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I've been selling off action figures that I collected a couple years ago and that means I have money in my PayPal account. Money in my PayPal account means I bid on things I don't need on eBay. I bid on a sealed Lego set this weekend that was my holy grail as a kid and by some weird case of luck, I actually won for half of what it normally goes for. I already own the set though. Bought it a few years ago. But brand new! Sealed! It's going to have that brand new Lego smell and a little catalog and that little flyer to sign up for the Lego Mania Magazine. Unblemished minifigs! Unscuffed transparent pieces! The boring part of me wants to keep it sealed and try to flip it for profit closer to Christmas. The bigger kid part of me wants to open up that nostalgia bomb and enjoy the hell out of it. I guess basically I think I'm supposed to feel bad for buying a set I own, but I don't because its like my favorite set and I"m gong to enjoy it like crazy.

"Humans suck at money." That sounds about right.

Good day all! Just got done with a 17 hour power outage today after a huge wind storm passed through the area. That being said, I got a bit bored and decided to mess around in LDD. I made some power poles for LEGO Worlds that come in both 2-line and 3-line variants. There are also variants of whether the pole has a transformer or not. Do be aware that these models don't include power lines so you will have to build them yourself. If anyone wants to see more different types of poles let me know and I'll see what I can do! DOWNLOAD: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109508761/ATP/CSM_PowerPole.zip

Pereki is currently stuck in the baggage claim area of an airport. [11:16:16 PM] Pereki: There only, like, janitors here now though [11:16:29 PM] Pereki: A help desk guy [11:16:38 PM] jamesster: help desk guy is your new bff [11:33:44 PM] Pereki: Theres no food here at all. I do have some pumpkin seeds, but those are awful [11:33:50 PM] jamesster: plant them [11:34:01 PM] Caleb Ely: Pereki and the Pumpkin Stalk [11:34:04 PM] jamesster: maybe you'll have pumpkins by the time you leave [11:34:10 PM] Pereki: Grow a beautiful airport pumpkin [11:34:23 PM] Caleb Ely: That turns into a carriage [11:34:29 PM] jamesster: it's the aeronautical pumpkin charlie brown [11:34:33 PM] Caleb Ely: [11:34:37 PM] Pereki: Haha [11:34:48 PM] jamesster: I'm here all night folks [11:34:52 PM] jamesster: so is pereki [11:35:21 PM | Edited 11:35:35 PM] Caleb Ely: The jamesster and Pereki Comedy Night [11:35:24 PM] Pereki: I'm all alone here now. Helpdesk guy is gone [11:35:32 PM] jamesster: go to the desk [11:35:37 PM] jamesster: become the next incarnation of help desk guy [11:36:09 PM] jamesster: "hello I need help I'm late for my flight" "I have pumpkin seeds" [11:37:36 PM] Pereki: Planted [11:37:38 PM] jamesster: oh

Hello all, Since my last post four more models have been ripped. Much to my surprise, these models came in many more pieces than I expected. I was also surprised to find the toll that ripping has already taken on my hard drive, despite the low number of characters that have been ripped, my folder where the rips are stored already totals 625 MB. It seems that the number of textures used in the cantina are to blame which each texture costing about 1-4 MB. There is also an issue with the battle droids where some of the parts of their legs are missing. I also need to fix the bartender as for I realized I have the wrong head piece (the current one has a different facial expression). In my next post, I will be discussing and diving into the structure and format of the unusual GHG models that The Complete Saga uses. GHGs are painful, dsdude123

LEGO Island 2 is a hilariously strange beast under the hood. Here's some fun things I've noticed while poking around. First, the game is hardcoded as hell. All the assets themselves are stored in the bob/bod files, but absolutely all of the information linking them together in any way is in the exe. The exe is filled with huge lists of file paths for every asset in each bob/bod file. The exception seems to be textures - these are stripped of meaningful names and referenced by number (like, say, text420.tga instead), and all the info on what textures go on what models, where those models are located, etc is all in the exe. But each level in the game seems to be pretty much entirely isolated from the rest. There's a small amount generic assets shared around, but 99% of the time, if an asset - a texture, model, whatever - is used in multiple levels, it's just duplicated, saved in each bob/bod individually. You know all the different hats the NPCs have, and how you can swap them around in any level with NPCs? And how trees/plants/sign posts can be swapped around in the same manner? And how there's usually 3-5 levels of detail (LODs) for each of these? Those are hundreds and hundreds of models, collision files, and textures - and that's fine, but all of that is entirely duplicated for every scene that uses them. Duplicated in the bobs/bods, taking up hard drive space (and what was likely not an insignificant amount in 2001), and of course that means a lot of duplicated stuff in the exe too. This also means the game wastes a lot of time re-loading assets that already had their duplicates loaded for the previous level. But wait, there's more silly duplication of assets! There are some exceptions like the standard minifigure model, but generally, if two models are identical, but merely have different textures, the meshes and collision files are duplicated anyway. So for example, every minifigure has a unique model for their head, as they have unique face textures... And each of those has several LODs... And alllllll of those are once again duplicated per level they're used in. Minifigure heads alone account for hundreds and hundreds of duplicate files. But there's sillier examples. There's two switches you flip in the Brickster's Palace minigame - and they account for four models. Wait, what, four? Yep - switch 1 up, switch 1 down, switch 2 up, switch 2 down. Because apparently sharing a model and then changing its rotation when it's flipped is too hard. There's plenty of other silly things like this, but I think one deserves special mention... Every single asteroid in the Asteroid Belt minigame is its own 3D model. I'm serious. There are 235 3D models for asteroids, and 235 corresponding collision files. They're divided into three sets/variations - 66 copies of asteroid variation A, 70 copies of asteroid variation B, and 99 copies of asteroid variation C. But it gets better, variations B and C are identical! (Thanks to Will for using a tool of his to automatically check which of the asteroid files were identical to each other.) So instead of just having two asteroid models (with collision files) for a total of four files, there are 470 files being loaded to achieve the same result. There's also a lot of inefficiencies in the models themselves. Excess polygons, using a bunch of smaller textures instead of a larger atlas... But here's my favorite. You know that skeleton in the desert on Adventurer's Island, holding a gem? It's a pretty low poly model (though it could be lower poly and look identical), with 1416 triangles... And 3065 vertices. Wat. Let's take a look at the UV map... The face is the only part of the model that's properly UV mapped. The rest is just given the plain white texture (text027.tga if you wanna try swapping it out), and while it's UV mapped, it's done in a pretty horrible way. If you're curious about the details, read this article, originally published in 2003 (two years after LEGO Island 2 was released) but still relevant today: http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/provost/byf1.html http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/provost/byf2.html The bits relevant to the vertex count are explained in part 2. In short, splits/seams/breaks in UV maps split/duplicate vertices... And the UVs for the skeleton's body are doing more splits than a masochistic gym instructor. What you're seeing in the first image there are all the triangles for the body UV'd on top of each other. If you lay them out separately (and I've moved the face elsewhere as it's not relevant), it looks something like this... This is a UV map straight out of hell. Just by fixing it up I got the vertex count of the model down from 3065 to 1686. And as you might expect, that's not an isolated case... Lots of models are like this. More coming, maybe. I think the point has been made.

DO YOU SEE A BOWL OF RIGHT ARROWS HERE CAUSE I SURE DON'T THANKS GAME