AndyC

Strictly speaking the term "illegal connection" is an AFOL one. TLG themselves refer to builds that contain disallowed building techniques as being "out of system"

You don't even need LDD manager, you can use the "Export BOM" in LDD to generate a list of parts (BOM = Bill Of Materials)

Ah, yes, that looks like it'd do it. I too had been stuck trying to use the headlight brick and got stuck with the lip. That part suddenly looks a lot more interesting than when I first saw it, it's clearly been designed exactly for that kind of purpose.

Pretty sure you do, I'm sure I've done similar when ordering from SaH and still got the freebies.

I've been trying to figure that one out myself, it's certainly some cunning piece of SNOT work! No matter how I arrange things I just can't quite make it fit. Those side bits have surely got to be connected somewhere, because there doesn't appear to be any way they could simply be held in place. Tricksy Mr Berard, very tricksy. Great work on the rest of it though.

Can anyone work out what the dark blue piece above and below the windows in the roof is? It looks like a 2 wide version of http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=11477 but that doesn't exist, does it? New part possibly?

Whilst I'd agree with you from a purely architectural point of view, that kind of overly-busy design is quite common on Parisian buildings. You can't really blame TLG for mimicking the real flaws of a building style.

Note that you can switch modes at any time (View->New Themes) so if you prefer building in the standard LDD mode you can just switch temporarily to Extended Mode and put the brick in, then switch back and carry on building in the simpler mode.

Fascinating bit of history. I guess TLG really wanted the game to sell a theme and Time Cruisers was still fresh enough in the memory that nobody wanted to attempt another mish-mash of ideas. Shame because the game sounds like it might have been really interesting. Also funny to see things come full circle and TLG embracing the idea of mixing and matching the various themes for the Lego Movie, you have to wonder whether they'd look upon the same idea differently now.

Brand fit could be an issue with Sherlock. Possibly more intriguing is that the reason so much Sherlock Holmes things exist these days is that the characters are all out of copyright, making them cheap to use. But this project is so obviously based on the recent BBC adaptation that TLG probably couldn't run with it without licensing that off the BBC. Would TLG really want to pay license fees for something they could jut as easily do their own version of for nothing?

Brilliant. No only as the animation very well done from a technical perspective, but the overall storytelling was spot on too. The moment where he pulls the knife out had me in stitches!

If you can get 41999, then do so. They're both great sets but 41999 has had a very limited run, whereas the Unimog will probably still be available for a while yet.

The license was undoubtedly finalized at that point, but it hadn't been officially announced (although rumours were certainly flying around). Mothballing the MWT would've been borderline admitting they had the LR license. Aside from the fact they may not have wanted to do that, there may have been contractual obligations to provide no official confirmation before a certain point.

But he wouldn't have any claim over "the design of a Sandcrawler" or at least no more than any TLG designer who happened to design one normally would. In fact, he'd have less as, just as with every Cuusoo model, it'd be redesigned by TLG designers anyway. If that were even remotely an issue, dmac wouldn't have received any payment over his UCS Imperial Shuttle design. It just doesn't hold up to much scrutiny whereas the marketing concerns are an extremely common occurrence. As to Portal, it may not be licensing holding it up, but it's entirely possible it's seen as a better prospect than Purdue Pete (niche) or the Space Troopers (too similar to existing product) and so there may be an effort to figure out its feasibility in terms of part production so that something can appear to "pass" that review, rather than simply fail both projects and have nothing to present.

I suspect Portal is actually the reason we haven't seen the outcome of the oldest review. I would be unsurprised if trying to work something out on that is really what is holding things up. I'm not sure that actually makes any sense at all, marshall_banana taking a cut would be no different to TLG paying an employee to design a model. And you can bet that any cut wouldn't affect in any way shape or form what LucasArts/Disney would get. More likely the Sandcrawler, and indeed any Episode IV sets, didn't fit the current brand focus for Star Wars. It's really, really not a coincidence that the models being pushed by Hasbro are similar to those being pushed by TLG in the same time frames. What is going to be produced and how that fits into the wider branding will be decided long in advance of it coming to the shelves and is geared around common marketing themes to maximise sales and cross-product tie ins. It's not like TLG just randomly pick a bunch of ships and think "Hey, let's make these ones this year!" And I'd be stunned if similar rules weren't in place around the DC/Marvel stuff too.

Two ways: 1) It's harder for less honest folk to buy a set, take out the bag with the minifigs, seal the box back up and return it as "unused" 2) It's less likely that dishonest folk will just ring up TLG claiming "Bag 1 is missing" from their purchase (which they never made), knowing that'll get them all the figures. Not foolproof, but hopefully something that'll cut down on stolen figures and thus stop the rest of us honest folk from paying for other people's behaviour. Nice review though, although I'm still not totally convinced I want another gunship after getting the CW version. It's just not quite good enough to justify splashing out on.

They've said all along that it's entirely possible for multiple projects in the same review period to pass, in which case they'll simply queue them up and produce them in subsequent slots. Whilst doing that could theoretically lead to a backlog, the large number of licensed products we've seen as meant very extended review periods, so it probably wouldn't actually hurt to have a few designs "in the pipeline" to keep fresh designs coming out slightly more regularly. I think they said they have four potential "slots" per year, which is surely more than we've seen so far.

The initial images of the set made it look very bad, the angle made it seem way too short and exaggerated the stepping on the front. Having seen and bought the final thing, it isn't as bad as it seemed then. Elongating the front has made for a more movie accurate shape and although it does compromise the internal space, it's not so bad and the overall length is about right so it doesn't have the stunted appearance of the prelims. I still slightly prefer 6210, but it's a good overall representation of Jabba's barge. Like all the big vehicles, it's never going to be perfect and still sell for a widely acceptable amount of money.

You could try, but even a casual glance at that model reveals various "illegal" techniques that you'd never be able to re-create in LDD (the way the upside down round tiles are wedged in place, the antenna bases with tubing wedged in the, the tube pieces passing through 1x1 bricks with technic holes etc). There's probably a better chance off recreating it in something LDRAW based, since they tend to be more flexible in terms of what is allowed (to the point of generally allowing bricks to intersect in ways that are physically impossible)

I don't think it is and that's important to this discussion. It isn't and shouldn't be the responsibility of Cuusoo to promote projects, it's the responsibility of the project creators. It isn't and shouldn't be enough to simply put a good idea there and expect it to just take off without any further involvement on your own part. If you want your project to succeed, it's up to you to go out and find the people who will support it. Any attempt to magically make Cuusoo itself the key point of promotion is doomed to fail, because the people who are likely to support your project probably aren't going to be checking there every day waiting for someone to post that idea. If they were, they'd have already posted it themselves.

Wow. That's a fantastic idea. Whoever made the proposal really needs to be doing a better job of promoting though.

But what motivation do I ever have to rate a project? I can see a point in supporting it (it makes it more likely to be made into a real product), but rating it just makes it more likely to appear on the front page. Except at that point if I've already supported it, I don't actually care if it's on the front page because I've already supported it. In fact, I actually would prefer it didn't show up at that point (for me) so that when I go to the home page I see new stuff that I might like to support. And if I don't like it enough to support it, well then I probably don't want it on the front page either because it just isn't good enough to attract my attention. This is the fundamental problem with have two "positive" mechanisms, they work against each other. And given that the whole purpose of CuuSoo is to attract support for projects, having any other kind of rating alongside it just gets in the way. Focusing on a more personalised approach, rather than arbitrarily trying to add a ratings mechanism, would massively improve the CuuSoo site. Let me hide things I don't want to see. Don't show me projects I've already supported (but do give me some way to see how support for them is progressing). Show me things based on what other people who've supported the projects I supported have also supported. And then produce an overall aggregate of everyone's preferences to show to non logged in users (which should, in theory, highlight widely supported projects).

More importantly (from a business perspective), the process of inspecting every returned set and obtaining replacement parts as needed is going to be extremely labour intensive and there is no way around that. It simply can't scale.

I can see what you're trying to say, but I think you just end up replacing "supporters" with "likes" and don't actually solve the problem, in fact you make it worse because now it's confusing for end users. Consider what choice you are giving somebody who sees a project they think it good: 1) They can "support" it 2) They can "like" it 3) They can do both How do you explain to them what the difference is? Why would I, as an end user, care about whether a project is getting advertised more or not? All I want to be able to say is "this is something I might buy" but now it isn't clear how I do that. In fact you risk good projects losing support because people are "liking" them rather than "supporting" them.

If you're buying from S&H, then it's Lego themselves arranging a courier to ship it from one of their warehouses. In the same way that you'd complain to Amazon if your order from Amazon didn't arrive, with S&H that's managed by Lego's customer service. What I don't understand in this case is: a) Why he didn't get a shipping email b) Why the courier service would immediately return the package to Lego rather than leaving one of those redelivery cards (or knowing the companies that get used in the UK, just leaving the parcel on your doorstep) c) What Lego can really be expected to do other than refund the price, which they've already done.