Winbrick 2022: Level Pack mod

Winbrick 2022 Level Pack - 1.0 Release!

Hey again folks! Welcome back to Kralich's mystery box of mods and today it's about 3D Winbrick 2001 - a nifty little Arkanoid clone from 2001 with a bunch of extra features, made by Stefan Kuhner! I played the shareware version at my grandmother's house when I was a kid and always wanted to play my own levels, but couldn't. Over the last few years I spent some time trying to dig up first the name of the game from my memory, then a full version. I had no luck for most of that time.

Then, recently, Firebird_Man on Reddit sent me the full version of the game - success! Or not, because it turns out the level editor had to be registered separately (boo and hiss). Luckily, Hexadecimal Mantis - whose name you might recognise from my Bionicle Heroes mods as he has made a lot of them possible in the first place - was able to whip up a Cheat Engine script bypassing the checks for the level editor registration so I could make levels! This script is not public right now as he's refining it further for public release, but it was enough for me to make use of for this mod, so a big thank you to both of these two for making this revival pack possible

Now - on with the article!

Levels

Winbrick 2022 has 20 levels, which may sound like a lot - and it is - but Winbrick's simple editor luckily meant each one didn't take the dozens or hundreds of hours custom levels in other games can take (in this way, the simplicity was reminiscent of another old game I made a level pack for, Traintown). I chose twenty as back in 2001, you could submit your level pack to Stefan and if it had 20 decently made levels it would go on the official Winbrick website for download by all. Although this stopped being a hard-and-fast rule by 2010 when the last levels were uploaded, I decided to stick with it as a throwback. Each level is themed after something of personal interest, also in keeping with the theme of the original level packs. So - here's all twenty levels featured in this pack!

-Hau (A BTG reference in honour of Hexadecimal Mantis' other modding venture)

-RTBR Logo (The logo of my main mod project)

-ModDB (That be the site this here level pack is hosted on)

-Big Ben (A famous British landmark, naturally)

-HL Lambda (A reference to what my biggest mods are based around)

-Moon (That's the thing in the sky ostensibly made of cheese)

-Three Virtues (Another Bionicle reference - not the last either)

-Winbrick 2022 (That's the actual mod, innit)

-GGx2 (The initials of the grandparents who first introduced me to 3D Winbrick 2001 when I was a kid)

-Mata Nui Face (Given Hex and I's interests, it's only fitting Bionicle gets a good showing this time)

-Mount Everest (Another monument because these are ideas that are generally evergreen for bitpart packs like this)

-D+E (Me and my girlfriend's initials in a heart because we're soppy, d'aww)

-Kaleidoscope (Yeah, I was reaching a bit for this one, but one of the backgrounds that comes with Winbrick's level editor gave me an interesting idea to tie the background and level together)

-Lego (I love Lego, and it's made of bricks, so...win-win(brick)?)

-Lego Man (Ditto as per the above)

-Eiffel Tower (Another landmark, but I picked kind of a bad one considering height and all. Still, French representation, I suppose?)

-Mermaid (This one was my girlfriend's suggestion, of course)

-Nerf (I love Nerf, and this might also be a little tease for another game I'm hoping to mod soon)

-Cat (I have too many of these things, five all in all, so I couldn't very well not let them feature)

-Age of Sail Boat (This was my girlfriend's suggestion too, and it was pretty fun to make the cannons)

Conclusion

3D Winbrick 2001 was almost the game that got away, when it comes to modding - without a full version, then without access to the level editor, I couldn't save levels, and so even if the game was technically moddable out the box, it was just a little out of reach. I never gave up hope I'd be able to make good on this though and thanks to Firebird_Man and Hexadecimal Mantis, I managed to make the level pack of my childhood, finally. All of my mods for old obscure games dig up someone who remembers and has a nostalgia trip, so if that person is you, I'm glad you can share in the good vibes. I might make individual levels for Winbrick 2001 now and then if the fancy takes me, and in those cases I'll upload it to the addons section on ModDB for the base game. I'm also planning to write up a tutorial when the script is publicly available so that others can make their own levels if they like. In the mean time, thanks for reading, and stay bricking!