Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Discussion and planning of large-scale Castle Themed displays and events
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Tedward
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Re: Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Post by Tedward »

ffilz wrote:The buttress at the end probably should just be 1x2 slope, otherwise two adjacent 2x2 slopes will be awfully wide.

The other option is to suggest there NOT be a buttress at the end.

Actually, no matter what the standard is, joining wall sections that are very different in style may look odd.
Well, I personally like the buttresses and think they look cool in the water but they may be better left off the substandard.

IF we adopt the "moat substandard" and IF we keep the buttresses, I agree that they should be 1x slopes.

The wall-style issue has always been a problem but it has worked so far. We did even discuss a "double-height substandard" at one point a few years ago in which transitions and different styles were an issue.
SEdmison wrote:I love the idea of realigning CCC wall sections to base8 alignment.
It does seem like a bit of a "no-brainer" to me and I cannot think of any real objections.

Of course, I do see objections for the "interior" which is why I suggest bare baseplates for the interior. If we move to BpB inside the city then we lose the ability to easily install and move buildings.
...I've been using baseplate-plus-brick-plus-plate. This allows me to put 1x2 bricks with Technic pin holes or Technic axle holes to allow connecting sections, and then to have a plate over them to anchor them to the rest of the section (to keep them from sheering off).
The really great thing about BpB in practice is that an occasional single plate up or down at the edges is actually desirable and easy to deal with on the day. Reinforcing a connector brick is not a big deal and does not even require the standard to be rewritten.

I went a little nuts with the Technic connectors; I didn't necessarily have to have that many connectors all the way around the section, but you get the idea.
Love the detail on the samples.

Re: pin connectors: I find them totally unnecessary for landscaping. The pins are usually annoying to deal with as I find them stiff and impede movement as you are doing layout. If you simply throw on a few plates, trees or other "details" here and there it joins the segments more effectively (pins often leave gaps) and adds more visual interest to what becomes oddly flat strips of landscape at the joints. I borrowed a trick from my trainhead friend who has a ziploc bag full of 2x2 green plates which he uses to lock down baseplates on a table. One person provides a bag for the display and if a few here or there don't make it back to the correct owner no big deal.

If it is decided that pins are needed I would suggest we copy the pin hole positions from the wall sections and simply put two pin holes in the middle of the 8cre. But as I said, I don't think we really need them.
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ffilz
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Re: Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Post by ffilz »

SEdmison wrote:I love the idea of realigning CCC wall sections to base8 alignment.

I love the idea of standardizing on baseplate-plus-brick as the height. In fact, for a lot of the stuff I've been building recently, I've been using baseplate-plus-brick-plus-plate. This allows me to put 1x2 bricks with Technic pin holes or Technic axle holes to allow connecting sections, and then to have a plate over them to anchor them to the rest of the section (to keep them from sheering off).

There are examples in this set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sedmison/s ... 864919275/. (I can't figure out how to get the post UI here to allow me to include images in a post or I'd embed an example.) Here I really tried to push the envelope a bit in terms of the palette, the complexity, and the level of detail over what might be built with CCC today. My intent was to create a dirt road (dark tan) with wagon wheel ruts (brown and a little dark brown) cutting through a lush section of bush (brown ground to indicate mud with lots of green grass and weeds growing over it). I went a little nuts with the Technic connectors; I didn't necessarily have to have that many connectors all the way around the section, but you get the idea.
Nice. The nice thing with Base Plate Plus Brick Plus Plate is that it doesn't look at all bad with Base Plate Plus Brick.

That does suggest one update to the standard... People should avoid garish colors that could show through if there is a slight mismatch between modules. This particularly applies to cliff modules, but also river and shoreline modules. And if someone does Base Plate Plus Brick Plus Plate, using a garish color under the plates may be visible if placing that module adjacent to a Base Plate Plus Brick module.

With cliffs, even black showing could be a problem. So for cliffs, we should define a maximum envelope from the back that can have non-cliff palette colors, which is basically going to be one stud back from the minimum cliff profile. Given care taken in that way, even if one guy's cliff is the minimum profile, while another cliff module extends several studs out from the typical profile will look ok (there will just be a vertical grey edge showing).

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SEdmison
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Re: Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Post by SEdmison »

Tedward wrote:
SEdmison wrote:I love the idea of realigning CCC wall sections to base8 alignment.
It does seem like a bit of a "no-brainer" to me and I cannot think of any real objections.

Of course, I do see objections for the "interior" which is why I suggest bare baseplates for the interior. If we move to BpB inside the city then we lose the ability to easily install and move buildings.
Totally agree. I actually tend to think that the inside-of-town and beyond-the-wall parts of a display are fairly different, and there's nothing wrong with that. (In fact, it serves useful purposes.) For instance, if I'm building a free-standing waterfall, having it build on a 32x32 baseplate with landscaping to a height of roughly one brick gives me a piece that is fairly free-standing, easy to place, etc. On the other hand, within a town, having a bunch of separate houses built directly onto plates allows me to move the houses around to accommodate crooked streets. Those are just two obvious examples, but my point is that there is nothing wrong with having slightly different approaches to things like base heights, connections, filling space, etc., as long as we can make clear to potential builders what they need to build to contribute to what part of a display.
Tedward wrote:
SEdmison wrote:...I've been using baseplate-plus-brick-plus-plate. This allows me to put 1x2 bricks with Technic pin holes or Technic axle holes to allow connecting sections, and then to have a plate over them to anchor them to the rest of the section (to keep them from sheering off).
The really great thing about BpB in practice is that an occasional single plate up or down at the edges is actually desirable and easy to deal with on the day. Reinforcing a connector brick is not a big deal and does not even require the standard to be rewritten.
Sounds reasonable.
Tedward wrote:
SEdmison wrote:I went a little nuts with the Technic connectors; I didn't necessarily have to have that many connectors all the way around the section, but you get the idea.
Re: pin connectors: I find them totally unnecessary for landscaping. The pins are usually annoying to deal with as I find them stiff and impede movement as you are doing layout. If you simply throw on a few plates, trees or other "details" here and there it joins the segments more effectively (pins often leave gaps) and adds more visual interest to what becomes oddly flat strips of landscape at the joints. I borrowed a trick from my trainhead friend who has a ziploc bag full of 2x2 green plates which he uses to lock down baseplates on a table. One person provides a bag for the display and if a few here or there don't make it back to the correct owner no big deal.

If it is decided that pins are needed I would suggest we copy the pin hole positions from the wall sections and simply put two pin holes in the middle of the 8cre. But as I said, I don't think we really need them.
I agree that in small displays we probably don't need them. I think we certainly don't need connectors at every one of the places I had holes for them on my sample! :) I agree that using Technic pins can be annoying exactly because they are pretty stiff to connect, etc. However, with the sections that I've built, by having Technic bricks with axle holes behind the Technic bricks with pin holes, I can connect one of my sections to a Cafe Corner building (from Lego, from Operation Bricklord, or whatever else uses that standard), but I can also just connect a couple of sections with 4-length axles. The axles require way less force to connect, and the resulting connections can be pulled apart just as easily. Of course, if we decided that we liked the axle idea, we could just make that part of the standard, and if I wanted to connect to a Cafe Corner section I could use one of the hybrid Technic pin/axle dealies Image to bridge the connection of pin hole on one side and axle hole on the other.
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Tedward
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Re: Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Post by Tedward »

SEdmison wrote:
Tedward wrote:... I can connect one of my sections to a Cafe Corner building (from Lego, from Operation Bricklord, or whatever else uses that standard)...
LOL it is from doing a lot of MHS (Cafe Corner) layouts that I discovered that we don't need the pin connections. We do some sort of "street scene" at almost every VicLUG display and I use my lamposts, garbage bins and trees to join the modules together. :D

I think it should be noted in the standard with a demo section illustrated but I am not seeing a compelling case for requiring it.
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Re: Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Post by SEdmison »

Tedward wrote: LOL it is from doing a lot of MHS (Cafe Corner) layouts that I discovered that we don't need the pin connections. We do some sort of "street scene" at almost every VicLUG display and I use my lamposts, garbage bins and trees to join the modules together. :D

I think it should be noted in the standard with a demo section illustrated but I am not seeing a compelling case for requiring it.
Well, I'm certainly not married to the idea. I just figured that if I were going to make some sample sections, I might as well incorporate a variety of ideas for discussion. It is definitely true that I can still build features like that into sections for my own use without forcing everyone else to do so by making them part of the standard.
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Re: Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Post by Kosh »

I haven't built anything to the CCC Wall or base8 standards but have some experiences with setting up/adjusting Micropolis Displays, which also has a pin connection standard. My take on the pin standards is theres are occasionally times when you want/NEED them and those times make them very useful. BUT, those times are also somewhat few and far between, they tend to be specific cases versus the 'you must do this EVERY time' scenarios.
One of the 'must' times was the tall white building in the middle of this picture http://www.flickr.com/photos/bisonfuehr ... icropolis/#. It's so tall that it's quarter block base (single module) was not enough to keep it stable, so it got attached to the nearest other modules and thus was kept upright. I'd suggest that having the spots available to pin for when they are needed is prudent but suspect that many times they would not always be needed in practice.

For those interested the Micropolis standard is here: http://twinlug.com/micropolis-micro-city-standard/
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Re: Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Post by Tedward »

With discussion dying down perhaps we could get a sense of how people are feeling about adapting any of the proposals?

Please provide a quick yes/no/maybe to each so we can see which, if any, require further discussion.
  1. Are you in favour of revising the colour standards (still needs tweaking)?
  2. Are you in favour of an improved aesthetic including updated photos showing more detailed sections?
  3. Are you in favour of a more interactive planning process such as one based on Google Docs (still needs tweaking)?
  4. Are you in favour of making Baseplate plus Brick (BpB) a part of the standard?
    1. If it is adapted should it only apply to landscaping (only outside city walls)?
  5. Are you in favour of moving the wall standard location on a baseplate to match the Base8 positioning (inside of the wall sits on stud 11 and the outside of the wall sits on stud 14 when using a 32x32 baseplate)?
  6. Are you in favour of adding the "moated wall" (still needs tweaking) as a subsection?
Last edited by Tedward on Thu Dec 05, 2013 10:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Post by Tedward »

[Double-posting to separate my answers to the above questions from the questions post.]
  1. Yes
  2. Yes
  3. Maybe
  4. Yes
    1. Yes
  5. Yes
  6. Yes
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Re: Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Post by ffilz »

1. yes, well, as an alternate, or at least a caveat that old color scheme is still valid, but the new scheme is preferred

2. Definitely yes

3. Yes

4. Yes
4a. No, but not too critical to me

5. Yes

6. Yes (subject to some cleanup)
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Re: Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Post by AK_Brickster »

Tedward wrote:With discussion dying down perhaps we could get a sense of how people are feeling about adapting any of the proposals?

Please provide a quick yes/no/maybe to each so we can see which, if any, require further discussion.
  1. Are you in favor of revising the color standards (still needs tweaking)?
Yes - we have so many new colors now, we might as well take advantage of them.
[*]Are you in favor of an improved aesthetic including updated photos showing more detailed sections?
Yes - building techniques have evolved and we have raised our own standard when it comes to building. Let's put our best foot forward.
[*]Are you in favor of a more interactive planning process such as one based on Google Docs (still needs tweaking)?
Yes - interactive planning can help to take some of the load off of the coordinator, if done properly.
[*]Are you in favor of making Baseplate plus Brick (BpB) a part of the standard?
Yes. I think it allows for more detailed landscaping, particularly as it pertains to water features. Empty space can still be filled with landscaped plates, but that shouldn't be our standard.
  1. If it is adapted should it only apply to landscaping (only outside city walls)?
I'm impartial here.
[*]Are you in favor of moving the wall standard location on a baseplate to match the Base8 positioning (inside of the wall sits on stud 11 and the outside of the wall sits on stud 14 when using a 32x32 baseplate)?
Yes

[*]Are you in favor of adding the "moated wall" (still needs tweaking) as a subsection?[/list]
Definitely. This is a great addition.
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Re: Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Post by SEdmison »

1. YES!

2. YES!

3. Yes

4. Yes

a. No strong preference, but leaning toward yes

5. YES!

6. No strong preference, but leaning toward yes
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Re: Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Post by Aliencat »

Tedward wrote:Are you in favour of revising the colour standards (still needs tweaking)?
Yes definitely, the old standard is outdated since we have so many new colours since then.
Tedward wrote:Are you in favour of an improved aesthetic including updated photos showing more detailed sections?
Yep!
Tedward wrote:Are you in favour of a more interactive planning process such as one based on Google Docs (still needs tweaking)?
Yes completely
Tedward wrote:Are you in favour of making Baseplate plus Brick (BpB) a part of the standard?
Yes it's a good standard that allows for a lot more flexibility in landscaping.
Tedward wrote:If it is adapted should it only apply to landscaping (only outside city walls)?
No, everything, it's more stable and allows for more detail in things like roads, ditches, etc. inside the city wall.
Tedward wrote:Are you in favour of moving the wall standard location on a baseplate to match the Base8 positioning (inside of the wall sits on stud 11 and the outside of the wall sits on stud 14 when using a 32x32 baseplate)?
Yep, that way standards can be combined if necessary.
Tedward wrote:Are you in favour of adding the "moated wall" (still needs tweaking) as a subsection?
If it looks cool.
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Re: Updating the CCC Standard - Discussion

Post by BiggerJim »

Tedward wrote:Are you in favour of revising the colour standards (still needs tweaking)?
Yes
Tedward wrote:Are you in favour of an improved aesthetic including updated photos showing more detailed sections?
Yes
Tedward wrote:Are you in favour of a more interactive planning process such as one based on Google Docs (still needs tweaking)?
Yes
Tedward wrote:Are you in favour of making Baseplate plus Brick (BpB) a part of the standard?
Very much yes
Tedward wrote:If it is adapted should it only apply to landscaping (only outside city walls)?
Should apply to everything at the edges.
Tedward wrote:Are you in favour of moving the wall standard location on a baseplate to match the Base8 positioning (inside of the wall sits on stud 11 and the outside of the wall sits on stud 14 when using a 32x32 baseplate)?
Yes
Tedward wrote:Are you in favour of adding the "moated wall" (still needs tweaking) as a subsection?
Yes
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