Intro
This robotic biped is quite imposing as it stomps around the map. It's as wide as a house and looks like it could handle its self in a fight. It's kind of a cross between the cargo loader from Aliens and the robots from Silent Running.
"This little fella is from the future and has his brain floating in a jar of liquids held by a powerful steel body". That's how the README puts it and indeed that's what it is, a rather novel Mech like cyborg which does carry his brains in a bucket slung between its legs. The Model
The model is good considering it's the modelers first attempt. It was created using Lightwave and the relatively geometric blocks that make up this model have been constructed in an efficient enough fashion. Sure you could pull out a polygon here and there but it's a lot more efficient than My first attempt at a model. Brainbucket is constructed of about 28 separate geometric chunks. This seems to be a logical way to build a robot.
A nice first effort 3 star. The Animations
The animation isn't so hot. The readme says the model was built in 2 days and animated in 3.
This strikes me as a very short length of time to animate a character and I think it shows. To start with the model looks like it's been constructed to articulate in a realistic robotic fashion, with fixed blocks moving at the joints, but the animation doesn't really take proper advantage of this construction. Instead the whole shape bends and morphs to create movement. Ridged mechanical motion with an occasional hint of morphing for comic effect would have worked well with this character but the contorted movement we get doesn't complement the model at all.
There are other problems as well. The feet skate about (and sometimes dip underground) as Brainbucket goes through most of his animations. There's not much feeling of momentum either. He looks like he should weigh several tons but there's little in the animation to suggest this mass. I also feel more could have been done with the death animations. When he dies the blocks from which he's constructed just slide apart in a haphazard and slightly lethargic fashion and some of them appear to just end up floating in mid air. The blocks could have flown apart spectacularly and bounced along the ground. One of the animations could have pinched the scene from ROBOCOP where the ED209 is blown apart but his legs stay upright and functional for a few moments after its head has been destroyed. But what we get is 4 versions of Brainbucket falling over as different bits become detached.
It's not all bad though. As a taunt, Brainbucket attempts to stand on one foot. This would be a difficult task for a biped with this construction and the result is humorously wobbly. The Jump animation is quite funny as well. You know that trick when you swing a bucket full of water over your head and centrifugal force (supposedly) stops you getting soaked? Well Brainbucket does that.
All in all the animation is adequate but no more. In game play the only thing that stands out as very wrong is the stand animation which consists of a rather alarming twisting motion and which points in the wrong direction.
I'm only giving it 1.5 star. Animation takes time.
The skin looks good and closer inspection reveals a nice efficient 256x256 bitmap. This is good however closer inspection still reveals 46% wasted space. That could be lower. The layout looks somewhat haphazard and I think this'd be a tricky model to skin for. A little time spent laying out the skin in an efficient way could have increased the sharpness of the skin considerably without any cost in performance. This is an understandable problem though. My first models have exactly the same inefficiencies.
The bitmaps created by review by Chris "Shatter" Holden are by far the slickest part of Brainbucket. The base skin is a nice grimy gray and uses shading to suggest detail to good effect. I like anything with hazard warning chevrons on it. The 2 CTF skins are just a color swap of the original but they look good also. There are some strange kinks in the skin around the ankles of the model but that's no biggie, however there's something a bit strange about the way the front grill (?) on Brainbucket's bucket is placed. It appears squint. I think this is due to a change made to the model after the skin was created (it's mentioned in the readme) but it does spoil the effect a little.
I'm giving the skin 3 stars because I can. Sounds
No sound.
Visible Weapons Support
Brainbucket has no Visible Weapon Support and since the model has a built in weapon it doesn't seem likely that it ever will. Pack Inclusion
No. The model sticks way out of the bounding box. You can hit it square in the shoulder and it wont register a hit. Also in its stand animation the model is turned about 60 degrees away from where it's actually facing which means that you may think you're creeping up on it from the side but you're actually walking straight towards it. This seems a little unfair.
It is a fun enough model though and if you're looking to build a bot team of killer mechs then Brainbucket will not look out of place.
Jezebel attempts to spill the contents of a Brainbucket. review by James G Watt AKA jimbo
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