This is a crosspost from my Substack Newsletter.

As always, there’s also a video edition of The Hydromecha Monthly for a quick rundown on the headlines:

The Waltz of False Life and Other Auditory Escapades

I got back to making music this past month and finished a new song called The Waltz of False Life. It was loosely inspired by a couple of songs from Galaktikon 2, one of my favorite albums, plus some other prog metal stuff.

Initially I made the song using the GZDoom soundfont so I could use it in ANTARCTICA, but then I started messing around with some other soundfonts I had laying around to make a less-compressed sounding version. I also went back to an older song I made, Catacomb March, and gave it the same treatment.

Lights, Camera, Scratchbuild!

I now have the means to make better scratchbuilding videos using this new setup. This way I can actually show the creation process of builds instead of just showing stills like in the Plague Machine video. The camcorder is hooked up to a tablet so I can see what the camera’s seeing without having to take my eyes off of the table (which I shamelessly copied from Greig Johnson Making’s setup).

I’ve got ideas for another build that I’m hoping to get started this month. ETA uhhh idk maybe a month or two from now? We’ll see.

Here’s an incredibly early vaguely proof of concept sneak peak at what I’m building next:

This is gonna be the mouth to a big robot scorpion sorta thing. I’m gonna use bread clips to make the Chelicerae (funky looking claw things scorpions have in their mouths).

Behold, The Cyberpenguin

This is a new monster I made for ANTARCTICA MUST FALL (Doom mod I’m working on). Right now it’s using some placeholder sprites but it’s functional in-game and has SFX. It attacks by ramming into the player at high speed, sending you flying backwards. It doesn’t deal a lot of damage, but its knockback can be pretty crazy.

At some point I gotta make a model and sprites for the Cyberpenguin like I did for the Snowdemon and Surprise Elemental.

Here’s a closeup of the placeholder sprite. It’s a photobash of a penguin (duh), a snowmobile, a jet engine, and a snowplow train. Expect the final model to look something kinda like this.

Cubeguy Crouching Normals

Cubeguy’s crouching normals are finished along with some jumping-related animations (see the video edition for those). There are a whole lotta other animations I gotta finish (like the air normals) that I’m hoping to get cranked out in November.

Bugalo & Blender

As is tradition, there’s a a new Bugalo page out. I wanted to include a funny panel with some funny perspective in this page so I used some Blender magic to make a reference. I set the focal length of the camera really low to get that super closeup look.

The gif above shows the camera going from a more normal focal length to a much lower one while also moving closer to the model. The images below give you a better look at what’s going on. You can read Bugalo on the Hydro website by clicking here. If the new page isn't loading for you try clearing your browser's cache.

That’s all for October. I’ll see you again next month with another newsletter.

Have a good one,

-Hydro