CyclonatorZ

If there are still available spots, I'm definitely up for this. Man Versus Machine is easily the most fun I've had on Team Fortress 2 in ages - and it's already been one of my favorite games for over a year.

Why is Lego so hesitant to make a set/theme that utilizes large amounts of purple? Seriously, apart from licensed sets based on very purple objects or beings (Knight Bus, Construct-a-Zurg), purple has exclusively been used as a highlight color - never as a primary or secondary.

Woah! This is a very pleasant surprise. I have long considered Spybotics: The Nightfall Incident to be one of the best games ever released on lego.com, and until now I assumed it was lost forever after the site was purged of all its old games. It's great to see it's still around and kicking; I'll have to go and play it again sometime.

No, not really. Basically, it takes the relative simplicty of Traveling Tales regular lego games and simplifies it even more, to the point of absolute ridiculousness. For example, the combat is limited to fighting a total of three different enemies over twenty four levels, none of which are even remotely threatening. The bosses are even worse, posessing absolutely pathetic attack power and poor AI. Even without the upgradeable armor and weapons, you are unlikely to die more than a few times over the course of the entire game - that is, when you aren't in the invinciblity-granting "Hero Mode" that automatically activates when you collect enough lego pieces. This last feature gets so silly that you will sometimes find yourself walking into a boss fight and spending most of it invincible.The game also falls flat when it comes to the usual best attributes of TT games. There are no interesting puzzles or secrets to be found, and the special abilities usually boil down to bashing through one of the eighty-thousand different wall types present in the game. The core game mechanic involves the Golden Constractions, which can only be activated once you enter the aformetioned Hero Mode. However, there are only a few basic types, and their functionality is as simple as drilling holes through the wall making bridges over streams that look about one foot deep, or merely flying away from their previously progress-blocking positions. Let me say that again: this is the type of game where your hero can simaltaneously be imprevious to all forms of assault and unable to step over a small pile of lego pieces. Yeah.Don't go looking for laughs in this game, either. With only the most basic conections to the official canon, the game's cutscenes resort to painful, poorly animated slapstick, which succeeds only in making the Piraka look like morons. This is especially jarring when contrasted with the game's only redeeming points: its rather detailed graphics and epic music. This is honestly the only Bionicle game that truly captures the epic scale of the theme's settings, and the game's soundtrack combines traditional and electronic instruments and latin chanting to create themes that are unmistakeably Bionicle. With a little tweaking, some of the music would have been right at home in a serious movie adaption of the Voya Nui saga... but when paired with the game's silly cutscenes and pathetic bosses, its rather disconcerting to say the least.By far, the DS version is superior in every other area. In fact, its arguably one of the best first person shooters on the DS, easily comparable with that of Metroid Prime: Hunters. And at least it doesn't insult your intelligence like the main version of Bionicle Heroes does.

Tar Shard, Res-ClymaxMember Name: ~~Zarkan~~Description: A desert fragment dotted by hundreds of tar pits, which were untapped before the Shattering due to the presence of dangerous “Elementals.” These blob-like creatures wielded both tar and fire, and as such always appeared to be flaming. No one knew what they fed on or what their biological makeup was, for no one had encountered them and survived to tell the tale. After the Shattering, however, these creatures mysteriously disappeared, and after a few years the Stone and Cave fragments began setting up operations to collect and process the tar. The shard is now home to a variety of businesses that make and utilize rubber, as well as a few who specialize in coming up with other uses for tar. Strangely, in the last thirty years their have been reported sightings of what appear to be the Tar Elementals, but the few who claim to have seen them also insist that they were not aggressive. This has prompted Res-Clymax to hire a team of elite Toa and Troak warriors for the purpose of investigating these rumors.Virus Shard, Cha-ClysmaxMember Name: ~~Zarkan~~Description: The Virus fragment is different from many of the smaller shards in that it was named entirely for its commerce rather than any natural features. Originally a somewhat forested region, most of the trees have been cut down and replaced with factories specializing in virus creation – and as a result, Rahi creation. Most are run by Makuta, and as such the fragment is sometimes looked upon with suspicion, but over the course of its history there have been no significant scandals or disasters. In fact, for a fragment dominated by smoke-belching factories and toxic-waste disposal facilities, it sometimes seems too ethical to certain denizens of Clysmax. This has lead to a wide range of conspiracy theories as to the “true motives” of the fragment, ranging from a secret desire to overthrow the Fire fragment’s government, to a scheme to mind-control the entirety of Clysmax by seeding viruses into the air. However, no real evidence for any of these has surfaced, and if there is a secret agenda lurking behind Ra-Clysmax’s motives, the Makuta are likely doing everything they can to conceal it.Crystal Shard, Kru-ClysmaxMember Name: ~~Zarkan~~Description: A shard that is similar to Onu-Clysmax in many ways, but with a far more specific business focus. Early in the history of the EM, it was discovered that its underground tunnels contained a type of rare crystal that housed enormous reserves of energy. Mining companies quickly scrambled to claim and begin excavating the caves, as well as determining how to best harness the crystal’s power. By the time of the Shattering, the industry had become self-sustaining, collecting enough crystals to both power their machines and make a steady profit selling them across the Multiverse. Thus, they were in a far better position to recover from the Shattering’s effects than many fragments, and they soon became one of the most powerful minor shards in Clysmax. However, in the last one-hundred years, Kru-Clysmax has begun to run low on crystals, the tunnels having been enlarged as much as possible without endangering the structural integrity of the fragment. While the crystals grow back over time, the industry is nevertheless finding itself in a difficult position. As a result, they have begun offering a monetary prize to the first being who can figure out how to artificially duplicate the crystals, in the hope that they will eventually be able to manage the growing process themselves. In the meantime, limits have been established on crystal harvesting procedures, and the once astronomical profits have slowed down to a trickle.

I'll be honest: while I didn't immediately recoil in horror upon first looking upon Jack Stone, as I did when my summer 2002 issue of Lego Club Mag was adorned with the awfulness of Galidor, in the end I still treated it as a slap in the face. Like TLG's single biggest mistake, Jack Stone almost entirely did away with the creative core of my favorite toy, relying almost exclusively on big, single-purpose parts, most of which were quite honestly unattractive asthetically. The models were also quite poor: buildings were nothing more than skeletal frames, and the vehicles not only looked ungainly, but felt extremely wobbly in hand. Worst of all, the "minifigures" of Jack stone were inferior to traditional lego minifigures in every way: they were one piece, lacked detail, and gave off none of the charm of their predecessors. Overall, Jack Stone was a prime example of TLC's Dark Ages folly - one of many ill-concieved experiments that TLC wasted much time and money on rather than expanding and improving their core product.

Another piece of news confirms the first two posts. Greg F has written some tie-in novels for Hero Factory, and one of them introduces new characters using very Bionicle-sounding names. Most likely, they were some of the leftovers on the list TLG approved for the 2011 Bionicle story.

When it first came out, I enjoyed VNOG somewhat, but due to a glitch I never made it past the third chapter. It seems like the original MNOG was the only significant online Bionicle game that wasn't riddled with massive bugs - which is fortunate, as that would have made even more tedious than it was back in the age of dial-up internet. That is because 2006 was the year Bionicle officially abandoned any attempts to synchronize its main storyline material with its additional multimedia content. Between VNOG, Piraka Attack, Matoran Escape, Inika Island Assault, the interactive flash videos, and Bionicle Heroes, the Voya Nui saga alone spawned around half a dozen alternate continuties. It's understandable, considering that most typical Bionicle fans had only a basic knowledge of the storyline, and thus didn't care about inconsistencies between online games and books they likely never even read. And anyways, the increasingly intense and Toa-centric focus of the storyline made another MNOG type game all but impossible.

I'm fine with no Teal if they use this new-fangled Azure color in lots of constraction figure sets. But all they've used it for so far is Thornraxx's front arms. That is UNACCEPTABLE. Also: SAND RED.

That's not what the wiki says. It says that "Medium Voltage current must be wired into the High Voltage face (the 3-dotted one), while Low Voltage current can be wired into any other face."However, I must have not studied the page closely enough, because the sentence right after that one gives me the answer to my question. It says that "by default, the Transformer outputs Low Voltage current. A Redstone signal must be applied to it in order to make it reverse flow, thereby emitting Medium Voltage current from the High Voltage face (the 3-dotted one)."Once I realized what it was saying, all I had to do was attach a standard Minecraft lever to the LV transformer and flick it on, and bam, power began flowing from the Solar panels all the way into the MFE.

A roster like this, with seven MOC's all rather equally matched, would have normally posed a tough decision. But Bokoch easily wins out in my mind for not only being an excellent MOC, but also making the hideous Garai look awesome. Hewkii Mahri's mask is still one of the worst Kanohi ever made IMO, but it fits Bokoch perfectly, and puts Ballom over the edge.

Actually, the thing on the left is the the Batbox, which has been sucessfully recieving input from both the solar panels and the generator underneath. The assembly on the right is a Low-Voltage Transformer running into an MFE unit, which thus far has failed to recieve any power from the devices on the left. Also, I'm definitely not using any components of Red Power, as I've assembled all of my sucessful stuff so far by following the industrialcraft wiki's first steps and wiring tutorials. The problem is, they have no sceenshots accompanying the sections dealing with the MFE unit, and the instructions are vague enough that I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or not.

Thanks for answering my question, guys. I guess I'll have to start gathering crystals! In the meantime, I have another problem. I've been maxing out my tier one tech, adding solar panels and what not, but when I decided to start hooking up my battery boxes to an MFE, I found I was unable to get power to flow from the former devices into the latter. Here's a screenshot of my current setup:(Note: there are tin cables concealed behind the battery box that run out into the solar panel on my roof. I sucessfully hooked them up some time ago and had my battery boxes maxing out on solar energy. Also, to clarify the details you can't see, the MFE output and the high voltage transformer output are connected with that gold cables, and the battery box's output and the one of the low voltage transformer outputs are connected with the copper cables. This is apparently the correct setup according to a tutorial I found, but I've also tried having the gold cable run into one of the MFE's input faces, with no success.)

So, after learning about the Technic pack about a week ago, I finally took the plunge and installed it. I've got to say, all these new technologies and items have really made minecraft interesting to me again. I've only been playing for a few hours, but I already have some generators, electric furnaces, extractors, and macerators, along with about a bazillion ores of every kind. However, I've been hesitant about diving into the world of Thaumcraft, as I read something on the wiki about taint spreading if I mined too many vis crystals. For those who are more knowledgable, does this just apply to caves with huge clusters (which I haven't found yet), or also average caves with only the occasional crystal here or there?

Looking at these old issues almost makes me feel like I was a kid again. The Lego Mania Magazine was so much better than the barely-concealed advertisements that the current Lego mags are. It's crazy to think that its been years since TLC has printed a single building instruction in its pages. And you got to love how much effort the old mags put into connecting the playthemes with real world subjects - toys don't have to be totally vapid, you know.Thanks for doing this, Tazakk!

I never hated megabloks as much as a lot of lego fans (although I never liked recieving them for a present instead of Lego Bricks), and the almost religous levels to which some take their "lego purism" has long annoyed me. Ex. on some fansites, megabloks is actually used as a stand in for certain swear words, which is just plain ridiculous IMO. Nevermind the fact that Megabloks is the only company that has ever offered TLG healthy competition, and that (arguably) if they hadn't existed, TLG wouldn't have needed to pull themselves out of their Dark Ages - meaning fans would have had to endure a lot more experimental rubbish like Galidor, NBA/Hockey, and what have you.Also, Megabloks Halo looks quite good. There's probably more purple in that one line than in the entire Lego product history. And Starcraft looks like its going to be great as well. As long as Lego exists, I hope Megabloks is there keeping TLG from becoming a monopoly. Because if that were to happen, I think we all would have to be fearful of Lego's future.

I've started playing on the BZP server a bit, and I just put up a small house on the edge of BZ-Metru. Unfortunately, since I'm in survival, I don't have easy access to stone brick, which seems to be the main building material in that area. If anyone has a bunch, I'd welcome a donation - just put it in the chest inside my house, which is right next to the BZ-Metru guest house.

Except that the only reason Bionicle Heroes DS recieved a T rating was because of the ESRB's rule that first person games automatically receive that rating - which thankfully they they have since recanted. If it had been released today, it would have almost certainly recieved the E10 rating. The point is, although they have licensed plenty of films based on PG-13 movies, it is very unlikely they are going to let a film based on one of their original products reach Transformers/Avengers/Indiana Jones/Lord of the Rings levels of violence. The whole reason TLC allows themes like that is that the legoification tones down any kid-inappropriate content present in the source material. Doing exactly the reverse by staring the heroes in a film with Michael Bay-style brawls is just insane, and thus (hopefully) not going to happen. I certainly don't want Preston Stormer turned into a bloodthirsty anti-hero whose idea of justice is excessive decapitation and executing already defeated enemies.

"Alright, this is completely unfair! My (completely pointless) topic has gotten only (a perfectly average number of) posts and (a perfectly average number of) replies! I'm putting a warning up so people will shape up and post something! http://www.bzpower.com/board/public/style_emoticons/default/mad.gif "...yeah, not my proudest moment on the internet.

Another thing people keep forgetting is that there is a whole lot of variation within the PG-13 rating. There are honestly some PG -13 movies that are arguably less apropriate for teenagers than some R rated ones. And keep in mind that "appropriateness" doesn't necessarily just refer to content, but also whether enough kids even know about Firefly to warrant such a theme. Judging by the fact that the show couldn't even survive its first season, I think this is a lot more about nerd dissapointment than anything else.

I don't have much to say about the last few chapters, except that they've spured me to reread all the sections regarding the Kuambu prison, and now I am ready to share my "guessory" regarding the lightminds and darkminds. Since I am fairly convinced that the two terms do not directly describe a being's morality (a conclusion that I've ruled out as far too predictable and simple), I have a feeling that they actually refer to one's knowledge of good and evil. Essentially, a Lightmind is one that, regardless of its morality, has not come to understand the true nature of it - whereas a darkmind is one that has been tainted with the reality of evil's absolute awfulness.Why this theory? Mainly because it allows for the possibility of lightminds whose actions are evil (but do realize how truly awful they are), as well as darkminds whose actions are good (whether because of an encounter with evil or a former life as a villian). I can't prove any of it, but I wouldn't be suprised at all if the ultimate explanation turns out to be something along these lines.

Yeah, now that I look at it all closely, the map pretty much confirms that the Mahri would have all headed through the "vortex," not just Matoro. Beyond that.... well, there is a clue in the 2001-2008 concept video. One of the pieces of artwork featured (the one detailing the Mata Nui robot folding up into a ball) has text in the lower corner that mentions "Bara Nui." However, judging by how finalized the robot design is and how it mentions Mata Nui assembling the prototype robot, I think its probably a much more recent piece of art. What I'm really curious about is whether any of the Toa Nuva's journey while searching for the Great Beings was planned out before it was scrapped, and if so, if "Bara Nui" was 2009's location even at that early of a stage.

Alright, seeing all these images related to the first eight years of Bionicle reminded me of something. Greg F said a while back that after 2007, the original plan for the line was for Jaller and the Toa Mahri to journey to Karda Nui and finish their mission in 2008, and Toa Nuva to star in a "hunt for the Great Beings" arc starting in 2009. What I'd like to know is if Faber has any concept art relating to these scrapped storylines.

I'm not a MLP fan, but I don't have a problem with MLP fans. What I do find annoying is the Anti-MLP vs. Anti-Anti-MLP arguments that have flooded much of BZP (especially the blogs). It sometimes seems like more members are engaged in Pony Wars than any sort of lego-related discussion.