Running LEGO Rock Raiders on modern Windows

To do: Thanks for making this page Aidenpons, moved it to a better name and guess need to clean it up

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LEGO Rock Raiders is an early 3dfx-only game with rushed development and no post-release updates, leading to an unstable experience on modern versions of Microsoft Windows. This guide is intended to help run it on newer computers.

1. Locate the directory LEGO Rock Raiders is installed to. By default, it installs to LEGO Media\Games\Rock Raiders in the Program Files folder, which is typically C:\Program Files on 32-bit computers or C:\Program Files (x86) on 64-bit computers.
2. Copy the entire Rock Raiders folder to a location outside of the Program Files directory. This helps avoid dealing with administrator permission prompts when adding, editing, or removing files.
   • Optionally, create multiple copies of Rock Raiders either for backup purposes or for installing or creating different mods.

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1. Dig up your game directory and move it to somewhere out of Program Files, like My Documents. Windows 10 hates people mucking around with Program Files, and you'll need to do a lot of mucking - so put it somewhere safe. While you're here, it's a good idea to just make about five backups. It's also a good idea to go into Control Panel -> Folder Options and 'Show extensions for known file types' or something. As part of the initial setup, delete the shortcuts that come installed ("Basic" and "Advanced" - you won't need 'em)
2. Make sure LRR does not need the disk to run. It is almost impossible (you will need to screw around very heavily with an XP Virtual Machine and even then that's doubtful). This begs the question 'How do I know when I can't even get it to launch' - if LegoRR.icd is 0kB size then it does not need the disk to run. If LegoRR.icd has a size that isn't 0, then welp you're out of luck - it needs the disk to run and Win10 does not like that at all.
3. Now the troubleshooting begins. There are several things to do. The first step is to get LRR to run in Windowed Mode. To do this, create a shortcut to LegoRR.exe. Right-click your new shortcut and click on Properties, then Compatibility. Quite frankly, tick anything that looks interesting. The only reason we know so much is from endless screwing around in the vain hope the game will run - and sometimes it does. In particular, you want compatibility for XP SP2 (or however far back you can go, compatibility for Win98 would be ideal but I don't think that's supported....), admin (always helps), and most importantly' 16-bit colour.
4. You also need d3drm.dll . For your convenience this is uploaded here. Put that straight into your LRR directory, right next to the executable. Oddly enough the .dll on LRR's disk does not work. No, for some funny reason you need Lego Island 1's d3drm.dll . Don't ask me why.
5. Now the fun really begins, because from here it's all hit and miss, hence the screwing around. Your ideal result - sorry, the only result that works - is Direct 3D HAL in Windowed. Nothing else will work properly. Fullscreen will lag to bits and RGB Emulation will crash.
6. It is known that LRR dislikes AMD cards. This is where screwing around comes into play. One user reported that doing stuff with CLGen.exe fixed their problem (specifically selecting the Voodoo option).
7. If the game crashes after finishing loading a level, it's likely it's trying to load the in-game movies but can't. Download this file, unpack it, delete the existing LegoRR1.wad and LegoRR0.wad (this is why you made those backups, back in Step 1), and shove this in its place.