jamesster

The Galactic Titan looks excellent, I'll certainly be purchasing it. Oy, my wallet hurts...

Jim Spaceborn, the 80s LEGO comic book series, seems fairly well known within the LEGO community. People have built replicas of models featured in the comics, created custom minifigures based on the characters, and the illustrator, Frank Madsen, even got an interview in Brickjournal where he discussed the creation of the series (and the canceled third book and three mini-books). So why has its Castle-themed equivalent, Castle Kids, been almost entirely ignored? All I've been able to find on it online is a listing on Amazon with a very rough plot summary and the cover art, a listing on Bricklink, a stub of an article on Brickipedia, and this topic here on Eurobricks which nobody even replied to. Having purchased the book from Amazon last year, I thought I'd try to get some more information about it on the 'net. So, here's some pictures showing a bit of the book, with the first Jim Spaceborn book along side it to show just how similar they are - it's obvious LEGO intended them to be companion book series (though I have yet to find any evidence that more than the first entry of Castle Kids was ever published): Front cover Inside front cover Comic sample 1 Comic sample 2 Comic sample 3 Ending Activity pages Inside back cover Back cover If anybody wants better quality scans, I'll see if I can dig out a scanner. As you can see, the formatting is nearly identical to the Jim Spaceborn comic books, and the art style is very similar, despite being drawn by a different artist (Freddy Milton). The hero faction is never identified by name, but uses the Crusaders shield. The villains aren't the Black Falcons as you might expect, instead, they're henchmen of Baron de Mauvais, with their shields simply being solid black with a yellow outline. The basic plot is that the titular robber baron has a band of robbers that attack and destroy farms of peasants, leaving them to get loans from the baron himself (who denies connections with the attacks) with 100% interest. When the peasants inevitably cannot repay the baron, he confiscates their land and adds it to his own. Eventually he ends up aiding in the construction of a new castle for the princess, but uses a jousting match as a distraction once it's completed and takes over the castle. His plans are eventually foiled by - of course - the "castle kids", princess Alma, her squire Ralph, and Will, an inventive peasant kid. Alma is pretty much a tomboy princess who's constantly getting scolded by her over-protective guardian Mistress Prim, Ralph is more trim and proper than her but is constantly getting roped into her exploits, and Will is... Well, a kid inventor, whose father's farm was attacked by the bandits. There's other characters as well; Lord Percevere, Sir John, and Master Barbican, all Crusaders members (Lord Percevere being the commander, Sir John being the egotistical knight and Master Barbican being the master castle builder), and Slybald, the baron's sidekick. For the most part, the character designs are fairly close to existing LEGO pieces, so creating accurate figures of them shouldn't be too hard. Princess Alma's castle is as to Castle Kids as the Spearhead is to Jim Spaceborn: A massive model featured throughout the comic, with a picture of the real life model shown at the end of the book with some facts on how many pieces it contained. We've already seen a real-life Spearhead replica, now who wants to re-build this castle? Edit: I've uploaded scans of the entire thing here: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=522746

Found some old posts on the subject... http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=58396&st=25#entry1073211 So, did old LDD versions allow for the user to select the FOV? Also: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=35736&st=100#entry782585 ... So, now the FOV is stored in the model file itself? Edit: Ok, as far as I can tell, that fieldOfView="x" bit doesn't do anything - I changed it to all sorts of values, and wasn't able to tell any difference when I loaded the altered model.

That's what we're asking - is there a way to change it? Often times, games and such will store the FOV value in some sort of configuration file somewhere, which can be altered to the user's liking. If LDD does this as well, then fixing it should be fairly simple.

And "zooming out" in LDD simply makes the distance at which the camera orbits the target point greater, it doesn't affect the FOV as far as I can tell. Here's some quick examples I threw together in a 3D engine of what happens when you change the FOV. Notice what happens in the "Camera Preview" window as the FOV increases... FOV of 10° FOV of 30° FOV of 60° FOV of 90° FOV of 140° So yes, the FOV for LDD is strangely quite small and awkward - as Alcom said, almost like building through binoculars.

That changes the camera position and rotation, but not the field of view. Edit: Here, perhaps this random picture plucked off of Google Images will help show what the FOV is: http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/electronics/binoculars/nikon/ApparentField_of_View._V202987062_.jpg

I wouldn't do that if I were you. There's a non-disclosure agreement tied to the beta, and a friend of mine who tried uploading gameplay videos he recorded to YouTube (not the same videos or person mentioned earlier in this topic) had his beta account terminated, and the videos removed with a copyright claim - all within about a day of uploading them. With the LEGO Universe alpha and beta tests, people were free to take screenshots and record videos all they wanted - they simply weren't allowed to share any information about the game (including those sreenshots and videos) until the beta ended and the game was released. I took over 1,000 screenshots of LEGO Universe during alpha and beta testing, as well as several video recordings, and they're certainly handy now for documenting changes made to the game during that time. But, if I had published those screenshots and videos before the time came, chances are I would have been booted out of testing. So yes, take screenshots and videos, they will be quite helpful later for people documenting early designs for the game and such. Just don't share them publicly until permission is given.

I saw that video earlier today, certainly caused quite a stir in the LU community. Seems the video uploader has an uncle who works for LEGO and was able to get into the closed alpha/beta test - whatever state the game is in now. Some things of note... The music in the second area is originally from LEGO Universe, from the Gnarled Forest area. Also, the appearance of another player towards the end of the video (who uses the chat to say "hello") confirms this is an actual MMO. Oh, and in a chat with a friend of mine, the video uploader confirmed that the game is browser-based. With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if it runs on the Unity engine, which has also been used for browser-based MMOs like FusionFall, and I think even Battlestar Galactica Online.

I have the summer set pictures saved to my computer, but I'm not so sure I want to upload them anywhere - didn't quite work out last time I tried that...

I'm not so sure the skunks are a complete tribe. From this webpage: http://chima.lego.co...lcome-to-chima/ So, we've got lions, eagles, gorillas, wolfs, ravens, crocodiles, bears, and rhinos. That's eight tribes not counting skunks, unless they plan on introducing even more tribes (like skunks) later - which I kinda doubt, I'm honestly surprised they've got as many as they do now. But hey, you never know, maybe... Also, the Speedorz game is pretty interesting. First thing I noticed is that I recognized nearly all of the music tracks - they had previously been purchased from Audio Network by LEGO, and used for the racing minigames in LEGO Universe. I can't find all of the LU ones uploaded individually on YouTube (they can be all heard in various gameplay videos, but mostly covered up by sound effects), but and . Maybe they decided to recycle the music and save some money?

Well, the game is called "LEGO Legends of Chima Online" for starters, the "Online" bit is very common in MMO names, LEGO Universe was even called "LEGO Worlds Online" early in development. Also, looking at the official press release... Free-to-play is usually, but not always, associated with MMOs. The fact that they point out it's safe implies there will be some form of interaction between players, as does "connected game experience".

I hereby dub this MMO LEGO Universe: Furry Edition. It does sound like it could be fun, though I am a bit surprised they're trying to tackle two MMOs at once (the other being Funcom's Minifigures MMO), especially since their last attempt fell flat. I'm not sure what to expect from the Speedorz game. I do like racing games, and 4T2 created one of my favorite LEGO.com games (Crystalien Conflict), so it sounds like it could be good - I guess we'll find out tomorrow. Laval's Journey... Eh, I was hoping for a LEGO Battles: Chima type game, but this could be fun too. Maybe enough to convince me to finally get a modern handheld system, I suppose my Game Boy Color is a bit outdated...

Funcom has revealed some more info over the past few months via quarterly reports, I've added the info included to Brickipedia's article for the game: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Unidentified_LEGO_MMO

This was the second LEGO webcomic I ever read, and certainly one of my favorites... I'd be quite disappointed to see it suddenly die off and not return, I've been reading it for about three or four years now.

As others have said, the models and 3D renders are top notch, you guys did an excellent job there. I'm just not so sure LEGO would be OK with the theme itself... Though I did get a laugh out of the "Bulletproof windshield to survive stones thrown by hippes".

Got Razcal's Glider at Walmart yesterday (though I haven't even opened the box yet...), they seemed to have mostly everything except for Speedorz.

Drome Racers did that too, but aside from being mentioned in the online bio of the Detective from Minifigures, I'm not sure it has any real ties to the main LEGO continuity. If it does, then it's also worth noting that the theme was said several times to take place in the then-futuristic year of 2015. Ah, but there's a catch - the video game LEGOLAND uses the more "realistic" LEGO timeline. The game's story revolves around a LEGOLAND park's inventor, Professor Voltage, traveling through time to duplicate castles and temples and western saloons and such to turn them into rides/attractions for the park, and visiting the Rock Raiders in the future to learn how to use Energy Crystals to power them. The park's chef is Rosie Brickolini - and the LEGOLAND manual states that she's the cousin of Mama Brickolini from LEGO Island. On top of that, two more characters from LEGOLAND (Bob Longtree the park gardener and JP the park mechanic) appear in the Game Boy Color version of LEGO Island 2. And it doesn't stop there: Professor Voltage was also stated in the manual to be the grandfather of Veronica Voltage from LEGO Racers (who invented the time portal that allowed the game's theme cross-overs to happen within the "realistic" continuity, there's even a whole magazine comic showing her activating it for the first time, with Captain Redbeard and Basil the Bat Lord coming through it and challenging Rocket Racer on the spot). Professor Voltage was also , but was cut from the game for unknown reasons (though as my video shows, it's possible to play as him via Cheat Engine as the game developers didn't bother to actually remove him from the game's coding and assets). And while he didn't physically appear, Professor Voltage was mentioned in the LEGO Island webtoon "The Stolen Painting", where Pepper and Luna Rom borrowed his boat to go to Knights' Kingdom Island and visit King Leo... All in modern times. Good luck figuring that one out! I certainly will, as soon as I've made enough posts to enable the PM system. Something funny about that... Notice anything about Commander X and Techdroid 2? They're the same minifigure - Techdroid 2 is just Commander X without his helmet.

LEGO Battles is comprised of three individual and unrelated stories (Based on Castle, Pirates, and Space, with Ninja and Islanders also playing a role in the Pirates story). The theme mish-mashing stuff and unlockable random characters are saved for free play mode, which doesn't affect the story at all, so yes, the campaigns are pretty consistent in continuity, aside from the whole Pirates vs Ninja thing. LEGO Battles was originally several separate games that ended up getting merged into one, and I assume by that time in development they already had the three separate stories designed. As for LEGO Battles: Ninjago, I've only played through the first act of the hero side, but from what I've seen so far it seems to be similar to LEGO Battles, but with only one story instead of three - all the theme mixing is done in free play and has no story implications. There are Power Miners monsters in some levels though, themed around the four Ninjago elements (Ice Monsters, Lightning Monsters, etc), but I think it's safe to say they're just a similar species, and there's no direct ties to the Power Miners story. It's not really explained when or where the minifigures in LU came from. The four explorers that found Planet Crux came from multiple other developed planets, and the narrator did say they traveled "through space and time" to find Crux. Similarly, after Crux exploded, they used what remained of the Imagination Nexus to signal for help, but it's not explained where that help came from either. The game starts with the player on a spaceship that was bringing minifigures to the remains of Crux, but it's not stated where the spaceship came from... So it's actually quite open-ended, the characters in LEGO Universe really could have come from anywhere and any time. Huh, I guess I never really thought much about it before. Another thing about Crux - the game's backstory says that it was the first planet with minifigure life, the minifigures simply being called the "First Builders". The descendants of the First Builders, minifigures made of pure imagination called Mythrans, still lived on the planet when it blew up, though it seems they just sort of stood in the Nexus Temple like statues, watching over the big beam. In the game itself, the game masters and moderators usually took the form of a Mythran when appearing in-game - a pretty fun idea, making the game's real life staff members mystical beings in the story. One thing LU never really explained, though, was the presence of ancient tombs in the ninja themed planet chunk. What are they? Remains of the First Builders, or other long-gone minifigure life? But now this is turning from a LEGO Space timeline topic into a general LEGO timeline topic... So, back to LEGO Space. The first boss of LEGO Stunt Rally, Radium, was a former Rock Raider who got kicked out after performing radiation-related tests on other crew members. Additionally, in the Arctic segment of Stunt Rally, one of the scenery elements you can place is a UFO ship (I think the Alien Avenger or something similar) frozen into the ice. But the game also makes use of Adventurers (both desert and jungle), with Johnny Thunder and Sam Sinister appearing in the intro. The Arctic area also has Arctic sets (obviously!) and Extreme Team tents. And on top of that, Barney (one of the drivers in Stunt Rally) and Axle from Rock Raiders are both playable characters in LEGO Racers 2, which also involves Arctic, Adventurers, and Life on Mars... And Soccer Mania involves everything from Life on Mars to Pirates and Knights Kingdom 1, all at once. Oh heck with it, let's just say that those games are all the Time Cruisers' and Time Twisters's fault.

Tonight, I leave this topic with the desire to get a LEGO wheelbarrow...

I'm not so sure of that... Set 10029 Lunar Lander, to be precise. Also, the official story of the game says that the base, run by the "Lunar Mining Corps", mined a crystal substance called Imaginatium which provided power for the unnamed planet below. Planet Crux was described as being in a far off corner of the universe (it took months of searching for the explorers to even find it), while whatever moon MoonBase is located on seems to be closer to "home", at least orbiting a civilized planet.

I've been planning to do the same thing myself (for boss cars anyway), and there's already plenty of "how to build" videos for the boss cars on YouTube. The problem is, most of them are terribly inaccurate (I even saw one that involved cutting pieces with a knife to get the desired shape!). I built all the boss cars in LDD a few years back, they're as accurate as I could get them, but there's issues due to the in-game cars either not providing detail, using pieces that simply don't exist in real life or LDD, or using impossible connections or weird designs: The red ladder pieces on Captain Redbeard's car are set too low, and if you build it in real life or LDD, they actually scrape the ground. King Kahuka's car uses a non-existent piece in two places, a 1x2 tile with a clip centered where the stud is on a jumper plate. Additionally, the front wheels are impossible to attach exactly as how they are shown, it would require something like a 2x4 plate with wheel axles. Basil the Batlord's car is doable, but the in-game model is so reduced in detail that the connection between the dragon head and car is entirely missing, so you have to add in a few pieces. Additionally, the wheels on his car just float - the 1x4 plates with axles were also removed from the model. And on top of all that, the wheels are offset by about half a stud in-game, the back wheels actually clip through the car chassis a bit! Veronica Voltage's car has the steering wheel piece sitting on top of a 4x4 plate. If you do this in real life or LDD, it makes it impossible to push the windshield down all the way, so you have to replace the 4x4 plate with two 1x4 plates and a 2x3 plate, and put the steering wheel in the gap. But there's even more problems. Oddly, the cars the bosses race in use separate 3D models and textures from the equivalent player cars! This in and of itself wouldn't be a big deal... Except the designs actually differ. This can be easily seen with King Kahuka's car. Unlock his car set, and use the Quick Build option to make a custom car like his. Then go into a race with him, pull along side his car with your "identical" car, pause the game, and play spot-the-difference. The feather is placed differently, and the shading is different. All the bosses have quirks like that, but to varying degrees - if I remember right, the player version of Gypsy Moth's car uses black where the "real" car uses dark gray. But by far the worst offender is Veronica Voltage's car. Take a close look at her vehicle in this cutscene: Now, compare that to the car players are given, which is supposed to be the same: It's very clearly not. Different coloring, tiles instead of exposed studs on the headlight mounts, the grilles are facing a different way, etc... So really, what exactly you build depends on if you're going to sacrifice accuracy for being a LEGO purist, and if you're going to build the actual cars or the player versions. If you want a starting point for the player cars, I've attached my old LDD models of them. Let me know if there's a problem - I'm actually on a computer where LDD doesn't work right now, so I can't open the file to make sure everything's as it should be. LR1 cars.lxf

... And again, the red team hardly gets anything. Sigh. Oh well, that's not to say the sets don't look awesome. The Galactic Titan looks excellent, even if it is yet another blue team vehicle. Can't quite make out the detail on the mech, but it looks nice too. I don't care for the bug vehicles as much, though, they're just not really my thing. Perhaps I'll resort to getting the red team minifigures on Bricklink.

I was hoping for the return of Forestmen with this theme, so I am a tad disappointed. The sets don't look bad to me from what can be seen in these low-res images, they're just not what I was hoping for. Oh well, maybe next time. I'll probably wind up getting the Forest Ambush set regardless.

Sorry to bump a month-old topic (and as a first post no less), but I'd like to throw some more info into the discussion. Really nice list, but there's a couple things that haven't been brought up yet that might end up changing the order of a few things... First, LEGO Battles - the Space story arc of the game involves Mars Mission and Space Police 3 happening at the same time. In addition, the corpse of a Blacktron 2 astronaut appears briefly at the start of the story, and the humans use androids very much like those used by the Spyrius and Exploriens factions, just with a a different color scheme. I think we can safely say that both Mars Mission and SP3 take place after Blacktron 2 and SP2, maybe even at the same time as Exploriens, Unitron, and Spyrius. The aliens in LEGO Battles also make use of Exo-Force robot technology, the robots themselves seem to work for the aliens (perhaps they were abducted and re-programmed like the UFO androids?), and the Grav-Runner and Builder alien units are also adapted from Exo-Force robot sets. LEGO Battles also has an unlockable Classic Space astronaut, but seeing as it's only used in free play mode and not the main story, I don't think it has anything to do with the timeline. Second, LEGO Universe. Oh boy, LEGO Universe... Well, right off the bat, the first area of the game (the collapsing wreck of a starship) had a character from LEGO Island, Sky Lane, as the starship's captain. Sky Lane seemed to be a young adult or late teen in her LEGO Island appearances, and she doesn't seem to be much older in LEGO Universe. The same area also had a blue Classic Space astronaut drifting through space... In a rowboat. Johnny Thunder also appears in the game and plays a fairly large role, and while he does sort of act like an "old legend", he's certainly not an elderly man either. And later in the game, there's an entire level themed around Classic Space, simply called MoonBase. It's not straight-up Classic Space though, it introduces another faction (Piratron), takes place on a lunar mining site run by a battle-scarred astronaut named Han Nibble, and makes use of many modern pieces and such - sort of neo-Classic Space. Generally, it's sort of Classic Space but even farther in the future, which, given that Sky Lane and Johnny Thunder also make appearances in the game, makes a bit of a mess of the timeline. Oh, one last thing, the Space Police 3 stop-motion videos (I think they were animated by Paganomation) had a clip where an advertisement for "M-Cola" could be seen. "The only magnetic beverage!"