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Arise! Not sure if there is technonecromancy somewhere in the HG backstory but I figured I'd bump this thread with some very minor news. After several unsuccessful attempts a few years ago, I decided to try and extract the 3d files from the defunct HGA game in order to salvage the one or two gear designs that didn't suck... and this time it worked! I think it's both utterly hilarious and telling that Mektek/Stompy Bot/Blocplay/Whatever their name is now prioritized a detailed double fingered salute animation (and gangnam dances, butt slapping, and suck it animations) over less important things like cool weapon carrying poses. The ones I found in game make the initial attempt at plastic minis look positively dynamic.

...I need those. For reasons ^^

Butt slapping mech fetish confirmed!

Warboss that's hilarious.

In other news, the Utopia/Peace River KS rewards are supposed to start shipping mid February.

 John Prins wrote:
Warboss that's hilarious.

In other news, the Utopia/Peace River KS rewards are supposed to start shipping mid February.

Yeah, it's eye opening but not surprising. The gangnam style dance has iirc 160 frames of animation (and all other goofy taunts have 100+) whereas the weapon holding/firing animations have two frames... Their prioritizing e-sports loot box style aspects over piddly things like actual gameplay is pretty evident. I've gotten a single pose that resembles the classic assault hunter worth using out of all of it so far that doesn't look as stiff as a 12 hour old corpse.



Any word on them redoing the polar forces from the original box? I know it's unlikely but that's probably when I'd be interested enough to look again.

For the more knowledgeable, how are ramming plates supposed to look in game? I've been trying to jig up a hunter xmg and the only model reference is unfortunately the Arena model which would be like using a monster truck as a reference for a stock dealer pickup truck. Is the studded shoulder pad supposed to represent that? It's a bit post apocalyptic/necromunda for my tastes.

 warboss wrote:

Any word on them redoing the polar forces from the original box? I know it's unlikely but that's probably when I'd be interested enough to look again.

Why would they bother ? Not only do the fans love them, it would also take efforts.

 HudsonD wrote:

 warboss wrote:

Any word on them redoing the polar forces from the original box? I know it's unlikely but that's probably when I'd be interested enough to look again.

Why would they bother ? Not only do the fans love them, it would also take efforts.

Re-doing the plastics? That's probably not happening. Like, ever. People won't Kickstart that again.

 warboss wrote:
Butt slapping mech fetish confirmed!

"I like RoBUTTS and I cannot lie"

Seriously, though, I'm interested in anything decent you manage to get


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 John Prins wrote:

 HudsonD wrote:

 warboss wrote:

Any word on them redoing the polar forces from the original box? I know it's unlikely but that's probably when I'd be interested enough to look again.

Why would they bother ? Not only do the fans love them, it would also take efforts.

Re-doing the plastics? That's probably not happening. Like, ever. People won't Kickstart that again.

They could bankroll it themselves. feth, I could bankroll it, nowadays.

 Albertorius wrote:

"I like RoBUTTS and I cannot lie"

Seriously, though, I'm interested in anything decent you manage to get

I got you covered. I think the scale is a bit off though.




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As for my idea for re-rebooting HG plastics, a guy can dream! Stop judging me for dreaming big!

 Albertorius wrote:

They could bankroll it themselves. feth, I could bankroll it, nowadays.

Well, if you did, might I suggest a return to HO scale or 15mm? Or a nice 28mm Heavy Gear game?

 John Prins wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

They could bankroll it themselves. feth, I could bankroll it, nowadays.

Well, if you did, might I suggest a return to HO scale or 15mm? Or a nice 28mm Heavy Gear game?

To be completely honest, if I were to do that, I'd do it for something else. DP9 made it pretty clear that they did neither need nor want me as a customer, back in the day.

For example, nowadays Lancer has picked my fancy. I'd much rather fund 3d files for that line of mechs, at this moment.


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 warboss wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

"I like RoBUTTS and I cannot lie"

Seriously, though, I'm interested in anything decent you manage to get

I got you covered. I think the scale is a bit off though.

Spoiler:

...a Mad Cat? Really? Heh

 warboss wrote:

I got you covered. I think the scale is a bit off though.

Spoiler:

Dude, you've got some... weird fantasies.

Edit : Waitaminute, are you telling me those were taken from the actual game files ?!

Albertorius wrote:
...a Mad Cat? Really? Heh

It had the perfect mix of characteristics...It was one of the few mechs whose name I knew and the model was easily repositionable

HudsonD wrote:
Dude, you've got some... weird fantasies.

Edit : Waitaminute, are you telling me those were taken from the actual game files ?!

Making a Frenchman blush? Is that possible!? The spanking gear is ripped from the game but the Mad Cat is from thingiverse and tweaked to fit. No promises but I think a hunter riding a t-rex mech gangnam style is my next project.I

Edit: If anyone is against me posting this kind of jokey HG related stuff, lmk either in thread or by pm. I understand it's not really minis game related until someone prints it out but I figured the thread was dead and therefore I wasn't derailing any real conversation on the topic.

I don't see what the problem could be, tbh.

 warboss wrote:

Making a Frenchman blush? Is that possible!?

You didn't make a Frenchman blush, you made a Frenchman grin

Silliness aside, it shows where the HGA team were investing their efforts, funny emotes & lootboxes. Brilliant.

 HudsonD wrote:

Silliness aside, it shows where the HGA team were investing their efforts, funny emotes & lootboxes. Brilliant.

That was my first reaction as well when looking at the table of animations and how much effort was put into each category. The actual battle animations are 1998 Heavy Gear of game quality but they had to make sure they put their modern stamp on the equivalent of tea bagging via their taunts.

Is there any broader source on the Hunter XMG than the Gears and Strider Northern Compedium One rpg book? Like an adventure or official short story? The only info I can find on it is in that book but my collection of leftover RPG stuff is pretty paltry. The only pic I can find of it that I consider good is ironically from the most recent Lion's Wrath blitz book.

In a broader sense, was there any official novels or story compilations from HG beyond the 1-2 page blurbs that preceed many chapters?


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 John Prins wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

They could bankroll it themselves. feth, I could bankroll it, nowadays.

Well, if you did, might I suggest a return to HO scale or 15mm? Or a nice 28mm Heavy Gear game?

I'm biased so add salt to taste... but I'd prefer a return to RAFM scale both for its practicality in terms of available terrain as well as a long overdue mea culpa to the OGest of OG HG fans. Plus, at that scale, I've found that I prefer the proportions that better match the art rather than the exaggerated ones (big clown hands, gorilla arms, and JRPG weapons) that we currently get (and admittedly are necessary... a lesson learned from the Tactical scale minis). YMMV. I'm also a proponent of a return to a skirmish scale game in terms of model count so that goes with the bigger model scale well.

Honestly, a "best of both worlds" approach would be something akin to 15mm: enough detail and heft for the little guys, not too big Gear and modern-tank sized tanks, so yeah, HO scale would probably work pretty well.

I'd love it if there was basically the equivalent of Corvus Belli's Infinity both in terms of model count as well as the range of model sizes used.

So I was working this weekend on my Hunter XMG conversion for 3d printing (instead of joke mechspank poses!) and have come up with this so far. I've deleted a bunch of likely unprintable details, resized body part proportions to avoid the tactical scale look, and tweaked the weapons to look more like the blitz scale equivalents. Thoughts? Oh, and yes, I did indeed use virtual legos to make the shoulder ram plate armor.

Well, that's already much better than my attempts.

Also, want

 Albertorius wrote:
Well, that's already much better than my attempts.

Also, want

Thanks! I had already finished tweaking it when I saw you uploaded the IW boarding shield but I considering adding it and some IW details for lulz anyways before lazyiness set in.

Question for the people still following this thread... How important to you are the size differences between the various gear categories that were introduced during the blitz era? I'm referring to the greater differences in size between scout, trooper, elite, and fire support gears (in that ascending order). I was a bit surprised when I rebought a bunch of RAFM gears how much more similar in overall size they were compared with the equivalents in blitz scale. I understand why they did it but was curious how important it is to others. I'm working on a Grizzly Panda now and am trying to dial in the size. The HGA models are basically built on the same core frame (with the notable exception of the feet) with just added bulk for the heavier gears. I decreased the hunter by 15% so that there is a definite difference but it's only about half the difference in the blitz minis. Is this enough?

Personally I prefer a less marked difference. I understand the reasons from an in-game perspective of being able to differentiate stuff, but... in a void it looks kinda daft.

This is, canonically, how big the two above are in-setting:



So I'd say you're pretty much on point.

EDIT:

O_O

...does the Grizzly have little bear ears? Ohmygoshthatssocute

Thanks for the comparison pic! I actually asked someone else (Ashley at the Paint it Pink blog) to measure her Hunter as I don't have any built for Rafm scale but it looks like the 15% reduction I did is spot on with the RPG art. It's probably not enough for blitz scale but I'm not sure yet which one I'll try printing at first.

As for the ears, I was hoping someone would notice. The original had small thin armor plates there as pictured below but I ended up rotating, enlarging, and especially thickening them to make them more prominent and printable because I had the same reaction. I have to believe that the designer put them there for that purpose!

 warboss wrote:

I'm biased so add salt to taste... but I'd prefer a return to RAFM scale both for its practicality in terms of available terrain as well as a long overdue mea culpa to the OGest of OG HG fans. Plus, at that scale, I've found that I prefer the proportions that better match the art rather than the exaggerated ones (big clown hands, gorilla arms, and JRPG weapons) that we currently get (and admittedly are necessary... a lesson learned from the Tactical scale minis). YMMV. I'm also a proponent of a return to a skirmish scale game in terms of model count so that goes with the bigger model scale well.

I'm pretty much agreed on all counts. HO was a much better scale for the gears and infantry, if not the striders/tanks/whatnot.

So I did a small "stuff to Grizzly" scale, and man, does it show:

The Jaguar is the one where the comparison is least stark, but even then, it is huge. Maybe not so much in height, but the... heft, of the Grizzly is surprising.


...of course, it goes downhill from here xd

Hunter... It must be a third of the total volume


...and well, the tiny guys





Pretty sure each single leg of the Grizzly has at leas as much metal as those.

Thanks! I did my own comparison using my Blitz minis and I came up with about a 25% difference between a hunter and grizzly (i.e. 33mm vs 44mm) but obviously that varies with pose. In my initial post, I sized the hunter at 15% smaller but decreased it to 20% smaller. Now that I'm trying to support all those crazy northern armor plate angles (in between recent frequent crashes of Chitubox that hamper progress further!).

For reference purposes...

Thanks. I haven't decided if I want to do the cheetah as I like it less than the XMG and Panda. It's also a multipiece model like the grizzly that I have to preassemble and I'm worried about gaps in between the parts. I suppose we'll see how the grizzly turns out when printed before I decide.