Sneak Peek At Bionic Dues

[x4000]

Here's a fun sneak peek at the animated Assault Exo (not yet lit).

Why are there moving hull parts? They really off-put me, because I don't understand why they'd move and make said hull weaker.

Real reason?  Because they look awesome, and still is boring visually. 

If you want a fake in-game-world reason I'm sure I can make one up, too.  But suffice it to say there are a lot of constituent parts on these, and armor is not their best thing.  This could be part of the propulsion system, part of the computer system sensors, part of the reactor venting system, even.  It could even be decreed that it is some sort of thing that messes with the computer vision algorithms of the robots.  I don't think what is going on there is outside the realm of sci-fi plausibility, and it really does look vastly better.

Gameplay-wise, it also serves a purpose: alerted robots are animated and alive-looking, whereas non-alerted robots collapse down into a less saturated, non-animated shell.  So we don't have to do something like put a cheesy "ALERT!" or "!" or whatever over top of them.  Very efficient.

Anyhow, I'm super proud of it.

[mrhanman]

I like the animation.  It makes the exo a lot more interesting visually, and also gives the impression that the machine is breathing and therefore alive.

Are these things alive? Or piloted remotely/locally by some direct neural interface (a la Avatar or Evangelion)?  Or is there a dude manipulating plain old levers and switches inside?

[LaughingThesaurus]

I was just thinking, yeah, it doesn't make sense because it looks like the robot is breathing. Then you brought up the idea of a ventilation system. See where I'm going with this? The "breathing" is the robotic suit's ventilation system, and it may have been designed that way for the sake of familiarity with human bodies.

[x4000]

Good idea with these being a bit alive -- that's pretty cool actually. These are remotely piloted, but if there is a bit of the pilot inside the exo that would go along with why they are so hard to unpair.

[madcow]

For some reason the animation makes me think he wants or is trying to hug. But poor robot, we all know robots can't hug.

[Aquohn]

Good idea with these being a bit alive -- that's pretty cool actually. These are remotely piloted, but if there is a bit of the pilot inside the exo that would go along with why they are so hard to unpair.

A bit of the pilot inside it? Like what, the appendix?

[x4000]

A fleshy hippocampus-like organ grown in a petri dish from the pilot's DNA, perhaps?

Of course, another reason for the hull movement could actually be related to the venting required for propulsion, I realized today.

[Aquohn]

Yeah, LaughingThesaurus floated that particular idea earlier (the ventilation one, not the hippocampus).

In which case you might want to add some steam VFX.

[x4000]

There actually is a certain amount of sparks and so forth coming out from under them, and they let off a smoke trail when they move.  But I'll look at potentially doing some steam too when I get around to adding more flourishes with them.  Because of the nature of this game, we're really able to pull out all the stops with things like details on the bots and particle effects related to them, etc.  To the best of our abilities, anyhow.

[madcow]

By the way. The animation speed on it seems really fast to me. Like distractingly fast, maybe it's just me but it might do better as slower, exaggerated movements.

[x4000]

That's an artifact of it just being a quick gif.  The animation speed in the game is set a completely different way, from a png sprite dictionary.  It was either this fast as a gif, or annoyingly slow.

[madcow]

Oh okay, wasn't sure but figured it would be better to say something now than nothing at all!

PS: steam would be cool too as others mentioned.

[mrhanman]

There's a PnP RPG I used to play (might have been G.U.R.P.S.) that had example cyborgs that were only a human brain and nervous system in an otherwise completely mechanical body.  I always thought it was a cool notion that stuck with me even after having forgotten the specific source material.  Something like that could work.

[Aquohn]

There's a PnP RPG I used to play (might have been G.U.R.P.S.) that had example cyborgs that were only a human brain and nervous system in an otherwise completely mechanical body.  I always thought it was a cool notion that stuck with me even after having forgotten the specific source material.  Something like that could work.

Er, lore-wise, that would entail permadeath. And would kinda not gel with the story much.

[keith.lamothe]

There's a PnP RPG I used to play (might have been G.U.R.P.S.) that had example cyborgs that were only a human brain and nervous system in an otherwise completely mechanical body.  I always thought it was a cool notion that stuck with me even after having forgotten the specific source material.  Something like that could work.

Er, lore-wise, that would entail permadeath. And would kinda not gel with the story much.

To protect you from the robots, we'll make you mostly into a robot!

... actually I'm pretty sure that's been done somewhere.  Either way, I don't think it's what Chris had in mind