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[12:44:05 PM] McJobless: what do we do when mcjobless hasn't sleep [12:44:15 PM] McJobless: Watch do we do when he has college [12:44:27 PM] McJobless: Ewaaaarrtlly in the mlooprhniht

I have a lot to say about the movie, most of which was already touched on. So I won't say much. BUT, We've all seen Benny's Spaceship, right? I looked up the "LL-929" seen on Benny's ship, and look what I found: Look familiar? Now, who built the white MOC? Why none other than Mark "I-Killed-Teal" Strafford. So three guesses as to who built the official set here. And the MOC was built almost five years ago. Wanna see more of the MOC? HERE YOU GO. I just thought this was very interesting. [iNB4 jamesster says something along the lines of "this was common knowledge".]

We here at Rock Raiders United are natural born masochists. @le717 Now that you've done this you should *is tackled by a horde of desperate RRU members* *gasp!* *cough* make a *cough!* help! Tee- *gasp!* vrrhrrr *cough* *struggles free for a moment* Tee-Vee Here! emulator! *Is knocked unconscious by a projectile thrown by one member.*

It's fun to provoke jamesster with knowledge when he's extremely tired. EDIT:

For the last week I have spoken about a "master plan" I had. It all started with me mentioning it in the shoutbox and saying perhaps I should have consulted about it first (that concluded with Cyrem saying "New rule: no secret plans". le717 banhammer time!"). Following this initial hint came two status updates about it. Who can also forget the trailer which frightened even Arthuriel, creator of the great Insane Raiders comics and our ever-powerful founder. Finally, the hints ceased with me telling JimbobJeffers in the shoutbox "You never know what I have up my sleeve." All was quiet on the east side of the Island mention of my plan ceased on Friday, but that was simply the calm before the storm. All the mystery, suspense, and fear built up over the week has lead up to this one single, final moment. A LANDSLIDE HAS OCCURRED Inspired by sites such as the ever-useful Drama Button, I have faithfully recreated possibly the most annoying audio glitch in LEGO Rock Raiders. Just like the game, it never stops until you reload or close the page. Built using HTML5 audio, it requires a rather modern browser but also allowed me to support mobile devices as well. Of note is the standard Rock Raider sandwich (which I did not make, someone else did). I only felt it right to click/tap a sandwich to initiate the chaos. You will also find a small stopwatch to keep track of exactly how long you have endured the landslides. To achieve the full experience, you will need to click the sandwich multiple times and have your speakers turned up. MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHABAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Does this rival the greatness of Flappy Bricks or Banana Pananic? I have no clue. I kinda doubt it, but then again it can never be understood what may be the next big thing. Let the California landslides begin. Less dramatic tl;dr version (per request by jamesster, I recreated the "A LANDSLIDE HAS OCCURRED" Rock Raiders audio glitch as a website push-button.

Annoyed by those pesky bats, scaring your Rock Raiders away, making them drop the final energy crystal you need for your support station seconds before you run out of air? Well, here's the solution: The Rock Raiders ABDT (Anti-Bat-Defense-Tower): Featuring two six-barreled miniguns and a searchlight to bring brightness to the ceiling and ends to their lives (also features two practical tool holders for tool storage while you defend the base). Can be operated by a Rock Raider or as a self-controlled turret and fits comfortably in the loading bay of a Chrome Crusher. Also works against slimy slugs. Just a little for-fun build I made while going through some old parts and having the BrickArms miniguns at hand. Probably doesnt go too well with TLGs anti-violence thinking, but whatever.

Once made a market square with a friend on a now closed server. People could rent a building and/or stand and sell their products there to other members. My store parodied LEGO sets by selling sets like "The Red Mechanic" (redstone, switches, etc.) and "Alchemist" (brewing stand, potion ingredients, etc.). I owned the building with the glowstone square on the top front of the store. Right now I'm working on a federation of islands populated by NPCs on the RRU server. Therefore I'm building villages on the islands. I've done this before on the server I mentioned earlier. It were three islands connected with the main continent via an underwater tunnel (left). It was called Trinity Island (an RCT reference). I also had some space left on the right island, so it became home to a functioning rollercoaster (hence the name of the village). The LEGO logo in Minecraft. I'm not sure why I build this in the first place, but it worked out well and was fun to work on. Again, on the closed server earlier mentioned I was working on a theme park called Whispering Cliffs (you get that reference again?) build alongside the edge of a cliff. I don't have an overview of the park (it was half finished when the server closed) but I do have one image of the Nether dark ride. It shows the main room of the dark ride, all made by hand (a little MCEdit for creating the room). Also, the text message shows the name of the now defunct server. Lastly, two images. A big farm I made first when I joined the aforementioned server, influenced by that Explore the Farm game from Humongous Entertainment. Next to it, an abandoned mall which I build but never served its purpose. Next to it is a minecart station, behind the mall is a villa. The admin of that defunct server I mentioned, who also was the friend helping me with the Market Square, opened up a new server. He still had a back-up of the old server world so I was granted access to that world for nostalgia purposes. He placed this world in the new server temporarily so that's why you see that tokens bar on the right, which is a feature on that new server.

Four minutes. I lasted four minutes before my family hollered up the stairs that I was driving them crazy with a pointless waste of time. Just wait until I'm next home alone, then we'll see who lasts the longest...

A couple of announcements to make. Firstly, I'm glad you'd like to join the server c4squid, I'll add you and notify you via PM when you're in. Secondly, the server is currently down for maintenance. I'm going through and re-configuring a bunch of things, particularly in order to add a second Creative world to the server. When ready, you will be able to travel between Survival and Creative worlds (with separate inventories) via portal hubs at the world spawnpoints. Dynmap will be configured to render both worlds, but I'm deleting the current maps and re-rendering them at lower resolutions as the current files are HUGE - it's taken over two hours so far for the file to be deleted via FTP. They won't look awful, it's just that you won't be able to zoom in as far. I aim to have the server back up by tomorrow. Thirdly... UHC: Round 3 Yesterday at 6pm UTC, six courageous warriors entered the brutal world of Minecraft UltraHardcore. Grouped into three teams of two, their goal was to survive and slay both opposing teams. The contestants were as follows: Face Melters Arthuriel JimbobJeffers Spyrius Smashers RobExplorien Shadowblaze The Green Lurkers Antillies RR Rocks The first player to go was Arthuriel, after stepping outside in front of me there was a sudden 'BOOM' and he was gone. I died shortly after, being unable to continue strongly without him... The remaining two teams fought on valiantly and survived long past the original ending time. Unfortunately my online access to the server was temporarily cut for a period of time, during which Antillies died, so I was unable to see how. But after re-establishing connection, the three remaining adventurers met up for a climatic ending. Swords clashed, armour was bashed, and structures were built with rapid speed in a tense struggle. After the dust settled, only one competitor remained... The last man standing was RR Rocks! Therefore, the winning team this round are ! Commiserations to Shadowblaze and RobExplorien for coming in second place, and well done to all who took part. I don't know about the rest of you, but I found this round to be the most fun yet! Awards Most Sudden Death: Arthuriel Bragging Rights: RR Rocks

Hmmm... Running TeeVee saying 'A landslide has occur- *gets banned* Oh, I haven't put something about teaching your child important values, nor the melted soldier, and not even something about flowers and red bricks...

Yep, that's about the right size. Except that it is not golden. Pure gold bends on contact. What it is is finely wrought Lego steel, from the forges of the long-ruined Great Furnace. Aye, it has endured much and is tougher for it. In fact, I'll go off and talk to Sauron and see if he can lend me one of his hammers.... Grond would be effective at smashing into your house... No wait; a better idea. I shall free Morgoth from the chains of Manwe (with dots over the 'e') and get him to reforge his massive sledgehammer, Grond. *silence* ... *chains snap* I am coming. You cannot get out. I am coming... No. You didn't. Thus A MASSIVE DEBT HAS APPEARED YOUR FINANCES ARE IN DANGER MONEY IS BEING DRAINED FROM YOUR BANK ACCOUNT AN INSURANCE PAYOUT HAS OCCURRED Back on topic, I couldn't go it for very long as my dad absolutely hated it. He lasted less than five seconds. Also, clicking it multiple times and then it lines up sounds like a string band. A BAD SIMILE HAS OCCURRED EDIT: Drill Master, considering what you've been working on... A RUNNING MAN HAS OCCUR- *gets hit by another banhammer, replenishing my stock* EDIT 2: *boots up Scratch*

I'm prepared to make hundreds of heads explode now. For those who are actually interested in game design; these lessons, starting from Experience Loops, have all come from Daniel Cook, who is an INCREDIBLE game design teacher. I'm simply rewriting his lessons into words that I can understand. If you'd like to go far further indepth than I would, I recommended you watch the YouTube video about his IGDA presentation which covers all this, and then have a look at this amazing website. Concept E - Skill Chains As we established in the last concept, Experience Loops are what keep the player engaged with our game. Unfortunately/Fortunately, though, it goes a lot further than that. We're going to discuss scenarios further down, but for the moment, consider this: everytime a player enters a "scenario" (some kind of predetermined instance where the player must perform set actions in order to continue onwards, such as killing enemies or moving to the end of a platforming challenge), the game design must present some form of obstacle that the player needs to overcome. Enemies, platforms, time limits, you name it. The key to these scenarios is that they are designed to test the player's mastery of certain types of skills within the game. However, what happens if the player hasn't been trained in those skills? Of course, they fail. When a player fails over and over without understand what is going wrong, they will get bored. When they get bored, they quit. We cannot, as game designers, allow for this to happen. Luckily, there's a fantastic way around this. It's called a "Skill Chain". Observe the following diagram: This diagram shows you the Skill Chain from the original Mario. To explain it, I need to explain what the two kinds of skills are: Atomic Skill: A low level, simple skill that is repeated often. Combination Skill: A high level skill that requires multiple Atomic Skills to be performed, and is usually only repeated once in a while. The two lower skills, "Move" and "Jump" are both Atomic Skills. You learn these quickly, and they are repeated frequently throughout the game. The next level up is a Combination Skill. Killing a Goomba is still an action/skill, but to complete it, you need to be able to both move and jump. Every single skill is its own Experience Loop. What that means is that when a player performs an Atomic Skill, the player is subconsciously going through the entire loop once, and when they go through a Combination Skill, the player is going through multiple loops at the same time. This is why it is EXTREMELY important to make sure that your core Atomic Skills, such as movement and jumping, are like a good song. No matter how many times you play them, they should never get boring. Refer to the Experience Loops section above for ideas on how to make a loop good. From a level designer's perspective, this Skill Chain gives you an entirely new, valuable way to look at designing levels. Your whole goal of designing a good level is to start SCAFFOLDING up these Skill Chains, by slowly introducing the player to new concepts, and allowing them to master it. Eventually down the track, you then introduce new skills, and then after the player has mastered them, introduce the idea of using them together. A very good example of this is Portal 2, in how it introduced the Portals, allowed them to master the logic of Portals, and then introduced Gels and got players to master those, and then allowed players to use and master both simultaneously. Concept F - Arcs Experience Loops are fantastic, but they leave a big problem. Experience Loops are, by nature, designed to be "Interactive Mastery Scenarios". The idea is that they are designed to allow a player to build skills, master them and have fun while doing so. This doesn't work with elements such as story, or ending the game, however. An Arc is a content-delivery system. Essentially, an Arc is a broken Experience Loop. They have the very same structure, but where as an Experience Loop actually continues to loop until the player has finished, an Arc ends, and that is it. It'll look something like this: You might question why we would bother adding Arcs to games, if we want players to master skills, as that's the way to have fun. The big problem with Experience Loops is that very part of the loop; "Personal Objective". To get somebody inside the game, they need to be enticed by it. They need what we call an "Evocative Stimuli". To understand Evocative Stimuli, we need a quick lesson in how the brain functions: When we perform an action, that action is recorded in our mind as a memory. As the brain stores that memory, it tries to sew it up with a string of connections. Those connections all link to various elements, such as "colours", "actions", and more importantly "emotions". Whenever our brain is put into a situation when it needs to think quickly, such as playing a video game, and the brain needs to recall something, it doesn't have the time to full play out the memory. Instead, it looks at the emotional connection so that it can make a quick judgement on what the person needs to do in response. Evocative Stimuli attract a lot of emotions. These stimuli, upon being called, give players a "jolt of energy", and allow them to effortless make a decision on what they need to do. The stimuli itself can be anything, from visuals to audio. The only problem with it is that it truly is a "jolt". Once a stimuli has been triggered, it cannot be triggered again. It's a one-use yet powerful MultiTool in our arsenal of design elements. Consider a book, for a second. Books are just a series of Arcs. They are constantly delivering you Evocative Stimuli in order to keep you engaged. The problem with this method, however, is that you become tired of it quickly. We call this "burning out", since you've become so overwhelmed with Evocative Stimuli, it no longer has any effect on you. Without anything to break up the monotony, there's no chance your player will want to stick around. Arcs are not designed to be major gameplay elements. They don't loop, and thus, don't repeat. Think of them as cutscenes, ending a game, and elements such as that. Their intention is to give the player a boost of motivation so they can push on with the Experience Loops. Concept G - Architecture and Frequency of Loops and Arcs As you've noticed, everything so far has weaved itself so perfectly into each other. We've looked at the very microscopic elements of a good game, and worked our way up. In the last concept, the ending was rather abrupt, but that was on purpose. The previous lesson introduced you to Arcs, and their core problem. This one will show you how to use them properly, as well as Experience Loops/Skill Chains. To make an engaging experience, we need to be able to effectively switch between giving the player interactive mastery sessions (Experience Loops/Skill Chains), and giving them content that motivates and entices (we cover these soon) them to continue (Arcs). The creation of a pattern of these is called an Architecture. A simple level Architecture is shown below: (The sandwich means that you've sandwiched a Loop between two Arcs) The player starts with the first arc, which gets them excited with an initial burst of content delivery. Then they play the central Loop several times allowing them to master a skill. Finally, they hit the Conclusion Arc, which wraps up the story nicely. This very simple Architecture is enough to give the player constant engagement across that level, provided your core elements (Mechanics and Concept) are interesting enough. So long as you always think of Experience Loops/Skill Chains and Arcs as building blocks, you will always be able to create interesting and effective Architectures, and if it doesn't work, it can be fairly easy to rearrange and find the pattern that is right for you. Now, that's all grand and all, but we have one slight problem. What exactly should you be focusing on when you develop your game? Many people in this day and age complain about the quality of endings in all sorts of media, games included. I'm here to introduce the idea to you that endings aren't important, and for a solid reason; 95+% of the player's experience will be within the CORE LOOP of a game. That is, the player will spend the majority of their time performing the main Experience Loop(s). What this means is that your focus as a game design is less on the overarching story, and more about making sure that very core game element works properly and is fun. This is how we categorise Experience Loops: (Shamelessly taken from Daniel Cook's YouTube presentation, see the top of this post for a link) The smaller loops are fast, frequent loops. These are Core Loops of the game, and the player is constantly repeating these over and over again. These may be things like movement and shooting. The larger loops are slow, infrequent loops. These are things you do less often, usually involving many of those Core Loops. This could include killing a Goomba, like we mentioned earlier, or even finishing a level. Looking at this diagram, you can see it's extremely important for you to have a strong foundation of Core Loops for the player, as everything depends on them. This is why spending most of your development time working on getting the Core Loop(s) right is the best thing you can possibly do for your video game. Concept H - Simplest Form and Concept v. Flow Before we continue on with the heavy gameplay lessons, I'll give you a breather and set you up with some simplier concepts that may help you out. Firstly, "Simplest Form". When designing Interfaces for games, programs, or just about anything, your whole goal is to attempt to provide the most information in the least space possible, while still sticking to the boundaries provided by the development team. It's a very hard thing to design an Interface in this manner, and that's why we have the concept of "Simplest Form" to help you out. On average, our mind can only juggle around 7 things at once. We can't multitask everything. Trying to shove lots and lots of things at us, all at the same time is bound to give us confusion. This is why you need to find the simplest way to convey information. If you consider everything as a distraction to the mind, then you'll be able to make the next judgement a lot easier. To make the best interface, you want to find the minimum amount of information the player needs to make a good, accurate decision, and only display that. It's okay to hide things off-screen that might be important, but aren't necessary to the player's decision-making process. Consider how games play Mass Effect, Halo, Ratchet & Clank and World of Warcraft present their information. Which ones are easier to read from? When we work on our Core Concept, we are trying to bring the player to try out our world and stay within it. That's the concept of a game. We discussed this earlier, but we haven't really gone indepth on how that process works. We also haven't really touched on what Flow is and how it plays into design. Concept When we want a player to play a game, we need to consider enticement and motivation. There is a key difference between these terms. Enticement: "something used to attract or to tempt someone; a lure." Motivation: "a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way." Motivation is the concept that somebody has a personal reason for wanting to do a certain activity, whereas Enticement is when somebody is being attracted to do something. When a person goes to play a game, the motivation for playing is determined by the player. A game designer may supply motivations to choose from but what ultimately entices a player is their PERSONAL CHOICE. A player's personal choice can never be dictated, and therefore, our job is not to try make the player think in a certain way, but instead give them the means for them to explore what they could be enticed by. An example of this is allowing a player the ability to try an activity they might not be able to do in real life, such as shooting or paragliding. However, there is a problem with this. Once a player's curiosity is satisfied, their personal choice may seize to exist. From that point forward, they need to have a new motivation for them to continue the game. This is how Experience Loops apply to more than just Skills, but also to the story/concept itself. Mechanics/Flow In order for a player's motivation to work properly, they need to be engaged. There's something key to remember: Being in the state of Engagement = Being in the state of constant Cognitive Flow This equation works either way. The idea is that in order for the player to be engaged with your game, they need to feel like they are in a state of constant flow, and in order for that to happen, they need to constantly feel engaged. It's a cycle that never ends until the game has ended. As we've just spent the last few lessons learning, the means of maintaining engagement (and therefore providing flow) are MECHANICS. These both include the mechanics of player action and the mechanics of world response (something we might look into down the track). Testing What's so important about these aspects is that you can't, and should never, test these together. They are both separate elements that need to be developed separately to make sure they can stand up on their own. It's easy to adapt your Concept into your Mechanics and vice versa, but only if they are fun and work as intended. The easiest way to test, outside of making the game/story on a much smaller scale, is to look around you. Are you enticed by the ideas? Are your friends, family and even strangers enticed by the ideas? Are their similar products on the market? Are they selling well? A lot of the process for making a game is research. Start early, and you will be able to refine and nail your ideas as something incredible.

and yes I agree with this I already am: this topic. I hope you reloaded the page before starting this. I fixed it so 1 hour+ timers would not go off the gray border. You really thought clicking it again would turn it off? Well, you were provem wrong. Did I mention I cannot be held liable for damages? Well, at least it is not the LEGO Universe Uber Hammer- oops. Don't worry, I'll give you a sandwich. That will strengthen you.

I endured about forty seconds before a fainting occured.

Sorry, to double post about week apart but I thought some of you guys may be interested in an article which came out today. http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/the-lego-movie/ covers the process of creating the stop-motion credits sequence at the end of the move and was something that I read and watched and found to be quite interesting. It also has some media in the article including pre-production renders, storyboards, design screenshots, and the final sequence. It's quite neat, overall.

A really simple but very useful mod that gives you access to every car chassis and piece in the builder at any given time (even ones you can't normally use): In GAME DATA/OBJECTS/BRICKS, there's a file called UNIQUEBRICKS.TXT, which contains "All the bricks that can go in the game ever". Now, see UNIQUEBRICKSGENERIC.TXT? It lists "The generic bricks - available in all worlds". Simply overwrite it with a copy of UNIQUEBRICKS.TXT, and boom, every chassis and piece is accessible everywhere. Edit - There seem to be quite a few newcomers who don't know you have to unpack the game's GTC before doing any modding, so here's a link for that:

Hiding in those WADs. Have you extracted them yet? If you haven't, use something that will *cough* Then you can organize them according to higher powers who actually know how the Data method works, or you can just leave them in your directory and recompile the WADs afterwards. He made one anyway. Look upwards; it's still on this page. And you'll get better as time goes on. Yeah Thanks. But How can i get them back to .WAD Files? Read or watch the tutorials before posting, please! There is more than enough information about this in this forum!

It's about freaking time somebody made this, Bats are the worst mob in all of LRR...But now we can finally strike back!

The seed was: A LANDSLIDE HAS OCCURRED World type: Amplified

It's glorious, and very useful. Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMpIm4AHVBg Hideki Freaking Naganuma. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8zo3ko_9YA

The information you gave me was actually about the battery, but I figured out your laptop is a Dell XPS M1330. Spec Sheet You need to get the drivers for nVIDIA Geforce GT 8400M. Please go to THIS, and then put the following information into the drop down boxes: GeForce GeForce 8M Series (Notebooks) GeForce 8400M GT (put your Operating System here) (put your default language gere) Then click the "Download" button. Install the program you download, then restart your computer and see if it worked. Thanks So much it worked!

The information you gave me was actually about the battery, but I figured out your laptop is a Dell XPS M1330. Spec Sheet You need to get the drivers for nVIDIA Geforce GT 8400M. Please go to THIS, and then put the following information into the drop down boxes: GeForce GeForce 8M Series (Notebooks) GeForce 8400M GT (put your Operating System here) (put your default language gere) Then click the "Download" button. Install the program you download, then restart your computer and see if it worked.

Some Variety. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-YzfAUsj1o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnuFYYJHaY0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU4hhNKsPog

I withstood it for 5 minutes and 40 seconds. At approx. 2 minutes, I clicked the sandwich a few times. Then it sounded like "A LANDSLIDE LUNCH LINE HAS OCCURRED!" Edit: did it again, this time withstood 9 whole minutes of it.

A broken set of speakers has occured. Your monitor is in danger. A whole lot of glass has appeared. Blood is being drained from your hand. Y'know what, le? *goes and fetches one out of four collected banhammers* A BANMAHHER HAS APPEARED YOUR HEAD IS IN DANGER *clonk*

Actually I ended at 1 hour and 16 minutes and yes I agree with this Edit: I accidentally double posted (web browser glitch I suspect) would a Mod delete the previous post?

You may have 55 minutes under you belt now Ace, but just you wait till I have time for round 2. After all I did say I decided I had enough, meaning I could of gone on for who knows how much longer. Also, I think le717 may have to keep a records list. XP

Oh i'm still going, I'm at 20 minutes now...

Have fun beating my time Ace. I'm a master at loops endurance.

That orchestra... http://youtu.be/ZB_ltsS9w4c

This is pure madness! btw: Maybe we should make a diary about withstanding this website: 30th Second: My brain begins to melt 1st Minute: Aaargh, make it stahp! 1:15 min: Must turn it off. Therefore I will click on the button for a second time 1:17 min: Nooo! Now I hear two Chief's. My brainz can't stand that many land slides. I will click a few more times on the button to find out, if it will turn off. 1:25 min: AAARGH. Chief made a family meeting with all his brothers, because I hear like a zillion voices at once. Must close the window to end this mad.... *head explodes* PS: I withstood only for a minute (at the end a clicked a second time on the button and then closed the tab). maybe I should test it for more than a minute. PPS: One minute and ten seconds.... ...too many land slides.... ... I hope, that it doesn't have any lasting impact on me... edit: An edit has occured An edit has occured An edit has occured An edit has occured An edit has occured An edit has occured (okay, I will stop. That was only a joke).

I'm already on my 8th base wow, 9th and 10th are coming soon... Orbital view Taste the rainbow...

Yes, I know it was for marketing bricks to the Asians, but.... Anyways, it's nice to see Lego doing well and Mattel doing not so well.

Sorry for the bump (whatever), but 1997? IMPOSIB! ROADS AND SIDE PATHS ONLY BUSTER!

Are you kidding? It's music by M83, they are awesome.

Well you got a lot of brownie points from me.

Another thing to note is just HOW accurate the manufacturing of LEGO bricks must be. It's on par with aircraft parts. There is no way there will be consumer 3D printers in the foreseeable future which can pull off the precision of LEGO's machines. The clone brands can't even pull it off properly.

3D printing is in no way on par with Lego quality, mainly because you cant use the same ABS that Lego uses. I had some custom weapons designed by a friend printed over shapeways, and the plastic is grainy, absorbs model colors to a certain extent (due to the grainy surface) and is no way near as durable. It is nice for a very limited set of parts (since its pretty expensive), but for mass-producing parts it is just not good. The next problem would be that you need a printer that can print really small details, and these things are expensive. It would be easier to get a mold cut and have the pieces molded somewhere. Also, when printing these small details they would break/use off really quick because of the strain on the plastic. And actually, Lego patented the brick idea/design, but the patent wore out after 20 years, and since then we have clone brands. 3D printing may have some use in the custom sector, but then again, only professional machines are able to produce the amount of detail needed. It is useful if you want a small amount of pieces that wont be in the spotlight, but you will not be able to mass-produce your own bricks.

I doubt three-dimensional printers could possibly recreate standard elements anywhere near the quality of a LEGO brick, at least any time soon. However, I do expect builders to replicate more exclusive or nonexistent parts, particularly Minifigure accessories. Because most accessories will not face serious stress, quality may not be too much of an issue, as long as the printed elements have the necessary LEGO aesthetics (color, texture). Obviously the LEGO Group has no legal right to stop a builder from printing clone bricks for his own non-commercial use. As a purist, I never use third-party elements, and I am disgusted by the knock-offs, particularly those which clone some of the most uniquely LEGO elements (Death to DeCool)! That does not mean I could not be bribed... I am looking forward to the day I can economically print the Nexus Force Faction Gear from LEGO Universe!

Well, firstly, LEGO states that 'the moulds used in production are accurate to within five my (=0.005mm) and this accuracy means than only 18 elements in every million products fail to meet the high quality standard'. Sources: http://education.lego.com/en-us/about-us/lego-education-worldwide/making-lego-bricks I think it's going to be a long time before commercial 3D printers hit that level of standard. Next up... Clone LEGO brands. They already exist, and even so LEGO is the number one most valuable toy company. While LEGO hasn't had a lot of success in fighting off competitors, they still seem to be the number one choice for people to buy bricks from. LEGO is a well-established brand - just as Google is the first place most people go to when they want to search for something, LEGO is the first place many people go to buy bricks. But that doesn't answer your question completely - if 3D printing becomes accurate enough, people will just print their own bricks won't they? My answer: Yes, probably, and that goes against the 'LEGO will never have a strong competitor' message I just gave above. If people can do it, they will, and that may hurt LEGO as a company. But, the thing is... When 3D printing becomes that accurate, it's not just LEGO that is going to have issues. ALL toy companies are going to have issues. For that reason, I can see only two outcomes: Some kind of new laws are introduced to prevent the home manufacture of toys cloned from toy companies. Toy companies die out and go bust, just as corner shops died out with the introduction of supermarkets years ago. And, with that, I hereby take off my hat solemnly and hope that the world isn't that cruel. That 3D printing doesn't destroy toy companies. That LEGO endures, as do the childhoods of many generations to come.

heavy f****ing metal. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6E2vQ5A30Y

Dat guitar ^.^ http://youtu.be/hlab0XVQkn0

Well, it's been almost a year since I last reported progress on this diorama. And now, at last, it is finally complete! Check out the photos below. The images are all hi-res, and I've linked them to the fullscreen versions, so click on them to zoom in. My dad and I painted the terrain together. Thin acrylic paints were used on the modrock areas to seep into the recesses, and also apply varying degrees of shadow. Thicker paints were used on the smoother sections for a complete coverage. Two things I knew I had to have in this diorama are: Loads of Ogel's minions. There are loads in the comics, but you only get two with Ogel's base. I ordered more off Bricklink for a total of ten minions. Loads of evil orbs. Across all the sets, you only get a total of four - hardly enough for world domination. So I ordered some more, and now have four times as many! More in-depth photos are contained in the spoiler below (and there are quite a few of them). So, there you have it. What do you think?

Well I thought the movie was great.

There you go. So the known realms are: Bricksburg Pirate's Cove The Old West The Forest of Obsolete Products Clown Town Technic Mecha Mine? Viking's Landing OCTAN HQ Dino Island Middle Zealand Pharaoh's Quest Cape Space Vladek's Realm (On second look, that may say Vladek's Koala) Cloud Cuckoo Land (Bionicle and Fabuland also fit in there somewhere.)

Oh, and one more thing.