Oooh… pretty snow! And bark!

(5:37) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. You may recall the Warthog in BCM517 which had a tree in the back. When I got that hog angled up so steeply that it was unboardable, I noticed some striking snow and bark effects when hitting the flip prompt. That's the topic of this movie.

Released November 1st 2024, gameplay recorded October 25th-31st 2024.

00:02 (Angling up, stage one) In this initial segment (starting at the checkpoint seen in BCM517 around 3:16), what I was originally doing was setting things up for trying to get a snow machine. Raising the nose would make it easier for the tank to get under the hog. I never did get a snow machine, but the set-up is now also serving as a good start towards making the hog unboardable.

Note: rotating the hog around the tree to a new direction seemed useful. Without rotation, I couldn't get stage two to work. Maybe it was to do with the sloping ground, or maybe I just needed to try more, I don't know.

01:02 (Angling up, stage two) After quite a few tries (it seems a bit random), I finally got the hog unboardable as seen.

01:29 (Snow and bark) There's now a few minutes of footage showing the snow and bark that result from flip attempts. The hog itself was too jammed to actually flip, and I suspect the attempts weren't altering it in the slightest. Note: a short while after the close-up clip at the rear of the hog at 1:55, I saved a delayed tunnel checkpoint, to preserve the situation for further play. That save is what I used for the rest of my footage.

02:55 (Tyre burn) Another flip effect was tyre burn at the rear left (also in view around 1:40). You can see the blackness grow as I press X three times; then I let it fade.

03:12 (Steady bark flow) I also found that I could get the bark flowing in fairly steady fashion by doing my button pressing appropriately. And since I like flying bark, that gave me a good excuse for making a short montage of bark clips to end the main coverage.

03:49 (Odd blinking) At some point I noticed the blinking on two of the hog's display panels, which I thought was odd, so here's a short clip of that. Is the blinking because the hog is unboardable? No; I've also had an unboardable hog where there's no blinking. In fact, you can see an example in the movie's final clip (until a plasma blast causes blinking to start). What's the cause of the blinking then? All I can say is, I suspect it's arising from the hog's unnatural state.

04:01 (Grenade play) The hog was jammed pretty robustly, and you can get some sense of that with this grenade play, in which I also try some flips along the way. Three plasmas appear to do nothing, but finally, a frag at the back of the hog makes it boardable. That frag effect was expected; seemed to happen most times. Actually there were also times when my first plasma made the hog boardable, but that was unusual.

Sometimes after the frag blast (I did the routine many times), the hog was causing scraping sounds. In that case, weapon effects were lacking. I didn't like that, so I've used a clip where there was no scraping initiated.

04:30 (Example with heavier snow) I did further play to get other examples of a similarly unboardable hog, in case there were other interesting flip effects to be seen. With this example I got significantly heavier and louder snow, but the bark was relatively weak.

To end the movie I do a quick bit of grenade play. Notice that the first blast causes two of the hog's display panels to start blinking. So I think the blast affected the hog somehow, which caused that. Also, when I do one last flip after the second tag, the hog visible sinks a little. So that flip definitely affected the hog.

Closing remarks All this flying snow and bark may cast further light on the issue of snow machines, and specifically the question of how the snow and bark is arising. In this movie, trying to flip - which put the hog under some unseen force - caused snow and bark. With a snow machine, I think the hog is likewise under some force or strain, except that it doesn't stop, and so the snow and bark keeps churning out. I'm also thinking that contact with tree branches was needed. That would be the other element.

Just to mention, this wasn't the first time I'd got the hog angled so steeply that it was unboardable. Originally I happened to do it three days earlier when trying to get a snow machine. I subsequently noticed the interesting flip effects, and that's what gave me the idea for the movie (in which I started afresh).

With my main example here, flip attempts never worked. The jam was too firm. However, I later got an example in which the jam was apparently weaker, because this time my first flip attempt moved the back of the hog down the tree a bit, and the hog's angle must've reduced too, because the hog was then boardable.

© 2004-2024 by Rockslider