The Alpha Commander

In case you haven't been able to get a good look at him in game yet, here's the newly added Alpha Commander. This is a personal shot from the dev build, so please don't distribute it out of this sub forum. But since you guys can already take your own shots, figured some of you might like to see him close up.

Will he get the A on his face like on the concept art ?

http://i40.tinypic.com/2i7a1k1.jpg

Any information about the functional difference between the two commanders thus far?

Lovely blockhead.

Currently, none. The differences between commanders will be fairly limited. We'll have more detail on commander differences soon, beyond the obvious aesthetic ones.

I love it thus far, but I really hope you guys add that blocky bit in between the should joint and the sides of the torso. And make the arms generally beefier, they are much larger in the concept art.

That really changes the Alpha Commander from "Wassup guys! Alpha in the house!" to "I will grind to a pulp everything you love and cherish and use it as rocket fuel."

But if the change isn't made, I still love him. I think he'll be my favorite one way or the other, just fits me way more than the Delta does.

I hope he's still a WIP design still, I feel it's too far removed from the concept originally presented.

Mike

Mike, I'll freely admit I'm a little confused by your statement. There are differences for sure, but take a look at this. The differences are pretty minor. I'd be curious what changed that you really don't like.

My thought was that he looks a bit tall and lanky, the concept looks more stocky and tough. It's minor proportional differences yes, but it makes a lot of difference in my opinion.

Yeah, I agree.

Looking at the comparision above, I do like the concept art better. Though I suspect the posture is an important contributing factor here.

Hey all,

I think the differences size wise are rather small. It could be the stance of the concept compared to how it looks in game. In the concept the arms are down and rotated out slightly if to say "come at be bro..." Also the the upper torso appears to be leaning back slightly in the concept which completely changes how everything attached to it looks.

I think a more relaxed stance for the commander would look more powerful but that's more of a personal taste thing. I'm not sure how the commander would then look against all of the other robots in the game. It may look.....off?

Let me know what you guys think?

Cheers,

-Todd

You both hit on the core aspects that I was thinking of as well, but I 'll be going into a bit more detail! ;p

First, a visual aid;



1] The angling on these 'vents' is more Vertical than shown in the Concept.

2] These are much smaller than seen in the Concept, it has a noticeable effect on the proportions, particularly in terms of the Torso:Arm Mass Ratio.

3] It seems to compensate for 2] the shoulders themselves were enlarged, they feel like they're twice the size compared to the concept.

4] The Abdominal area is 'taller', or at least feels as thought it is, I'd say the Abdominal should be shorter by a small amount and the Pelvis should be made taller by the same amount.

5] The thighs in particular feel longer than seen in the Concept, I get the feeling this is due to the standardized Skeleton, but you cna off set this a bit but building up the lower legs upwards to make the thighs appear to be shorter.

Additional notes;

The Arms - I'm hoping this is a case more of of reusing/adapting Delta assets instead of a standard design feature, I'd hope we're not stuck with the same Gun and Fabber Arm for every Commander(along with the 'Shields'). I'd hope that each having distinct elements(Like the green Glow for the Fabber) would be enough and allow for more varied designs.

The 'Eye' To be honest, I'm dis appointed that it's currently just a texture detail, considering the detail of this Alpha commander compared to the Delta I don't see what it couldn't be modeled in some way.



All that being said, I understand if this is just a WIP/first pass at the Alpha Commander(you didn't specify) but considering the level that you "sold" The Alpha/Progenitor Concept design(T-Shirt, Maybe the Statue? Maybe the Minis?) I don't feel there is all that much room to change the designs really.

But as I said earlier, I get the feeling that the Standardized Skeleton is a pretty big root cause of the changes, depending on how in depth it is.

I also should say that out of all the concepts/designs we've seen so far, the Alpha is by far my favorite.


Mike

The arms look a little to close to the arms on the delta, mainly because of the side shields.
I would like to see some true asymmetry like:
A shield on one arm and an obvious gun.
A shield on one arm and a sword like appendage on the gun side.
Or both obvious gun arms closer to the concept art which isn't asymmetrical but it would give the alpha more graphical divergence from the delta.

Though I would like to state that the addition of the alpha commander and the hard work that went into it is appreciated.

Actually the Shields are the one thing that IS different, it uses the Same Gun and Fabber as the Delta, but with different Shields attached.

Mike

The Rendered Alpha looks like the starter mech from Hawken (not a bad thing, but the art style is pretty different to PA).

I agree with everything Mike has analyzed, thank you for that. I also think a major proportional difference comes from the shields; they dwarf the Nanolathe and the Uber-Cannon, giving the effect that the forearms actually look way smaller than they are. This isn't helped by the gigantic shoulders and tall, thin nature of the model overall.

Apologies to the modeler, I'm going to make a parallel comparison in saying it would be a good model under any other name

One last thing, why do the shoulders look sunburned?

Rendered? Which rendered one? The concept art, or the in game one? That's an ingame shot using the debug camera.

And Mike - you hit the nail on the head with the rig comment. Using a common set of rigs is going to create certain constraints on the overall design of the commanders.

I'd assume it's just a matter of where the sun happens to be at the time the pic was taken.

Mike

Yeah, I meant the in-game one when I said Rendered.

Its more that it has shields on both arms that it's similar to the delta. Sure there is a difference in the arm shields on the alpha. The alpha's shields have a bend where the top third and bottom third, of each shield, deviate at what looks like a 37 degree angle. I like the shield-less concept art of the alpha, just guns. Also the guns in the concept art look much larger than the guns on the delta, gives it more of a gunslinger look.

Though perhaps since all the commanders have the same equipment right now their arms will also look roughly the same. Since they have mentioned that in the final build you'll be able to choose different equipment, that has some functionality differences. Maybe at that point there will be different graphical representations of equipment chosen, "Metal Fatigue" would be an example of that.