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Hullo, Initially, I planned to post this as an "April Fools" video, where I joke about making an "720p version of the LEGO Alpha Team intro" except the end result is poorly drawn and so poorly edited you can literally see that half of the intro was recorded in GIMP. The only reason I'm not bothering to disguise it as an "April Fools" video is because... well ...this video ain't fooling nobody. It's more of a parody of the intro instead of something you can trick your friends into watching. Maybe if I put a Rick Roll somewhere in it, it could be an April Fools video, but most people would probably be turned away from the awful visuals before they reach the end. Anyway, here's the video if you want to watch it. Enjoy??

Surprise! It's an Irish folk song. Except it's got guns! This is probably my new favorite track of mine, even with all the repetitions (which by the way are very intentional). This track is like 80% stuff I've never used or tried before, so it's got a very fresh sound. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I do!

2019

Last Friday i made a special avatar for myself inspired by the jackbox party pack game Monster Seeking Monster. And over the next few days i have been making allot of avatars for other people, so i decided to showcase all of the ones i made so far. Hope you enjoyed these and if you want one for yourself, go ahead and PM me.

Hello, I'm still alive and lurking. This is the first video I had the chance to upload in a while, since I've been studying like crazy for the past few months. But now I finally have some time to get back to making music and uploading videos! This is a pretty simple EDM track inspired by the cyberpunk aesthetic, hope you'll enjoy.

As promised, here's a single post containing some of my videos, from this summer onwards! This is a TouHou style track I started two years ago right after finishing Champion Battle, but I remade it from scratch with my new composition style. Unlike other tracks inspired by the same source, this one is a full-fledged composition! This one is a rather unusual track for my standards, being more focused on experimental atmosphere and ambience than anything. Melodies are very scattered and are by far the least important element here. This is a pretty basic House track, it's nothing too extreme but it's definitely a refreshing take on such a stale genre! And last, but not least, this is a track I made as an example to show to a game developer who contacted me. I didn't even get to send it to him, so I decided to upload it. It's a JRPG-syle background music with very Japanese-y elements and floaty harmonies. And that's all! Enjoy!

Greetings, and welcome to the inaugural entry in what is certain to be an edifying and scintillating program. I suppose you're wondering why I've called you all here tonight. The reason, good sirs and madams, is birds. A most vital and compelling matter, as you can no doubt see. Neither of these things is a bird, and yet they're nearer birds than any non-avians alive today. Whatever one might say about archosaurs (and there's a lot to say) they were no slouches. Not content to have produced the first vertebrates adapted to flight, they opted for an encore, conducting themselves with no small amount of style. Stick this in your fancy sails, synapsid freaks! There was a lot of tweaking over the eons, but eventually the familiar form emerged: Sans tail, sans claws, sans snout. Aerodynamism incarnate. Still, it was not so definitive an avian that it overpowered its beakless-breathren. Rather, it coexisted with all manner of feathered beauties. Look ma, no wings! Alas, the cosmos is a cruel mistress, for the age of reptiles was coming to an end. Between the Chixalub asteroid and the Deccan Traps, Aves, birds as we know them, watched their dinosaur brethren vanish from the Earth, in what was not even the worst mass-extinction to date. While those puny mammals were getting their act together, Aves was flourishing, getting up to all manner of outrageous hi-jinks Flight! What is it good for? It should be noted that while no other dinosaurs escaped, there was another lineage of archosaurs that survived.... And while it was those pesky hominids that ultimately reached sapience, one can hardly deny the impressive cognitive faculties of certain birds... Not bad for a lineage that lost its hands millions of years ago! In conclusion... Well.... What was the point of all this? Oh! I know! BIRBS!

And I'm back with more music! It took more time than expected to get the video done, but it's all good now. It's here. This is some pretty complicated music. If you don't like it at first glance, give it another go. Irregular time signatures aren't as intuitive as 4/4 and the like.

So it was my birthday and I had a very nice time with family and friends. Loot included: - clothes and blanket - two DLCs for Warhammer 2 Total War which I have spent the past week playing with -One 'black box' from a friend that contains OSes from the 80's, which in turn can then run various games from that time period, including the first three text-based ZORK adventures aaarg my enter key isn't working- and such a quantity of Lego that I couldn't build it all over the weekend! ATLANTIS: - 8075 Neptune Carrier (of which I had one already ) - large set - 8077 Exploration HQ (of which I also had one already ) - very large set - 8059 Seabed Scavenger - small set - 8060 Typhoon Turbo Sub - medium set - 8057 Wreck Raider - small fry compared to the above All complete, which is nice! Minifigures, portal keys, and all! FANTASY CASTLE THAT'S LITERALLY WARHAMMER (evil skeletons, Orcs with green skin, Dwarves, heroic Mannish defenders) - 7079 Drawbridge Defense (missing some minifigure accessories; one crossbow, some weapons (got plenty spare ), golden shield (used serving dish instead), golden sword (used katana instead), golden helmet (used gold fire cap instead... this guy looks pretty wacko now ) - large set - 7037 Tower Raid (complete and duplicate, neither of which worry me ) - medium set - 7097 Troll's Mountain Fortress (missing 1/2 of minifigure heads but all bricks, and both trolls, there) - very large set Note on 7097 - It is the worst fortress I've ever seen. It has no reinforcing at all, and when assembling it the pressure of putting bricks together caused the high tower to just disintegrate before my hands. Using my remote controlled repeating ballista, I ran the combined fortress over into pulp. The gates fall off, the gate arch falls backwards, the bonds between segments split, the walls implode... A terribly reinforced set. I'll have to fix that MARS MISSION: - 7690 Eagle Command Base (missing one large orange pipe, which is a bit of a shame as it's one of the most important pieces of the set as well as one of the most irreplacable. Not a problem, I'll just share from my other Eagle Command Base ) - large set - 7692 Recon Dropship (missing minor replaceable pieces) - large set (The dropship is quite large, but the alien craft which will be forever termed "Alien Extractor" is quite hefty as well. Very dense. - 7697 Clawtank Ambush (complete) Now my third Clawtank (or is it fourth? I've started losing count of my number of Clawtanks and LRR's Loader Dozers ). However this can hardly be said to be a problem, unless one considers storage space. - medium set All in all, a colossal haul that I'm almost embarrassed to share ... But there's one more thing I got... Can you guess what it is? You'll never guess Make a guess, and then open the spoiler below... Yaaaaaaay! My engineering degree has taken its toll. See, it's not just the degree. As part of my engineering degree - that's what makes it so special - I have to have obtained 800 hours of engineering-related work experience. Else they don't let me graduate and I'm left floundering for work experience. At the beginning of last year I threw myself into it by skipping first year and starting second-year immediately. Then in the semester-to-semester break I picked up 120 hours of needed work experience. This left no time to prepare before heading into the next semester, where I took a fifth course on top of my workload. Then came the Christmas break, which was again spent a) desparately hunting for needed experience (very stressful!) and b) doing work experience. I finished work on a Wednesday and the first semester of 2018 started on the next Monday. All without a single proper 'day of rest.' (The engineering degree is four years, so I've got this year and one more to go). Small wonder, then, that my brain is now forcefully shutting me down as I'm on study leave. It is to be expected that I am feeling as exhausted and despondent as I do feel, just because my brain has never had time to calm down for the past one and a half years. Weekends would be spent fretting about assignments. Major holidays were spent hunting down work experience. Minor holidays always had assignments due over them. It's not too bad though. I'm very tired and unwilling to get any study done for exams, and my sleep schedule is nonexistent. But that's most of the effects of it (other effects include unwillingness to socialize and a total lack of patience with inanimate objects). Which is bearable, and as depression goes, relatively minor. At least, that's what I tell myself. Whether it's actually true is another matter, but at least I'd like to hope that things are minor. They certainly all make sense now that I know I have proper depression as opposed to random 'meh-ness;' nearly all of the hitherto inexplicable events that have happened this year can be explained now. Nearly. Oh well. I hope you're all doing better than I am, but I know for some of you that flat-out isn't the case. Al-ways look on, the bri-ight si-de of life!

Heyyy, it's been a while since I've done anything! Better get back on track with a fully produced track with real recorders! As I mentioned in the description of the video, this has been laying around for a pretty dang long time. While I still think this track is way too silly for me to take 100% seriously, it still is pretty important to me, so I felt I needed to publish it and move on with it. Hope you'll enjoy!

i'm so sorry

Merry Valentines!

I've never really followed the whole "New Years Resolution" thing before, but in getting older and running out the body clock, I've realised it might be good to start making some changes. One thing I really want to achieve next year is one of my biggest failings from this year. I'm a software developer by day, and a gamer by night. Being drained through the day with professional-level coding has made me bitter and cynical towards my own projects, to the point I've stopped doing them. While I still write game design documents as a hobby, I've completely put off physically working on any of the projects I would have once committed to. My New Year's Resolution is to produce one large-scale mod. It's something I used to do, or at least make serious attempts at, and I totally have the capability to do so now. While just making a new project from scratch gives me a lot of freedom, doing it as a mod means I get to excite an existing audience and utilise any existing content/implementations (i.e. I don't have to make my own guns or gun code, which is important as I have no visual ability whatsoever, and core stuff like weapon physics are a real pain in the knackers to do). A big problem of making a game from scratch is that any serious investment will cost me (purchasing asset packs or artists to make the game not look s***, paying for my own time and materials, paying for promotional stuff etc) and I'll want to seek return, which means a lot of legal and certification woes to deal with. I just want to build something big but relatively light that people can enjoy. My trouble is selecting a game for the specific mod I want to create. In an ideal world, my ultimate mod project would be a kind of Destiny-styled Raid, set in a breaking-down theme park. That is to say, a networked game-mode where a group of players are teleported between several small scenarios, in which they must complete a puzzle with barely any hints, while a horde of enemies attempts to gun them down. The story and aesthetics will be based on the likes of Westworld and Jurassic Park, which I've become very obsessed with recently. Ideally, players can collect audio logs, and collecting enough will change the final boss fight (or add a second one). Of course, that kind of project would be intense to produce, especially with many mod kits, so the idea is modular and flexible. Maybe it will only be solo. Maybe combat will be reduced. Maybe there will be less variety of individual puzzle mechanics and instead more reuse in creative ways of the same puzzle mechanics. The core, player surviving a collapsing attraction park, will remain the same. I'm looking for suggestions of games that have the capability to do anything along these lines. I've thought about using Blockland, but I've heard some negative things regarding the capability of the bots and having many different behaviours going at once (ideally, many people can connect to the server, group up in "fireteams" and run different parts of the course at the same time, like how a theme park ride has people in different rooms). If people can prove Blockland is capable of this kind of stuff, sure, but otherwise I'd like to know anything else I could use as a base. Another variant I've thought about (and one more relevant to RRU) is to make an overhaul for LEGO Rock Raiders that switches it up to become a time trial to find certain missing people and objects in the various tunnels underneath the park that staff used to get between attractions to perform maintenance. Any suggestions will help. A part of this is I want to make something people will actually play, as opposed to just producing crap for myself.

Hello people who probably don't know who i am, I'm Someswedish (although i usually go by Mr.TheSweDragon now days) and i was a somewhat active user around this forum like 6 years ago or so? though i did mostly just lurk and stuff, i sometimes did create some dorky drawings and videos for the forums and generally have a good time back in the day. But at some point years ago, I kind of just dropped out with no word. I felt guilty about it but it was something i needed to do since i couldn't say back then. But today i decided to write in this blog i apparently had to explain what happened and why i left, what i have been doing for those long years and where i am today and what i may do now. Mostly for the benefit of some of the old user i lost contact with. For convenience I'll put each point into a spoiler so you can read them without being drowned by words or choose which topic is most relevant to you. Who the heck is this dragon dude? Why did you ditch this place? What did you do after you left everything behind? So what brought you back? Okay, with all that done and over with. Now what? I don't know yet, i might pop in from time to time to see what's going on and maybe make a post or blog entry. Maybe a sort of text lets play, think that could be fun if people want me to work on it. Or maybe i'll just disappear for another 6 years or so, who knows? Anyway, thanks for reading this lengthy status update and maybe see you later?

For the past few weeks (well, it WAS a few weeks when I initially wrote this. I've come back to it a year or two later to fix it up and publish it), I've been thinking about Art Battle and RRU Tower, specifically thinking about why those threads fell apart/flopped. I know both AB and RT are dead, and most members involved in either threads are barely active on this forum, but still I'd like to provide my thoughts about why both of them might've failed and what would need to be changed/fixed if somebody were to reboot this kind of open collaborative/competitive art topic in future. If you have any thoughts about where Art Battle/RRU Tower failed or want to discuss any of the points brought up in this blog post, feel free to reply. 1. THROW OUT ANY STORY/LORE I think one of the biggest reasons Art Battle fell apart and RRU Tower fell before it even started was the fact they were both established around a plot (or, as was the case with Art Battle, they evolved into a story with too much unnecessary lore). I feel like Art Battle was ruined by the narrative and lore being built around it, as the developing story about ThunderCorp (or whatever it was called) started to make AB more focused on the narrative, rather than focusing on the silly antics that kick-started the entire event (I will not deny the fact I was one of the people involved in mutating AB Round 2 into the mess it became before the thread died). The introduction of a serious story also clashed with the fact that most people still wanted to do silly things for the sake of fun (as was the case when boss battles were brought in, only to be obliterated in a single image) which, considering Art Battle's roots, is perfectly fine, but it annoyed the people who were invested in AB's developing story. As for RRU Tower, it failed for being too plot-focused right off the bat, mainly due to two issues: The first one being that it didn’t really have a fun or interesting starting point for people to play off of. May I remind you, Art Battle started out as a joke (Fush had an art request thread, then I started an art request thread so Fush sent a drawing of me literally stealing her thunder), so there was immediately a simple and fun starting point for people to work from and no story/plot-boundaries for people to stay within. With RRU Tower, we started with character bios, a description of the titular “RRU Tower”, and that was it, people were just expected to come up with some strips where they talk to other users (at least, for the time being) which is a rather boring set-up, both for the people making the strips, and for the people who would've read them. I mean, I guess this kind of set-up could’ve worked, but it's just that there was nothing interesting happening at the start for people to get hooked/willing to join in, people were expected to make strips of characters blabbering at each other until the host of the thread decided to start the war part of the thread. Speaking of which, the second issue with RRU Tower's plot was the constant threat of a battle later on in the story. I'll probably come back to this statement later and either edit it or delete it, because I can't quite put into words why I think that was a major problem. In short, if anyone wants to make a reboot of this type of thread, start with a small, silly premise that people can freely expand upon, and leave it at that, no lore, no previous narrative, nothing but a simple event to get the ball rolling. As for discouraging people from creating their own narratives/plot-lines, hopefully the next section "Less is More" will resolve that issue. 2. LESS IS MORE I think one thing that helped Art Battle to get off the ground was the fact that, in the beginning, there were no comic strips. To continue the battle, you had to convey everything you wanted to do/achieve in a single drawing. Not only do single-panel drawings discourage people from making long stories/deep lore (as it’s hard to add/expand on a story within the confines of a single image), the use of single-panel drawings also lowered the bar to entry so that people who aren’t artistically talented/didn't have the time to produce more than one piece of artwork could still participate. The thing is, a comic takes FAR more time and dedication to make compared to a single one-off drawing (admittedly, that depends on how much effort gets put into it), which is one of the reasons I think RRU Tower never really took off: it was structured as a comic series that people would be expected to work full time to put together a highly polished six-panel strip every month or so (voluntarily, with no payment). Hell, I put together a 12-panel strip for RRU Tower, and I had to really push myself to complete it, as I quickly lost the mood to continue working on it. Contributing a single panel to advance the battle/situation is more fun and quicker to make than a 6 panel comic that's a boring/frustrating slog to work on (and, again, it allows more people to participate without dedicating too much of their free time to it). You can establish rules to force users to make 1 panel strips at a time (maybe 2 at a stretch). I'm not saying limiting what people can post down to a single panel will stop people from developing stories/plot-lines altogether, but it will definitely make it harder to do so. 3. EITHER USE A BETTER SCORING SYSTEM, OR NO SCORING SYSTEM AT ALL This one I’m a bit iffy about, and I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on this matter. Art Battle had a weird scoring system where people who drew a panel had to nominate somebody to continue the “battle”. The nominee would get a point if they submitted a piece of art as requested, but somebody else could get the point if they submitted a drawing before the nominee. Despite sounding good on paper, the nomination system was pretty dumb. If the nomination system were to work properly, then everyone who got nominated would need to be free at the time they get nominated. The thing is, everybody has a life outside of RRU/participating in “art battles”, so some people who get nominated will be too busy to contribute, allowing people to easily submit a drawing before the nominated person. Speaking of which, the rule about people being able to submit drawings/panels before nominees made the point of nominating people completely redundant, as the topic would devolve into a posting free-for-all since anyone could post at any time (I was largely responsible for abusing this in AB Round 2). While I would say the solution would be to sacrifice the nomination system (and turn any future art battles into a free-for-all), I think the nomination system might've helped to bring a few other members on-board, adding to Art Battle's initial attention/popularity (I could be completely wrong though). It's just that the nomination system was somewhat pointless.

A bit of context: I wrote this terribly silly thing a few years ago on request from a player in a BIONICLE Mafia game I was hosting (as one does). Anyhow, I've always felt remiss that I never got round to posting it on this site, so here goes. Enjoy! Here, for the curious, is the scene in which it originally appeared: Kudos to Ghidora for requesting this in the first place.

And it's time for another track! This one is pretty serious/melancholy compared to my usual stuff, but I figured it would be cool to try something different. I don't have much else to say cause I don't know how to describe this. Welp.

Sleep is hard. Body does not want to sleep. Brain wants to sleep. Brain tends to lose. Hi! I'm [still] Jaina, [still] queer as hell, [still] messed up in the head [but slightly better than before], [still] obsessed with LEGO stuff. Especially that which was around during my early childhood. Hey, it's been a while since I was around here. I dropped out of RIT. Game Design, while still a huge passion of mine, is no longer something I can pursue. I simply cannot retain ANY useful information about coding (beyond the basics) if I stop coding for even a short period of time, and I have trouble learning anything new in it. I'm also in a bad place in my life, mental health wise, so I'm focusing on doing a whole lot of therapy and getting my s*** back together. I brought back RSIs (repetitive strain injuries) brought about by trying to breed a shiny version of every single goddamn Pokemon (for which that is possible) by playing an extremely excessive amount of Dofus, followed by Stardew Valley, and then Sunless Sea. I'm itching to go back to Sunless Sea. I have no self control, though, so whenever they are feeling marginally better I do something to screw them up. It's REALLY boring watching Netflix and trying not to fidget all day long. I recently remembered how awesome LEGO stuff can be and I want nothing more than to build, build, build. Unfortunately, my home is in Rochester, and my bricks are with my parents, in Saint Paul - plus, my hands hurt all the frickin' time so I'm not gonna open that barrel of snake worms until they are doing better. In more positive news, I have a partner and also a sort of partner who will probably eventually be a girlfriend and it's pretty great. It's weird that some people actually find me attractive. Edit: Hopefully I'll be around here more often. I have very little to do lately. Recovery is dull.

Just imagine... ... Imagine a computer game. More specifically, a real-time-strategy game. But not with medieval knights. Not with spacemen. No, something far better - with both. Both sides made out of Lego bricks. Imagine starting with the classic AOE three minifigures... Imagine harvesting Yellow bricks to build more minifigures.... Imagine harvesting Grey bricks to build weapons for those minifigures... ... and harvesting all sorts of bricks to start building small vehicles.... Imagine using those vehicles to harvest more bricks to build more vehicles.... ... to build war machines of destruction... ... And then imagine the other player doing exactly the same thing. Picture the carnage. Robin Hood's arrows bringing down giant alien spaceships, which are in turn bombing Aquanauts submarines trying to mine silver crystals to add a giant death beam to the Neptune Discovery Lab. Mars Mission tanks grabbing with Police Cars, and aliens walking away handcuffed. Pirate ships boarding submarines. Chrome Crushers drilling the front off those inferior Power Miners vehicles. Spamming Galaxy Squad speeders to fight off an unexpected invasion of tribesmen lead by Achu. Training "super units", like the MX-81 Hypersonic Operations Aircraft, only to find that your enemy has build the Mobile Devastator before you and has just wiped out half of your Aquanaut allies... ... and of course, destroying anything yields precious bricks back, so imagine sending a fleet of Small Transport Trucks to pick up the wreckage of the defeated Agent Bikes so you can upgrade your Chrome Crushers to have a second laser on them to defeat the second wave of inevitable Agent Bikes... ... and using those bricks to repair your frontline Exo-Force mechs with Mechanics while they pelt away at the Fire Station... ... then imagine starting LDD or variants thereof, and creating your own units... your own faction to bash the Ice Planet / Insectiods alliance with crossbows mounted on cars... expanding on tech trees of short-lived themes.... bringing new units to complement a strategic weakness... ... of course, the keyword here is "imagine," as I can't code for peanuts. But still. It's a nice idea to think about.

Hullo again. So, a few years back, I tried to make a Rock Raiders comic series (named "Rock Raiders know zilch", a title which was explained using the smallest Calvin & Hobbes strip available on the internet) in an attempt to one-up Arthuriel's excellent "Insane Raiders" series (which, due to my minimal sense of humour, didn't work well). Considering the fact I've only made 2 blog posts about "Rock Raiders know zilch" so far, it's pretty clear that I haven't followed up on my promise of delivering my comics regularly, but during RRU's downtime, I've worked on a few more strips (and I also managed to overhaul my art-style. Quick shout-out to @Ayliffe for posting LEGO Nexo Knights storyboards on Twitter, which inspired me to change how I draw Minifigs). So anyways, time for the new issues. Enjoy: #3 - RRU Raiders United #4 - Stress raiders #5 - Dimensional blunder #6 - "Loss" of clever ideas (Yes, its a dumb "Loss.jpg" comic, sorry @someswedish) So yeah, those are the latest editions of my comic series, which I'm renaming "Zilch Raiders" (because "Rock Raiders know Zilch" is a bit of a mouthful). Thanks for reading and I hope you've enjoyed these new strips. I'll be sure to post more comics in the future (although when that'll be is yet to be determined). -- Ben24x7 --

Since the 1:1 L.M.S Explorer thread was one of the most visited threads on RRU I thought that I should revive the thread in blog form (since almost all threads are closed now). Maybe not many people will see this blog, but you know what? I will still post this blog entry in case someone only uses this forum instead of a chat program like Discord (which still doesn't have a good overview compared to a forum). Also keep in mind that the edit-button doesn't seem to exist in the blog section. That means that I have to post updates either in a new post below or a new blog entry and that we all have to avoid making spelling errors for example (the final boss of posting basically^^). Original Forum Thread: This thread contains the older content like the original descriptions, older renders or things like images of my separate L.M.S. Explorer bridge model. https://rockraidersunited.com/topic/3082-11-scale-lms-explorer-ldrawstudio-20-file-downloads-2021-10-21-oh-hey-this-thread-is-10-years-old-and-still-going/ Download Links: 1:1 L.M.S. Explorer (LDraw file that also works in studio 2.0): https://www.rockraidersunited.com/files/dl-r195/ 1:1 L.M.S. Explorer bridge (LEGO Digital Designer file): https://www.rockraidersunited.com/files/dl-r358/ 1:8 L.M.S. Explorer (LEGO Digital Designer file): https://www.rockraidersunited.com/files/dl-r194/ 1:16 L.M.S. Explorer (LEGO Digital Designer file): https://www.rockraidersunited.com/files/dl-r193/ 1:32 L.M.S. Explorer (LEGO Digital Designer file): https://www.rockraidersunited.com/files/dl-r192/ Description (slightly changed from the entry on BrickLink: https://www.bricklink.com/v3/studio/design.page?idModel=105148) Below are the renders (made in studio 2.0) of my improved 2016 version of the L.M.S. Explorer from LEGO Rock Raiders. The import of the LDRAW file took about a minute and rendering took about 1/2 to an hour depending on the picture (rough guess from 2019). Render options used in studio 2.0: Very High, Transparent (adding a background afterwards is more practical in my opinion), Asteroid (Lighting option), GPU, Stud Logo. Here is the link to the thread on RockRaidersUnited: https://rockraidersunited.com/topic/3082-11-scale-lms-explorer-ldrawstudio-20-file-downloads-2021-10-21-oh-hey-this-thread-is-10-years-old-and-still-going/ It's also on Flickr (album link): https://www.flickr.com/photos/94844382@N07/albums/72157711107415188 Summary of the background story: 2010 I started playing Rock Raiders again and saw this ship in the intro. My first thought was: "Awesome! I wonder, if someone managed to build and upload a picture of a recreation of a 1:1 version" I didn't find a big version, so I decided to make my own. The building process looked like this (ultra short summary): -during the whole project: Watching and analyzing the intro and one of the both outro versions over and over; including still frames of the video (resolution: 320*240 pixels) -using LDD (Lego Digital Designer) -around 18000 bricks LDD became unstable, so I used LeoCAD -using LeoCAD (in the beginning it was fast, but it became very slow and unstable too, but at least it stable enough to almost complete it) -during the process bugs like slightly displaced bricks were occurring, too, but it was okay. -2011 I published the original version -2016 I found out, that converting an lcd file (LeoCAD file) to ldr (LDRAW file) improved the speed of LeoCAD immensely. That's why I fixed many mistakes (some micro gaps still exist, but I would have to start from scratch to fix those). -until I found out about studio 2.0 and it's render function I settled on POVRay to make pictures of this ship Random statistics: Length: 962.4 studs/ 769.9 cm/ 303.1 in. Width: 130 studs/ 104 cm/ 41 in. Height: 143.4 studs/ 114.7 cm/ 45.2 in. pieces: 58827 (it's only the hull. Also some superfluous bricks. Apparently bricklink also displays a lower number, but I tested the download and it worked fine and display 58827 bricks) construction time: ~10-11 months (2010-2011 and 2016) Other notes: -Personally I like the overall shape of this spaceship, but the main problem is the small amount of details. -keep in mind, that this ship gigantic and that your computer may not handle the file. I recommend a bit of patience since it can take a while depending on what you are doing (selecting all the bricks can take a few minutes). -it's an ldr file imported to studio and then converted to an io file. Images Video R. R. Slugger also made a YouTube video (the thumbnail uses an older L.M.S. Explorer render in case someone wonders about the different look) about my various versions of the spaceship and includes his own attempt of building one of the models (1:16 version) in real life! I think that the video is quite nice and I wonder if more collaborations are possible in the future? (Maybe about the L.M.S. Explorer version from the Rock Raiders book "High Adventures Deep Underground" which has to be seen to be believed XD). Future Plans The project is currently inactive, but I already started working on it: yet another version of the L.M.S. Explorer. This time without micro gaps or small construction errors here and there. I will also make sure that I only use bricks that existed back in 1999. The main reason why this is inactive is that it's not an exciting task since it's basically doing the same thing again (reconstructing the spaceship).

Hello all, you may or may not remember me, but I have been thinking for a long time now about coming back to this site I remember when I did stupid things like spam topics,dumb child content, really bad grammar and spelling,and of course weather reports. But that will be no more, I promise for real I learned from my mistakes. So my goal is to have a new fresh start here by starting over, If some one would be so kind to give me advice on how I could improve even more I would be gladly appreciated. Any ways I want to start fresh with a new overhaul since I had no clue what I was really doing in the first place when I started with overhaul making and modding.Now that I am much better at modding and making levels I should be able to do a lot better now,but I still don't know how to do animations or modelling that is to advance for me. So now I must apologize,for all the hell I putted you through I'm very sorry. Last I'm also going to spend most of my time now talking about rock raiders ,modding it,and getting help with the modding as that is what this site is mainly about, why talk about your favorite TV show or brony stuff etc. Ps If a mod would delete or at least lock my old spam topics I would be gladly appreciated. Hope to see you around I promise thing well be much different,and if they aren't just ban me. I have to admit that I was very scared just to write this.

You may know me via the recreation of the L.M.S. Explorer in different scales (including 1:1) or the Insane Raiders comics, which are insane, but believe me: the Rock Raiders in the game LEGO Rock Raiders try to challenge Homer Simpson for title of being the dumbest fictional person. So what am I doing creativewise at the moment? Will the Insane Raiders come back? Will they crawl out of the grave or the chimney during some Halloween or Christmas special (or both. Nightmare before Christmas is the proof for this XD)? Well, that I don't know, but I wondered if I could make more elaborate pictures instead of many simple pictures (my comics) and so decided to do that as a training. As a start I decided to draw the avatars of two users based on their current avatars. The first one is someswedish's orange dragon with a pink afro and the second one is Ben24x7's mining cat: After that I recreated a LEGO MOC (a figurine called "Electra"), that I did years ago, in some sort of superhero fashion/style. There is also experimentation with the shading (also sorry in case, that the eyes etc. look weird): Then I wondered, if I should do something really detailed based on a more well known franchise. For that I provide a bit of background: You may see a character in a clear pose, that can be described as an arch for example. That is called a "line of action". I thought about ways, how to emphasize (the length of) such a line and then I remembered the Viera from the Final Fantasy series, that can be described as tall humans with rabbits ears. No no, please don't run away (in case you have an aversion to furry stuff). It will all make sense (or fall apart in a hilarious fashion or a really awful one, that nobody dares to mention decades afterwards)! I wanted to do some sort of cool samurai pose, but it didn't work out (it just didn't look right) and so I just went with a rather boring standing pose, but at least I learned about designing a plate armour (based on the armour/"armour" from the character Fran. Why do I mention plate armour? Well: In general the Viera aren't dressed in a practical fashion (it can be described as skimpy), which made me wonder, how a Viera knight would look like (since they seem more about professions like dancing etc. and a knight is a nice change). To be fair: The end result with the ears and hair isn't really practical, but at least it's memorable (the goggles do nothing! ; ) ). I also made a version without the ears and hair, which looks more like a regular knight: Then I went the opposite way in regards to the graphical style (doing something very simple for a change) and combined the Prince from the Katamari Damacy series with his Katamari (the ball thing) and Link with Ezlo (the bird cap) from The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. The theme: When tiny heroes meet (to be fair: everyone and everything, that's being rolled up by the Prince, will be crushed by the pressure of the surrounding objects and then turned into a hot plasma/star in the sky, which sounds like a horrible fate (hint: it is), but least you will glow in the dark (also day, if the viewer is close enough)!): Update (2019-09-01): Sonic the Hedgehog In case you want to know, where you can find my stuff: Here is my deviantart account: https://www.deviantart.com/arthuriel And here is my twitter account: https://twitter.com/_Arthuriel_ Obviously I am also on RRU (and also on Discord). Of course I am still learning since proportions can be of or a pose too boring etc. and me trying do this faster since I am not really fast at the moment, but I try to improve. One thing, that I am thinking about, is doing this on a more professional level (paid commissions?). At least I am curious, how it is and while my art isn't the best it's certainly not the worst, so maybe people are interested in that. For that I will probably have to work on stuff like a price list etc. since I haven't done that yet and also trying to have a bigger reach (or a reach at all). The last point also the reason for the word "(Un)Adventure" in the blog title.

Hello. I present to you my (not really) new track I composed. It's inspired by Breath of The Wild, and it tries to mimic the style of the music that plays where the Sheikah are involved, namely shrines, Divine Beasts and guardian encounters. The twist here is that this mellow and somber Sheikah atmosphere, filled with orchestra (real violins included) and unique sound design surrounds a stupidly heavy EDM drop. Enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWqr1g0TM8E Edit: RRU doesn't want to embed the video. Oh well.

Just Imagine.... A Lego RTS... But not just simply themes bashing it out for your enjoyment. Many themes were released with absolutely no aquatic component. Many themes were solely aquatic. So why not bring two factions to bear, one fighting for control of the land and skies, the other sending aquatic incursions? Submarines, boats; anything to skim the waves and provide devastating firepower to bear on your opponents on the shore having wrestled the sea from your opponent's control. Ships like the Neptune's Carrier from Atlantis could be enough to provide amphibious landings as well, though I have different ideas for that submarine; I previously mentioned the idea of "king units;" highly powerful sets that you looked at in the store and drooled at; the Mobile Devastator, the MX-81 Hypersonic Operations Aircraft, or the LMS Explorer (though maybe that one's a bit too big... you could still have "orbital bombardment" or "teleport a team of Rock Raiders anywhere on the map"). Perhaps the Neptune's Carrier functions more like it did in the Atlantis online animations, whereby it functioned as more or less a submerged LMS explorer, containing all the ships that the team needed; unlike the sets, where it barely contained a small wheeled vehicle. A mobile base is always something appreciable in an RTS, if you have the micromanagement for it... Yet the theme which created this forum is subterranean. Perhaps that could be a feature. I've seen Digging implemented extremely well in Impossible Creatures; units that dig are simply stealthed until they "undig," except notably digging units cannot attack other digging units Why not here? Chrome Crushers mining the filthy Power Miners mechs to bits while zapping them with laser fire, whilst scores of Rock Raiders hurry behind keeping the vehicles at high HP; all while the troops on the surface are entirely unaware of this, perhaps only hearing muffled explosions. There would be two "maps;" one of the standard ground and sea we know so well from any RTS, then below that, a slightly transparent underground cave network with natural entrances, obstacles, and exits (of course, unnatural minifigure-made entrances, obstacles, and exits can be arranged), which might focus on a key press like Tab as the foreground fades to invisibility, allowing you to control your units with ease. But there's a more potent force on the battlefield beyond an underground threat; I was contemplating Master Builders. Unlike simply being just high HP high attack heroes, these could have a unique function to create units on the fly with the bricks around them; the bricks of course having come from your fallen enemies you just smashed. Similar to World Builder, whereby you could create units if enough bricks were together (a lot of the gameplay revolved around getting such bricks together), these legendary heroes would have the ability to create units with the nearby bricks, replacing your lines as they fall. Of course, such a system would be extremely abusable on lower population caps, whereby a Master Builder could rebuild your army faster than your feeble units can shoot them down, and downright useless on higher population caps where replacing 1 in 100 really isn't worth it. Thus a simple solution would be to scale build speed with population cap, and perhaps make an automatic function (though autonomy in an RTS always results in stupidity) whereby your chosen Master Builder focuses more on rebuilding your units as they fall. Such a system would be possible because unlike other games where killing units just creates graphical corpses, destroying giant mechas should give you vast hordes of bricks from which you can summon your own creations! Perhaps, in the sake of ceasing endless spams, the amount of bricks dropped by a unit could be less than the amount it took to build; in the interests of preventing endless Master Builder reconstruction. But that's all about one half of an RTS; the unit composition, the micromanagement, the lasers (my favourite part... you know you're playing an RTS right where the sounds cease to play because there are so many PEW PEW PEWs already sounding).... how about the economy? If you were playing Rock Raiders, you wouldn't exactly care about white bricks. However, you'd be extremely interested in the rare Teal resources around the map, something that other themes wouldn't care about. But your Mars Mission ally would be more than happy for you to harvest those white bricks and tribute to them; and if you have an eco bonus of extracting bricks from rocks faster, being a mining theme, perhaps it's in your best interests to help fund his war effort. Tribute might even be automatic for these resources you don't care about. All this makes for perhaps a confusing HUD, showing bricks in all colours of the rainbow; a system similar to the online Lego game Monster Fighters would work well, whereby your most important studs are detailed and the others that are only needed rarely or not at all can be accessible via a drop-down menu. At the front lines where your constructs are rising and falling all the time, but mostly falling as your Master Builder cannot be everywhere at once, the bricks are free resources, if your Small Transport Truck is able to dodge the laser fire which will inevitably scatter. Such plentiful resources means that you'd be interested in getting them back as soon as possible; thus whoever had the resource dropoff closer to the front line would easily accumulate the greater resources. Perhaps this could be fixed by extremely expensive resource dropoffs, unlike the classic 100 Wood seen in Age of Empires II. But this still wouldn't stop a lategame grind where you're rolling in every resource except spare population. Ideally you wouldn't be rolling in resources due to the presence of ludicrously expensive, ludicrously powerful units. After all, why stop at one? Why have one LMS Explorer providing constant beaming down of raiders with laser beams when you could have two? Intergalactic space might get a little crowded, but such a ground-focused RTS wouldn't need to go into detail on that... My coding has improved since last I wrote a wall of text on this, but alas it's still only cin >> and cout << , so such an idea remains in the imagination; hence the title, Just Imagine.... ... just imagine a fleet of Chrome Crushers drilling upwards from the surface right underneath Lego City with supercharged lasers... ... just imagine Johnny Thunder saying "Aw crikey!" as laser bolts from Exo-Force mechs whizz past his face as he frantically repairs your long-ranged Classic Castle cannon... ... just imagine a stealthed Neptune Carrier emerging from the sea and unloading a cargo of Lego Universe Maelstrom bots onto your precious economy, before disappearing beneath the waves... ... just imagine the spam of Rock Raiders with Laser, Freezer, and Pusher beams constantly popping out of Tool Stores to fight off an endless horde of elemental spinning ninja dragons.... ... just imagine summoning Space Police I, II, and III together to bring the various criminals of the galaxy to 'justice,' if your idea of 'justice' is 'pulverizing their vehicles to pieces and driving over the rubble....' .... just imagine.... a Lego RTS.

Oh man it's that time of year again. That is, time for spooky anime metal! That's right. I decided to stray away from my tradition of making regular spooky stuff, and went for just a halloween appropriate track instead. I think it ended up being the best decision I could make, since I was getting bored the hell out of my skull with the spookiness shtick. Don't you just love the triple alliteration in the name? I couldn't make a Halloween track without a cheesy name, even if the track isn't that spooky.

What now? An old school rock track featuring my beautiful 99% artificial voice? Yup you heard right. I'm not a songwriter so the lyrics might sound pretty cheesy, but they still do have a meaning. It's all about the depiction of a weird feeling evoked by certain sceneries and situations, and something else. I won't say because I think it's best to leave the analysis to the listener.

I love LEGO. I think my username makes it quite clear I'm a LEGO fan. What I love most about it is the classic minifigures and decals/stickers used on sets. I would have liked to have collected a few more Adventurers sets from my time but I only had so much money then that I couldn't afford to. For me I think that TLG should do a minifigure series of classic minifigures who have only appeared in Video Games, like with LR2 characters like Frankie Solido and Baron Rosso, to LI2 characters like a Brickster Bots.

I love making games in Unity. Especially LEGO based games. I'm currently in the middle of a Racers Project but have also started modding the TTGames LEGO games like LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 and making custom game icons for both classic and modern LEGO games. I do try making my own custom decals for games like Racers 2 and LDD.

Switched back to this alias on RRU since it's the one I was using in every other LEGO community (LEGO Universe, Legend of Mata Nui, Eurobricks, etc), and it was a bit confusing to new folks Moved the RRU Discord server to my old account where all the other LEGO servers are Cleaned up my Discord server list in general; 30 was too many to keep track of Set up a bot for the RRU Discord server (we'd planned to have a custom one from the beginning but it never got off the ground, so I found an existing one that had the functionality we wanted) Cleaned up old Announcements channel for the RRU Discord, did some other organization/cleanup Improved forum member title/rank

Here's the music I made for Halloween this year! It's a little late as the blogs weren't fully implemented back when I published this track, but better late than never I guess. Enjoy! ? I will be rolling out a couple other tracks from this summer over here in a couple days to not overflow the blogs section.

Minifigures are poor defenceless creatures that only live to build. It's the one thing they know. They live in a world where the only places they can build are flat planes, which are few and far between. The horrible world they live in is filled with savage giants, completely disregarding the poor minifigures. They even move and destroy their creations that they've worked so hard on. But the only places that can provide them with building space are within the giants' fortresses. However, there are some giants that pay attention and empathise with the minifigure race. They provide a safe place to build and the bricks needed as well. The minifigures work with what they're given. Some nice giants are younger and less intelligent, and have a harder time catering to their minifigures. Others are wiser and help them greatly. But the other giants despise the outcasts. They attempt to take away and damage the minifigures' safe space. This makes space even more limited. But the nice giants grouped together and formed communities. The minifigures dubbed these "Afols". And the war for minifigure freedom continues. Conflict due to limited area arises in the safe spaces as well. Minifigures fight desperately, sometimes violently, for room to build, and even try to convince their giants to help them as well. But the giants guide the minifigures to make peace. This is the story of the minifigure. And it continues with you.

i'm so, so sorry

BioniCLOTHES: Because I totally couldn't think of a better pun for this title. Guest-starring the lovely @le717 as, well, a Bionicle.

Hey guys. It's been a long time since I was active here. I got a job now, so that's been taking up quite a lot of my time. Maybe too much... I miss being here, I really do. This will be the first time I've even put anything on the forum in forever. I'm sitting here, waiting for something to say, but I don't have much. I haven't been able to keep up with the forum. I don't know who is still here or not, or who the new members are. What the next biggest topic is. I've just sorta fallen off. I want to change that. Get back into the family I've once known. Yes I said family, because you guys are. You've made me be more comfortable over the internet, if that were ever truly possible. I know I've had some off times, but we all do, right? I'm gonna try to be more active again. Perhaps bring back some old things I've left behind. Or create some new things for everyone to enjoy. In other news, I think I may have finally beaten my composer's block, so you can expect me to start posting music here again. And, if you really must know, I push shopping carts at the local Walmart now. This job tends to build up stress at times, but I made a vow that I would not quit, and I've been told the managers have noticed my, determination. Anyway, sappy blog post over. It's good to be back. See you all around the site. - Drill

If you have ever have attempted to mod LEGO: Star Wars The Complete Saga, you may have discovered that the games characters don't have any texture files. Unfortunately, the textures were embedded in the GHG model files themselves. A quick look at the STORMTROOPER_PC.GHG file confirms these suspicions. Sure enough, after the 30 byte header of the GHG file, the header of the first texture file (DirectDraw Surface) begins with its image data following afterwards. Using a hex editor, it is possible to extract and edit each texture from the file. Below is the result of extracting one of the textures. However, editing or extracting textures via this method can be extremely time consuming and difficult for modders who do not know how to use a hex editor. So, in hopes of finding a better way of extracting these textures, I resorted to IDA Pro and Hex-Rays to decompile the games executables in hopes of finding code that might assist me in extracting both the textures and the models. However, IDA quickly ran into trouble. For some reason, IDA was unable to create any code from the data section, I pulled up the PE Sniffer from PE Tools and to my dismay discovered why IDA was unable to read the section. The executables code was being protected by Armadilo. Someone over at TT Games was smart enough to add an anti-decompilier so that we couldn't break into their code. I wasn't going to waste time trying circumvent the protection so I decided to continue my search. Fortunately after digging through the forums, I found a tool that would extract the GHG's into separate DDS and OBJ files. In comparison with NinjaRipper, the tool is much faster and easier to use. However, the textures are not applied to the models so anyone hoping to use these files will need to reapply the textures themselves. Also to my surprise, there are no tools that allow conversion back into GHG. It is my hope that Sluicer creates a tool to convert back or at least releases the source code for the GHG to OBJ software so that someone else may build upon that code to create a OBJ to GHG converter. For now though, I shall remain using NinjaRipper as for it provides a better output than Sluicers tool. Back to model ripping I go!

Before I begin this blog, keep in mind that this project was cancelled and shall not be continued unless i have enough time and more artists willing to work on the project, but even then i probably won't do it again. So, i'm sure you've all heard about some sort of "top-secret project" me and ben were working on. I would hint it in the chat, and honestly i didn't exactly do a good job in hiding it as the hype was too much for me to contain. Well, i'm going to tell you all about this "project" in this blog post. It all started on the 22nd of December in 2014 when Art Battle was still a thing. I had been sculpting in ark out of Art Battle, turning it into a story with the help of the other contributors (Fush didn't like it though, as it was straying away from the original formula of Art Battle). As ben was the user i decided to put an emphasis on in my comics (he was basically the protagonist really, which didn't make much sense as there isn't supposed to be a protagonist in Art Battle; Everyone is an antagonist) i decided to ask him for help with the creation of this story arc by sending him a simple message where i told him i was thinking about creating two, also protagonist-like characters named Jen (a feminine clone of Ben who was the head of Thundercorp's cloning department) and ROSS, the Robotical Operative Synthetic Scientist. (an A.I. working in the science labs who was slightly insane but still stable) Eventually, we started fleshing out the characters and made the first comic featuring Jen, but it wasn't elaborated very far and was one of the last comics on Art Battle IIRC. Ross, however, never got his own appearance in Art Battle and forever remained a piece of concept art. As we started working further, i started working more and more on the "hero's journey" and the furthest we had ever gotten was when Ben goes down into the cloning pits and Joe, that stick-figure guy who kept screwing up in the beginning of the second art battle, saves him and blah blah blah. Around Christmas art battle eventually fell apart and i decided to cancel the ideas. Before i did that, i was thinking about making a game/spin-off that would explain some of the outside parts of thundercorp but that didn't work out either (obviously). Even though art battle died, i was haunted by great, juicy ideas but i had no idea what to use them for. Eventually i couldn't help myself and sent another private message to Ben titled "Meh, i guess it doesn't deserve to die" We then decided each-other's roles: I'd write the script, and he'd draw the comics. The script wasn't very good at first because anything involving ayliffe putting on sunglasses with explosions in the back ground with his arms flinging all over the place and a canister of banana pudding flipping all over the panel is completely ridiculous. I had started working on concept art for thundercorp vehicles, specifically the "GU-909 Prototype", "SU-4079 Dark Demolisher" (parody of the chrome crusher), and the "AU-4910 Lightning Scout" (parody of the hover scout). And Astro-Space-Guy, my real life best friend, provided concept art of the alternates, specifically Dark-Matter-Guy, and Some-Polish. We were also thinking about making the comics far more "HD" than the previous comics in Art-Battle, but i didn't exactly like the idea due to taking a very long time to create. When JimbobJeffer's project, "Let's Make A Game" came, we had to put the project on hold which caused it to take longer. Afterwards, i took a look at our progress and all we had were three panels. I then came up with another idea: It wasn't very realistic that thundercorp was this super-company that ruled the whole world, so i decided to make other companies and factions, which lead to Cyrus Industries, a company which produced and made the equipment for RRU and the Rock-Raiders. My idea for their soldiers were "perfected" Fund-Our-Corp drones who didn't speak, disobey orders, and were completely "dumb" and lacked A.I., and were referred to as "Hollow-Men" by Thundercorp soldiers. We also had ideas for two more Thundercorp Alternates, which were known as "Xiton" and an unnamed Mumboking alternate, but the two had no actual concept art and were mere ideas. As i realized more and more how ridiculous Thundercorp being the only involved company was, i decided to create more companies (my computer was unavailable at the time and so i had to draw the whole list in real life). While i was doing this, things were starting to fall apart, and Ben was unable to work on the comic enough, so i decided to ask Someswedish. However, Someswedish said he'd probably do it later on in time, but i lost contact with him and when my departure occured, the whole thing was falling through. I wanted to announce it in August of 2015, but that never happened. However, we were still throwing around ideas (and ben had an idea of having LairofRockwhales as a Gman-esque character.) After i returned to RRU, on the 5th of August, one last idea was thrown, which was ben proposing to redraw Jen. Finally, on Wednesday, 3:15 PM, i decided to ping Ben. He replied to me that he was unable to do the comic anymore. And i replied with this: And it was true. I was losing interest; In-fact, i was more inactive than he was. I did very little and i didn't really come up with any actual ideas after the Jen-recreation proposal. ...So yeah, this is it. This was that top secret project i kept going on and on about. It just didn't work, and this was the first project we ever worked on, and we just weren't there yet. As you see in that message above, i decided to make this blog so that everyone would know about it. I doubt anyone's ever going to approach me and say "I want to continue the development!" Because if someswe didn't want to, why would anyone else do it? I also doubt that Ben will do another project with me: I don't know why, i just do. I feel he's burned out by this and wants to do other things, and i completely respect that. And besides, i should've known: This project was a failure at the start, because the one thing that made Art Battle so consistent and fast was because EVERYONE was contributing to it, while we were just two people and only one person was making it. It just simply couldn't be done. If anyone wants to do something art-battle related, or if an Art Battle 3 comes along, then i'd be happy to join. When Ben gives me the unfinished comic i might post it on here, but i won't confirm it. Well then, now that's over, i can focus on other things now. See ya later, folks. (Edit: wow, this blog post has lots of links)