The weekend didn’t really turn out the way I thought it would. There was a neighborhood watch meeting/social that Mrs E really wanted me to attend on Saturday, but she forgot about it until 2 hours before it was supposed to start. It took four unplanned hours out of my day, and I just couldn’t get back into my coding headspace at all. On the bright side, I did get to meet some nice people and eat some decent grilled burgers, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
(Coding is very heavily reliant upon short-term memory and concentration, and it’s very easy to forget what you were doing if you’re suddenly distracted. There are a couple of good blog posts explaining that phenomenon here. In a nutshell, distractions completely wreck my productivity–it’s not “just a couple minutes”, it’s more like 2 minutes of distraction followed by half an hour of trying to get back in the zone.)
I ended up working on the taxicab instead just so the rest of the day wouldn’t be a total loss, and by the time my bedtime rolled around, I was so close to done that I decided to spend today finishing it up, along with some bonuses.
I decided I wanted to go for a sort of General Motors thing where the same base platform is re-badged at different trim levels and given different names. There’d be the midrange luxury trim level with chrome accents and nice interiors that private citizens and car services would buy, and then there’d be the nasty and cheap trim level that appeals to tightfisted rental companies and taxi companies. In addition to that, there’d be a police version.
This is the upmarket version, the DMC-Northstar HL 300, with chrome accents and leather/wood interiors:
This is the stripped-down economy version with all-plastic interior and hose-it-out plastic upholstery, the Stercus:
BONUS CONTENT BONUS CONTENT BONUS CONTENT
And this is the Stercus with police package installed:
In addition to all that, there are 3 editable versions included. One for the fancy HL 300, one for the regular Stercus, and one for the Stercus with police package.
Update: Ever have one of those moments where a whole bunch of things just kind of serendipitously flow together and you get to kill a lot of birds with one stone? Yeah, I just had one of those moments.
Mrs E needs a new pair of shoes, I want to test out a new download delivery service named Pulley because the way it works seems ideal for sending out review copies and comps on the new WWG storefront, you guys have been very patiently waiting in the face of months of endless teasing for something new to buy, and I happen to have something that fits the bill much earlier than I originally intended, thanks to The Weekend That Did Not Go As Planned. Nice!
So, without any further ado, I present you with a Pulley-powered buy link for this model:
(Link removed because my Pulley trial expired. Thanks for helping me test it, everyone!)
If you snap it up, let me know how Pulley worked out for you. It’s really slick and no-fuss, but I want to see how it works under practical circumstances. It should take you right to PayPal, and once you complete the transaction, you should see an email appear in your PayPal email inbox with a download link in it.
Those are really looking nice! It is going to be great to be able to fill up my streets for once.
Buying process works pretty well, I'm downloading the model right now… thank you very much!
(What about the Brio and the Intencerptor?) 😉
Nice!
Everything worked out great! The model looks good!
Still no Car 54 🙁
LOL
Another fine model.
(Would the derogatory nickname for these be Doesn't-Run DMC?)
Stercus? Clearly for sale to those who don't know Latin.
Thew Northstar looks like it's pitched for sale to wise guys (or black suit wearing men with sunglasses and coiled wires coming out their ears.
I like the retexturing to put some variety in the street.
Process went like a charm…no problems here…Will build and get some photos up soon 🙂
Indeed – worked great, downloading now. Love that it uses s3 as the storage backbone.
Models look great! Got it and am printing now. One issue related to browsers. After the transaction I checked my mail using Chrome and the file wasn't there, only the paypal receipt. When I switched over to IE, it was there just like clockwork. This doesn't just happen with this service. Several service's emails regularly don't show up through Chrome. These are becoming fewer day by day, so that's cool because I absolutely love Chrome, but for now its a two step for me. (Check in Chrome and then go through IE if its not there.) No worries, it'll all be compatible someday. Just wanted to give you a heads up for the future for customer service when sending out comps and you get emails back saying they didn't receive the file. If they use Chrome they'll probably have to check with another browser. Building a few now!!
Just as a side…I use Chrome as browser…but get emails…including Gmail through Outlook.
I got the confirmation of payment almost instantly…the actual download and thank you email took a minute or three.
Purchase and Download went with out a hitch, I went straight from PayPal to my inbox and the download link was already waiting for me there (I'm a Firefox user)
The Paypal process worked smoothly, and the whole sale went very quickly. The only lag was on my end, when my cable modem choked in mid-download – I had to reset it (its old and needs replacement) and re-download, but all arrived safe and sound.
I hope we can buy Mrs E a nice pair of shoes.
Hey, John C – remember that you can use the editable version to make car 54 in any shade you want!
Stearcus makes me think of Stirculius: God of Feces!
Looks way better than that though, thank's man!
the pully system worked well for me.
Talk about distractions, I was going to spend the day designing air transport containers, but now I have to build these guys,
Very Cool.
TOPO: Thanks for the business! Brio and Interceptor are WWG products, so they're only gonna be sold there.
John B: Doesn't-run-DMC cracked me up!
Glenn: Indeed! The whole time, I was like "Self, do not make this car look too cool.This thing gets about the same respect as a Corolla, Taurus, or other similarly boring car, and everybody other than fleet buyers and broke used car buyers thinks this is an uninspired piece of crap. Huh. Look at that, the DMC-Ford logo looks kind of like it's saying 'Turd' when shrunk down to this size. Turd. How appropriate. It's a Turd Stercus! Hey, that kind of rhymes with 'Ford Taurus', which is even more appropriate. I guess the DMC-Ford marketing department either really dropped the ball or simply phoned it in."
I'm glad you think the HL 300 looks like a mob douchemobile/MiB wagon because that's exactly what I think every time I see a black Lincoln, Cadillac, et cetera.
Solospirit: Looking forward to it!
Robby: Yeah! The only thing I dislike is the use of Flash in the backend, but other than that, I'm impressed with their backend and the frontend experience. I didn't know if it was worth a damn because anything can work great when you're paying 1 cent for a 50kb PNG logo, and I wanted to see how it would handle a bunch of people from all over the world snapping up a 50MB download.
Emergencyoverride: Does that happen even when you refresh the page? I've had that issue a couple times with Chrome, but manually refreshing the inbox or whatever tends to work for me.
Alexio: This thing made 45 bucks while I was sleeping. I'm surprised, since I only expected like a handful of sales. Thank you and everyone else who gave it a try!
Werewolf8: Heh! At least I stepped on my urge to rebadge it as a Kia Poo for the Asian market.
Tommygun: 🙂
Great model Chris the new download Pulley worked great no muss no fuss. I was done in under 1 minute (Order to download)
The ordering process worked just as well as everyone else has said! I should have paid more attention to your comment about "50 MB" though. It took me about 20 minutes to actually down load the sucker. But now I've got it. (Them, really, given how many different varieties are included!) It looks like it's going to be a neat little project. Thanks for releasing this one now, to ease the pangs of waiting for the others!
Carlfishman
I have uploaded pix of my first build (a taxi) to the Build Photos folder in the Lounge.
I found that the pods go together best if they are made 'cup' side first and then closed with the flat side, and that the front and back are best left last when gluing on the sides. Also, I plan to put the sides on BEFORE the pods on my next build (a police classic) to see if it will help me to hold down the tabs on the front and back (I use a needle-nose tweezers to grip the tabs when I glue them, and I can't do that if the pods are glued on).
The one-page format and low parts count makes printing, cutting, and assembly quick. I really like this model.
The second model (a police classic version) went together much faster and easier. They've got my cab pulled over as we speak…
I do recommend you put the pods together, then attach the sides to the top, then put the pods on, and finish with the bottom plate. I found it much easier to get the front and back panels to align with the roof without the pods.
Purchase and download went without a hitch. Download link came a few minutes after the the purchase confirmation, not an unreasonable length of time, but just enough to make me hit refresh a few times 🙂
Models look good but my cyan cartridge is dry as a bone, so it'll be a while before it gets built.
Just posted pictures of the taxi in the lounge forum.
You really really need to look over the instruction sheet before building.
As an owner of the "Y" chromosome, I find this difficult to say out loud, but you need to do it.
Posted some pictures of the taxi and a quick mod using Tommygun's Umbrella corp logo. (Thanks Tommygun) Enjoyed the build process and have more printed out for tomorrow. Great model!
Worked like a charm.
Payment went smooth as silk, but I dont seem able to download the file. got the download link ok, but I get no response clicking it. copying it into my browser (IE8) givs me the download window, but the download won't start, It now tells me that I have exceeded my download limit. Having said that, the images look great, looking forward to being able to build one of these.
Elaric
Never mind, got it in the end. Had to paste the link into the browser, open the file remotely on the host server and then extract the folders onto my system. Looks great, loving the texturing. Now I just need to print the license plates for them.
Elaric
Seems to be working pretty well so far, with the exception of the 2 hiccups mentioned by Elaric and Emergencyoverride.
I think, because I know how I'd work around those problems, that a similar setup would work just fine for sending out review copies and comps on the WWG storefront. Thanks for helping me test it!
I'm also really glad people are getting a kick out of this model. I'm having a lot of fun with these cars because it's different from what I've been doing all these years.
So has Mrs. Ebbles gotten her shoes yet?
Thanks for the chance to buy another wonderful Ebble creation.
L A W
Well, I sent the story to the twoHourwargames Yahoo Group (and got you at least one sale), and now I've posted it to the hobby news at The Miniatures Page, so you ought to be able to buy her some KICKIN' shoes…