SaperPL

For people who get into the contest not only because of interesting topic, but also to try themselves and compete with others, if rules are not reliable, it stops being fun. By not reliable, I mean that you have to make some assumptions based on the criteria and you ask about some of them, but some if not explicitly stated, can be often misjudged until we actually ask if something is allowed, how it'll be judged etc. If you keep misjudging "the spirit of the competition" because how rules are not clear, it starts feeling random and out of control, so not fun in context of competition. Some information is required to figure out if I actually did good - if there is no precise criteria explanation, but there is a list with who's got which place, then you can try to figure out where you're at in comparison to other entries. If there's no list of places then clear explanation of the criteria - how those were judged is something that can give you feedback here. And for the record, I'm talking about all this because the more clear and restrictive the rules, the more inclusive the contest will be to new people and we'll have more people entering the contest. Some of the contests here with a lot of entries are big repositories of unique building techniques, but also the more people are involved, the more people roam around topics of others and give them feedback throughout the contest time, and that's also part of the fun to interact and have feedback and test various ideas from others giving the feedback. Anyway, I'm repeating myself, because you are repeating same questions/arguments, and the bottom line is people are different and have different approach to things, and so if you all guys think it's not about the rewards, why not make contests more often without physical rewards, but with various cool topics? (this question was already answered by Jim some time ago - it's rhetorical here) Should the contest be only aimed at those who have same approach to this as you, or do you want the physical rewards to be also a bait for bringing other types of contestants? @msk6003 I agree about wanting for people to interact with you in your thread, but the view count metric doesn't directly represent the quality of the entry. Sometimes the topic you've chosen may be enough for a lot of people to check it out of curiosity, but it doesn't mean those people that peeked inside actually like what's inside. Car transporter set is well known and that's probably why you've had a lot of views, although I don't know if you're referring to this specific contest or something from previous contests. About posting WIP and not getting any replies - if you add a thread where you're like 100% done with what you want to make and there is no room for improvement (like your thread suggests that you've got your digital design done), it also means there's no room for interaction from others. Also I feel like the western approach here is to just give out positive feedback, and sometimes you shouldn't get a pat on the back, but hard truth that you won't be able to compete with others entries with what you've build. Note that regardless of whether it's a contest/non-contest thread, if I just drop a complete thing once, or something that is close to completion, there will be just few comments, while starting a thread with just a concept and slowly building on top of that mechanism by mechanism, iteration, by iteration, creates more opportunities for people to see this thread and to comment on the progress. If you drop something close to completion, there's also not that much incentive for someone to take a look at the thread again when it pops up with an update.

Try to use morning light, open up windows/doors to let as much light in, and if your phone camera app isn't letting you tweak the exposition/white balance, you can try openCamera app. I guess next time when you'll be making some photos/video. Anyway, do you have an ldd/studio model for this? I'd be nice to leave those things that you've figured out here with the front axle with suspension and engine behind for future reference for others :)

Look, for me the current approach to how criteria are laid out imprecisely and later judged makes it less fun. When I want to discuss this when the competition is not on, the response is let's wait for the next contest to be laid out. When I ask about how criteria will be judged during the contest, the response is to wait and see the results. And "Trust me bro, we'll judge it right"... When I criticize with arguments why I believe this is a problem, instead of discussing it with counter arguments for why shouldn't we have criteria slightly more fleshed out, it's either "it's just for fun" or extrapolating to "you'd want 500 pages of rules" which imo are not reasonable arguments in the discussion. I don't think anyone brought up a counter argument that more open criteria are good for creativity or something like that, because that could have been a good start for the actual discussion here. The argument about Jim's effort to source and handle the rewards is a good argument, but for a discussion about having contests more often. And when we had that discussion, and some of us stated that we would be okay with more contests without physical rewards, there was a reason behind having actual rewards, so I feel like at least for Jim that only 1% being about the rewards vs 99% about building might not be so true when it comes to bringing new people to the contests. And mostly I would agree with this kind of approach, if it was clearly laid out what's the criteria for winning - in your example of a runner race it's not like everyone goes in a different direction, some go uphill, others go downwards etc. It's clear that everyone races on the same/complaint path (same distance and difficulty) and the winners by decide by who gets to finish line faster. It's a clear criteria. But for one look at TC20 - Studless Recreation results, where the base criteria were not so clear so two solid entries were "disqualified" in a way that doesn't really make sense, so we even have a track record of baseline being not clear to the contestants. For two, what's my problem with how we use this approach with criteria being the small baseline and leaving a lot of parameters up in the air is that again more functions, bigger build will score more points than a small build despite both scoring 100% on the baseline. If the size & more functions is the part of build quality voting criteria, then it's not obvious to newcomers and we all already know isn't good enough imo, but also it means the contests are kind of pay2win this way, where having big repository of bricks + more time for building bigger models will mean competitive advantage over another entry if both have 100% on the baseline. If it's all we already know about how we should judge the build quality, then why not state it once and re-use it for every contest by linking to that statement or including it in the opening post? Then it would be clear that amount of functions does indeed matter in the end, so if you can't afford building something big/complex, then you're not having a chance to actually compete despite fully adhering to the voting criteria.

You asked and I elaborated :D Like I explained to Jim already in the generic contest topic, it's my OCD of digging into things like this because that's part of my job in game development. This is not a good reference because there is a precise baseline that you don't need to explain, where the vehicle probably should be street legal, you're using either industry standard parts fit for their job or have some parts custom made for the specific build. You don't compromise on doors because you can't ft a steering wheel etc. Also I'm guessing there are not a lot of shows where a construction vehicle would be competing against a car or a bike. Also with explanation on the ruling in previous contests there were situations when they went in detail like that. And otherwise if you'd just get a number of points you got for specific criteria and the criteria is vague or you just get a place for your entry, it still doesn't let you know how you should improve next time. All-in-all it boils down to the fact that we are taking part in the contests for various reasons and IF you want more new people to take part in them and keep taking part in them, you should cater to the newcomers' needs and their perception of the contest as well.

It's either let's say 100% for originality because I picked up a set that multiple people stated they didn't even know it existed, or it's 0% because it's a truck with elevated bed so it's a pretty common topic. It has 3 functions beside steering, so if it gets 100% points on all criteria and competes against a bigger model that has all 100% of stated criteria, but that bigger model has more functions, my entry will probable lose there. One of those functions is fully manual, so it's one step more than what we've been okay with so far with knuckle boom cranes and excavator arms where you have a knob at each stage and not input routed to the tower. Will this be penalised or not? It's worth noting that almost no of the tow truck sets have fully functional tow bar/tow tray because they either have it too close to the arm holding it, or it doesn't tilt so you cannot pivot the towed car when steering the tow truck. Does this count the same way as the acceptable true to the original model or not? If it's gonna get penalised for this not being mechanically actuated, then it's like 33% of it's original functions while for example winch not being implemented fully in extreme adventure is like just 1 out of 8 functions - does it matter? By the way I don't know if building in original colour scheme will have significant value. One of the reasons I picked this set is because of it's colour scheme. If the color and for example stickers were to be negligible in how this is valued, I probably would've picked something different and made something in different color theme. A good example of the problems I considered was the extreme adventure set's purple panels that had to be replaced with blue. At this point I feel like penalising those who picked sets they couldn't replicate in original scheme could be a bit too much, but at the same time someone will have to get short end of the stick - either it's them, or those who chose specifically sets that they could replicate with correct color theme while potentially risking other features being implemented with imperfections. Also about the set choice - I feel it's kind of in the middle of the stack when it comes to number of features that are not that common in models that the community is building. If the number of unique/complicated functions that are not purely car steering/drive/suspension/engine doesn't matter, then the optimal choice might have been to go for 41999 as two of contestants did. I feel/have a hunch like this might have been easiest build ot make because we're all building cars with suspension and there's a lot of ideas on how you can implement those mechanisms. But if the number of unique functions does count, this could have been a bad bet to go with something like that. Similarly if you for example were to pick a sian as a target and make it with parts from recent tecnica sets. I'm not sure if that answers your question though. Whether it's something wrong with it or not remains to be seen how jury will vote.

I would say it's 50:50 for me, not 99 to 1. Still the problem here is not that I'm not winning, but the problem for me is taking part in a challenge where conditions may change afterwards based on the interpretation, and that feels to me like a waste of my time. The challenge of making a build for the given topic is nice, but if afterwards I see that I did not understood the rules the same as they were valued, it's not fun for me anymore as it starts feeling as I wasted the time because of that, where I could make different choices if criteria interpretation was clearer from the beginning. And I already said that I'm pretty pedantic about the rules, but I also believe that better rules will mean more contestants will re-enter in following contests if rules make more sense to them and challenge is more approachable. Yes, but no. I'm not saying for every scenario, but criteria for originality could have stated whether it includes the pick of a set to shrink or not. And how that originality would be treated, whether being about picking out some obscure sets or picking out sets that depict things that we don't often build, so something different than trucks, tractors, sport cars etc. Things like how is the jury going to decide between two entries that have full scores outlined criteria. Also does shrink ratio matter or not apart from being a requirement to be a reasonable amount of shrink? I didn't get an answer for that - if it doesn't matter, than IF someone went ahead and sacrificed build quality for heavily shrinking down to a small scale, now he's done it without knowing it doesn't really matter that much. Also we don't know whether keeping the original colour scheme/not keeping it will be a part of staying true to the original, where picking a set that you can source parts in specific colour might be treated as a part of the challenge. Voting criteria has literally one line - two sentences in total. I'm not saying that it should be 500 pages, but it could be a paragraph for each of the four criteria that we have here. You have extrapolated it a bit too much by estimating 500 pages document.

It's not only about my complaints stated here, it's also about track record of what happened in some previous contests, at least from my point of view. Good example was how TC20 - Studless Recreation went down in the end. One of the winning by popular vote entries was "disqualified" for using modern approach with panels and not just frame with wholes, despite the requirement being explained as it has to be instantly recognizable, which the entry obviously was. There were 7 total entries with the modernizing with panels approach, I think, which shows it wasn't that clear and proves my point that contestants will spend their time doing something based on initial explanation of the rules and then it occurs at the voting stage that it was meaningless because they didn't fit the valid interpretation of the rules. We will keep having contests with great topics like this one, where we'll end up with a lot of great submissions like now we have, and jury will have to figure out which model should take the podium despite two or more models 100% fulfilling the criteria of the contest. So despite there not being a criteria for more functions or more effort, more complexity, they will have to count at some point despite the terms of the contest having no such things in criteria, because jury has to pick something in the end. And I'm not saying the popular vote itself is a solution for this either, because again, if the terms don't go precise into details, it's again up to everyone's interpretation. The argument about Jim's time is IMO wrong here, not to take away from him spending his free time on the contests, but if he's not spending more time to flesh out the terms clearly at the beginning, he will have to spend more time answering questions and figuring out the results fairly. My argument is that by not making clear and precise criteria, the contests keep creating traps for people to fall in, and when they do, they will feel like they've wasted their time.

I never said I demanded anything. I would like != I demand... Don't put words in my mouth that I didn't say. I have valid arguments and you are always responding without anything solid except for "it worked so far", which is not an argument. It's like saying humanity survived for ages without electricity - that's true, but also "so what?". What you are doing is organising contests in a way where rules don't matter and you always can arbitrarily pick what you like regardless of the rules, or maybe even you specifically make the rules in this way so they are not precise or even vague, so you can then arbitrarily pick something without a problem later on. That is why I'm so hell bent on the rules being stated and executed more precisely. Also to prove a point - I've seen a few times already that you don't have a problem with changing the way of selecting winners between jury and popular vote or mixed even after the mid point of the contest time. Even in this contest you were considering it. That's because you are never really improving with the rules nor having valid arguments about Well, what takes fun in the contest for me is knowing that what I decided to build may make no sense in the end despite being a perfect choice adhering to rules, because there's a lot left for jury's or voters own interpretation. I'll probably stop bothering taking part in contests that are not proper competition with solid criteria for evaluating the entries. Why should "this is my final word!" stop me from stating my opinion (again)?

Well, I'm digging into this because for me what's detracting from having fun in the contest is the feeling that I'm making something that completely doesn't make sense from the moment I choose what I want to do, if I don't know exactly what the voting criteria mean. For me, the part of the fun in the contest is also the competition and trying to get better at each contest I participate in. But if I keep failing in contests that are constructed in a way that only afterwards you can figure out what would be valued the most, it's not a meaningful competition for me. Note that there is no criteria about the amount of functions or size of the build, which means that if Jury were to stick just to this, winning should be possible with a model of this kind: If it was representative of the set it was based on. My point here is that by the criteria laid out there picking a harder to implement model that had more functions shouldn't be valued higher. On a side note for future contests - I would also like to see a refinement of the rule about discussion topic requirement that would make it clear whether entering the contest in last moment and laying out the progress in few days or even hours is okay or not. From the perspective of competition, this allows you to sit out and see what others are making and calculate what they need to do to top-up the existing entries. I know this leaves someone with less time, but again, for someone who has a sizeable collection of loose parts from various sets, it may not be a drawback. Also you could be making multiple potential models for submission and deciding last minute without others knowing what you're working on. I think this kind of behavior is against the spirit of the competition where most of us are openly discussing what we're making, and it should be regulated.

But are you going to explain how the voting criteria were evaluated? Not by stating who got what score, but explaining what and how was valued for those criteria, because this: still doesn't explain much. About originality: For now, I can only see one entry that should get a score for originality which is the barcode truck, if we're talking about an original approach to implementing mechanisms. For every other submission (I think) it was just about solving the problem in limited space, but that was core requirement for the contest anyway. And also if you think about the barcode truck from this perspective, you could also treat it the same way, so we'd end up making it so that the originality is about uniqueness of the set you have picked and managed to solve its problems. I'd like to have it laid out clearly, if not in this contest, in future ones, so we know what's important and how to tackle this. About staying true to original: How much penalty will there be if a function is not exactly working like in original full scale model? Will this be proportional to the total amount of functions in the set? How does it combine together with the looks though - there are set models that are more about looks and have less mechanical functions and there are models that have many functions but are a bit more messy in their construction because of that. Will this be somehow balanced between functions and look depending on how the original model was made? About shrinking scale: Will the shrink ratio affect the score in a way that the smaller the better or is it just a checkbox that you need a reasonable amount of shrink there? I would like to actually see where I end up with my submission if I'm outside of podium, even if I'd end up being sharing the same spot with multiple other contestants. I'd still want to know if I was going in a good direction or not.

Wow, that was fast. It's like a shortest build thread ever... But the model came out really well, have to give you that. Those gifs are really nice too :) Are there limiters preventing the track assemblies from freely turning around axles? I don't know if the original model had something like that either though.

Looks really good, but there are two details that caught my eye - the windshield's lower edge arc is sticking out over the hood and while I know it was kind of like that in the original model, it feels weird. The second thing is that the doors are not sitting flush with the rear wheel arches. I would recommend either trying to re-take the photos or tweak brightness/contrast on the photos because with a lot of black, it's hard to look at the details in dark areas. Also if you want to put comparison shots like in the last group of photos, I'd rather be looking at a single scene where I can see the details, or maybe put one above the other if they are horizontally wide, rather than just "a proof" that there is a side-by-side comparison, beacue this wide strip with 6 photos i hard to see actual details and compare things. Shots from upper left and bottom right look okay, just make them fit both in one rectangle for 1024x1024 requirement, if you are planning to put them in the entry.

Yeah, the original set was really weird so that makes sense to approach it this way. If possible, I would really like to see this perfected after the competition in a way that you don't need all that platforms and just one spot with one gear rack input. The looks of the model itself are perfect representation of that iconic green look. That detail of green color + decal where the inputs are is a neat touch as well. By the way, out of curiosity - do you know what's up with that light grey area in the centre of the dumping spot when you're showing it from above at 2:28? Is it a big grey sticker that you later replaced or is it just a video artifact? In other shots it's clear that there are bricks.

That works pretty good for what it is. You should definitely score the points for originality here. What surprised me is that you can fail to pick up the wheel. I feel like you either should use a thicker/wider wheel for the presentation, or the grabber should be lower, almost at the ground level. What I don't like is that you need separate input to return the grabber to default position. This feels off if the gear rack line is supposed to be input for a function and then you have to split a function between two inputs. At this point it may too late for that, but wouldn't it make more sense to figure out some rubber band/wind up motor spring mechanism to return the grabber back to default position once there is no input for those gears anymore? And find a gearing that doesn't add too much resistance to it, but it's enough to push the grabber through the apex point over the dummy code pilot box? If you'd just have two inputs, then what I feel would be possible is that you could add rails ensuring the truck hits the gear racks properly (maybe even something correcting it through steering), but more importantly if you have pick up input on one side and dump on the other, you could use the same input for both functions, but the difference would be whether you're going at it forward or in reverse. So by tweaking the positions where' you're grabbing the input off the floor along the length of the truck, you may could use the same spot where you're dropping the tire to turn around and pick it up again with the same gear rack input without having to manually place the tire in pickup spot after dumping it.

MichalKK built this in original color scheme and shared photos on rebrickable I probably should revisit this design with new toilet paper roll piece and flipflop liftarms. Is there anything else new that could make sense in the revision of the design?

Exactly - that is why I think there should be specific metrics outlined precisely for judging the entries when the contest starts. Without contestants knowing those metrics at the beginning of the contest, you will have to penalise some of them for decisions they made at the beginning or throughout the project, without knowing how it will be judged. But you will have to do it to come up with a list of winners. I'm wondering now what will be the metrics for voting criteria of originality - is it only about build techniques/mechanisms implemented/how they are implemented or is it also about the set that was picked? Will contestants that picked the same set be penalised as unoriginal? Will the ones picking iconic well known sets be treated as not so original? Also we're mostly building cars, bikes, trucks, tractors and construction equipment outside of the contest, so picking something like that may also feel like it's not something original.

I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence - I could say the same about your small "big red" :D One thing is the rigidity and parts falling off - yes, they tend to make a mess in those - but the other thing is whether something is considered a legal technique or not. If you were to create instruction for how to assemble the row of those pistons, you'll have to provide specific distance for the offset in some custom way. Similarly you shouldn't insert a pin into a thin liftarm just partially - it may not fall off, but is it the intended use of this connection type? hmm... <takes a look at three silver awards under your profile> :P Interesting. I was thinking this might have a problem with raising the boom under some additional load with those linear actuators. I guess the wall of the house in scale is not that big of a load. I don't remember what weights I checked for my mobile crane apart from pallet + barrel from a forklift set, so maybe I did try to pick up some heavy stuff there and remembered that wrong...

Looks awesome, a strong contender for the first place, I think. I expected the boom sides to look terrible from the studio render, but they are fine. I don't like how the seat of operator is built, it feels like a mini sofa without cushions. I'd try to build the back and bottom separately - use a bracket with studs on the side on that door hinge structure behind the seat and attach seat back to it. I still don't like the yellow half bushes attached by a quarter of stud onto the end of the axle in the engine. I don't know where I've seen it, either on some bricklink contest or on ideas, but I feel like it wouldn't count there as acceptable technique. Apart from it I wonder if those two small linear actuators are enough to lift an actual weight with the boom extended. I remember I had a problem with a single one and half as big boom in my mini mobile crane and had to double that. Whole thing looks really good though and I want to see the video. Great job :)

8109 Flatbed Truck Functions: - HoG steering with knob on the roof of the cab - Flatbed platform raising with rear axles' kneeling mechanism - Tow bar/tow platform hidden underneath rear bumper/lights bar - Winch on the platform with a latch/lock mechanism Original model: Pics: Full Size Photo Original Model Full Size Photo Original Model Full Size Photo Original Model Full Size Photo Video: Thread: Free instructions: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-155661

Video: Instructions on Rebrickable: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-155661

I think I'm finished with the instruction. Managed to grab few openings to go through all of it. Will try to release the video and instructions tomorrow. Because I'm short on time recently, I didn't test this step by step physically building it, so proceed with caution, but I think the steps should make sense.

I wonder if you'll manage to source the parts in time if you're starting now. Unless you have inventory where you can steal the parts in required colors from the models. I don't like the idea of coming in at last week before the deadline and rolling out the whole progress while knowing what others are building, but I suppose it isn't against rules as long as you can show the progress in the thread and not just drop the finished MOC thread at the last minute (which happens often in my local LUG for the MOC of the month contest, which is why I don't like it). But well, at this point with all strong contenders with complex mechanisms, it's going to be hard to compete, but still I want to see how your build will come out, so keep pushing it forward :)

I thought someone has a know how to make those kind of animations in studio, but this is nuts - 146 renders ?!?!

Initial steps for instruction done:

I just noticed that most of the sets with a tow bar have it implemented in a non-functional way either because there is no tilt for steering with the towed vehicle attached or because of lack of clearance for the bumper area in front of the wheel. If you were to put some model at the matching scale on it, the small turntable and its attachment above would be too close to the front of that car. The closest to working properly, I think, is what is there in 42008 Service Truck, but you'd tilt the towed vehicle, it'd start touching the arm at the corners. I wonder whether we should care about this being functional at all...