Wait, Warthogs are creating weather now?

(6:38) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. While recording for the last movie, a new phenomenon manifested. A suspended hog, seemingly snowing! Check it out.

Released October 27th 2024, gameplay recorded October 21st-26th 2024.

00:02 (Original snowing hog) I got my original 'snowing hog' as seen here, back on October 21st. The jam freed up in such a way that the hog was left suspended, and it looked like the hog was snowing. I assume the snow is actually coming from the branches though, due to hog contact. When the hog get lowered slightly by a plasma blast, the snow stops. A curiosity to notice: each time I throw a plasma, the snow momentarily pauses. You can see that later in the movie too.

00:57 (Setting up for getting more) To focus on this phenomenon for the movie, I set things up with a checkpoint after having delivered an initial shunt to the hog, similar to the shunt it got in the preceding footage, whereby the hog is moved nearer the back of the tank. Having done that, all that's left will be to knock it back the other way and hope the jam frees up just right.

01:13 (Two failures) However, it's pretty random and has usually taken me many tries to get a snowing hog. Here you see two typical failures. The second one may've been partly my fault though (rather that purely due to randomness), as I may've also hit the tank, causing it to slide forwards. I was trying to only hit the hog, so the hog would end up sliding off the front of the tank.

01:31 (Success) This time things free up nicely and I get a good snowing hog. It's a bit wonky, unlike the original very level one, but that doesn't matter.

02:45 (Even heavier snow) This second example appears to feature even heavier snow. Sitting in the side-seat, it's clear that the snow is louder too. At the end I do some tagging. Notice the downward tails on the plasma grenades.

04:09 (Weak snow) Sometimes I only got weak snow, such as seen here. I suspect the weakness is because the hog isn't in such good contact with the tree branches, being a bit lower. This isn't the first time I've shown weak snow though. If you recall, my suspended hog in BCM520 was causing snow, but only very weak snow (except for when you looked at it the right way and it strengthened).

04:32 (Lowering and raising, and tyre burn) In this last example I've again got heavy snow, and I draw attention to a curiosity. There's tyre burn on the ground, despite the tyre being up in the air! When the hog is lowered the snow turns off and the tyre burn fades out. But when I get the hog fully back up with some tank work, I get heavy snow again, and the tyre burn returns.

However, heavy snow doesn't always mean you get tyre burn. Back in the 1:31 segment we had heavy snow but no tyre burn. My original snowing hog did have tyre burn though. You may've noticed it around 0:38 (and there was also some visible tyre burn with the hog in my 'Even heavier snow' segment).

Something else I'll mention: sometimes I instead got tyre burn at front right instead of front left. Seemed pretty random. Another thing: I never got more than one tyre burn at once.

Closing remarks I'd say this phenomenon lends weight to the thesis that in regard to snow machines such as showcased in BCM518 and BCM521, the snow arises from the interaction between the Warthog and the tree branches. I suspect it's arising in much the same way as it's doing here. With a snow machine the snow tends to scatter more widely and wildly, but that would be because of the tank. The snow may be bouncing off its surfaces, or perhaps it's being sent away from the tank due to some other mechanism.

Note: 'tyre burn' was mentioned earlier in the written commentaries for both BCM515 and my 'snow machine special' BCM518.

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