD#

The HUD is vastly different. The whole overlay is positioned on the top side of the screen with information put next to each other:

• "ranks" text is specified instead of having the big position number, on the top left;
• lap counter, has a different style and layout;
• lap time, displayed separately instead of right next to the lap number;
• best time, put next to the regular lap time;

A debug FPS counter is present, displayed under the ranks and with a different font, similarly to later builds for the N64 version shown on different magazines. It shows the game running at a maximum of 62.5 FPS.

Also, the speedometer is present and is completely different from both the final version and from other prototypes shown to journalists and magazines. The speedometer itself and its needle are rainbowy and a number, for the speed units, is shown on the bottom right, likely for debug purposes.

Power-Ups#

Power-ups are present in this build, though they widely differ from their final version counterpart.

• no upgrades (white bricks) are present at this time;
• the main four categories of power-ups are already defined, but due to no upgrades being present only one per category is implemented:
  • "Projectile" (red brick) category has a laser gun of sorts, if used it spawns a series of projectiles that makes the other cars spin in place, killing their momentum;
  • "Boost" (green brick) category is the same as in the final game, giving you a boost in speed forward, though no booster is shown behind the car and it lasts less than in the final game;
  • "Hazard" (yellow brick) category features, instead of the oil slick, a land mine. Once used it stays in place until an opponent goes into it, making it explode;
  • "Shield" (blue brick) category is the same as its final game counterpart, but there's no visuals for the shield itself.

The brick contamination mechanic is absent, meaning that if the player already has a power-up and collects another one, the collected one simply disappears and the player obtains the new one. No particles or other effects are present yet (aside from the laser gun).

The graphics for them are also different, being 2D on the track and having different sprites for the HUD once collected.

Sounds for power-ups are also implemented. Notably this demo uses an earlier rendition of the pickup sound effect, which ended up being used in the intro cutscene for the console versions and in the demo for the 2001 release. It is slightly longer and has lower volume compared to its final counterpart.

Car Physics#

The player's car physics largely resemble the ones from the final game, although more rough and with no drifting. By comparison, the driving style seems similar to when, in the final game, the player drives backwards. The dev log also states that powersliding is implemented at this time. Top speed (without boosting) and acceleration seems to be identical (or nearly) to the final game, revolvering around 75 to 80+ units on the speedometer.

NPCs on the other hand, contrarily to the final game, do seem to use the same physics as the player, however following a predefined path. This leads to mixed results: while being more realistic, it also means that some cars, if lead too far away from their predefined path, can end up stranded not knowing how to get back (in the footage around 2:00 we can see Redbeard stuck against the entrance of the first shortcut, also showing that bumping doesn't seem to be implemented yet). The stranded opponent's behaviour is the same as what is seen in the final game (example), with the opponent eventually getting back on track but losing a lot of time in the process.

Driver Animations#

The demo doesn't have any tipe of animation implemented for the drivers, as a result they just sit still in their car at all times.