Legoland

LEGOLAND, portable

Play in your browser | Releases | Decompilation | Porting rules | Roadmap

This project is a portable version of LEGOLAND (LEGO Media, 1999), built on the matching decompilation of its legoland.exe. Its goal is to make the game run natively on today's systems (Windows 10/11, Linux, Android and web browsers) while keeping the original game's experience as faithful as possible.

The decompilation recreates the game as C that the original Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 compiler turns into byte-identical code, checked function by function with reccmp; its main is the source of truth for what the game does. This repository adds what it takes to run it: a real program entry, the game's startup data, plain-C replacements for its hand-written assembly, and the Windows APIs it calls reimplemented on SDL3.

Please note: the port is about platform independence, not about changing the game. Optional changes live in extensions/, each with a switch to turn it off. The approach follows isle-portable, which did the same for LEGO Island.

Status

Platform	Status
Windows 10/11 (x86, x64)	Played from start to finish; released
Linux (x64)	Builds and passes its self-test with the Windows build's results; play testing in progress
Android (arm64, x64)	Builds and passes its self-test on an emulator; play testing in progress
Web	Live; passes its self-test in Chromium; play testing in progress

The decompilation is at 97% progress (99.2% average match). All 44 functions the original wrote in assembly have plain-C versions here, checked against the original in a CPU emulator where it mattered (tools/emu/).

Usage

An existing copy of LEGOLAND (the CD, or its image: an .iso or .bin) is required. No game data is included: the first start installs the game from your CD, in any of its languages (English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Czech...).

Platform	Download	How
Web	Play in your browser	Choose your CD image; it's installed in the browser's storage for the site, nothing is uploaded. Recent Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari 17+. Saved games can be exported and imported. On a phone or tablet: touch is the mouse, a finger drags the object lists, two fingers move around the park (a two-finger tap is the right button), and the keyboard opens when the game asks for a name.
Windows	LEGOLAND-port-windows-<version>.zip	Unzip and start LEGOLAND-port.exe. A launcher offers full screen or a window.
Linux	LEGOLAND-port-linux-x86_64-<version>.tar.gz	glibc 2.31 or later (Ubuntu 20.04, Debian 11, Fedora 32...), X11 or Wayland. Unpack and start legoland (-windowed for a window).
Android	LEGOLAND-port-android-<version>.apk	Android 7.0 or later. Install the APK, then choose the CD image on the first start. Touch is the mouse (the game's pointer is hidden); a finger drags the object lists; two fingers move around the park, a two-finger tap is the right button; the keyboard opens when the game asks for a name (three fingers show it too).

On Windows the setup finds the CD in a drive (a mounted ISO counts), or takes an ISO, a folder with a copy of the CD or an installed LEGOLAND, and copies about 400 MB next to the program. The music plays through the port's own DirectMusic; off Windows its instruments are GeneralUser GS (free, included), and Windows' own gm.dls is used instead when you copy it into the game's folder (the web page has a button for it).

The game still draws its 640x480 picture; the port scales it up with sharp pixels, 4:3 with black bars, in full screen or a window (-fullscreen, -res 1024x768, -windowed, or the launcher on Windows).

Optional features (extensions/)

Feature	Default	Switch
Music follows the level: each level plays the theme of its story (Western, Castle, Egypt, Inca); the original only ever played the main theme, the others were cheat codes	on	launcher box, web page checkbox, -no-level-music
Movies pause in the background instead of running on and skipping ahead	on	-no-pause-movies
Portable music: the port's DirectMusic (GothicKit dmusic + FluidSynth) instead of Windows'	on	-windows-music
Skip the logo movie with a click	on	-no-skip-logo
Action log: what you do, in legoland-port-trace.txt, for bug reports	on	-no-action-log
Debug console for testing (commands)	off	-console

Library substitutions

To run anywhere, every Windows-only library is replaced. Each changed call in the decompiled code is tagged with its subsystem (// [library:video] and so on), so the "Remarks" link lists every place it touched.

Library/subsystem	Substitution	Status
Window, events	SDL3	✅	Remarks
DirectDraw (2D video)	miniwin surfaces in memory, shown through SDL3	✅	Remarks
Software 3D renderer (hand-written assembly)	Plain C	✅	Remarks
DirectInput (keyboard, mouse)	SDL3; touch on Android	✅	Remarks
DirectSound, ACM (sound effects)	SDL3 audio, miniwin ADPCM decoding	✅	Remarks
DirectMusic (segments and styles)	GothicKit dmusic + a style engine, FluidSynth	✅	Remarks
Video for Windows (Indeo 5/3.2, Cinepak movies)	FFmpeg's decoders, our own AVI reader	✅	Remarks
Files, folders, CD checks	miniwin: case-insensitive paths, the installed data folder counts as the CD	✅	Remarks
Registry (settings)	An .ini file	✅	Remarks
Timers	SDL3	✅	Remarks
Threads, events, critical sections	miniwin (Win32 on Windows, pthreads elsewhere)	✅	Remarks
GDI text and bitmaps	miniwin; off Windows the game's TrueType font through stb_truetype	✅	Remarks
Certificate printing	The default printer on Windows; off Windows, saved as a picture	✅	Remarks

Building

The project uses CMake presets and cross-compiles everything from Linux (WSL works):

cmake --preset clang-cl-x86 && cmake --build build-clang-x86        # Windows, 32-bit (clang-cl + xwin's SDK)
cmake --preset clang-cl-x64 && cmake --build build-clang-x64        # Windows, 64-bit
cmake --preset linux && cmake --build build-linux                   # Linux, with the host's clang
cmake --preset linux-portable && cmake --build build-linux-portable # the Linux release (glibc 2.31+, Zig's clang)
tools/android/build_apk.sh                                          # Android (SDK + NDK, no Gradle)
cmake --preset web && cmake --build build-web                       # the web (Emscripten)
tools/release/make_release.py all                                   # the release packages, in dist/
tools/release/github_release.py                                     # dist/ as a GitHub Release (needs GITHUB_TOKEN)

Requirements and details

• Windows builds need clang, lld, llvm, cmake, ninja and the Windows SDK and CRT from xwin: xwin --accept-license --arch x86,x86_64 splat --output ~/xwin (XWIN_DIR to use another folder). The first configure downloads SDL3 and FluidSynth (pinned, checked by SHA-256).
• Linux needs SDL3's dependencies for its video and sound backends (Debian/Ubuntu: libx11-dev libxext-dev libxrandr-dev libxcursor-dev libxi-dev libxss-dev libxtst-dev libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev wayland-protocols libasound2-dev libpulse-dev libpipewire-0.3-dev libdecor-0-dev); the release uses Zig (~/zig/zig) to link against an old glibc. Off Windows, <windows.h> and the DirectX headers are generated from the SDK (tools/linux/gen_win32.py).
• Android needs the Android SDK in ~/android-sdk (build-tools 35, platform 35, NDK r27) and JDK 17.
• The web needs the Emscripten SDK in ~/emsdk; see port/web/README.md.
• The build turns the game's initialized data into C (tools/gen_data.py) from the original legoland.exe, the one file of the game in this repository; the program doesn't need it at runtime.
• Checks: every build has -port-selftest, which reads the game's resources and writes dumps that must be identical to the Windows build's (tools/android/selftest.sh, tools/web/pagetest.py run it on Android and in Chromium); tools/test_miniwin/ compares miniwin with Windows' own DirectDraw, DirectSound and GDI; tools/emu/ runs original and port functions side by side in a CPU emulator.
• The matching build (MSVC6 through wibo) still works: uv run setup.py && cmake --preset msvc6 && cmake --build build && ./tools/verify.

Contributing

Bug reports are welcome in the issues; the game's log (legoland-port-trace.txt, or "Save the game's log" on the web page) helps a lot. The decompiled code's fixes and names go to the decompilation first and are merged in here. The working rules are in PORTING.md and CLAUDE.md; the plan is in ROADMAP.md.

Third-party code

Built into the port, each under its own license: SDL3 (zlib), FFmpeg's Indeo and Cinepak decoders (port/ffmpeg/, LGPL-2.1+), GothicKit dmusic with TinySoundFont (port/dmusic/, MIT), FluidSynth (LGPL-2.1+, built from its pinned release), zlib's blast and puff (port/blast/, port/puff/, zlib); off Windows stb_truetype (port/stb/, public domain or MIT); on the web coi-serviceworker (port/web/, MIT). The LGPL parts can be replaced: this repository has everything needed to rebuild the program with another version of them.

LEGOLAND is a trademark of the LEGO Group. This is a fan project, not made or endorsed by the LEGO Group; you need your own copy of the game.