Phase 2 The Itch

Leaving the 'grey' area on the side of the train station just left and itch. Cured it. Let me know what you think.

Phase 2 Rail Station LDD

 Phase two is complete and I am more than satisfied with it. Nevertheless, there are many things that can be added to this set. I have yet to post it on the Lego website. Between CAD designs and gaming, this little beauty has multiple sources of inspiration.

The model sits on a 48x48 base plate adjacent to 3 road plates for coherence.

There are three dominant exterior colours: the black, grey and burgundy bricks. For some reason the black bricks look blue-ish when rendered by the Lego Digital Designer software.

Overall, the key features from phase 1 are still present:

• The mini train figure is still there,
• The inside of the main station has the coffee and ticket place,
• There is an overhead crossing,
• Covered waiting area and
• Smaller waiting area on the second platform.

except for the bike rack but there is space on the side of the building for one. The burgundy and grey brick arrangement is similar to the fire station set. I feel it gives the build a bit more character and more coherent to the existing Lego sets I own. The round transparent bricks add a lighting effect on the flower beds.

From the opposite angle the features of the overhead crossing are visible. I have added the fencings and rails to mark the end of the platforms. Do note that the covered waiting area is longer than in Phase 1. The 3 brick space is just enough for the train doors to open which was a relief when designing.

The inside space has the ticket office with swivelling chair and computer and bureau drawers. The back wall of the office has a wooden table and shelf.

The coffee shop has an angled display which for the life of me I could not get the software to fit flat squares on to represent chocolate bars and cookies. The back has a sink similar to the fire station set and the shelf has a coffee machine with multicoloured transparent bricks to represent the different flavours of shots that go in drinks. Lauren thinks it looks more like a pharmacy. Let me know what you think. There is no keyboards associated to the coffee shop since I wanted it to be more of a touch screen. I can still include a few chairs on the inside for seating but decided against it for clarities sake.

While it is not visible from the shots taken each platform has a digital clock under the covered platform.

Let's post this on the Lego website and see what comes of it.

Cyber-Dog Brick Out

Phase 1 Rail Station

Phase 1 of the train station is complete. I am quite pleased with it. While there are significant improvements to be made let us have a walk through the rail station while highlighting the key features to the build.

The front of the rail station is marked with some features like the

• double lamp post before the steps
• flower bed on the left
• bicycle rack on the right
• The little yellow sign was taken from the set because it is the 'transport sign'  Lego uses and it features on the minifigure of the train conductor in the Green Emerald steam train.

The facade of the build has a swing door as well as a sliding door. Except for the office side of the building the windows go all the way to the floor. After much 'motivating', the mini train sign on the station is a collaboration with Lauren. I am quite proud of it.

As you walk in, to your left the ticket booth is present and to your immediate right are seating arrangements and to your far right is the cafeteria complete with coffee machine and wall shelf. The roof technique is emulated from the creator sets which allows it to be easily detached to see the inside.

On the rail side of the build there are two doors one is for passengers to get onto the platform and the other one is for the station masters access to and from the platform and the ticket booth. The arched overhead is very much imitating how stations are in UK countryside. There are seating arrangements ending with a bin on the far side of the platform. The platform ends onto the overhead crossing that leads to the other platform.

Finally, when it is integrated at the end of the high street:

Pre Rail Station

Post Rail Station

Close up

Surprisingly enough, I had bricks to complete the station. However, the rail is not in the most ideal colour. Phase 2 will include completely redrawing the rail station on LDD in a suitable colour and possibly trying to obtain them by means of theft/begging/etc. What colours do you guys suggest the build should be in? Lauren thinks that the burgundy used in the existing buildings would be a good choice for harmony. Transport in Lego is often coloured in yellow and white; this is another option. What do you guys think? What other improvements or key features are lacking or you think it would be nice to have? Comment here or on facebook and I will pick up on them.

Cyber-dog brick out.

Brick Touch

While Terraria and Minecraft became my pseudo Lego because of its financial implications, they never could quite cut it. Let us blame it on nostalgia. Nothing cuts it like the real thing. Enter Lego Digital Designer (LDD). Infinite Lego bits, if the build gets approved through moderation you can even order the original build in. Purr-fect. That said I have tried many things on LDD, namely, a Museum, spaceships and the only actual successfully completed one the Oriental walk bridge. The organic nature of the architecture just challenges the orthogonal nature of Lego and really it made it worth it.

You can already see the lack of depth to this construction. This is why during this jobless time of mine and the downtime in the League of Legends EU server. I got the old wicker basket out with the red lined cloth. That one basket actually belongs to Lauren but it contains all the Lego bricks that Lauren and me did not find a home for.

Yet there it was the definite lack in the town become we have enough Lego sets to call it a high street with just enough houses for a residential area (Photos will be posted when they are taken. It is 03 18 and flash photography would even disturb my eyes at this point; but hey once you get going...).

Bottom line is our town which consists of the Grocery Store/Mall/Hotel/Retro Fire station and umm a space shuttle launching pad  o_0  was lacking the obvious. We have had the Green Emerald Steam Train for quite a while and the tracks but no station so today except for a job application to someone who probably will not employ me anyway because awesome is not good enough, I set myself to making the station. I actually set out to build the station two days ago but when I stared at the basket, it stared back at me.

I was not sure if I had the resources for the build so after two days of sorting the basket in logical piles - and when I say piles these now have taken over half of my living room, I set off to undertake the build. My unfaithful 'main d'oeuvre' left me for sleep because past 21 45 it seems a switch is just knocked into a woman's brain that says, 'neEEeeed sleeeEEEeeep.'

I powered through and the build is almost complete except for the missing pieces. Photos will follow. The station has the regular features namely 'station' and ticket office. However, compared to the lame backless city set (anything backless is lame unless it is a dress. Seriously how would you like to live in a backless house and hell the backless prison sure is impregnable.). This one has an overhead footpath and a cafeteria and overhead cover for people on rainy days.

Phase two, as I will call it, will consist of identifying bricks that require replacing because of wearing and also LDD of the Clock on the front of the station because I definitely do not have the parts for it. Then identify the bricks that are missing. For specific numbers I will be using LDD. I found some interesting websites that sell second hand Lego bricks.

Phase three will be the completion of the project.

Good Night my friends. I will try and upload photos of the build tomorrow and also maybe the high street itself.

PS.: I thank LegoLord on Flickr who inspired me to forge on. One day I will have to raid his house for all his Lego

Brick Love

This blog has been inactive for a while now. Mostly, because I get distracted. As much as I'd like to get back into Terraria decompilation, what the developers have done in Starbound looks really neat. Their pixel art make my tunneller look drab.
Why am I here I ask myself?
I had a panic attack today when I thought my Terraria character and map files had disappeared. After I found them nostalgia kicked in. Which is why I probably went and looked for the Starbound website to see if the developers were making utter rubbish or actually a gem.
I feels like a gem. Looks like a gem. Hell, their website just so full of thumbs ups. The cutesy nature of Starbound, the colour palette choice. They have an actual transport system in place. I would kill to see their coding.
At the same time, the game has a back story. To what extent is the world dependent on the back story scares me a lot as it will shift the game from the endless randomised worlds with endless replay ability to a more streamlined environment.


I love Terraria to bits. So I will every so often poke myself into breaking my mining fast and well, this place might gain some momentum again. 


Until then


Fair thee well internets!

Active Bricks

Active silver blocks have been successfully created. I have to learn more about the behaviour of inactive stone walls before I move on to completing the primary set which will be the mother code for all the other active blocks. Took me the whole day to figure this out. Previous active/inactive block systems seem to rely on the inactive walls being 'walk through' bricks which I would like to avoid using. Furthermore, the present 'walk through' bricks do not allow bricks to stack vertically while building unless there is an interfacing tile next to it.

Good night

P.S. I have not watched any anime series for more than a week now. Troubling thought that.

The Transport Drill

Before even undertaking this project there are several things that I need to take into consideration which will prevent this drill from becoming a game breaker. These will be:

• The Drill will only dig through the --what I qualify-- as soft ores, woods and stones. This will prevent from cheap ore farming
• It will be crafted from logical items namely (This list is very tentative):
• a couple of drills
• lots of Iron bars
• lots of cables
• gelo because it has not many uses but you could glue things with it (yeah.. i know..lame)
• glass for the portholes
• lava bucket to solder things (yeah..i know..logical)
• Book (you need an instructions manual - how else do make your bloody Gundams)
• It will be craftable only on the tinkerers station possibly if the mechanic is close by

The end result will need to be a 4 person fully controllable vehicle that can move in the vertical and horizontal axes. Custom sounds and all the fanfare. Not sure if it will travel through lava yet, but probably not.

Now a few limitations present themselves from the base game:

• Rotational movement physics does not exist (diagonal sprites??)
• No vehicles exist and multiplayer vehicle means 3 people tiddling their fingers while the other drives them into lava (maybe they need to be holding the gelo that powers it)
• what happens to the player sprites during travel
• How do they get off the transport?? default to behind dig path spawn??

I have quite a few milestones ahead of me. While crafting mechanics is not an issue, it was probably the easiest part of this project.

The second milestone will be the movement physics which I will test out on playable characters first. The movement involves rotating the transports and then probably propelling using the jump key. This is very similar to a real swimming mechanism where the character actually turns rather than move vertically forward when in liquid and propulses itself with its legs when one presses jump. So this mod will be called real swim, where the swim physics will knock out 2 milestones which is movement physics and the diagonal sprite situation. If this real swim works we will be able to move forward with this. Excited.

If you guys have any suggestions just want to tell me to give up please comment below and share on fellow terraria community friends pages

May the Cybergod bless this cyber dog

Modding Terraria

So after testing out that I can make a coin out of wood with a couple of programming lines, I set off with a few projects in mind based on my own consumption of Terraria. While building is more my focus as a standalone consumer, Terraria provides a platform for interaction/ranting/trolling/laughing/messing about with the old 4. If I am able to I will try to get screens of the destroyed never completed dojo in which we had the funnest PVP in a long time (where the funnest part was probably when Shura just randomly started bombing the dojo while me and TZ were building it -_-. I did not find it funny then but meh control freaks), if Shura allows, that is, he owns the map.

I have plans on duplicating the Castle in the Sky and putting it through a bombing session before we PVP in there. It is only fare (nods to fortify his conviction in the idea).

Diversion

While I have a couple of specific items that I want to create to make the castle complete namely:

• Active *enter any ore name* Brick
• Active Books
• Side Wall Candle holders that can be activated
• Jail Doors
• Switch only Doors/Jail doors (that cannot be open by clicking so blood moon zombies can't open them)
• Multi Cables to create coded Island Entrance (credit to Lauren's point and click puzzles for that idea)
• Chains rather than modern switches
• Block switches

I also want to create some world exploration 'essentials'. These consist mostly of vehicles:

• Transport Drill:

I have already made an initial sprite from scratch. This is a clear reference to the transport module Shredder and his sidekicks use in TMNT animated series. This is purely fan based work and I don't claim any copyright but if you want to use anything that is not yours, be polite, ask for permission and thank the owner.

• Stargate - To teleport from one spot to another. They will operate on a code system so multiple gate can be present on a map.

• Bouncy Terrain Buggy - with a rotative physics to make fun and annoying travels or even races.

• Either a ridable Pegasus or a gelo powered jet bike, to get to aerial areas

If you have any more suggestions improvements or wish to provide assistance please leave comments below. Please share on fellow Terraria community pages.

Terraria On goings

While the purpose of this sandbox was to keep in touch with TZ, Shura and Shini, Terraria had always been a treasure box of surprises for me. This randomly generated environments created explorer moments in the rather grey evenings between juggling job and applying work. I even got Lauren into it. Mind you this unlimited box of Lego as I may refer to it was more than easily adopted by both of us.

While several build projects were of essence with Lauren namely (in order of creation):

1.Tree House

2. Snow Bridge x Lake Taho

3. Forester's Rest (Completed) x Castle in the Sky (On going)

I encountered a similar conundrum to what troubled me to the point of sawing Lego bricks as a child of 12; my resources were starting to feel...limited (sign of exasperation). While the Tree House was a build that birthed naturally from the resources that were present.
The snow bridge was meant to be a suspension bridge however, background cabling was not a feature Regedit thought of. Similarly the prehistoric pump system made filling up Lake Taho quite the task (yes that mass of water is all pumped from underground). Now I wish I recorded the initial view of that mass of land. Diversion. Point being that having no cabling did not bother me but the database of utilities at my disposal started to show their limitations.
However, when it got to the Castle in the Sky, some critically required resources became apparent such as better theme decorations. and more importantly, a castle requires secret passage ways. The day when active blocks came to be I was over the moon full of anti-gravitation potion (**chuckles** while Lauren Facepalms. It's like scene in episode 3 of Daily lives of High School Boys when a girl passes by while they were re-enacting a scene from an J-RPG...ehem...diversion).
ONLY to find out that active blocks can only be active STONE blocks, here is one of those moments when you scroll through your menu and wiki and stare blankly into your imaginary conversation with Regedit: 'Really man would it have been that hard?'. It is not a very secret passage way if it is made of stone within gold bricks. Because MR Sir here decided a Castle in the Sky mash-up with the Mysterious Cities of Gold reference just HAD to be built with gold bricks.



As an Elder Scrolls Series fan, I was more than familiar with video game mods--more so as a leecher than a seeder--for all the wrong AND right reasons. With a couple of Unity Projects on hiatus namely Basic FPS and top down fear shooter, my Java skills were rusty and C++...well C++ skills were non-existent, google being my saviour, the search Terraria Mods opened a whole new worlds within Terraria for me. The sandbox within the sandbox and the possibility of being more than just another leecher after s u c h a l o n g t i m e. People out there had already started dissecting Terraria to the world of the divide by zero. In my favourite 2D environment attached to a 3D screen, therein lied the perfect knife to cut the Lego bricks in whatever form I wanted. All it would take was some C++ and some photoshop skill.

The Cybergod bless tconfig and object oriented programming.

Morale du jour

Don't forget the semi-colons, they will haunt your noob programming..haunt it long time XP