legomr

Hng, now I really want one of those.

Still waiting for a good Home One model. :)

More tumblers, always welcome. Love the offset seat arrangement in the cockpit of the flying tumbler.

Wow, pretty impressive. I was actually waiting for a helicarrier as mini polybag model from TLG.

Great overall shape! Kind of reminded me a bit of crustaceans. Would love to see more pics from different angles.

Pretty good. Love the feet and "toes".

Very cool. Some of the greebling looks fantastic. Would love to see this as actual model.

A couple of good ideas here. Fingers crossed!

I still hate it when small plates, i.e. 2x2, 2x3 etc, are somewhere in the middle of a larger 8x16 plate or so. Two 2x2 plates stacked are not funny, either.

Exciting project. Would love to see further updates of work in progress.

Something subway-themed would be nice. Also, very small motors might be helpful, i.e. something along the line of 2x4. Doesn't have to be powerful.

I think it's not a bad idea. Hopefully it will work well even when you only buy one of each battle back.

Very cool!

That's a very good question, one that I have been asking myself too, recently (in a slightly varied form). And I believe it really depends on what you want to achieve, and what the base parameters of your model are. For example: If you build a pure model, e.g. in a UCS way, obviously a "good model" is close to the original in shape and proportions. However, if you build for minifig scale, it might be less important to get scale or proportions right. These might take a backseat to swooshability, playability etc. Silly example: The UCS Millenium Falcon might be the better model even on a minifig scale, but 7965 is just as recongisable, but features all the insides etc. For my taste, Lego being Lego, I am more impressed by models which make sense in a minifig way.

It really depends. Obviously, individual collectable minifigures are great for steam punk. I also think the old pirate theme (with all the epaulettes and so on) is great for that, as are Kingdom sets. Haven't got any Monster Fighter sets yet, but that obviously works too, as would LotR sets.

Nice to see reviews for older sets - especially for older Space sets! Hope it will renew the love for non-Star-Wars science fiction among AFOLs.

Nice colour scheme, I agree with that. It's interesting to note that, in my opinion, the ship itself doesn't look a lot as if it was minifig scale. It was only when I saw the inside image that I realized it is.

Well, I was referring to keeping all combinations in memory, which I assume is the only way to keep searching through combinations tractable. I assume that 4GB is still the usual maximum amount of RAM most people have installed. Anyway, for the original problem (axis-aligned combinations), I believe the storage can be done in 37 bits for six bricks. To illustrate, let's number the eight connection points (studs or anti-studs on the underside) on a brick as follows: ------- |(1) (2)| |(3) (4)| |(5) (6)| |(7) (8)| ------- So the two black bricks in this image are connected 1-on-1,2-on-3. The two bricks in this image are connected 1-on-3,2-on-4,3-on-1,4-on-2. The funny thing is that the connection 1-on-8,2-on-6 is the same as 1-on-1,2-on-3, just mirrored. It becomes clear that most connections are just mirrors of others. There are really just 17 unique base combinations to connect two bricks: 8 where the bricks are parallel, and 9 where the bricks are orthogonal. From these 17 different combinations, we can derive all others by mirroring along the short or long axis, or both, of the first brick. So, we need five bits to store 17 different combinations plus one empty combination (when there is no brick connected at all), plus two bits for mirroring along two axes, plus one bit to designate whether the new brick is above or below the old brick. So, the first two bricks are designated by the first eight plus eight for the third brick, plus eight for the fourth, etc., equals five times eight bits = 40 bits. Even better, for the very first combination of two bricks, we don't need the above-or-below bit because both cases are identical. In fact, we don't even need the mirror bits if we just remember to multiply the resulting number of total cases by four. Ok, I hope that makes sense.

Well, I mean, if you allow rotation around a brick, you change the nature of the task completely. In addition to running through a tree hierarchy, it is now about looking for collisions in rotation spaces. That's a lot more complex and becomes a rather "untidy" problem. I don't know why exactly the original "research" has been undertaken to calculate the number of permutations from combining six 2x4 bricks. But I assume that it was less about calculating the absolute number of brick combinations, which is of little meaning and just serves as a nerdy little example. Instead, I assume that the original programmers really just wanted to show off by proving a way to traverse a rather big tree structure. Consider how much memory you need to store all possible combinations, for example. Probably more than most computers even today have. The thing is that it's probably an interesting, classical problem in information science between memory usage, execution time (consider searching for a particular combination), etc. You can apply this to Lego bricks, but you can equally apply this to real-world problems. For the new problem which adds rotation, the task becomes rather messy. It's not about purely traversing permutations or a tree hierarchy anymore, although that must still be part of it (but only to the extent that it was in the original problem). Now, there is the collision detection latched to it. Which is nothing new in itself. The new problem with unaligned axes is thus only about adding a number of special/exceptional cases.

Great. Just watched The Abyss the other day, looks a bit like it, too. :)

MASSIVE review! Very informative, I'm not sure if there can be possibly any questions left open about this set now.

Interesting pictures. A bit dark in places, and of course not a full review. But it's still nice to see the set and especially the figures from different angles.

Very good and informative review. I'm not too sure if I like the set itself. I always thought they should have created a new mould for Wolverine's hands so that his claws are directly connected to the hands and he can still hold something else.

Good review. I really miss proper Lego space themes. Always thought that the Spyrius theme was a bit too dependent on printed parts, and very busy designs, though.

Has an air of Blade Runner about it.