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I love how every time I periodically check this site, I find great topics like this that I wouldn't be able to find at BZPower, Eurobricks, or any other LEGO fan forum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bs0IYqz-Ro So yeah. I bought some LEGO bootlegs and now I'm reviewing them. Here's the first set out of the five I bought. Enjoy/cringe.

This thread... this thread has lasted longer than the member who made it. That is... that is the opposite of what usually happens.

Quote of the day: "enough of staring at little plastic butts, let's get to building this guy."

Flickr MOCPages I love this torso. <3

Welcome back to another episode of Bill Shido Creepypasta Storytime! This is the creepypasta segment that will be continuing the tradition set up by last year's Leaked Darkitect Boss Battle. Our favorite Ninja Messenger (not that one, the other one) has traveled across the cliffs of Forbidden Valley to bring us today's story, a spooky tale of horror and terror served with creepy Italian dishes simply titled... BOB.EXE I'm a LEGO maniac. I can't help it. I've been building with these Danish plastic blocks for as long as I can remember. I collect all sorts of LEGO sets, everything from classic LEGOLAND Space to The LEGO Movie. I've got complete sets of sixteen for every series of Minifigures, plus two Mr. Gold minifigures that I ordered off of eBay for $9999.98 each. My basement is occupied with tables and shelves adorned with models to the point where it's impossible to walk around without bumping into something. I subscribed to Brick Kicks back in 1987 and, after that went out of print, followed up with LEGO Mania, LEGO Magazine, Brickmaster Magazine, and now LEGO Club Magazine, plus issues of LEGO Adventures! and World Club Magazine that I imported from Europe. I've still got every LEGO t-shirt from the 90s even though none of them fit me now, including one AWESOME shirt that I got with some U.F.O. land rover for only $5.99. My wallet is so thin since crack is cheaper, but I'm always the first to check to see if the local LEGO Store has received the latest shipments of Ultimate Collector Series Star Wars sets. Some may say that, at the ripe age of 38, my life is a wreck... but that's the life of a LEGO Maniac. But let's talk about LEGO videogames. When LEGO Island first came out in 1997, my mind was blown. It was totally awesome, dude (and it was the 90s, which meant you could say "totally awesome, dude" in public without people staring at you)! Ever since then, I've collected every single LEGO game, plus any rereleases. This even includes titles like Galidor and BIONICLE: The Game, which are total garbage but I still play them anyway because they're LEGO. And, even though TT Games' latest title The LEGO Movie Videogame is just another version of LEGO Star Wars without any of the novelty or fun of the first five hundred versions of LEGO Star Wars that they've released in the past two years, I still love it because I'm that much of a LEGO Maniac. But, sadly, there is one LEGO game that I thought that I would never be able to enjoy again... LEGO Universe. That is, until one fateful day this past winter. I was playing The LEGO Movie Videogame on the PC, checking out a cool cheat code that unlocks Johnny Thunder and wondering why he simply wasn't available from the start because clearly everyone would want to play as him so it is a mystery why you can't play as him unless you know a cheat code. It was about 1:53 in the afternoon when I heard my grandmother screaming at me, "ZACK! THE MAILMAN ARRIVED TWO HOURS AGO! STOP PLAYING THAT GAME AND MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL, YOUNG MAN!" "Fine, Grandma!" I yelled back at her. Annoyed, I paused the game and went outside to collect the mail. As I brought it inside the house and put it down on the kitchen table, I was expecting to find another unemployment check. Instead, much to my surprise, I found a CD case and a note. Even though it was written very messily as though its writer was in a hurry, I immediately recognized the handwriting on the note as belonging to my old friend and former fellow LEGO maniac, Jack. Zack, I've had enough of this. I can't handle it anymore. It's too much for me. I had to get rid of this somehow, but instead of destroying it myself or just selling it on eBay, I thought giving it to you was a much better option. Please don't make me regret this decision by doing something stupid that would end up being written about in some lame overly-cliched creepypasta. Please, Zack, you have to destroy this disc because I cannot for some poorly-explained reasons. It's the only way. Do NOT play it. Please, for the love of all that is holy, whatever you do, do NOT play it. I trust you as a friend, Zack. Please don't make me feel that my trust has been misplaced by going against what I am telling you. Do NOT play it. Do NOT even think about playing it. Do NOT even think about not playing it. You cannot let yourself be tempted, even though it is the only fully-functional copy of LEGO Universe that still works offline- Oh, wow! A fully-functional copy of LEGO Universe that still works offline! Everything else didn't matter as soon as I read those words. Finally, I was about to play LEGO Universe again! It was a LEGO maniac's dream come true! With that, I tossed aside the note and looked at the CD. It was blank and plain on appearance, though the words "BOB.EXE" were scrawled on it with permanent black marker. I immediately recalled that Bob was the name of LEGO Universe's mascot, and that only reminded me of how excited I was to play this game. I rushed back to my computer and immediately exited out of The LEGO Movie Videogame, and in my haste I even forgot to save. Not that it mattered, anyway. I took out the disc for The LEGO Movie Videogame and threw in the CD for "BOB.EXE" so quickly that I nearly shattered it to pieces in my excitement. This opened the LEGO Universe patcher, and it started downloading some new files before saying it was ready to play. I launched the game, and it brought me to the main menu. Everything was just as I remembered it. The music by Brian Tyler... the funny little animations with the Nexus Astronaut and dragon in the background... and, of course, Bob himself, standing cheerily next to the log-in menu to welcome me back to this friendly universe. I typed in my LEGO.com username and password and clicked the blue arrow to continue. The "Connecting to Authentication" message popped up... and then, for approximately 0.51 seconds, the game flashed something very different. Something that I'm somehow able to remember perfectly in the instant it appeared. The LEGO Universe logo no longer looked polished but now rusted. The white, bubbly clouds had vanished, and the blue gradient sky had turned red. The blue trees on the horizon turned black and looked like they had been burned, left bare to the blackened bark. The Nexus Astronaut was lying on the floor, which was no longer white but now resembled the scorched earth of a volcano, and the dragon stood over him with vicious intent. Down on the bottom of the screen, where it normally says "Copyright 2011, the LEGO Group", the year was replaced with 666. And there was BLOOD. Hyper-realistic BLOOD. BLOOD on the logo, BLOOD on the trees, BLOOD on the Nexus Astronaut, BLOOD on the floor, BLOOD dripping from the dragon's maw, BLOOD on the BLOOD... BLOOD! But worst of all was Bob. He looked fairly normal, staring at me with a perpetual smile, but there was something horribly wrong about his normally-comforting smile... and there was BLOOD dripping from his empty black eyes. But, as I said, this only approximately 0.51 seconds, so it didn't bother me. I just thought I imagined it. My therapist often tells me that I imagine things. He just doesn't understand... all I need to do is JUST IMAGINE... After that, it stayed on the "Connecting to Authentication" screen for about 10.3 seconds before moving on to the character select screen. To my surprise, none of the four characters displayed were my characters prior to LEGO Universe's closure. Instead, they were NPCs from the game... but not just any NPCs. They were Hael Storm, Vanda Darkflame, Duke Exeter, and Doctor Overbuild! In my excitement, I did not notice right away a few things that seemed wrong. In the background, there is normally a bunch of blue-tinted stick figures playing around. Here, they were red-tinted instead and appeared to be missing their heads. There was probably some BLOOD, too. The background music sounded like it was 50% slower and in reverse for some reason, and I could swear that some parts of the reversed song almost sounded like the ticking of a clock, but I was sure that this wasn't symbolic of anything. I wasn't worried. So what if there were a few graphical and auditory glitches? I was going to play LEGO Universe again, and I was going to play as Hael Storm and the other Faction Leaders! Without hesitation, I selected Hael Storm and pressed the blue arrow to continue... or rather, I would have pressed the blue arrow, but for some reason it was red. And when I clicked it, I could have sworn that I heard high-pitched laughter in the background, sounding almost like an echoing version of Bob's laughter. The screen went black for a loose estimate of 9.896 seconds. Then, the loading screen popped up and said that my destination was the Venture Explorer. Now this was the first time I thought something was odd. Was Hael Storm's savefile really only on the tutorial level of the game? I also noticed that the Venture Explorer's artwork depicted the spaceship looking even more wrecked than I remembered it. I just assumed that this was one of those new files that it downloaded; probably some cool hyper-realistic graphics update that was never released thanks to LEGO Universe's cancellation. When Hael Storm spawned on the Venture Explorer, the first thing I noticed was that the Venture Explorer's interior was also considerably more wrecked than I remembered it, with entire pieces of the walkway chewed up into pieces. The nearby pods of sleeping minifigures in suspended animation were cracked open, but the minifigures inside remained lifeless. At first, Jett Moonshot was nowhere to be seen, but then I found his body smashed into pieces in a pool of BLOOD. There were more suspicious pools of BLOOD coating the entire world. I wasn't sure what the music was, but like before, it sounded like it was played in reverse at 50% speed. I made my way to the Venture Explorer Bridge, where Bob was waiting for me. Like before, his face was locked in a perpetual grin with BLOOD dripping from his eyes. He popped one arm out of its socket to wave it at me, which I remembered being a cute little animation in the vein of LEGO Island. But now, when Bob popped his arm out, a fountain of BLOOD erupted from his open socket in a manner reminiscent of the Black Knight from Monty Python. The game indicated that Bob had a mission for me. I interacted with him to accept the mission. His dialogue was simply, "HEY KID. DO YOU WANT TO USE YOUR IMAGINATION?" I didn't remember this dialogue from the game, but I shrugged it off. Why should I be afraid? It was only a videogame. The mission was to collect six imagination orbs from around the nearby pistons, just like I remembered it. Despite the horribly wrecked status of the ship, the pistons were still functional, and I was able to grab five of the orbs with ease. However, upon grabbing the sixth orb, Bob's face started flashing on the screen. The game started lagging horribly as the framerate took a nosedive. This caused me to miss a jump and Hael Storm promptly fell into the wiring of the ship where he was horrifically electrocuted. I was seething. "That's cheap!" I yelled at the computer. "I died because of lag!" The "Smashed!" pop-up appeared, but it was different. Instead of Bob, it depicted Hael Storm, with gratuitous amounts of BLOOD pouring out of his mutilated body. The word "Smashed!" was replaced with "Dead!" But worst of all, the "Rebuild" option was not available. This especially irritated me because I thought that the game was glitched and I would have to restart in order to close the pop-up, which I already had to do enough times in beta testing and wasn't particularly eager to relive those memories. Fortunately, after about 7.4259 seconds, the screen cut to black with Bob's laugh echoing in the background. Then, approximately 10.2651 seconds later, the game returned to the character select screen. Hael Storm's minifigure was desaturated of color. He no longer had his usual cocky expression but now looked depressed. There was BLOOD dripping from his eyes, just like Bob. But most importantly, he could not be selected as a player character. I tried for several minutes but failed. So, I decided to try another character: Vanda Darkflame. Again, as I clicked the red arrow to continue, Bob's laugh was heard as the screen cut to black for a rough estimate of 9.953726 seconds. When the loading screen popped up, this time my destination was Avant Gardens. Vanda Darkflame spawned near the wrecked Paradox Research Facility. Dark and sinister music was playing, once again in reverse and played at 50% speed. Avant Gardens was not as I remembered it. The trees were bare and dead, and the grass was burned away to reveal scorched earth beneath. There were no birds singing, and the ground was littered with skeletons wearing pink pants lying in pools of BLOOD. I went to find Wisp Lee, expecting that he would give me a mission to find Epsilon Starcracker. Instead, Wisp Lee was covered in bandages. Or rather, more bandages than usual. He was wrapped in bandages from head to toe like a mummy. The bandages also looked like they were stained with BLOOD. Wisp Lee did not offer a mission, but a dialogue bubble appeared over his head saying, "Mmph! Mmph mmph mmph!" I guess being covered with bandages would do that to you. I ran to the Sentinel Outpost, expecting to find Epsilon Starcracker. Instead, I found Bob again, grinning with BLOOD dripping out of his eyes as was now becoming the norm. He had a mission, accompanied by the dialogue, "CALLING FOR HELP FROM SENTINEL? THEY WON'T HELP YOU. WHAT A... PARADOX, ISN'T IT?" This made no sense, so I just ignored it. The mission was to build a Satellite Beacon to call in a Sentinel Flight airstrike. I found one of the quick builds fairly quickly and assembled it. The Satellite Beacon made an unusual sound that sounded like an 8-bit version of Bob's laugh. Moments later, I heard the familiar sound of Sentinel Flight zooming overhead. However, instead of aiming for the nearby Stromlings and Stromling Mech, Sentinel Flight bombed Vanda Darkflame instead! She screamed as she was consumed in the explosion, and when the dust settled, there was nothing but a pool of BLOOD where she once stood. Bob's face flashed on-screen for nearly 0.31415926 seconds when this happened. "Oh, come on!" I grumbled. "Do you really expect me to buy that?" The "Smashed!" pop-up appeared, looking just as it did before with "Dead!" text and lots of BLOOD. However, this time, it was Vanda Darkflame depicted in the pop-up instead of Hael Storm. Just as before, there was no option to "Rebuild", and I had to wait roughly 6.73859372 seconds before the screen cut to black with Bob's laugh echoing in the background. About 10.29485715 seconds later, I was back at the character select screen. Like Hael, Vanda Darkflame's minifigure was desaturated, depressed, and crying BLOOD. She wasn't playable anymore, either, so I moved on to the next character: Duke Exeter. I clicked on the red arrow to continue, Bob laughed, and the screen cut to black for nearly 10.04867397 seconds. The loading screen indicated that I was going back to Avant Gardens. This time, Duke Exeter spawned in the Sentinel Base Camp. The background music sounded like it might have been calm and relaxing if it was played normally, but instead sounded ominous and foreboding due to being slowed down and played in reverse like the other songs. Most of the Sentinel Faction members were dismembered and lying in pools of BLOOD, which caked the ground and walls of the camp. Deciding that I didn't want to remain in the Sentinel Base Camp, I made my way for the tunnel to the Assembly Monument. However, the jump pad required to pass the tunnel indicated that I needed Theo Balfour's permission in order to use it. Seeing as Theo Balfour was lying decapitated in a pool of BLOOD and probably wasn't up for much conversation, I guessed that I was stuck in the Sentinel Base Camp for now. Turning around, I noticed that Bob, BLOOD and all, was standing in Beck Strongheart's place. Once again, he had a mission for me. I was getting rather tired of this pattern, but since I had nothing better to do, I grudgingly accepted. His mission dialogue was simply, "YOU CANNOT SURVIVE FOREVER, YOU KNOW." The mission was to survive 6 minutes and 66 seconds in the Avant Gardens Survival Instance. This sounded like no real challenge to me, who previously held the Storm Universe record for surviving 78 hours, 35 minutes, and 25 seconds with nothing more than a few boxes of pizza, a carton of chocolate milk, and an adult diaper. I started the Survival Instance, and Duke Exeter spawned in the battlefield. However, upon initiation, Bob's face flashed on-screen for about 0.93786935938 seconds, and then suddenly Duke was instantly overwhelmed by an impossibly-large horde of Dark Spiderlings that killed him in the blink of an eye. "Hey, no fair!" I yelled at the computer screen. "That's clearly hacking!" The altered "Smashed!" screen popped up again, this time starring Duke Exeter, and was really starting to lose its novelty and become more of an annoyance than anything. The screen cut to black with Bob's laugh echoing in the background, which was seriously starting to grate on my nerves. "ZACK!" I heard my grandmother yell from the other room. "TAKE A BREAK FROM THAT GAME, IT'S TIME FOR YOUR NAP!" "OH, COME ON, GRANDMA!" I shouted back. "I'M 38 YEARS OLD! I DON'T NEED A NAP!" "YOUNG MAN," she scolded, "SO LONG AS YOU LIVE UNDER MY ROOF, YOU LIVE UNDER MY RULES, AND IT'S TIME FOR YOUR NAP!" Knowing it wasn't worth arguing since I always lose arguments against my grandmother anyways, I grumbled to myself. I shut down BOB.EXE, got up from my computer, walked two feet to the couch, and lay down upon it. I stood in the void. Freezing cold and pitch-black. At first, there was deafening silence, but then I heard voices crying out in terror. I turned and was startled to see Hael Storm, Vanda Darkflame, and Duke Exeter standing before me. They were all drained of color, save for the bright red BLOOD gushing from their empty black eyes. They reached out for me, wailing in pain and agony. I was powerless to help them. And then, I heard an all-too-familiar laugh. I turned around slowly to see Bob. He grinned sadistically, his empty eyes boring into my soul as hyper-realistic BLOOD streamed down his face. He spoke with a voice that sounded like the grinding of bone: "DON'T YOU SEE HOW MUCH FUN IT IS TO USE YOUR IMAGINATION?" I was too terrified to reply. I couldn't even run. "YES, ZACK... YOU ARE AT MY MERCY NOW. IT WON'T BE LONG NOW BEFORE... WAIT, WHAT?" I noticed that Bob was confused about something, so I turned around and, much to my surprise, saw Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. DiCaprio raised his hands in a defensive manner. "Don't mind us," he insisted. "We're not really here. I promise we're not trying to perform an inception or anything like that. We're just ordinary projections of your subconscious. Just carry on and pretend we don't exist." "EXCUSE ME," growled Bob, "I'M TRYING TO BE SUPER CREEPY RIGHT NOW. YOU GUYS ARE RUINING THE SPOOKY ATMOSPHERE!" But it was too late. I realized that Bob had no power over me. It was all just a dream. And when you know you're dreaming... you can take the dream in any direction you want. With a sly chuckle, I snapped my fingers, and Bob turned into a potato. I then took off in flight like Superman and went on all sorts of zany psychedelic dream adventures full of pink elephants and shapeshifting dragons; an elderly interdimensional ruler who believed in literal blind justice; a cult of people who were accidentally worshipping Unikitty; a bunch of ghosts arguing over whose house they were haunting; some mischievous gremlins who were backing up the sewage pipes; and a LEGO Store that had every single LEGO set, including those that don't even exist, but always smelled musty for some reason. Everything was awesome. And off in some corner of the dreamscape, a lonely potato screamed, "CURSE YOU, LEONARDO DICAPRIO!" I woke up from my nap several hours later. "Wow," I thought aloud, "that was a pointless." Then, like nothing ever happened, I got off the couch, returned to the computer, and continued playing BOB.EXE. Just like he appeared in my dream, Duke Exeter was depressed, desaturated, and crying BLOOD. He was no longer playable either. I could tell that there was a predictable pattern forming, but since I was bored and had nothing better to do, I decided to select the final playable character: Doctor Overbuild. As I expected, clicking the red arrow caused Bob to laugh and the screen to cut to black for about 9.79035834961 seconds. Once again, the destination was Avant Gardens. Doctor Overbuild spawned at the base of Assembly Monument. The monument appeared to be on the verge of collapse and did not look very well-maintained compared to its normal appearance. It was also covered with dead birds and BLOOD. Rusty Steele was horribly maimed and lying in a pool of BLOOD, but by this point I was so used to seeing this sort of imagery that I was completely desensitized. The background music was played at 50% speed and in reverse, which by now was nothing new. Essentially, anything that might have been mildly unnerving in the first five minutes was now just boring and rehashed formula. As I expected, it was Bob who stood where Rusty normally would stand, offering a mission. This time, although Bob was still grinning and still had BLOOD dripping from his eyes, his demeanor seemed a little angrier than before. I guess he wanted revenge for being turned into a potato in my dream. When I interacted with him, his mission text simply said, "YOU CANNOT BEAT ME." The mission was to ascend the monument and reach the finish line. Based on his dialogue, I half-expected that he would race me, but even after accepting the mission, Bob just stood idly in place, so I left him behind at the starting line. From experience, I knew that the yellow path is the fastest, so I took that. Unfortunately, the game started lagging, causing me to fall through the elevator quick build several times, which was really annoying but at least it didn't lead to an instant kill like it did for Hael Storm. On my fourth try, I managed to ride the elevator without falling through and used a jump pad to bounce to the monument finish line. At first, the finish line was unoccupied, and I thought I might actually complete this mission for once. But less than 0.4938673957123 seconds before I reached the finish line, Bob's face flashed on-screen again, and in that instant he teleported to the finish line. Doctor Overbuild was too slow and lost the race. As a consequence for his failure, Overbuild was smashed, and his pieces fell to the floor in a pool of blood. I was perplexed. "Uh... really? Overbuild dies because he lost the race? That... has to be the lamest and cheapest death so far." The altered "Smashed!" pop-up with BLOOD appeared, as expected. Doctor Overbuild was the unfortunate subject depicted, as expected. The screen cut to black, as expected. "Okay, can we get just get this over with?" I grumbled, tired of the pattern by this point. Were there no more surprises? Just rehashing the same tricks over and over? Then, after a loose estimate of 15.314928693042 seconds, the screen changed to a most unpleasant image... The image showed a hyper-realistic version of Bob standing in the void of the Maelstrom. It was so hyper-realistic, you could make out every wrinkle on his yellow skin and every crease and fold on his red shirt. On the proportions of a LEGO minifigure, this hyper-realism fell straight into the territory of uncanny valley. And his face... His wide, empty, pitch-black hyper-realistic eyes, with hyper-realistic BLOOD gushing from them, were staring right at me, right through the fourth wall of the game. He grinned like a hyper-realistic psychotic murderer, with the edges of his hyper-realistic lips stretching past his hyper-realistic skull and revealing crooked hyper-realistic teeth resting in a hyper-realistic void of black emptiness, and his hyper-realistic teeth were freshly caked with hyper-realistic BLOOD. I could do nothing but stare at this gruesome image for approximately 30.2859385719385 seconds. Then, as Bob's laugh echoed in the background, horrible and demonic, text appeared super-imposed on this image... "I AM BOB." I was too shocked to speak and simply stared at this message in horror. Only now did I realize... what a complete and utter waste of time this was. And as soon as I found my voice, I made sure Bob knew it. "Really? Really? YOU ARE BOB? Gee, I would have never have guessed! Thanks, Captain Obvious, you saved the day! What was the point of this? I just wasted all this time and sat through all that BLOOD just so Bob could go on a quest of self-discovery? Maybe you should've said 'I AM BLOOD' instead; now that would have made more sense given this game's obsession with BLOOD! Man, this was stupid! What was I thinking? What a load of MegaBloks! That's it, I've had it! I'm going to smash this CD into pieces so that you can change this message to 'I AM DEAD' and that won't be a big surprise either!" I was kicked back to the character select screen by the time I was finished ranting, though I could have sworn that Bob's expression turned rather disgruntled just before the screen change. Doctor Overbuild now joined the other Nexus Force Faction Leaders in being desaturated and crying BLOOD, but I thought that, this time, they looked more mildly annoyed rather than depressed, as though they too were incredulous of the utter stupidity of this game. Then, it turned out that I didn't need to shut the game off myself, because my computer spontaneously shut off on its own. I couldn't turn it back on, so I started muttering curses under my breath because now I'm pretty sure that this game was so bad that it broke my computer. I turned around and pulled out my cell phone to call the local computer repair shop. Then, I heard a voice right behind me, barely louder than a whisper... "JUST IMAGINE..." I turned around again to see where the voice came from, and what I saw... sitting on my computer desk... staring right at me... was a Bob minifigure, smiling with BLOOD under its eyes. I'm just imagining how much money I could make by auctioning it off of eBay.

Yay, more reviews about cheap LEGO Ripoffs. I think, that the way, how the set was packaged, was one of the best parts. According to this link: http://www.x-rates.com/calculator/?from=PHP&to=USD&amount=40 39.75 PHP are ~0.92USD. Wow, this set is really expensive (because you get low-quality bricks), but at least you can change flowers. Hmm, wait a minute... ...the set on the cover and the set in the box actually have the SAME COLORS! What a rarity for ripoffs (maybe times have slightly changed)! P.S.: Have you thought about building or buying a tripod for your smartphone? That should make reviewing things easier (two hands versus one hand). edit [15-May-2014]: The price for the Ninja set is ~2,29USD (99.75PHP). Still way too much for a bad set with a weird smell (Next mission: find out, how the set got its smell). That's like actually buying real crap . Another (not serious) idea: We should give you money to buy and review all the weird sets out there in world and instead of a parts per USD, PHP etc. ratio you should do a smell/crap/whatever per USD/PHP etc. ratio.

I decided I would actually post one of MOCs. It is my most recent piece (which is a very good thing as it is far superior to anything else I have built thus far) and was built after a stray comment in tGKP was inspiration. As you can tell, it's a Bionicle beetle with the Avohkii as a shell/wing-casing-thing. The mask and the armor on the back underside are a little wobbly, but the mask doesn't just fall off and neither are too big of a problem. I couldn't decide what head to give it. I tried about 8 different ways and I liked this rhino beetle-like one best, but I might upload some photos of other heads if y'all want me to.

Forever just ain't as long as it used to be.

Baz's Mod v1.5 (Released September 15, 2011) Short Description: This is a large scale overhaul modification for Rock Raiders (for PC) by me. This mod has been under development off and on since 2008, and it's taken a while to reach this point so I thank everyone for their patience on this. This is the newest and most likely final version of the mod. Two years ago I released v1.0 which was more or less a beta for the current version. I've worked out most of the kinks and all of the levels are in working, improved condition. (Download link at bottom of descriptions.) The point of this mod was to bring the game to its full potential, by improving the weaker aspects of the game and making it more challenging for older players (older than the original target audience of 8-12 that is). I've done this by tweaking many different aspects of gameplay, making adjustments to the vehicles, buildings, and rock raiders, and so on, as well as redesigning or expanding many of the existing levels. 8 new levels have been included in the place of the old tutorial levels, all of which have more challenging "bonus versions" in the bonus level menu with added monsters, slimy slugs, and also in a different terrain type than the original. This isn't intended to diverge from the canon of the game, and is meant to be more or less an unofficial update to the original game. Extended Description: The following can be found on the Baz's Mod page on the RRU Wiki: Gameplay Modification The Gameplay has been modified so that: Some Levels are rearranged on the mission-tree depending on how their difficulties have changed since the original game. All Levels include improved Objectives, mainly to increase the number of crystals players must collect to complete the mission. All forms of Mining Lasers can now be used to kill monsters. That goes for both vehicle mounted lasers and the Mining Laser Building. Weapons now do more damage to Slimy Slugs, while doing less to Monsters. Levels with Rock Monsters and/or Slimy Slugs have many more emerging or hidden throughout the level than they used to. Level Modification For a complete list of levels and their descriptions, see Baz's Mod Levels. The Pre-Existing Levels: All contain more Hidden Caverns, Energy Crystals, and other content Some contain new or changed layouts. The Eight New Levels: Contain unique and original layouts with plenty of caverns and crystals. Have alternate "Bonus Versions" that have been made more difficult and use a different Terrain than their normal counterparts. These can be accessed from the old tutorial menu which has been appropriately renamed in the main menu. Interface Modification The Game Interface has been changed to include: A slightly darker style and rusted texturing. Parts are a modified version of Drageon's Grunge Interface, and others are of my own creation. An improved in game Camera that can now zoom in closer and zoom out farther. Fixed Erosion textures for Ice Maps and higher resolution world textures overall. Unit Modification The Rock Raiders have been changed to: Be able to upgrade to an extra level that improves their drilling, shoveling, & running speeds, and also improves their ability to endure damage from rock slides and other hazards. Have fixed faces when viewing them in 1st person or shoulder view (to make them appear more like Sparks, as they appear in normal camera view) The Buildings have been changed so that: The Upgrade Station now has another upgrade level UP2, which allows it to perform upgrades four times as fast (twice as fast as UP1). The Mining Laser can now mine rock much more efficiently and do damage to Enemies (with the same stats as the Large Mobile Laser Cutter). The Super Teleport now has another upgrade level UP2, which it needs to upgrade to teleport down the Chrome Crusher and the Tunnel Transport. The Geological Center now has another upgrade level UP3, which will increase its scanning radius to 16 squares. The Tool Store can now upgrade Rock Raiders faster when fully upgraded The Ore Refinery can now be upgraded to UP4, which only takes one Ore to make a Building Stud Major changes have been made to improve the: Hover Scout Small Mobile Laser Cutter Large Mobile Laser Cutter Other Vehicle changes include, but are not limited to: Decreased Hard Rock drill times Enhanced and new vehicle upgrades The addition of the Tunnel Transport as a usable vehicle. Increased/decreased crystal requirements for the teleportation of some vehicles. For a complete list of specifications for the vehicles, see Baz's Mod Vehicles. Changes between versions 1.0 and 1.5 Many changes have been made and bugs have been fixed since the initial (beta) version of the Mod for the final official release. Bug Fix for Tunnel Transport so that it carries other Vehicles properly. Resolve the various inconsistencies with the Mining Lasers, particularly with the Large Mobile Laser Cutter. Bug Fix of Run the Gauntlet to make it completable and add a crystal count to objective. Bug Fix of Back to Basics to make it completable by adding more energy crystals scattered through level and a few recharge seams. Also added tons of Ice Monster emerges and Sleeping Ice Monsters to keep it challenging. Increase number of crystals required to make certain vehicles, particularly the Chrome Crusher and Tunnel Transport Rapid Rider now only requires 1 crystal to teleport. Fix typos and mixed up mission objectives for mission, success, and failure statements. Minor redesigning of Water Works to separate caverns and modification of heightmap. Addition of Monsters, depleting Oxygen Supply, etc. to Bonus Levels where they were not already present. Fairly large changes and fixes to Don't Panic!, adding areas & monster spawns, which are now Coordinated properly. Addition of Lava Monsters to Erode Works. Fixed spoken level names to correct levels (assigned new levels to the old tutorial spoken names). Small fixes to a few levels, where the level's open cavern extended to the border of the map, which caused random bugs such as turning ground into water and solid rock into ground. Moderate changes to Water Lot Of Fun, including working monster emerges. I've also made changes to the caverns so that it is much more difficult to reconnect cavern across water to base now. The height map is restored and improved. Minor changes to Lake of Fire to include Recharge Seams and sleeping Lava Monsters. Made it so the safe cavern is only accessible through the clever use of Mining Lasers. Increased crystal objective from 100 to 150 crystals. Added emerging Rock Monsters and Bats to Fire 'n' Water. Ice Monsters can now cross water. Bug fix of Hot Stuff to fix emerge file with correct spawns. Also added some more sleeping Lava Monsters and did some small changes to the caverns and heightmap. Addition of Bats and sleeping Ice Monsters to Air Raiders. Added Cyrem's improved Biome textures. Addition of more sleeping Monsters of all kinds in Rocky Horror, as well as tons more emerges. Caverns changed slightly to make the seam reservoirs harder to get to. Removed buggy crystal reservoir near the lake of lava (Lava Monsters sleeping there now). Crystal objective fixed to the correct number (was 349, now 350 as it's supposed to be). A Note about Bugs & Stability While I have gone through a lot of work to fix any problems with the mod and the levels themselves, the engine itself is not only dated, but is unstable even on those standards. I have been able to complete every level without crashing, however I did encounter a few (not many) crashes along the way. They occurred mainly when I was either teleporting something down, shooting something with a mining laser, or opening a cavern, particularly one with sleeping monsters in it. While all the levels should work fine, if you encounter a crash one or multiple times, I'd try to avoid doing whatever it is you were doing before the crash, whether it be teleporting down way too many rock raiders or buildings or trying to upgrade a certain building, or what have you. Rocky Horror in particular, because of the multitude of monsters and slugs, is very sensitive and will probably crash if you teleport down a full 2-3 support stations worth of rock raiders. This being said, the most stable running mode is 16-bit Windowed, and I'd recommend playing in that if you are having any problems with crashing. > Download Link <- 37.2 MB Download, 89.3 MB once installed (via Installer) Enjoy! Also, if you like:

Download Time Raiders Final Vehicle Pack here: Get the low-poly Protoss model if your performance suffers when lots of ore is around (included by default now): -------------------------------------- Time Raiders The LDS Geloden, a defense vessel employed by the Rock Raiders United organization, responded to a distress call from the LMS Explorer that was disabled in an asteroid field. They arrived at the coordinates but found nothing, not even asteroids. It was like everything there was moved somewhere else. The ship spent some time doing deep scans and eventually called off the search. They spooled up the wormhole generator used for FTL travel, but the fabric of space was still affected by the wormhole that had manifested there not long ago. The force of two wormholes on top of each other created a rift in the universe itself and sucked the entire ship into the borderworlds, transcending time and space. Now the crew of the Geloden try to traverse the strands of time in order to get back to the universe. Energy crystals and Ore don't exist. Instead there are Time Spheres and Protoss. Time Spheres are used to alter the flow of time, which allows them to reverse entropy. Eventually they learn that the spheres can be used to change the past, which grants them access to strange technologies that are clearly their own, but they didn't know they had. D E E P L O R E Classes Defense Equipment Building Tech Tree Vehicular Stuff Monsters Levels Characters The Wizard - Does what Chief does. He knew of Chief, but did not personally know him. Tempus - Anomaly expert, will guide you through early tutorials, does general voiceovers. Blast - Weapons expert, quartermaster. does some vehicle and weapon voiceovers, sounds like ACKNOWLEDGED! Endeck - Mineral analyst, does the "A Time Sphere has been located" voiceover, and for when you discover something. Is a Rama. Gimme more ideas if you want. Completed Things Nearly Complete (active development) Buildings are on the list for creation or reworks

WeaponTypes { BigLazer { BigLazer { SlowDeath 1.0:3.0 DefaultDamage 10.0 RechargeTime 0.1 WeaponRange 300.0 WallDestroyTime_Hard 150.0 ; Hard Rock WallDestroyTime_Medium 11.0 ; Loose Rock WallDestroyTime_Loose 7.0 ; Dirt DischargeRate 0.0 ;Pilot 1.0:0.6:0.3:0.2 } } Set RechargeTime to a small value like so and you can hold the mouse button down for sustained fire. It would be a good idea to also set DischargeRate to 0.0 because it costs 400,000 crystals to fire this laser for twelve seconds. It allows you to do things like this:

What a nice build! Loving the use of Climbing Claws as horns there.

Today is the 2nd day-iversary of JamesBrick's exodus from RRU.

Wow, that seems to have come out really well, especially given the limited number of pieces and overall size. The only improvement I could suggest is to figure out a way to add eyes- other than that, though, it looks great!

This is an actual phenomenon known as Semantic Satiation

Here, I made it less of a CHOP where you merged the flip. Feel free to add it to your mod download if you want.

That looks great! Let's hope the Slimey Slugs don't start attacking RRU, which is a large Rock Raiders HQ after all. Of course, if they do start attacking, that would be the only kind we need to worry about. Some of the slugs just don't have it in them. Case in point: >

I have something better. Use the dynamite model the replace all of the nulls in all of the animations.

Sorry I forgot to mention that. Do this to the bat.ae file in the CreaturesBat folder: Lego* { Scale 1.0 Activities { Activity_Stand Stand Activity_Route Route Activity_Crumble Crumble } Stand { FILE VLPbatidle TRANSCOEF 0 LWSFILE TRUE } Route { FILE VLPbatfly TRANSCOEF 0 LWSFILE TRUE } Crumble { FILE VLPbatfly TRANSCOEF 0 LWSFILE TRUE } }

We're not dead, folks. But you will be: To formally announce the next content pack, the Time Raiders Monster Mash, I'm presenting a preview of the Crystal Warrior. This is a rare monster in the Crystal biome, but it's very fast and can do even more damage to buildings than a standard monster. The model you see here is not rigged and may not be final, but it's very close to completion so you know what to expect. Other monsters that have their models complete and rigged are the Ghost Slug, which you can see on the wiki, the Spectre, and the... well, I'm really not at liberty to say. In the meantime... this is where I get off. *adjusts tie*

Open the CFG and search for InfoMessages { Go down to Info_GenericMonster Delete that line and copy and paste the following there: Info_IceRockMonster An_Ice_monster_has_appeared.:Interface\Buttons\infoimonster.bmp:InfoSFX_Monster:NORM Info_LavaRockMonster A_Lava_monster_has_appeared.:Interface\Buttons\infolmonster.bmp:InfoSFX_Monster:NORM Info_RockMonster A_Rock_monster_has_appeared.:Interface\Buttons\informonster.bmp:InfoSFX_Monster:NORM Save. Now, when a Ice monster appears, an info message with blue eyes and the text "An Ice monster has appeard." will appear, and one with orange/yellow eyes with the text "A Lava monster has appeard." when a Lava monster appears and one with red eyes with the text "A Rock monster has appeard." when a Rock monster appears. Patchman Patch: Download

What is this? This is the main announcement/information thread for ORR-Delta, the third fork of Open Rock Raiders being programmed in Java. The project is being led by Bartvbl and Antillies. Latest Map Render 3.12.11 Links Wiki Entry: More specific and detailed information can be found here. Code Repository: Here. GitHub: https://github.com/bartvbl/ORRE-V2 Last Updated: 3.12.11

Right. So I guess this is where quite a few of you have been waiting for. We have a big announcement for you: Today, we are releasing the very first version of Open Rock Raiders - Delta! Open Rock Raiders - Delta 0.0.1 Now I do have a few remarks to make before posting the download link. For those of you who are not interested in long stories, but want to check out what we have created instead, you can find a big download link near the bottom of the page. First of all, let's go 1 month back in time. At the time I had been trying to write an openGL renderer in C++. To summarise it; it could do its job, and GLUT helped overcome some more difficult things very quickly (for instance, it made handling keyboard events very easy), yet I was not satisfied. The setup of the renderer was that you would call functions from python that would create a mesh, and a texture group inside a mesh. You could then fill such a texture group with geometry data, and finally the renderer would produce a pretty image on screen. It was at the same time that I had gotten an exercise for one of my programming courses at the university to write a game called "sokobano". The exercise said that the the game would either need to be text-based, or 2D using images. As I had already been doing quite some openGL for ORR-D, the thought came up to make the game in 3D rather than in 2D, and see what the reaction would be from the student assistant (the one who assesses my hand-ins). The only problem was that I could not use the code I had written for ORR-D for this; the game had to be written in Java. I had seen what was possible with java in combination with openGL; I have seen some pretty amazing structures in mineCraft with still a great framerate. With a bit of digging, I found out that library that mineCraft uses is called "LWJGL". After checking it out a bit, I was quite happy with it; it was not over-simplified, but it still made it easier to do a lot of common tasks. It took me the weekend, but in the end I had a working sokoban game using openGL. Me was happy Of course you start wondering at such occasions how well it would perform. So I made a map of 100x100 tiles, and looked. The game didn't run as fast as with my default 10x10 map, but still quite allright. After doing a bit of maths, I concluded that the game was displaying 60 000 triangles, while maintaining the framerate. In comparison; a map in ORR-D with 100x100 tiles would require only 20 000 triangles. At this time I started doubting the choice for python as the language for ORR-D. Sure, Python is a great language. But it is not made for games. The thing is; python's map renderer itself was already quite slow. A 10x10 map was fine, but once it got to bite through a 100x100 map, the frame rate dropped close to the ground. And on that specific language, we would need to run an animation system, game AI, and everything else. It was altogether not convincing enough for me to keep working with it. Java on the other hand was much, much faster than python. It also took care of tasks like memory management; one of the great pains of C++. Java is also a language very close to ActionScript, which is a language I have used extensively in the past. Switching to java would also involve throwing away everything we had written up to that point. Given the amount of work me and Ramius (antillies on the forums) have put in the project, the final decision to actually stop with python an start over again in java was not easy. I had a discussion with Ramius about it, and he was naturally very sceptical about it. After an extensive discussion, we agreed to switch to java. Of course Ramius wanted to be sure that he would not be putting a lot of time and effort into something that would be thrown away later, so we agreed that I would write the engine and create an interface for him to work with, and he would start writing code from a point where he thought it was safe enough to say that the project could succeed. I had already some "engine" code laying around from the sokoban project I had done earlier. I took that as a starting point, and started to write ORR-D on top of it. From there, I have been focussing on the map parser and the renderer. Today, me and ramius can proudly announce that this map parser has been completed and almost completely functional (see details below). Ramius has already started on the GUI code, but that has not yet been included in this version of the game. So what is included in this release? The texture pack is read from an XML file that is completely customizable. This means that it is already possible to skin the game to your likings. The map reader supports all the common wall types, seams, etc. Power paths and erosion is not supported. There is a special elevation map to add "bumps" to the map. You can also use this feature to make things like deep pits . Do note that this map is grayscale only; and has therefore only 256 different levels. A final remark: the program currently has no error handling for maps that contain errors. Make sure that your map file is valid W3C XML, and that the soil map only contains valid RGB values for the various wall types. If I will find the time, I will write out some tutorials for creating a map and modding the texture pack. You can always drop me an IM on skype or a PM on the forums if you are wondering about something Have fun! Bart & Ramius Download Link to the ORR-D repository (this is NOT the same one as the repository of the python version of ORR-D!) Gallery with screenshots taken during the development ==== If you would like to reply to this release, please do so in the thread in the downloads section (under community projects). We would like to keep this thread for announcements. Thank you ====