Oct 17 2010

Fate/Stay Nigth UBW is a failure

Category: Anime — Spiller @ 15:56

When I read/played Fate/Stay Night my favorite chapter was undoubtable Unlimited Blade Works so I was excited to hear that it was going to be animated into a movie. However when finally watching it quickly showed that there was something very wrong. It tried to follow the story down to the smallest detail, it even kept consistent with the event CG graphics.

This is not necessarily a bad thing however Fate/Stay Night is insanely long (and boring at times) and the movie was less than two hours; it is simply not realistic to include everything in the movie. But they tried anyway and failed horribly…

The whole plot was so hurried that there rarely was time to actually explain what was going on. There was only room for the action scenes and almost nothing of the plot (and absolutely nothing of the romance aspects) were explained. Well, if you like mindless action then it might not be that bad…

There was one scene where they deviated from the original storyline, the climax of the romance aspect in the plot, and well, for good reason. However they decided to dub it over with some lame story about Shirou seeing Rin’s memories just to show the event CG graphics from the game? For God’s sake…

 

The visual aspect of the movie is pretty good, I always hated the graphics from the game but they did it well while keeping the original drawing style pretty well. The sound is also okay, but in the end what does it mean if the storyline is terrible?

Sorry, but this gets a 3/10 from me…

 

 

Oct 17 2010

Motorized Off-Roader (#8297)

Category: Lego,Mindstorms — Spiller @ 15:35

This project was an attempt to combine the Lego Technic Off-Roader (#8297) and Lego Mindstorms NXT kit and thus motorizing the functions.

To summarize the project it ended up having these features:

  • NXT controlled steering
  • NXT controlled rear wheel drive
  • NXT controlled suspension height
  • PF motorized winch and lights (on-board PF power box)
  • 2 step manual transition
  • All original features (V8 engine, doors and such)
  • Almost no changes to the visual design

The electronics used:

  • NXT microcomputer
  • 3 NXT motors
  • PF power box
  • 1 small PF motor
  • 1 PF switch
  • 1 pair of PF lights

I ended up getting bored and stopped working on it so there is still some rough edges, but in general I’m pretty satisfied the result.

The following text is an old description of the project I found on my HDD:

Building

First step was to remove the designed parts carefully and making notice of where they were connected to the chassis in order to add it later when the NXT is added.

The original model has one motor connected to two functions by a manual gear switch. Since this wouldn’t work with a NXT, all the mechanics had to be changed.

Therefore, everything else than the fundamental chassis was ripped out.

Later on, some parts of the chassis was also changed to fit everything together.

Construction

The Power functions was preserved. The small motor was placed in the very front, directly connected to the winch. The battery box is also placed in the front together with the electrical switch.

In the back where the battery box had been, the NXT is placed with two NXT motors underneath. The last NXT motor is placed under the seats.

A manual 2 speed transmission was added in the bottom. The original differential was replaced with the older type differential because the new one isn’t strong enough and the gears would slip under the pressure.

Final product

There where almost no changes to the original design, so it looks very much like the original model other than the NXT parts which are visible.

I got bored in the end and finished the construction a bit too fast and didn’t fix the 2 step transmission. It sometimes under huge pressure jump out of gear. It should be easily fixed with a rubberband or something similar which can hold it in place.