Leaderboard

So I got the Viking Heavy Artillery Wagon for Christmas, and it has a very interesting firing mechanism. Turning the crank pushes down the soccer seats, which then spring back and fire the bolt - and on a good day it fires a whole meter. The logical step was to build an oversize one capable of firing more... and motorized. I had the choice between Mindstorms, Manas, or an incompete set (two motors + two battery boxes) of Power Functions. I decided to go with the Manas because they could be remote controlled (we didn't have any Power Function remote controls). That was a decently wise choice, because the Mindstorms motors don't produce nearly enough torque to drive the mechanism in mind... but the Manas barely does either. Also, because the Manas uses infrared it won't work in sunlight. But despite all of this, it works. I needed two Manas motors (=4 outputs, as one Manas brick contains two feeble motors). One for moving around and the other for rotating / firing. Here are the wheels. Because they're geared down with only two gears to go forward you have to press reverse... oops =P It also barely turns, as you can see in the first video down the bottom. There's not really much to see here except excessive reinforcement. Oh yeah... about excessive reinforcement... I'm running out of long beams so had to do this. It works. Now onto how the thing actually fires. One of the quirks of the Manas motors is that each brick has a total of four outputs, but two of those outputs are linked. I attached manual cranks to the side ones (which click horribly, ugh) but put the main mechanism attached to the ones at the "back." The one on the left drives a short gear chain which leads to a beam. The other, on the right, drives a set of bevel gears (gears at 90 deg to each other), driving a shaft, driving another set of bevel gears attached to a gear chain... yeah, I was running out of gears by the time I finished that. Except for the Bionicle small gears that don't fit nicely on a single Technic beam - got bucketloads of those. More than I do regular spaces in fact, which is why I've used them so often as spacers - it's because spacers are rarer than these gears. The reason I haven't just used those gears is because they're really fiddly to fit on a regular Technic beam. On the left of the above image are two ultra-heavy Technic joints from amusingly, of all things, Exo-Force Striking Venom! A testament to the fact that you can grab bricks from one theme and put them in something completely different. The beam is rigged up to a Universal Joint (which we got from a Creator boat set of some sort), which is the best way to rotate a rotating beam (and that makes no sense. That is, this position is basically what the Universal Joint is designed for). That then drives a wormgear with casing taken straight out of Slizers, which heads over to yet some more gears on the right, driving the main final mechanism... Of worth noting is that six rotations of that transparent yellow tooth = one projectile. Rotating that final beam causes the white things to rotate, pushing the soccer seats, which then spring back when you rotate it a little further, going past their resting point and finally firing the projectiles! The ammunition salvos are designed to be extended ad infinitum - but I ran out of beams and five-bears. I still haven't run out of those gears. Here, have a video of the whole thing working: As you can see, it's incredibly ponderous, creaks, shakes, doesn't turn, and fires two shots per minute. I need something with higher torque... ... and that's what I got. Replacing the Manas Motor with a Power Functions motor works brilliantly. ... but wait, what if we just rigged up that motor straight to the final drive shaft? .... Oh. That's what happens. (and yes my camera sucks at video recording. Hey, at least I had a tripod.) I can trace bricks for this creation to: - Very large quantities of Toa Mata / Nuva / Metru for those gears - Slizers, for the wormgear box - Power Miners, for the attachement for the giant gear to the hinges... -... and the hinges are from Exo-Force - Nitro Race Team provided every orange brick you see - Visorak Oohnorakhsjhjbblahblah for that transparent yellow piece - Some Sport seats for those seats - Power Miners again, for those wheels - Manas (dur) At some future point in time, when I get a Power Functions remote controller, I will build a sequel - faster, quicker, and better!

Here's a Tee Vee that looks even more like an apple.

I've recently started collecting MISB Johnny Thunder sets. I'm hoping to grab 5934 next. The question I keep battling with is whether or not to open them...

"(Microsoft) TEE VEE wants to fight!" I wanted to make a Portal 2 "Say Apple" joke, but I wasn't sure if it would count as 'on topic' or not.

why did it take 4 years for this to become a joke

Got 3837: Monster 4 today. Seems to be complete. Oh, also this car base from 4575: Pulse...

Currently I am very close to putting animated (internally known as "sequenced") textures on custom models. I've exported an existing model to LW5 via Lightwave 9, which creates a valid model without sequenced texture data. I was able to insert that data back into the file while keeping the file valid and readable by LRR. Unfortunately, the texture does not animate. Lightwave recognizes it as a sequenced texture, so I suspect there's a control byte in the file that tells the game to animate it. I need someone used to this sort of sleuthing to help me figure out what's missing. I have included two files at the bottom of this post. SteamThing.lwo is my edited file, and SteamThing_orig.lwo is the original. The edited file should be placed in Data\World\Shared and it shows up on the Tool Store. Please help me analyze these files. The file data, as far as I know, is as follows: FORM = Header data PNTS = Vertex data SRFS = Surface (texture) name POLS = Polygon data SURF = Surface name again? COLR = Diffuse channel for the surface FLAG = ? LUMI = Luminosity data (probably maps, effects) VLUM = Luminosity value CTEX = Surface UV data TIMG = File path of image IMSQ = Image sequence data TWRP = ? TFLG = ? TSIZ = ? TCTR = Possibly number of frames before looping the texture sequence, which happens automatically anyways TAAS = ? TCLR = Diffuse channel again? I took IMSQ, TWRP, TFLG, TSIZ, and TCTR from the original file and added them immediately after TIMG. Lightwave reads this data properly, as shown below. LRR displays the model and the first frame of the texture, but it does not animate. Interestingly, it only seems to show the steam on the back of the Tool Store. There is more steam at the teleportation landing pad, but it's invisible to me. I will supply additional files if you need them. http://oresome.rockraidersunited.com/download/429 http://oresome.rockraidersunited.com/download/430

Ayliffe presents; "The Adventures of Unikitty" (the game)

You could say that it's.....an Apple TeeVee......

and all of this would have sunk into oblivion if TheBillionTonBrick hadn't necroed it

This topic is a mess

what kind of hentai is this

I blame Ayliffe...

...but does he have a headphone jack

Now look at this apple that I just found

goodbye

ok now i definitely feel uneasy

Here's a TeeVee that looks like an apple

that wasn't delicious at all but i'll give it 6/10

I can't tell if I should like that post or not

why didn't I think of that?

Got 3835: Robo Champ today. All complete with a few spares.

Latest freebie from work

I don't see this inconsistency. There was a field of asteroids, a few small ones hit the ship, the force field protected them and they weren't damaged, although a bit shaken up. Next, a huge asteroid came, and collided with them. Meanwhile, jet set the ship full-power straight ahead, away from the wormhole that had just appeared. This took down the shield and damaged them slightly. All the engines were also drained in the process. The gravitational pull of the wormhole finally sucked them in and spit them out in another galaxy. So, is not so. Otherwise, there are inconsistencies. Just so happens hat this particular one is not.