AndyC

According to Lego Digital Designer: 91992 Train Buffer 1 - Has the plow 91994 Train Buffer 2 - Is the standard buffer

Well technically there is still Lego Indy and Batman merchandise available, in the form of the video games. So if they're on sale it's kind of accurate, if slightly confusing.

You have those the wrong way round. 88002 is the newer PF motor, which is more powerful and has an integrated cable.

It'd be better if you always had to do it or not at all, with my preference on not at all. Holding down a button might not sound as good, but if gives the player a much better 'feeling' that they're always in control. Rather that than getting frustrated as a platform fails to clip quite properly and falls down, requiring you to repeat the excercise for the umpteenth time. I know, which is why I'd ditch it. It's a lazy gameplay mechanic, worse even than quicktime events and they're one of the laziest tricks in the book. Like I said, it may work better in the final game. Especially if its used in a creative way. If it's a case of 'do puzzle X, swap, do puzzle Y, swap, do puzzle Z' as per the demo, then it'll be a bit pointless - you might just as well have swapped over at the key points anyway. No, but that's the problem. Naturally I don't want to be R2 in a fight, so I hit the swap character button to switch to the nearest Jedi, except now I'm not swapping to who I think, because I'm already Anakin. By the time I've figured out who I'm controlling again, I've lost a life. It's just an unnecessary irritation. They aren't very different, but it all adds up to making you feel less in control of the characters and the whole game a lot less fluid. It's something that was absolutely spot on in the originals, so it's very disappointing to see the follow ups losing this in the name of trying to add in 'extra' bits that it didn't really need.

Actually, I wonder if you could adopt one of the return-to-center steering ideas, so that when the engine stops a switch is pushed into the 'on' position, rather than doing it on the remote. Not sure how feasible that is though....

Played Destroying Malevolence on the 360 demo. Disappointed. 1) They've kept the irritating force/magic purple brick thing from Harry Potter. It's jarring because it's not consistent (some things auto-force into places, others don't) and moving an object in 3D space with just a 2D stick really doesn't work. It's especially irritating at the bit where you have to arrange the red/yellow/green blocks to unlock the power up, because unlike HP there isn't even a way to target which item your force powers are focused on. Cue endless 'fun' trying to get the force to effect the brick you actually want to move. Grrrr. 2) They've kept the stupid 4 sequence memory test things. Remembering four things is neither a challenge, nor fun. It's just dumb. A vain attempt to make it look like there is more to the game than there actually is. If you insist on putting a 'puzzle'in place, then actually make it a puzzle, though I'd rather it was dropped altogether. 3) The 'scene-swapping' thing seems unnecessary, a feeling reinforced by the fact it seems to want to tell you when you should swap indicating that the actual amount of choice in the matter is probably rather limited. It might work better in the real game, but I'm not entirely convinced by the demo. 4) At times weird things happen with character control. For example when you fly R2D2 over the pit and stop the train thingy, suddenly your back in control of Anakin again without actively swapping characters, which is confusing. And it's not even consistent, as other similar bits don't suddenly swap characters. Hopefully that won't carry through to the final game. Also swapping control between characters seems less reliable than in the previous games. 5) All the new additions mean that, like HP, the controls in general feel overly-complicated and less fluid. TT could really do with going back to basics and seeing why the original LSW games played so much better. On the upside: 1) At least they haven't tried to carry over Harry Potter's awful spell selection system, I had feared we might be expected to switch force powers with some equally clunky mechanism. Thankfully we have been spared. 2) There are some neat little touches that don't get in the way too much, like the lightsaber cutting through things bits. I have a feeling that, like the HP one, I'll wait till I find this one going cheap somewhere. And keep my fingers crossed for LSW4.

I can't say I'm too surprised. When I first heard of it, an online game where you could build what you want and play with all your friends, it sounded extremely cool. When it arrived it clearly wasn't that and quite what it was somehow seemed rather lacking. Releasing it for the PC was probably the final death knell, PC gaming is mostly for the hardcore these days and parents are probably less inclined to let younger children play on the PC than on a games console. It's cool that we got Universe mode out of it, I just hope that this doesn't signal LEGO losing faith and giving up on that too.

I suspect it's just plugged into the red channel side. If you could see the other side of the train I suspect you'd see a bit of dark grey of the plug showing. I'm pretty certain they'd not alter the PF connectors.

Yes, they're supposed to be rigging, they're folded up in step 31. As to the set, it does look rather disappointing. I think it's only the little pirate ship that appeals to me. I guess that's one of the reasons the factory line didn't carry on for much longer. Still, not bad as a parts pack if you pick it up cheaply.

FWIW, the reason you were finding it difficult is that the numbers at the back of Lego manuals are Element IDs, which refer to a specific piece and colour combination. Bricklink's numbers are mostly the same (but not always) as Lego's Design IDs. The easiest thing to do is usually to find the set on Bricklink and the get the part numbers from the inventory, rather than trying to work from the manual.

Brickset says 534, but with collectible figures and others I've picked up here and there it is probably getting closer to 600.

Ask yourself two questions: 1) Will you enjoy it? 2) Does it hurt anyone else? If the answer to both of those is yes, as it is for a great many people, then things like 'childish' aren't really important. Life is too short to let other people dictate the things you are allowed to enjoy.

If you search by the part number Bricklink uses, rather than the set (which isn't out yet AFAIK) you can see quite a few for sale that have presumably been parted out of the new 2010 train sets. http://www.bricklink.com/search.asp?q=bb466

The 1x2 plate with clip on top is in various 2011 sets so that's not definitive. Though the round profile bricks on the coal loader where ordinary round bricks might have been fine seems odd for a MOC. Also, at the back of the engine by the IR sensor it looks a lot like there are two 1x4 plates with two studs (again a newish part) but that's not been seen in red so far - hard to say for certain though, as other parts could be used to get the same effect. I really hope it is a new set though, TLG would be being very kind to train fans if it is.

Given that there appears to be a boxed version of her right behind her, I suspect she's for sale. Haven't seen details but I'd assume it'll be similar to the existing clocks.

Or one of the intermediaries. If the distributor or stores feel their margins are too small, then the final price is going to go up. Of course that assumes you can amortize the cost of the mold across all the pieces it could produce in it's entire lifespan. If you make a highly specialised one-off mold for a piece and then barely sell any of the sets the piece is used in, the cost starts to become extremely significant. The more likely a piece is to be used in different sets the less risk there is associated with producing the part and therefore the less significant the mold cost becomes.

Yes, licensing works like that. But as I said, Hasbro doesn't license Transformers, they made it up, it is their product. Just as Lego doesn't have to license Bionicle. All the Transformers cartoons, comics, movies license the Transformers IP from Hasbro. Which is why asking for Transformers Lego is as pointless as asking for Bionicle Playmobil. It just won't happen.

Except that Hasbro doesn't license Transformers, it owns the property outright. So you'll never see Lego Transformers unless something goes seriously wrong at Hasbro.

Well kids old enough to start playing with Technic pieces should be able to handle a little maths. Not that I wouldn't appreciate some way to make assembling geared models easier, though I suspect a proper physics implementation is necessary to make it really useable. It may have limitations in places, but it's so much easier to work with than any other virtual Lego tool, including your own, at least in my opinion. Trying out all the LDraw based tools just left me frustrated with pieces not quite clipped together, or overlapping or worse. Trying to understand how to rotate a sub assembly in MLCad without it going all over the place drove me up the wall, for example. The occasional frustration with trying to replicate a single technique is far outweighed by the speed with which you can manage most types of ordinary building. LDD might not be for everyone, but it's good enough for a lot of people, I guess.

I think you've basically just got a model which is too complicated for LDD to rotate, it can't figure out which bits you're trying to move. You can see this in the way the red outline (which shows the parts trying to rotate) never completely encompasses the whole leg. Unfortunately rotating large and complex sub assemblies like this is one of LDDs weak points, so you're probably stuck with detaching it, rotating it separatelym then reattaching it. Using the grouping functions can make this slightly less arduous. As to the flex rods, they aren't flexible in the current release of LDD.

They won't always contact you, often they'll just ship the part. If you need to post back the faulty part you'll get a note telling you with the replacement part.

1) To position gears next to each other you just need to use the rotate function on one of the gears so that it's teeth aren't colliding with the other. It takes a little trial and error but is usually possible. 2) To pan the camera rather than just rotate it, hold down SHIFT whilst dragging with the right mouse button.

It's certainly possible, though it's not without numerous challenges. If you want to start/stop trains you need some sort of IR control (which then leads to the problem of how you know which channel the approaching train is on) or you need some brains within the train itself (NXT brick?). There was a video recently of someone who did something a bit like this by putting colour coded tiles into the track and using a colour sensor so that the train could appear to act intelligently based upon what it saw, including changing speed and stopping at stations. Remote switching is probably easier, since you can do all the thinking part! With most layout's you could probably get away with putting all switches on a single IR channel, depending to some extent on how close together the switches are. Or you could run long PF extension cables to PF pole switches rather than use IR. There are various designs for a bit of technic mechanics to motorize the actual switches, so that bit should be fairly easy.

I doubt that would be a problem, the pneumatic tubes are pretty flexible after all. The main issue would be whether front and rear mounting points are the same and whether the PTO is in a suitable place.

There appears to be a small bit of his neck visible in green at the top of his suit, which would obviously be yellow if the torso were ever to be used on a normal santa minifig.