Intro This is the second PPM of Kenny from Southpark to rear his ugly head, this time courtesy of Rim.
Originality
None ... it's not only based on an established character, but the character has been done before in this medium. I suppose there's a shred of originality in creating a 3D model based on a cartoon that's about as 2D as you can get, but that's stretching it for our purposes. The Model
I know it's hard to acheive the smooth round cut-out style of Southpark with low-polygon models, but the priority with Quake is speed of rendering and economy of resolution before adherence to the original subject material. Basically, this one is just not well-suited for use in the game. In trying to keep Kenny smooth and round, Rim ends up with 760 polygons. The count could have been lowered dramatically considering the simple composition of the actual character if Rim had thought more in terms of "hey, this is Quake" than "hey, I can't possibly make any concessions despite the great need to do so".
The eyes really stand out in my mind as examples of careless construction ... though there are some blinking and movement effects that give the model some interesting character, they depend on geometry which, coupled with Rim's fetish for high detail in a low-detail environment, throw face count-friendly innovation to the wind and support brute-force polygon complication. An odd choice by the author is that the weapon model is part of tris.md2, while weapon.md2 is empty. I suppose this was to ensure that the rifle stays visible when Kenny dies, which isn't a big deal, but which does look strange when a Kenny player croaks and throws a weaponmodel into the air while keeping his rifle beside him. After the face count, though, the most irritating part of the model is that it hovers a few units off the ground. It's not that hard to set up the ground plane in your scene as you model a character and looks very sloppy when it's misjudged. The Animations
Kenny's animation is a bit better than his irresponsible construction. As mentioned before, the movement of the eyes looks pretty cool. The Stand scene (in which Kenny produces a nice cold one) was quite clever, too. Muzzleflashes and widening pools of blood round out the good points of the animation (too bad there isn't a way to get a pack of rats to run up and drag the corpse off ...). Despite these brief intakes of fresh air, there are still sloppy problems with the animation, from objects passing through other solids and appearing briefly on the other side, to the barrel of the rifle hanging below what should be the ground plane, to some weird leg movement in Crstand that I can't quite place. Furthermore, the rifle doesn't seem firmly anchored the the right hand but prefers to hover a bit.
Five are included, and all work very well for the character. Southpark-simple.
The included sounds have all been ripped from Southpark, of course. There would probably be another star or a star and a half added to this score, if only because the trouble was made to include sounds in the first place, but the death sound effects are too long and make an annoying model to render even more annoying to play or to play against. Visible Weapons Support
Not now, and probably not ever. The fact that Kenny's rifle is part of the main tris.md2 would make the addition of viewable weapon support a fairly extensive project.
Pack Inclusion
The skin is a bit beyond the 320x250 bounds established, though the main reason Kenny is not going to be included in the pack is because the polygon count is ridiculous for this character and the other little problems conspire to make it unsuitable in general. Yeah, the model is good for a few well-deserved laughs ... but as far as gameplay goes, I recommend that if you aren't far more a Southpark fanatic than a Quake deathmatcher, you might want to steer clear of this one.
review by Malekyth
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