Aanchir

I probably already know the answer to this question, but are LDD entries allowed? Or do the entries have to be in physical bricks? I guess if I have to work in physical bricks, I have enough Ninjago and Atlantis sets with me at college to, for instance, make an underwater version of the Fire Temple or Spinjitzu Dojo. But I'd have a lot more creative options if I could work digitally.

Yeah, it would have been really nice to get more info on that... Especially since based on the website, those are probably the same ancients who created the skull carving mounted on Witch Doctor's staff. I figure even if his "deduction" was a wild guess, the fact that the staff was what Witch Doctor was using to shoot laser blasts at Stormer gave him plenty of incentive to smash the staff. For me, it was largely just the shock of having read all those extremely corny animal puns on the HK TRU site and then hearing even worse and far less relevant puns in the actual episode. Perhaps I can watch it again sometime soon, this time knowing what to expect, and thus be able to be a bit more forgiving. But the first time through it was almost painful hearing the difference in the more serious dialogue I was expecting. It's like reading three issues of a Superman comic and then reading a fourth issue where the whole script is switched with one from a Spider-Man comic. Seeing serious (if corny or trite) one-liners replaced with lighthearted banter and wacky comparisons is a little bit jarring, if you catch my drift. I disagree about David Carr's portrayal; it's able to be either serious or silly depending on the context. So, for instance, his attempts at "pranking" Mak Megahertz are suitably silly, but his introduction to the "Explaining the Character and Creature Building System" videos is nice and serious. He also can add shades of exasperation, as seen every time things go wrong in the challenge videos. Henry Winkler's portrayal has neither the comedy nor the drama, instead just feeling stuffy and serious when things are going OK and then childishly jumpy when he's worried or excited. Hey, if an Earth reference works in the context, I think it's fine. Some of the Earth references in Hero Factory FM don't bother me one bit. What bothers me about Stringer's "cattle wrangling" line is that he has essentially lived in Makuhero City since he was created. If an unnamed side character who might have had some suitable background were to say it, it would have just enough ambiguity to be believable (if it were in BIONICLE, people would ask Greg about it and he could throw together a satisfying explanation in a jiffy). But when a line is just given to an established character who happens to have a southwestern accent, it feels painfully lazy on the part of the scriptwriters. All of the Ninjago episodes are available for free viewing on . So feel free to entertain yourself with those. Perhaps you're right about the target audience, but frankly I don't see why older children would prefer gratuitous jokes to ones that make sense in context, like the Clutch Powers and Ninjago scripts include. If the context of the Hero Factory videos is less lighthearted, then the jokes can be less silly. Well, that's weird. I guess that also explains why Mark Hamill was on the cast list. I guess if they had drawn it out too much it would have been boring, though.

Yes, but it tends to bother me when a theme is designed with a gimmick that can't last much longer than one year or wave, because that usually means if the theme is successful enough to continue, later waves will be forced to abandon the gimmick that unified the theme's sets in the first place. However, let it be known that I have tried to design in interchangeable cockpit design into my Blacktron III MOCs on LDD, in the spirit of Blacktron II. My experiments haven't gone well. It's hard to make a cockpit that's interchangeable but still sleek-looking (I want at least a little bit of a sleek design so as to pay homage to Blacktron I's fearsome spacecraft as well as Blacktron II's bubbly ones), especially one that can be used in a variety of set designs without making all the sets feel too similar to one another. I think Blacktron's "escape craft" are the perfect bad guy analogue to Space Police's prison pods, so I want some of that interchangeability present in any sort of Blacktron revival. With parts in colors that currently exist, though, it isn't working out that well. Hope your own experiments have better success than mine have so far!

I disagree about bubble canopies. In the case of the ones used in Atlantis, they all have a semi-circular cross section around the midpoint, meaning a typical LEGO arch piece can be used over top of them. I used this technique in my D2C contest entry. They might not have studs on them, but neither did a lot of traditional windscreens such as 4474, 2507, or 2483, the third of which was pretty bubbly itself. And some of today's bubble windscreens are arguably more System-compatible than these in that they attach by studs or by common clip-and-handle hinges, rather than by the rather limited hinge styles of some older hinged windscreens The octagonal studded canopies were indeed excellent, and I love how they were used in Blacktron II to create circular "bubble cockpits". I have tried to replicate this with more modern windscreen pieces for Blacktron III MOCs, to little avail. But saying that older cockpits interfaced better with the rest of the LEGO system seems to be a big generalization. At best, their bottom surfaces tended to be easier to match due to usually being based on common wedge elements, and even this didn't apply to all windscreen pieces in themes like Aquazone. Now, with that said, I think TLG would be doing fans in general a great favor if they were to introduce concave curved slopes to go over parts like this and this. This could allow for very interesting spacecraft shapes, as well as making curved windscreens based on those sorts of curves more versatile.

I wonder if there will be any great new police minifigure face designs. I'm still hoping to get a head I can use for an Axe Cop minifigure. Unfortunately, there don't at this time exist any faces that include both sunglasses and a mustache.

There was also a similar problem with the Fisherman from Series 3, but that was later fixed. Personally, I don't know whether it makes much of a difference to the aftermarket price how many Romans there are per box. If the demand stays the same, then whether there are three or five per box probably won't make a huge difference.

Pretty good for the most part. Gali really bothers me, because she has a lot of light colors (medium blue and silver) without enough brighter or bolder colors to balance them out. Swapping out the Medium Blue for Bright Blue could help-- a version of the limb pieces exists in Bright Blue on Suukorak, although the same unfortunately can't be said for the lower body piece. Gali's mask also looks kind of ugly on her, but this was a problem with the original Toa Nuva version as well, to an extent. Pohatu could maybe be improved by rotating the ankle joints 90 degrees, since his ankles are currently way too high. Lewa obviously feels sort of incomplete, but this is because of how there really aren't any good foot or armor pieces in his original green color. I really liked the Toa Nuva from 2008 both in terms of their builds and their color schemes. But I also did a lot of odd experiments to explore the color scheme changes. For instance, here was an early, bad attempt at trying to give Pohatu a "brown" color scheme, while here is a later, better attempt at giving the classic Pohatu an "orange" color scheme. It was pretty easy in both cases since LEGO's classic brown is actually Earth Orange, a color near-identical in hue to Bright Orange but two shades darker. Overall, one reason I really liked the Phantoka and Mistika color schemes was in terms of contrast. The Phantoka got vibrant primary colors with a dark stone grey secondary color, while the Mistika got deeper primary colors with a brilliant silver secondary color. The similarities in the masks (pretty obvious in the case of the Phantoka, subtler in the case of the Mistika) also helped maintain continuity. And then the vehicle forms of the Miru Nuva and Kakama Nuva made the similarities even stronger, although annoyingly the center fin disappeared from the vehicle form of the Miru Nuva-- if it had stayed, then there would have still been five fins, just like in the original.

I kind of disagree. Rocka becoming XL was IMO one of the best parts of the episode, seeing as it reinforces the importance of building to Hero Factory. This is one of the reasons I really like Hero Factory's story-- the importance of building keeps its values close to those of the company it's a part of. I kind of interpreted Witch Doctor's staff as letting him control his Quaza powers, not just giving them to him. And seeing as he doesn't shrink back to civilian-size when the staff is broken kind of reinforces that for me. Speaking of which, if there had been more time in the episode it might have been cool for them to see them put him through the malfunctioning teleporter to shrink him so he could be more easily brought back to the Factory. Another real missed opportunity. And the plot points you mention liking didn't bother me much either. But the banter was oh-so-horrible to me. I much preferred the banter and one-liners from RotR. It was campy, but it was usually in-character, which I prefer to some of this episode's jokes. Eh... Some of the scenes had colorful backgrounds, and some had more colorful characters. I kind of wish everything were a bit more colorful like it is on many of the hero box arts. A lot of the backgrounds just felt grittier and dustier than they do in promotional art elsewhere. As you mention, the lack of lighting could have something to do with this. A lot of the box art has an eerie greenish glow which is largely absent here. I didn't really like all the fight scenes-- the Furno vs. Waspix scene was rather annoying partly because of how awkward Furno was during it. Which, granted, is plot-relevant (he's supposed to be seeing that leading isn't as easy as he thought it would be), but for me wasn't very entertaining. Absolutely disagree about Zib's voice actor. I much prefer his voice in web media like Hero Factory FM. It can be either funny or dramatic, as opposed to here where it has this uncharacteristic seriousness without any sense of dramatic timing. And when he's excited about something it's even worse-- he has the same sort of bubbly excitement as Kiina in TLR, except not on a character where that sort of attitude makes sense. His elaborate high-five with Quadal was pretty awesome, though. And I'm probably being too hard on poor Zib-- he was perfectly OK in RotR and OoF, but here it's like they concentrated all the worst things about the character and voice actor into one script. Other voice acting was all good, although I agree about some of the awful lines Stringer had to work with. It's those awful metaphors like chocolate milk, cake, and cattle wrangling that really made me grow tired of the banter very quickly. Good point about the less-rushed story. Still nowhere up-to-par with some of the episodes like The Enemy Within, though. Then again, some might argue that if The Enemy Within had been more rushed they could have worked in some more story info on Von Ness so that his motivations in Episode 4 didn't seem so inexplicable. Overall, none of these episodes have been up to the same level of storytelling as Clutch Powers or the Ninjago TV episodes. Here's hoping they work a bit more on that. Also, no idea what the other 22 minutes of content on the DVD will be.

Well, in my case, they're the most iconic good guys. They have a consistent gimmick-- prison pods-- that doesn't detract from the building experience and never feels too gimmicky or old-fashioned. And since you need good guys to have bad guys, then someone's got to be revived. Some people treat Unitron as a "good guy theme", but I can never find any legitimate story information about Unitron, especially because it was a US-only theme for the most part. I wish I could find someone who has Mania Magazine scans up for download, but I never can. And anyway, their gimmick-- cockpit modules that are interchangeable between almost all the sets-- could get old really fast IMO. Something to keep in mind is that Space Police has been revived twice It has demonstrated its staying power quite effectively. And I don't think theme revivals should be on the basis of what's "due" for a revival-- rather, they should be merit-based, and Space Police sets have a lot of merits in all iterations. Plus, I'm still a little disappointed that Space Police ended so soon. It lived a good life, lasting about three waves of sets, but I had been hoping foolishly for a Blacktron revival. And I don't think you can do a Blacktron revival justice without the Space Police.

Thanks for that, just watched it. To be honest, I was extremely underwhelmed. Perhaps it's just because RotR got such negative reception and so I was expecting the worst with it, and then this got a lot of positive reception in comparison, but this time I felt the script was really, really lacking. Hardly any of the Hero banter and jokes struck me as in-character or even funny. And while I had no problems with the voices of the various creatures, it seemed like many of them were added for the express purpose of letting them join in on the unfunny banter. Stringer disappointed me time and time again. The voice isn't a problem for me... he had a southwestern American accent for the whole of the story, including RotR and Hero Factory FM. But this episode had him utter the completely inexplicable line "This is just like wrangling cattle back home!" or some such, thus reducing him to a mere cowboy stereotype (he's always worked at the Hero Factory; what on earth could he be talking about?). It also struck me as a major missed opportunity when he issued a plasma blast from his claw. If he'd been given, say, a sonic roar, it would have both tied in with his former sound-based powers (which shared the same visual effect in RotR anyway, so it's hard to think everyone's forgotten about them) and his new bear form. In fact, most of the animal forms weren't used in outstanding ways. Zib's introduction of the new forms lacked even a hint of drama (His voice is still the only one in the series I extremely dislike), and most of the powers and motifs were never touched on again. Not even in the hero banter, which is where they'd have made the most sense (as demonstrated in the quotes here). On another note related to set design, Furno never used his bow as a projectile weapon, no matter how often other story content has emphasized the importance of it in a team with mostly melee attacks at their disposal. The "hero parts in the cave" scene bothered me, too. I had expected something more like Rocka XL's box art, although maybe a bit less morbid, with Hero parts littering the ground or something. Not a bunch of Hero parts with colors that look like brand-new, arranged in a neat pile. The animators could also easily have had Furno hold up a part other than a Hero torso (which wouldn't even be needed to build Rocka XL, since Rocka 3.0 already has one) and had it be much more convincing that these were "ancient armor pieces". Especially considering I don't think the Hero Factory is more than 100 years old in and of itself, so even if you treat the modern armor design as a place where sets and story are inconsistent the Hero Core is a glaringly obvious sign that it's Hero armor. I found it ironic that the set names for the enemy creatures were never uttered, suggesting that the script was written before the final names were settled on, but this wasn't really a flaw. Frankly, I was afraid they'd be treated like given names, which would have been awful. So that's one strong point in favor of the episode. Now what was amazing, much of the time, was the animation and cinematography, although there was a lot of shaky-cam... I couldn't tell if it was a result of the recording somehow or of the actual animation, but it was bothersome to say the least. I liked the jungle atmosphere, including the Quaza temple, the teleporters, and the tree branches. These all felt right at home in the sci-fi Hero Factory universe. The Heroes were rendered well also, with little splashes of color on some of their armor parts to make them more interesting. I loved Furno's jets (he's like the only character who made really good use of his animal powers), even though I had hoped his flight might be more graceful. It was a bit of a shame that the big shoulder armor pieces on Stormer and Stringer were shrunk down. While it fulfills the practical function of more often letting you see the characters' faces, as well as possibly simplifying animation, it also makes the character designs less imposing. And what I did like about this script was the fact that there was at least some character development. Bulk's vocabulary and reading didn't seem at all in-character to me, but his statement "I'm more than just the big guy!" brought that full-circle, showing that he's actively trying to improve on his intelligence. It's very heartwarming especially because some of our earliest info about Bulk mentioned that he was self-conscious about not being a particularly bright hero, which was never followed up on until now. Rocka and Furno didn't seem to show their character development that well, so it's possible they'll appear next year, still as rivals. But in the very least the fact that they teamed up to rescue Stormer was believable as a cause for which they could put aside their differences and give each other full support. Witch Doctor was possibly the best-written character. He had very stereotypical mad scientist lines, but do you know what? They were all well-delivered, in-character, and most importantly, intimidating. His evil laugh might have seemed a bit odd in that video clip we saw a while back, but at the end of his dramatic monologue it was wonderfully bone-chilling. Overall, this probably seems like an extremely negative review, especially coming from a person who tends to look at things from the most positive perspective possible. And truth be told, it was a fun episode to watch. But I was still, as I said, underwhelmed, and couldn't help but grimace at some of the things like the banter which I felt detracted from the experience. EDIT: On a side note, Raw-Jaw's lower jaw kind of resembled a Rahkshi head in that episode. Has anyone tried that idea? I'm away from my BIONICLE collection now, but I'd love to see photos if it really works.

Something I ought to point out is that in an interview LDD forum leader Superkalle did with a member of the LEGO Digital Designer programming team, it was stated that the programming team intends to eventually add all bricks to LDD, save for a few that for some reason or another cannot be rendered digitally (whether this is because of some connectivity problems or some other reason is anyone's guess, but I certainly don't think he was talking about any widely-used parts when he mentioned that). Now, they obviously have a lot of parts on LDD that tend to be in more current sets, like a load of Ninjago parts that appeared in this year's updates. But the LDD team even surprised me in some of the most recent updates by adding a huge number of parts that relied on discontinued hinge styles. So it's clear that they weren't fibbing when they stated a desire to add old parts to the palette when possible. As for LDD's other disadvantages to LDraw, such as limitations of the "click-into-place"-based interface, those will need some fine-tuning. I'm a builder who avoids illegal connections whenever possible, but at the same time some legal connections have connectivity problems, not to mention how hard it sometimes is to get parts into place that aren't technically connected-- for instance, getting train wheels onto curved rails. Still, I prefer LDD to my experiences with LDraw just in terms of how authentic the building experience feels. I prefer "clicking" parts into place over "sliding" them into place with coordinates. For train fans, it's not an ideal tool yet, but I'm hoping that future software updates will continue to improve the program and make it more convenient for building all types of models.

Yeah, I kind of agree. Perhaps the same blade piece, doubled up, with a full-size lightsaber blade for a handle, or maybe a 6M bar. Of course, if the body sticks forward too far holding something with two hands could be difficult... I guess we'll find out once the fig is available. Personally, I think that axe blade piece looks kind of ugly unless it's used on a piece that is wider at the point where the second axe blade would otherwise be attached, like the aforementioned 6M bar. Otherwise it always gives me the impression that the blade would fall off as soon as you tried to cut something.

Maybe he means "human figs". :unsure: Anyway, so far my brother and I have the Zookeeper, Lumberjack, Boxer, and Lizard Suit Guy. Out of the four, the Lizard Suit Guy is perhaps my favorite. It would be amusing to use him in a vignette involving next year's "Dino" theme, I think. He also makes a great mascot, Halloween trick-or-treater, or kaiju. And his face feels very unique in expression but generic in detail, making it versatile. The lumberjack's axe might be perfect for the Axe Cop cubedude I have been working on. His flannel shirt also looks way better than I expected it to, despite the printing only covering the sides of the arms. By the way, a little tidbit we learned from Brickfair is that his name, Kel, comes from a Canadian friend of one of the designers. The boxer is amazing, in particular because of his double-sided head, although I think I might have preferred if his gloves were more easily removable like the Cheerleader's pom-poms or the crab claws in this year's Atlantis sets. I guess the way they are they look better from more angles, though. His face has a lot of detail-- there's the obvious black eye and wobbly lip on the reverse side, but on the front he also has a gold mouthguard over his upper teeth. His helmet is a nice sculpt, and his leg and torso prints are very nice, though I'll issue a warning that the yellow print on my boxer's legs is a little thin on the sides. Don't worry, it's very yellow still, unlike the inexplicably greenish skin printing on some lifeguard figs from Series 2. But the color matching is much better on the front of the legs than on the sides, where there's a slightly orangish tone from the red showing through. As for the zookeeper, she's amazing. I love the copper-colored metallic details on the torso and legs, such as her belt buckle, key, buttons, and name badge. Her face is charming, and her hair looks excellent in reddish brown. In her case, for whatever reason, the printing on the sides of the legs seems more solid than on the front, but being printed over a yellowish-color anyway (brick yellow a.k.a "tan") it doesn't look bad from any angle. The chimpanzee is pretty excellent, although its hand doesn't fully clip to anything, just sort of hangs from things or holds accessories very loosely. His design simplicity is a testament to modern minifigure animal design, with enough solid lines to be consistent with older animal sculpts like the horse. I also like his printed face, which is IMO miles ahead of the slightly alien-looking sculpted faces of the classic monkey. I wish this guy's arm were a separate piece so it could rotate, though, kind of like some of the Toy Story figs that had unique arm sculpts. I'd love to see a male zookeeper in a future series, partly because he could have different accessories (like a broom for the less romantic parts of the job) and partly because a male version of the zoo uniform to match the female one would be very good to have if you wanted to make a full zoo.

My brother and I got one of these for free with a recent purchase at the LEGO store at King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania, so this must be the offer in question. LEGO store calendars usually apply to LEGO brand stores, not to the LEGO Shop website, at least to my knowledge. So I don't know if the offer extends to the website, but if it did there'd probably be an announcement there rather than just on the store calendar.

I think Space has already "resurrected in its full glory". It's not as though Space themes today are too much smaller than they were in the past. And while the format of Space themes have changed, no longer featuring single-faction waves, this is an across-the-board change that occurred in most themes, even ones that Star Wars probably never had any impact on. Star Wars did some serious damage to LEGO Space back when the prequel trilogy was out and there was mass hype for anything and everything Star Wars. But I haven't seen that much attention on Star Wars for some time. And it seems that shortly after the prequels ended, LEGO Space soon returned at full strength in the form of Mars Mission. Meanwhile, I don't know if it's safe to say that the LEGO Pirates theme ended specifically to make room for PotC, even though it sort of seems as though that were the case. There was pretty much a full year between the last Pirates set (Imperial Flagship in January 2010) and the first Pirates of the Caribbean sets (sometime in Spring 2011). I can't imagine why such a "buffer zone" would possibly be necessary if there were a huge demand for pirates in general. Now, LEGO Lord of the Rings probably would damage the likelihood of Kingdoms continuing, since Kingdoms doesn't seem to have had outstanding success. Then again, the fact that it's been a low-visibility theme could have to do with the huge marketing campaigns behind other recent themes like Atlantis, Hero Factory, and most recently Ninjago. In any case I think whether or not Kingdoms continues depends on its own merits entirely. But whether it gets a non-licensed replacement would depend on whether a Tolkien-based theme is in the works.

Some things I observed about these pictures when they were up: Yes, many of the figs were obvious prelims, which unfortunately made it hard to judge what would be different and what would be the same in the final versions. Notably, the Geonosians seemed to just use Twitch's wings from the Toy Story sets, doubled up with one pair hanging to the left and one pair hanging to the right. Not sure how I feel about this, although Twitch's wings were one of my own first impulses when people complained about the new Geonosian lacking wings. The Geonosians have amazing brickbuilt guns which I guess are supposed to resemble these. They don't have much of a resemblance, but I love them anyway. Specifically, they use the collectible minifigure ray gun (87993), a Technic pulley (42610), and a transparent 1x1 round plate (6141). Anakin's Jedi Interceptor also includes a small Mustafar scene. A picture in the corner shows Anakin fighting Obi-Wan there, so I'm pretty sure Obi-Wan is included deliberately rather than as a placeholder for a different character. Although, needless to say, it probably is a stand in for a non-CW version of the character.

Probably referring to these ones (more pictures here). I checked Plast Team's website earlier, and they're currently not listed or even mentioned. But given that they were shown at ToyFair, I can't imagine it'll be too much longer before their debut.

Dorek, my man! Didn't even know you had an account here! I'm also a bit disappointed by some of the lacking colors. I suppose, though, there had to be some sort of compromise to keep the parts palette relatively small despite now having two waves of parts. I'm personally grateful that Hero Recon Team seems to have been successful enough that they didn't have to retire any parts besides the exclusive chest piece.

When I think of it, I think of it more in good vs. evil terms. "Good" spaceships tend to be sleek and shiny, whereas "evil" ones are jagged and muscular. This was the case in many sets from the first year of Exo Force. But then again, TLG has demonstrated now with Alien Conquest that organizing it based on the origin of the spaceships also works. In general, though, angular vehicles lend themselves to a grittier, more realistic look, while sleek ones speak to a pure and idealized view of advanced technology in the future. Whether you want your bad guys to have the ideal technology-- and thus, appear more threatening-- or have your good guys have the ideal technology as a reflection of their sense of beauty and virtue is up to the designer and/or storyteller. I personally feel that Exo-Force made sense with sleek human vehicles and clunky robot vehicles was a great way of showing how the humans have strong ideals and values while the robots have base and practical instincts. Also, with robots as the foes, it made sense that the more organic faction would have more organic shapes to their designs. Likewise, Space Police III's use of sleeker vehicles for the humans seemed appropriate to me-- the Space Police have long been established as having the fastest ships in the galaxy, and furthermore I liked how the police vehicles had the same sort of sleek design as a Ford Crown Victoria police interceptor while the bad guys had the angular designs of muscle cars. Which isn't to say that people with muscle cars are all bad guys, of course. Alien Conquest's reversal of this may be more realistic than those two themes, but at the same time it appeals to me less on an emotional level. That's just my perspective, though.

I agree that something called a mothership should be able to connect to or deploy smaller vehicles. And yes, it is possible at a reasonable scale. Consider Atlantis's Neptune Carrier, which is actually called the Neptune Mothership in some languages. With that said, I don't think size or emptiness is the problem with the current mothership set. Small fighter craft could have potentially been mounted on the support struts that connect the inner disk with the outer ring. As for the large empty spaces, including deployable fighter craft on them could have helped balance that out, or alternatively thicker support struts could have improved the set. I imagine part of the reason that these things weren't done is that the sound brick together with so many large pieces cut down on how much content the designers could afford to give the set at this price range (the Sketch Model really does suggest that thicker support struts were planned at some point but abandoned, likely for reasons of cost). Overall, though, I think it's silly to criticize a set because the name and the actual content doesn't match up. LEGO names haven't always made sense, even in the earlier days of LEGO space. Consider the 1991 minifigure pack, titled "The United Galaxies" in the UK despite including both Blacktron and Space Police figures. Or the Exploriens set "Alien Fossilizer", a name probably only chosen because it sounded cool and contained the word "fossil". What's important are the actual contents of the set.

Love this! Rarely do you see such radical vehicle designs in LEGO-- these even outclass some of the more bizarre Tiny Turbos in terms of unusual designs! And the fact that they're built with so much complexity is admirable. I like the second and third most because they look very cohesive. Not so much with the first... while I understand what it's trying to replicate, the end result looks like it's ready to fall apart. Some parts like the hinged back window and the front wheel wells also look a bit blocky compared to the hood. Still, the complexity of what these models are trying to replicate is what makes them most impressive, especially at this scale. So any effort is admirable no matter what flaws might appear in the final LEGO versions.

To me, it looked like one revolver and one flintlock, although now I see that what looked to be the muzzle of the flintlock was actually just the hand holding the revolver. So I guess it is just two revolvers. That should be awesome, then.

Loving every one of these figures. The person in the surgical scrubs is amazing, though I can't tell if she's supposed to be an actual surgeon-- she has an X-Ray and a syringe, equipment that doesn't totally make sense for a surgeon. The X-Ray piece is absolutely fantastic, with an image of the classic skeleton torso! The bandit looks great, even though he's not especially unique and I'm not sure how I feel about his guns not matching. Dude with teddy bear is adorable and I am glad to see a proper teddy bear piece rather than the Belville one, even though admittedly it's not a part I would have specifically asked for. The Roman soldier is cool, and I love the toy robot. When I first saw that torso I wasn't expecting much (certainly nothing as good as the classic Spyrius robot) but now that I see he's not really a "sci-fi" fig so much as a kitschy cultural artifact I'm much happier with the design!

I don't think we can assume the Batcave is the largest set. True, it's a large location in the story. But by that logic, the Forbidden Forest set would have been far larger than the Hogwarts set, which it wasn't (and I'm grateful for that; a full forest would have been painfully boring and even more painfully expensive). Really, it would be entirely possible for the Batcave to be the size of the Captain's Cabin, and just have a big computer console and a place for Bruce Wayne to change into the batsuit. Alternatively, it could be a moderately-sized set with a full-sized vehicle in addition to the aforementioned content. There's no reason it would need to be a huge set like the previous Batcave, especially since I personally felt some of the vehicles in that set were a bit superfluous.

I don't think you're doing anything wrong; LDD probably just has safeguards to prevent people from downloading out-of-date versions and thus potentially doing more damage to their already-built models than an update would. I'd recommend deleting all LDD-related files (other than your models, obviously; back those up somewhere) on your computer, and then trying to install the older version. That way, LDD will have no way of knowing that there was ever a more up-to-date version on your computer. This is just a guess, though. I'm not a tech guy, so if there's more to it than that I hope someone else will step in to give you the advice you really need.