Cyber Demon model by Deimos and Emporer
Chew with your mouth closed! – That’s one ugly SOB!
“I slowly turn the corner of the great wall, then realizing how large this roof was. And how freaking tall this building was. Regaining my power from that last explosion, I stopped and listened for that sound I could recognize anywhere. Yep, there it is, I can hear it loud and clear now, it’s getting closer. I promptly turned the corner ready to face the next puny demon. I then came face-to-face with a “puny demon” who was about six times my height with a rocket launcher for an arm. I decided the best thing to do is start running the hell away as fast as possible, while trying not to soil myself at the same time. The sound of this thing was as loud as a locomotive, and sounded like one too. It let out a horrid scream, but not a painful scream, more of an ‘I wanna beat the living sh*t out of you’ scream. I heard a *Ca-THUNK* And only imagined what it could have been. I turned my head, only to notice a rocket soar past me so close my skull vibrated, then a second one came and impacted the ground beneath my feet, sending me flying god-knows-how-long through the air until I came to a halt when I hit my face against the cold pebble floor. I struggled to get up as fast as possible, when another rocket soared over my head. I got an idea. Whipping out my chaingun, I turned, while lying down, and open fire on the damned thing. The force of the chaingun’s mighty kickback made me slide across the ground, slamming me into the wall behind. Not only did I damage the poor bastard, but I also got myself farther away from it. Realizing I couldn’t feel my legs, I dragged myself around the nearest corner, praying that another rocket wouldn’t come soaring in the process. I waited behind that corner for a long time, then that sound started to get closer again. I could now see him through the crack between the corner and a pillar, and got another idea… I dragged myself back away from the corner, preparing my rocket launcher. I squeezed off a round, and the rocket hit the wall right next to the crack. The explosion managed to damage the CyberDemon even some more, and also succeeded in pissing the thing off. It opened fire at the crack, being too stupid to realize a rocket won’t fit through there. Eventually the bastard pumped so much rockets into himself that he just keeled over and died. I must admit, that was much easier than I thought. Yet I thank God it’s over…”
-A small portion of my friend’s home-made DooM novel
The Model
The model in general was good. The poly count was low enough for a decent game of Q2, and it looks just like the original guy. There were a few problems I noticed, however. No model is perfect ;). The head looks a bit boxy, if you ask me. The lower jaw is a perfect square, and the rest of the head looks “square-ish” as well. There is also some odd polygon meshing on the left and right sides of the torso, which makes the corners of the chest stick out unnaturally (then again… he is a half-cyborg). There could have been a few polygons saved here and there, such as the bottom of the feet or the mid-torso area. The CyberDemon model uses parts from other models (such as those arms… recognize ’em from anywhere?… try the original Quake 2 male model) but it’s hardly noticeable unless you read the read-me or you are a complete ppm-guru. The rest, otherwise, is great looking. Everything manages to stay in proportion with the original CyberDemon, except the head is a bit big. It has flaws, but small ones. I would recommend this is you were once a good DooM fan (or if you still are). This is a four star model. Bravo!
Score: 8
The Animations
Nothing special here, folks. If you are a huge DooM fan, don’t read this part. Now on with it… the animations, quite frankly, aren’t the best I’ve ever seen. Because he stands still in the standing anims (not entirely, of course) there are some noticeable jiggly vertices. The run looks a bit silly, because the feet don’t move or bend, and his left leg looks crippled (don’t ask, you just have to see it). The animations are WAAAY too choppy for my tastes, especially the shoot animation and the death animations. Example: on one death animation, there is an explosion that lasts one frame long, and then immediately on the next frame the arm is already on the ground. It’s magic! Well, I’ve done enough complaining; there were SOME good things. The explosions were very nice, and the flipoff, salute, and taunt were pretty original. That’s all I have to say; if you’re looking for a well-animated model… you shouldn’t be here. Two stars.
Score: 4
The Skin
The skins were good (thank god… they were made by the guy who’s skinning for my PPM). The muscle lines were great, but it could have used a bit more shading. It had 25% wasted skin space, which will pull the score down just a tad, and the metal parts weren’t shaded very well. The horns were one unique color in the default CyberDemon skin, but this isn’t too bad. I can’t emphasize enough how good those explosion skins were! Just remarkable! The faces looked a wee but silly, also… overall, the skins were pretty good. The mistakes are small compared to the nice muscle lining and explosions (I just loved those!) which make up most of the model anyway. These deserve three stars.
Score: 6
Sounds
Yes, the CyberDemon has sounds. Deimos managed to get most of the original CyberDemon sounds in as well as some highly-modified ID sounds, etc. There was one we problem. The sound quality wasn’t the best… and another thing, it used some of the “Demon” sounds from Doom! Tisk tisk! Sinner! ;P They all went well with what they were supposed to be. Nothing much else to say here… four and a half stars.
Score: 9
Visible Weapons Support
Yes, the CyberDemon does have VWep. I found it quite creative how the appropriate weapon was sorta encased inside the rocket launcher. The problems, though, is he didn’t delete the unseen polygons in the weapons. Plus, with certain weapons, certain parts of that weapon stick out of the metal encasing. Not too attractive. VWep for the CyberDemon is creative yet with a few flaws.
Pack Inclusion
Aw, heck – CyberDemon WILL be in the next pack, not only for the fans of Doom, but also because he’s so damned cool!
-Review by BloodRedJack.
CyberDemon 2000 model by John Gorden
Intro
The CyberDemon, the original giant rocket wielding cyborg from Hell. The mere mention if his name strikes terror into the heart of anyone who’s ever played DOOM, in fact I bet that any veteran doom player reading this is clutching the mouse just a little tighter than usual right now.
“Made for both Q2PPM and Q2Mods CyberDemon 2000 is Horny, Hungry, and after Blood. It’s been 5 years since he was last let out to play and he’s mad as hell.”
That’s how the README puts it so lets see if this model is as scary as it should be.
The Model
Scary? Hell Yes! The model is excellent. It captures the character of the CyberDemon very well and is extremely well constructed.
Looking at the fine detailing on the model I was expecting a fairly high polygon count. Not so, at 634 polygons the model is well within acceptable limits and the modeler has made every polygon count.
The organic portion of the body is built in one piece whilst the cyborg implants are made from separate chunks. This is the ideal way to construct the model. It allows nice fluid motion of the fleshy parts and mechanical looking motion of the robot leg. The joins between the body and the prosthetics are simply done by placing the 2 objects over one another. This results in the body leaking through the mechanical objects and although that results in some funny clipping from time to time the effect is generally very good. It looks like the flesh is squeezing through gaps in the mechanism. The teeth are also done as separate individual objects and as a result they look ferociously sharp, in fact the head and face are particularly well done. The articulated jaw works perfectly.
It does appear that the CyberDemon has lost a little weight in the 5 years since we saw him last, however, I don’t think that’s a bad thing as I’ll explain in the animation section. The only criticism I have of the model is that I get the impression the arms are slightly on the short side but it’s so slight it’s hardly worth mentioning.
First Class. 5 star.
Score: 10
The Animations
The standard of the animation is also very high. I think the animator made a very good job of reinterpreting the motion from doom to quake2. This is not an easy task because the original CyberDemon is a HUGE monster and in order to fit within the Quak2 player bounding box it had to be shrunk considerably also the slow lumbering motion of the original is nothing like the frenetic action that’s found in q2 so baring that in mind there’s a danger that a doom player looking at this CyberDemon may think “Oh that CyberDwarf should cut down on his caffeine intake” but I think making the CyberDemon a little more slim and lithe looking helps counteract that impression.
The stand animation is great. He stands there moving his weight from leg to leg and flexing his fingers then shows us his fangs as he roars. The run animation is fairly good too but there’s a problem with the hips. They should rock from side to side but they appear to stay perfectly level and as a result the run animation looks slightly unnatural when viewed from the front. The jump, flip, salute and various pain animations are relatively conventional but very well executed and the taunt animation in which the CyberDemon throws back his head and gives out an all mighty roar (well it would if you could synch the sounds with the actions) is wonderful. It’d scare the life out of anyone who saw it. The rest of the animations are all very well done as well but I do fell that the death animations, although very well made, are a little unimaginative. I’d like to have seen the cybernetic implants come detached from the body or something reminiscent of the CyberDemon death in Doom where his carcass is reduced to a pool of red goo with some chunks of metal protruding. But you can’t have everything.
Very well animated but for a tiny flaw in the walk and rather conventional deaths. 4 star.
Score: 8
The Skin
The skin is made to the same high standard as the rest of this model. It’s 256×256, has only 18% wasted space, and makes good use of the now standard trick of doubling over the surfaces to use the same portion of the bitmap in several different places. More to the point the skin looks crisp, detailed, and complements the model beautifully. The layout is well done. The models is fragmented into a large number of smaller components. Although making the model perhaps quite difficult to skin for (as it’s not necessarily clear what part of the model corresponds to which piece of the bitmap) this means that nice distinct divisions between different parts of the CyberDemon are drawn improving the overall clarity of the model.
The bitmap art is also very well executed. He really does look like the original CyberDemon. The color is fairly close but more of a tan color than the pallid flesh tone or the original but baring in mind the restrictions of the quake2 pallet I doubt if it could have been any closer. The musculature is well rendered and the face is suitably demonic.
As well as the standard skin we get 2 CTF skins The blue skin gives the CyberDemon grey corps like skin and glowing blue horns whilst the red skin gives a somewhat sun burned appearance and piercing yellow eyes. All three skins are excellent. 5 star.
Score: 10
Sounds
The Sound…Hmm, well there’s two ways of looking at this. On the one hand this is supposed to be the CyberDemon form doom so the approach taken with the sound of just lifting the original doom sounds and using them in an almost completely unmodified form is a valid one. It makes him sound just like the Doom CyberDemon. On the other hand this is an update and it would have been nice to update the sounds as well.
As quake2 player models go the sound is fairly poor with the same sounds being used over and over so I’m giving it a low mark. However I do appreciate the reason for using such a simple sound system so when I calculate the final mark I’m not going to allow the sound mark to drag down an otherwise excellent model.
1 star but retro fans and purists will like it.
Score: 2
Pack Inclusion
CyberDemon 2000 is a top class model. I was torn between giving it 4.5 and 5 stars but decided to give it 4.5 in the end. The addition of viewable weapons and improved sounds would upgrade this to a 5 star model easily. Yes, CyberDemon will be set loose in the pack, and frankly, I pity all the other player models.
CyberDemon 2000 pictured about one tenth of a second before my field of view is entirely filled with incoming rockets.
-Review by James G. Watt
MonsterHouse: CyberDemon 2000
The Cyberdemon is a rampaging monster straight from the bowels of Hell, toting a rocket launcher in place of his left arm. Brought to us by Jonn Gorden, Cyberdemon 2K is a heck of a model. It is a damn sight better than the Cyberdemon by Deimos (which this followed) and is of course based on the monster from id’s classic games Doom and Doom 2. (Dunno whether he’ll appear in Doom 3) If you don’t know why Cyberdemon 2K is cool then I suggest you go shut down your comp and open the window and toss your comp out cos there’s obviously no hope for you. Cyberdemon 2K comes in regular and ctf flavours and features a full sound pack. My one minor niggle is it would have been nice to have a pain skin for him, oh well, can’t have everything can we? FYI Shown are CTF red and the base cd2000 skin.
Zero Gravity Entertainment: Quake Player Characters by John Gorden
Bonus: Bugs Doom by John Gorden
Bugs Doom is a project that I was only able to spend a few weeks on. I never went back to it when I had the chance because by that time Quake had come out and I didn’t want to spend all that effort on something that people may not be interested in any more. Instead I put my spare time into what would become X-Men: The Ravages of Apocalypse.
Little did I know the overwhelming reaction it would receive upon release. I still get emails requesting that I complete the project. Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to complete it, but it is on my “would be fun to do one day” list…
Donde Quake 2? 