Pretender Shells

[Hellscream333]

Is there any particular reason that we count the Shell as one piece when it's usually two/a front and a back?

[engledogg]

That's a hold-over from long, long ago.  Part of it was that we'd end up with weird forms like "half a warthog", "front half of a human", etc...I don't really recall the other part.

Any thoughts?

MIKE
engledogg

[Hellscream333]

I don't really see a need to change the forms. From the stand point of identification and searching you'd be able to find what you were looking for so long as we named them correctly.

EDIT: I definitely think we should count them as separate pieces.

[shmax]

It's okay with me if you guys want to split them up. Ed and I were trying to remember why we did it that way way back when, and we think it's because we had wanted to hold off until we had gestalt support, which is probably still a ways off.

[Hellscream333]

Well the gestalt support that we don't currently have would only apply to Monstructor. Otherwise, we have everything we need for the other individual figures to be shown and cataloged properly.

[shmax]

We use the term "gestalt" around here a little more broadly. I meant that we wanted to have one record for the two halves of a shell combined, one record for the front half, and one record for the rear half.

[Hellscream333]

I know.

What I'm saying is, for example, Energon Optimus Prime. We have all of his self contained gestalt pics under his main figure at the moment. But all the parts are there as well in their own records. We could do the same thing with these for the time being.

Or we could handle it like Energon Omega Sentinel.
We currently have the ability to assign a gestalt part type so why not use that in this instance for the completed Pretender shell. This way it's already labelled and ready to go once the gestalt functionality gets implemented.

[Hellscream333]

I just had another idea; Treat the shell as its own separate figure ala Checkpoint and Prowl

[engledogg]

I'm thinking something like this...

Leave the combined shell as-is (i.e. not deleting it) and treat it as a "gestalt-figure", labeling it both "gestalt" and "figure", and plopping it into the existing group.  We'd then create the two parts for the two halves of the shell and add them to the group.

http://www.shmax.com/product_details/1802/cloudburst

It would pretty much look the same, except the shell would be on the right side, along with the figure, and of course, we'd have two new parts (mold halves).

What would need to be done though is, since "gestalt" figures don't have mold numbers, is to assign that mold number that was previously assigned to the combined shell form, to one of the new shell halves we would end up creating. 

Speaking of forms...what would we label these halves?  Continue to just call them "human" or "bear"?  If so, we end up skewing data associated with each.  Say we had 23 pieces that had a bear form before...now, we're gonna end up with 25, even though each part is technically half a bear.  Or do we call them something ambiguous like "pretender shell half" for form?

MIKE
engledogg

[shmax]

Leave the combined shell as-is (i.e. not deleting it) and treat it as a "gestalt-figure", labeling it both "gestalt" and "figure", and plopping it into the existing group.  We'd then create the two parts for the two halves of the shell and add them to the group.

Oh yeah, I totally forgot we had some limited gestalt support. Sounds like we have everything we need.

Speaking of forms...what would we label these halves?  Continue to just call them "human" or "bear"?  If so, we end up skewing data associated with each.  Say we had 23 pieces that had a bear form before...now, we're gonna end up with 25, even though each part is technically half a bear.  Or do we call them something ambiguous like "pretender shell half" for form?

That's a tricky one, but since these are going to be marked as "accessories" (with the gestalt part being "figure/gestalt"), maybe they won't be throwing things off that much, as someone wanting to see how many "bears" there are could just uncheck the "accessories" filter while browsing and see the old number. Alternatively, we could treat them however we treat things like tails and wings; don't we have a "body parts" or "animal parts" form cat somewhere? Maybe you could create a "bear (front half)" form or something.