NWBrickCon 2006 Castle Area Planning

[JoshWedin]

As per Thomas' request, this topic is specifically for planning the Castle Area at NWBrickCon 2006. For those of you who don't know, Thomas is the coordinator of the Con's castle area.

Josh

[Thomas]

Thank you Josh!

Ok so here we go again NWBrickCon is approaching, and the response I've got so far for the Castle area has been great. I've been discussing in email with a few about a large combined layout at NWBrickCon and I'd love to see it come together. If you’re planning on attending please e-mail me and if you could let me know if you're interested or not in participating in a combine layout. Also please let me know what you’re planning on bringing so we can get a general idea of how much area we’re going to need. If you’re not sure you can attend but you’d like to have your MOCs there please e-mail me and we’ll see if we can figure something out.

Castles, Fortresses, Cathedrals, Villages, Houses, entire displays or small vignettes all are welcome.

Let me know what you're interested in doing or seeing while at NWBrickCon. For instance we could have a Castle roundtable, show and tell, building tricks and tips, some type of a presentation, possibly even a Brickquest or Brikwars game. If you'd like to see or do something in particular please let me know.

Oh and please add your name to the list in this thread.
http://www.classic-castle.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=99743#99743

Looking forward to seeing you at NWBrickCon 2006!

Thomas Rafert

NWBC 2006 Team, Castle Coordinator, NWBrickCon™ 2006

[Tedward]

Let me know what you're interested in doing or seeing while at NWBrickCon. For instance we could have a Castle roundtable, show and tell, building tricks and tips, some type of a presentation, possibly even a Brickquest or Brikwars game. If you'd like to see or do something in particular please let me know.

I'd like to try Evil Stevie's Pirate Game but that might not be "castle" exactly.

In terms of CCC display do we have any guidelines yet? (ie: 3 baseplates front to back by 10 baseplates wide )

I would like to do a couple of modules and maybe a ship. Could we do some sort of harbour at one end? I would like to try to make an "end" for the city walls that goes out into the water and connects to a dock/wharf area.

Am I making sense? Perhaps I will try to sketch it out later.

[J1A3L5]

Ted -

Sounds like a great idea. I have a largish model right now, which is surrounded by ocean on three sides. It's pretty far along now, so the plans for it are fixed, but it could theoretically attach to other oceanside model, if the cliffs lined up.


Tom -

I'm sending you a message through the Con site, since you don't have an email listed. Do you use MSN Messenger? It'd be useful to talk to you real-time for a bit!


-John L.

[BreadMan]

I believe that, with a little effort and planning, everyone's individual displays will be able to fit into the larger one using my new standard. Sorry for being so vague at the moment; I'm hard at work getting everything written up and web-ready right now and I'm pretty sure I'll have it posted by tonight.

Oceanside with a harbor is perfect, I was thinking of just that since I have a large ship that I'd like to include as well.

[JoshWedin]

I have a MOC, built on an island, that I was going to display seperately.
But it would fit very well into a harbor or ocean setting.

Josh

[BreadMan]

Ok, so, I've got the majority of the write-up done. If you have office you can d/l the .doc here (3.5 megs):

http://www.copernicanstudios.com/Base8.doc

and my modified version of NWMap here (2.4 megs, windows only):

http://www.copernicanstudios.com/CCMap.zip

If you don't have office then tomorrow I will be uploading a webified version of the article which will be a lot smaller and optimized and be making some kind of announcement about it, then I will post in here what I intend to do with the above. Meanwhile, have a read through (give yourself some time its 8 pages, though bout half that is pictures) and let me know any thoughts.

[Thomas]

Ted,

The Evil Stevie's Pirate Game would be great. You may want to get a hold of Sean Forbes on the Theme Coordinators page http://nwbrickcon.org/node/47 because he usually is in charge of the gaming.

We're going to go with Breadman's Base8 Standard and as for room well we've got quite a bit. With what others have let me know they're bringing we still have room for a 5'x13' display with some flexibility to go larger.

I think we could easily do a couple harbours if need be.

John L.,

Sorry about my email I guess I forgot to change that!
Fixed it now.
As for Messenger I'll see what I can do.

Brendan,

The write up is great. One question could we go with 8 brick height for the cliffs or would that throw anything off? Reason I'm asking is because in PSLTC we've been using that for our "dropped" table standard and it works out to an even 3" so for descending or ascending it's in multiples of 8 bricks/3". And hey that would go with your Base8 better.

Everyone,

Keep sending me the sizes of your MOC's in studs and/or baseplates. Also if you'd like to be included in the large community display.

Thomas Rafert

NWBC 2006 Team, Castle Coordinator, NWBrickCon™ 2006

[Tedward]

The Evil Stevie's Pirate Game would be great. You may want to get a hold of Sean Forbes on the Theme Coordinators page http://nwbrickcon.org/node/47 because he usually is in charge of the gaming.

Thanks I will!

We're going to go with Breadman's Base8 Standard and as for room well we've got quite a bit. With what others have let me know they're bringing we still have room for a 5'x13' display with some flexibility to go larger.

So now I'm confused.

Is there going to be a CCC display or are we strictly going with "8cres"? (Nice term BTW Bread Man .)

[J1A3L5]

Can someone enlighten me to what this "8cres" standard is? This is the first time I've seen mention of it. Is there a page about it somewhere?


Tom - Did you get my message I sent via the Con site?


-John L.

[JoshWedin]

Can someone enlighten me to what this "8cres" standard is?
-John L.

There is a link to it, up in Breadman's post. It seems complicated at first, but its actually fairly simple. The only problem is that completed MOCs may not fit the standard. For instance, my MOC fits the size requirements (multiples of 8 ) but not the edge thickness as mine is 1 baseplate plus 1 plate.

Josh

[J1A3L5]

Thanks Josh, somehow I missed that post.

I haven't read it in detail yet, but it does seem a bit complicated. I agree with you that not all models will line up with it. For example, the height of my ocean is 1 baseplate, 5 plates, and 1 tile. The height of my shoreline is about 14 studs high, but will vary in areas.

If someone wanted to contact me and match this to blend in with the rest, I'd love it to fit... It just seems a bit late to bring this up only a month before the Con.

Perhaps during the Con we could have one of the seminars/discussions devoted to designing a working standard, and begin planning things for next year. I won't be there until latish (possibly 8:00 or later) on Friday, but it'd be awesome if we could have one on Saturday or Sunday.

-John L.

[BreadMan]

Tom -

No problem switching to 8 bricks for cliffs, I like the 3 inches thing (never occurred to me and could be quite useful). I will update the article before I post the web version.

Ted -

We can include a CCC in the Base8 display, in fact I'd like to. All you gotta do is move your walls 4 studs in or out, or if everyone is mortally opposed to that we can leave them as is and build the display around them. It's Tom's call being he's the official coordinator.

John -

8cre is just what I'm calling an 8x8 square. Clever huh? I explain it all in the doc I posted above.

Josh -

Your MOC is an island, correct? So your water is made of blue plates rather than blue baseplates? Hmm. If so it's still doable I should think. Can you send me a pic? In fact...

Everyone -

If you can post/send me/Tom overall shots of the MOCs you want to put in the display, or draw out the footprints in NWMap (has anyone tried downloading it yet?) so we can get a feel for how this thing might come together, that would be great. I'm thinking that since, other than my ship, I don't have any MOCs I'm married to already built, my main role here is going to be making in-between modules to link everybody together, hopefully with Base8 but possibly otherwise. Landscaping is my "thing," in case it wasn't obvious, and I can put stuff together pretty quickly. I've got a decent number of baseplates and I don't have a problem hitting TRU for a few more if necessary.

While that's being chewed on, though, if everyone contributing could post the following we can start working on ideas for the rest of the layout:

Name:
Email and/or other contact:
Choose a flag to identify you in NWMap/fly above your MOCs
Flag #1 (red blue green white or yellow):
Flag #2 (red blue green white yellow or none):
Footprints of MOCs/modules you already have made:
Rate on a scale of 1-5 how much time/effort you have available in the next 4 weeks to build up your baseplates into Base8 compatible modules, 1 being none 5 being plenty:
Whether or not you would be willing/able to build BPB supports for each of the modules you create (see last page of the Base8 .doc):

How many 32x32, 32x16, 16x16, and 16x8 baseplates do you have available that are...
Green:
Blue:
Tan:
Brown:
Light Grey:
Dark Grey:

How many 8cres of Roads/Shorelines would you estimate you can build (Tan plates):
How many 8cres of Cliffs you estimate you could build (4x8x8 dark/light grey bricks):
About how many 8cres worth of blue baseplates you could convert to rivers/streams using green and grey bricks/plates:
How many CCC Walls you have built, how many of those you could convert to Base8, and about how many new ones you could put together:
How many CCC houses you could bring to put within the walls:

Here's a link to the Base8 article again just for good measure (sorry I don't have the web version ready yet) http://www.copernicanstudios.com/Base8.doc

[BreadMan]

(responding to John's last post since I was busy typing when it was posted)

Yeah, sorry bout the timing. I've been meaning to get this all posted since before brickfest (since this time last year really) but fate's been conspiring against me lately. But yeah, I was thinking of doing a presentation or leading a roundtable, if its not too late to set that up, to discuss this very thing (Tom?). I'd say this first display would be the test phase for what we have so far, and an actual finalized standard could be created after we figure out what works and what doesn't. I'm not certain when I will be there but it likely will also be late Friday, and I might have to leave early in the afternoon Sunday, so Saturday would work best for me.

I'm intrigued by your raised ocean level. Perhaps we could have some sort of raised lagoon that spills into the actual ocean. Send me a pic, I might take that challenge.

[J1A3L5]

I just sent an email to you, with a couple pics of what I described, and cc'ed it to Tom too.

About the roundtable - If someone could have a few "extra" 8cres modules to be shown, and some bricks to play around with to show different ideas, it might be a big help. Saturday sounds like the day to do it, if we can.

-John.