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I noticed a while back that the Alpha Team character models underwent a suspicious change during development. Let's look at our buddy Flex here. This is a screenshot from the released game. Like all other minifigures in the game, his legs protrude directly from his body. There's no hinge holding them to the inward sides of the legs like on real minifigures. Let's look at some beta screenshots. Ah. Tonight I noticed something more - if the game is loaded without any textures (aside from lightmaps in this case, though it can do without them, too)... ... Well, would you look at that. Curious if part of the body texture was simply turning it transparent (it didn't seem so, as there were no transparent pixels whatsoever on, say, Dash's body texture), I loaded the game with only Dash's body and head textures. Nope. The geometry in question has actually been given a different texture called NoPrick.tga. It's a 4x4 fully transparent texture that renders the pricks nixed. Sadly this texture is shared between all minifigure models, the original UVs have not been retained, and it's also used for some mysterious invisible trapezoidal geometry on a few baddie models. Furthermore, all the prick's materials have a slight greenish tint for reasons unknown. So, loading Dash's body texture in the place of NoPrick.tga results in this: It appears as though if one wanted to restore the pricks, one would have to wrestle with the models fairly extensively, in addition to the question of why they're attempting to do such a thing in the first place. That's all for now! Tune in next time for "Wait, why does mf_main_loc.nif in LEGO Universe have nodes named loc_lt_nipple, loc_rt_nipple, loc_bellybutton, loc_naughty, and loc_butt...?"

yeah, this, then you gotta grab your meat. grasp it firmly, but gently. then shove it into a crocodile,

Hello! It's a new music. My brother asked for it. Here it is. Yay. "I do try to make it resemble what the music makes me think about. Namely colors and sometimes shapes" (on the Barrage blog post): Welp. That means I have some form of synesthesia. Ain't that cool.

Chapter 4 - Albert's Abode "Albert's Abode" Albert's unassuming home is a relatively simple model; nevertheless, it was a very fun build with plentiful visual gags. Grass and flowers can be seen in the forefront, alluding to the "inexplicable" building ordinances requiring one wall be absent, a quality not unfamiliar to the buildings of the LEGO City line. The municipal government believes this open-air approach to housing encouraged community interaction and carried with it other societal benefits, such as economical government surveillance. Decades prior, criminals had attempted to gain entry to homes with intent to ransack via windows and doors to the front and side of houses, and almost immediately discovered this approach carried with it certain challenges; It could be very difficult to open them from the outside when their knobby little hands which couldn't work their way into the grooves. Others took an only slightly more pragmatic approach, opting to forcibly disassemble walls and the like, but this could cause quite a din and alert the entire neighborhood to the burglary. More recently, with the national enactment of these housing stipulations, one particularly bright young criminal mastermind, known by his surrogates only as "The Fourth Law-breaker," proposed something remarkable: instead of going a traditional route, prospective burglars might simply slip in undetected through the unobstructed back. In the next year alone, the crime rate septupled; violence and house-fires were on the rise as well, prompting municipalities across the country to commission new police buildings, fire stations, and the occasional underequipped hospital, bleeding dry funds for other expenses, such as parks, infrastructure, and economic development projects. "The Fourth Law-breaker" became very rich as a result of his discovery, enabling him to possess an influence over various authority structures, including the police department. The architects of the prisons built flaws into the cells, enabling allied parties easy escape from their captivity. Lawmakers figured it would be personally advantageous to look the other way meanwhile kicking the cylindrical tin container down the pavement. Thus the problem pervaded society: burglary on the rise, increased funding for new police and fire equipment without confronting the core issues, and an appalling underrepresentation of women in the workplace. ...oh sorry, there was a model, too? The terrier's "eyebrows" are the handlebar mustache accessory, and the tiles on the wall are supposed to represent letters from the cryptic "language" used in the Great Minifig Mission, creatively dubbed "Minifig"; the written form of which curiously resembles the faces of a six-sided dice, and contains a series of dot configurations which conveniently correspond to the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. The refrigerator (Fridge Logic) and lighting fixture (Lampshade Hanging) are an unapologetic nod to TVTropes, a serious ailment which conditions its victims to a perpetual cycle of link-clicking until your browser gets tired of all the tabs you've opened and will probably never get around to reading. And yes, my primary motivation for including the terrier was to give Typhonus a "Pet the Dog" moment. I...didn't plan to ramble on like that. Sort of had a fuzzy idea of that background in my head for a long time. Is that sort of commentary appreciated? Let me know in the comments. Or don't. I probably wouldn't.

As the title implies, these are the vignettes which accompany Nexus Farce: Ingress of Imagination. Below are alternative views of the models and a brief description. Chapter 1 - Johnny Thunder and the Quest for the MacGuffin "Johnny Thunder and the Quest for the MacGuffin" Much of this model's inspiration ostensibly comes from classic Adventurers sets and the slightly more recent Indiana Jones sets. The eponymous MacGuffin is a Voltstone from the Insectoids theme, which is called an Imaginite Crystal in LEGO Universe. Includes one Johnny Thunder and one affable dismembered skeleton. The symbol behind our hero is a simplification of the insignia seen inside the Nexus Temple in the story cinematic trailer. The elevated region is also shaped after the insignia. The First Builders and Mythran apparently have a penchant for triangular geometries. A dozen of those useless flick-fire projectiles are embedded in the wall, and to their right is that one conspicuously protruding brick. A couple friendly swinging blades are suspended to the left, and the obligatory lava pit sits beneath. Skeleton.

At least they didn't call it something like testercall.

Beautiful. This game should be considered art.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Chapter 3 - Albert "Pants Party" In all of its glorious inebriated splendor. This one's my indisputable favorite of the batch. Notion Potions are actual consumables in LEGO Universe. I represented it with this obscure piece in trans-medium blue, which works surprisingly well. Anyway, this acid trip is the spawn of the progenitor to this story, which was originally titled "Expedition". Albert had a really depressing and cliche-ridden backstory that surpassed the nebulous PG rating back then, which this parodies in an only slightly less objectionable form. But enough of that; the morality police may be surveilling us!

meat me there and i'll show you

This is so 80's and I absolutely adore it

Chapter 2 - Typhonus "Typhonus's Study" I think the title's pretty self-explanatory for this one. Impeccably preserved. The globe is circumscribed by a Belville bucket handle. There's a stud at both ends of every shelf. Each "book" is a 2x2 plate, with a 1x2 slope at the end; 1x2 brown panels span the gaps. Gallifreyan display panels? Typhonus must be a Time Lord, and the Venture Koi is his TARDIS. Good evening.

wow EDIT:

Damn I'm addicted to your music now

Fun fact: Hael Storm is in LEGO Rock Band. You can play as him or even make him one of your roadies. And in one cutscene, this is what happens to one of your roadies. Also, regarding Johnny Thunder: He's not "in the game" as a character you can unlock like Hael Storm. However, there's a character that uses his head called the Cowboy, who's suspiciously unlocked in a dinosaur/tribal themed area... So, I went into character create and made a minifigure that has that head and that hat in brown, a shirt from another character, and some plain black pants... ... Boom, there you go, it's more or less Johnny Thunder. Also yes this is the Wii version of the game, hence why it looks absolutely terrible.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47240216/Conversations1.mp3 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47240216/shortthingfinal.wav I actually did these instead of playing video games. What's wrong with me? Each one took roughly an hour. The second one was done first.