Hamster
Rating: 7
baseq2/players/hamster
Intro
Neuget is a hamster. not a dog, not a guinea pig, not a pig, not a human. He does, however exist in real life.. Visit his spot on the web at http://neuget.where.org/
The Model
Well, at first sight, I thought the model was pretty horrible, but I spent a while staring at it and the cuteness of the whole thing started to kick in. The model just exudes a feeling of cute rotund-ness. the teeny little sunglasses were adorable as well. :) The cute effect was achieved quite well, in my opinion. There are some problems though, but nothing to complain about too much. The model is segmented, and not very well. The legs are obviously separate objects, and look rather strange on the model, and would have looked better if welded to the body, but the author was using trueSpace (which I've used before) and I can see why he didn't\couldn't make this a single mesh. trueSpace, as far as I know, has very few tools that would allow you to do this, so I deeply, deeply sympathize with this author. ;) Some unseen faces could have been removed to lower the poly count (which is rather high for such a teeny lil' guy) but he made the most of this with the animations. Three and a half stars.
Score: Seven
The Animations
Well, the animations aren't the worst I've seen (*cough*cyberdemon*cough*), but they're not the best I've ever seen either. The animations give the hamster a touch of character and 'bounciness' that you're just not quite used to seeing in Quake 2. The animations are a little jerky at times, since I assume they were animated in qME, but they are better than most qME animation attempts that I've seen. The model gets twisted and deformed a LOT in the animations though, very noticeably. The salute frame I just didn't like. The "blown-up-like-a-balloon" thing I never liked. The taunt animation is hilarious though, you just have to see it to appreciate it. ;) The crouch frames are no different than the normal frames though, since he's so amazingly undersized (but hey, it's a hamster). The crouch pain frame also added to the cuteness of the model.
I have mixed feelings about the death frames though. Somehow the novelty of seeing a hamster blown up all over the place is really funny, and you can't really mistake a kill with it, but the first death frame seems odd to me, as his head seems to deflate, but hey, what can you do? The second death frame is fine, if not cute. The model does fly out of the bounding box quite a lot though. I'll give it three and a half stars though.
Score: Seven
The Skin
The skins are probably the weakest part of the model. First of all, 32% wasted space. Mmm, no. There's been worse, but 32% is pretty bad. With some knowledge of skin mapping in NST, the skin could easily have gone down below 10%. However, the skins are 256x256, which is a VERY good thing for GL users, but unfortunately the skins aren't all that great, using minimal shading. The original Hamster skin is all nearly solid colors with little variation. There were actually quite a few colors used in the skin, but it's all so bright, you can't even tell. There is a recolored skin which is the default skin for the model, but it's the original skin with some dark airbrushing on it. That one didn't impress me. There's another skin that's not particularly noteworthy. There are CTF skins though, which is good. If the skins were better, I'd forgive the skin mapping. But, this is such a damn cute model that deserves some new skins (skinners, hint hint!). I'll give the skins 2 and a half stars.
Score: Five
Sounds
I really, really enjoyed the sounds in DM. I had a blast, and I was continually laughing my ass off whenever I heard them running around, and how you begin to hate them. All the sounds are just the author (I presume) making noises and then sped up in Sound Recorder, but it's just so damn cute to see and hear a hamster in DM you forget about it. None of the sounds don't fit, either, they all perfectly match the hamster. The personality shown here is perfect between the model, the skin, and the sounds. One of the death sounds is particularly funny to listen to, as the hamster screams "ADRIAN!!" None of the sounds were excessively long or badly recorded, either, but one pain sound seemed strange to me, he says "Gonna kick ass!" but doesn't make a pain sound, that can be very disconcerting in DM when you want to KNOW you hit something. The sound was louder than all the others, also, which seemed strange also.. you get used to it, though, but still, I'm gonna have to dock half a star for it. The sounds easily get 4 and a half stars just because it fits the character so well and that there weren't any dumb errors.
Score: Nine
Visible Weapons Support
The Visible Weapons are the best part of the model, by far. Each visible weapon attaches to the little gun\cannon that protrudes from his back and he has a different hat\feature with each weapon, ranging from a Fez to a striped hat to a beard. They look absolutely HILARIOUS on the model and have no errors that I can see. Five stars, easily.
Score: Ten
Pack Inclusion
Despite a few small errors and gripes, I think the sounds and the vweps are too good to miss. Expect this guy in the next pack. :)
Addendum
I'm sorry but the model will not be in the next pack. The model just doesn't hit the height requirement for a fair model. It's all fun and games until you get some bunghole who likes to take advantage of the model's size in game. sorry, neuget.
-rogue13
This seems vaguely familiar somehow..
Sir, you dropped something.
how humliating!
They travel in packs, and they die in packs.
Yeah, that's right, you BETTER sit up and beg!
Very territorial, aren't they?
review by Jon "shine" Jones
author name Scotty
tris.md2
Vertices 338
Mapping Vertices 453
Polygons 590
Skin size 256x256
Skin Wasted Space 32%
weapon.md2
Vertices 20
Mapping Vertices 41
Polygons 32
Skin size 132x94
Skin Wasted Space ?
relevant links
Are there problems with this model information? Bad formatting? Typos? Broken links? Check out the original content, and post a description of the problem in this thread. Thanks!