[Lego] And down the 12V rabbit hole I go...

Legends say that Rayque is still pressing these two buttons, to this very day...

They don't make 'm like these anymore, as they would say. Old but gold, I guess.

If you are familiar with my preferences in LEGO products, I'm always interested in their niche offerings. That can range into themes like Bionicle or Galidor, set designs that are remarkable and boundary pushing, or toy peripherals where LEGO develops an entire new system that ends up with a short shelf life because it failed to sell enough copies. 

Having experienced pretty much every track or pipe system that LEGO has produced, including trains from DUPLO, 4,5V and the Monorail, their modern roller coaster sets, all generations of pneumatics and even solar panels - I was bound to inevitable go down the rabbit hole of what is LEGO's most ambitious train system: 12V track, the Gray Era.

Basically, during the golden age of railway modelling, LEGO sought to participate in an over-saturated market with their own expansions to their already existing 4,5V train system. Unfortunately, this was during the 1970 to 1980s, so LEGO was still a small toy company at the time. Expensive LEGO sets that do not have a broad appeal, contain many specialized parts that are exclusive to these few add-on sets, released almost forty years too early, and was also only available in Europe. The perfect recipe to create a niche line-up of sets, and that's everything I could ever ask for.

While my earliest hands-on experience with 12V as a system was when I was a child, I've never really owned any of the 12V sets until today. And in typical Rayque fashion, my entry set to the 12V system isn't even a train, but one of the track peripherals that LEGO offered to expand your layout. You see, what makes 12V stand out from LEGO's other train systems is that the emphasis of 12V isn't on the trains themselves, but the ability to add all kinds of gimmicks to your track, such as the set that I bought: #7866, from 1983. And personally, as an engineer and LEGO enthusiast, I'm far more interested in the inner workings of these add-ons and its system, rather than the set designs themselves.

The 12V system has a good selection of add-ons, including railroad switches, some street lights, a switch to turn off specific sections of track so that trains that drive over it will stop, and even a module that allows you to separate your wagons from each other. All of these modules are connected to a separate two-button controller, which you can stack onto each other to build a large keyboard, so that you can control your train layout from a distance. It's simple and charming, yet an effective system that was ahead of its time. LEGO has never truly recreated something similar since.

And with good reason, because 12V didn't sell well enough. Not to mention that all of these electric components and specialized pieces are very delicate; handle them with care. LEGO has tried many other train systems after 12V, for them to realize that keeping it to simple plastic railroad sets tends to sell better. While I'm not planning to go bankrupt now by purchasing more add-ons for a future LEGO project, I will continue my 12V scavenger hunt another day.

Now certainly, with modern LEGO peripherals such as Mindstorms, you could build far more advanced custom add-ons to your tracks. But where's the fun in that? If you really want to do it right, build a dedicated 12V layout, then use Mindstorms to automate it all. Now that would be cool thing to see. So many things to build and collect, so little time...

That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!

[EMS] Level 265!

Ding! A level up, just two months after my last one. And not just any level up; it's that all-important Level 265 milestone that unlocks Burning Cernium and the next 5th Job skill, Crest of the Solar! That was earlier than expected...

The currently ongoing Midnight Carnival, which is the successor to the Celestial Festival, is one of those grind-heavy events where you have to grind an hour a day to get your event rewards. Since one of these rewards are Grandis symbols, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to aim for 265 while also capitalizing on those valuable rewards.

Now, here's an interesting conundrum: the Crest of the Solar blogpost can now be written, but I still haven't published my Destiny revamp blogpost. I've decided to prioritize the Destiny blogpost over Crest of the Solar, and publish that one first. You see, I've finally been able to continue my work on this blogpost earlier this week and I've been able to comfortably add chunks on a daily basis. I had to bench my LEGO projects to get there, though.

However, I don't think I'll be able to have it finished before the end of November, simply because I realized that after wrapping up the 2nd Job section, it was already well over 6000 words. To give you an idea, this blogpost has just over 8000. Woops. So uhm, yeah. Work on that Destiny blogpost is going to take a while. But at least I've now figured out how to approach and structure it, as that took me a couple of tries.

Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to grab some lunch now and complete Burning Cernium after that.

That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!

[EMS] 15 years of Rayque!

Farewell Abrup, as you won't be here for next year's anniversary.

Fifteen years already, huh? I kinda lost track of it a couple of years ago, so my blog helps me to remember.

Been busy with several LEGO projects (yes, deliberate word choice) and working through my backlog from the past two months (you can blame Xenoblade 3 and Gunvolt 3 releasing on the same week for that), but I should be able to get back to writing about the Destiny revamp in October. When you read it, you'll probably understand why writing it took me longer than usual.

Anyway, the past year for EMS (and MapleStory in general) has been interesting, to say the least. With the absurd amount of quality of life improvements being dumped on a frequent basis (with some being long-overdue), the game's certainly moving in the right direction, but it's still not quite where it should go. Sounds familiar.

Because of the mixed reception for the Destiny and Ignition revamps, Nexon has pretty much dropped their initial long-term plan to have every (outdated) class modernized. What concerns me the most about this, is that this would theoretically mean that Nexon's not going to rework every class from the ground up to have skeleton animation.

I'm not going to give a thorough technical explanation, as that would require another blogpost of itself, but the gist of it is that not reworking every class from the ground up will bring a very awkward inconsistency between modernized and old fashioned characters. At one side you'll have all of the classes released since Kinesis, with Adventures and Knights of Cygnus, that run skeleton animation for pretty much everything. Flashy skills with complicated animations and behavior, but more importantly: smooth(er) gameplay. On the other, you have everyone else without, with classes such as Mechanic, Kaiser, Luminous, Mercedes and Evan being a couple of examples that needs skeleton animation the most. Due to their archaic and sluggish gameplay, they struggle to keep up with the game's increasing demand for finer mobility, precise movement and quick responses. Newer skill mechanics such as built-in ammunition (introduced with Pink Bean's Blazing Yo-yo), or something as intricate as secondary cooldowns (introduced with Kain) are heavy on the game client, so they can only really be used in conjunction with skeleton animation, which old classes then can't have for their non-5th Job skills until these are reworked from the ground up.

Thus, the unchanged classes from the early 2010s are showing their age, and Nexon's eventually going to hit that physical ceiling where numerical changes to attack speed and skill damage will no longer suffice. That is why they introduced skeleton animation and the 64 bit client, and that is why they started with reworking classes from the ground up... until they stopped with Knights of Cygnus. Whether if Nexon will change their mind has yet to be seen, but I hope that they will reconsider it once they have the appropiate staff for it (which they currently do not). They kinda have to at some point, considering that the current producer of KMS, Wonki (yes, that one), has declared that Maple is going to continue for the next 30 to 40 years. At that point, why would you ever choose any of the unchanged 32 bit classes over an up-to-date, modernized 64 bit class, moving forward?

Revamps and MapleStory's doomsday of 2079 predating the Maverick outbreak of 2095 aside, Housing's pretty good. I haven't unlocked everything just yet, but I might consider to write an in-depth blogpost (similar to Monster Life, or any of my other informational blogposts) at some point, since there's interesting stuff to write about. Definitely more fun to write about than whatever I'm trying to do with that Destiny revamp blogpost, or that Xenoblade article...

Shame that the first chapter of Monad's going to be removed soon, but that's been on the chopping block ever since they removed Captain Vaga several years ago. All things considered, a four year run aint bad for such a bunch of spaghetti coding. Not to mention that Monad's story is going to continue regardless, since World Tours have been integral to the main plot for almost two decades now. And to all of you recent loremasters out there: everything is canon, and always has been. If you don't believe it, you just haven't figured it out yet and have a lot to catch up with.

Cheers everyone. Dammit, I should've bought ice cream. But that's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!

[EMS] Level 264!

Ding! One more level, and I'll have the next 5th Job skill unlocked. That's probably before the end of the year.

So, what about the blogpost covering the Hero revamp? I started writing it somewhere mid-July, but I was unable to finish it before the release of Xenoblade 3. That has now consumed most of my spare time, as I've clocked over 150 hours in the past four weeks. Trying to blind 100% it on maximum difficulty, but y'know, these games are pretty lengthy when it comes to going the completionist route. So I won't be able to continue writing on the blogpost for a while, but I am expecting to get back on it somewhere in September after I'm satisfied with my current playthrough.

I'll probably throw my thoughts on Xenoblade 3 on this year's summary, or perhaps a separate blogpost (like with X).

That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!

[Other] And now for something different... (again)

My weird obsession with collecting video game plushies and artbooks continues. But here's an interesting question: what if one of your favorite game series had artwork made, but it does not have an official artbook for it? Would your quest end there, or would you continue to search for an alternative?

Artwork from Sin & Punishment (ISBN978-4-7753-1754-9). Any artwork from the first game is hard to find.

Sin & Punishment is an arcade-style railshooter, a short lived series with only two games that remains exclusive on Nintendo's platform. Its developer, Treasure Co Ltd, hired the freelance artist Yasushi Suzuki for the development of this series. His artwork was used for the game's box art, instruction manual and promotional material.

Artwork from Sin & Punishment 2 (ISBN978-4-7753-1552-1). Posters of the left artwork were printed to commemorate the second game's release, which has been hanging on my wall for over twelve years now. The artwork on the right was used for the non-Japanese box arts.

While Sin & Punishment does not have an official artbook (because Treasure seems to prefer to merchandise Ikaruga 

instead and port their older games to NSO), there are several volumes of Yasushi Suzuki's works. From my limited knowledge, only two volumes has artwork for the series: ISBN978-4-7753-1754-9 contains five pages of artwork for the first game, and ISBN978-4-7753-1552-1 contains sixteen pages of artwork for the second. Relative to the total of several hundred pages, that's only a small amount of available artwork for Sin & Punishment - but that's fine by me.

Artwork for Xenoblade X (ISBN978-4-7753-1552-1). Several years after Yasushi Suzuki made this artwork for Xenoblade X,
he would return to design a similar character for Xenoblade 2, who also shares the same Japanese name.

Here's a fun fact: Sin & Punishment has a couple of interesting things in common with Xenoblade. Yasushi Suzuki has made official art for both series, and Nintendo's Hitoshi Yamagami has been crucial to both game's development as without his involvement and patience, the first Xenoblade and Sin & Punishment wouldn't have been the same.

Artwork for Anubis: Zone of the Enders (ISBN978-4-7753-1552-1).

But back on the art of Yasushi Suzuki. The way he makes his art look like watercolor paintings is drop-dead gorgeous. I love his work on science fiction, and he's also been my entry into the world of biomechanical art. As an appreciator of his work and as someone who has the desire to become competent at hand-drawing, I know that I'm probably never going to get on his level of graphic design when it comes to drawing as an art medium. Despite that, perhaps a field of LEGO design is the right art medium for me, and for that, books such as these will provide plenty of reference to draw inspiration from. There's a lot I can learn and pick up from Yasushi Suzuki's works. While I still have a long journey ahead of me, maybe, just maybe, one day... I hope to be able to build something as beautiful as he draws.

That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!