"You'll read the manual later."


Version 1(May 18, 2013):

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The plans for this guy were laid ages ago. I started on him when I was just starting out, and he looked a lot different back then. Think a scrappy box with knobs, panels, and stickers about circuit diagrams. Needless to say, it was pretty bad. With this set, I picked him back up in hopes of reviving the idea. He started out as a two part machine, one being the launcher, and the other being the controller. The launcher would shoot little miniaturized sappers at targets in a sort of crab-like firing mechanism(No idea how to describe it), with similar characteristics to a modern day wire-based tazer. The controller was pulled up after the sapper was fired, and would be held in the right hand, awaiting the command to detonate. This idea proved to be way too complicated. I dropped the launcher in favor of the smaller handheld device you see above. The controller, also pictured in one of the manual pages, was dropped after I realized the Spy can't pull it up after he throws the smaller sapper, and he can't hold it in his off-hand because of the cloak watch.

The stat ideas come more from a desire to have a completely subversive Spy who works better against teams that have few, ineffective, or no engineers to go up against. I also believe it rewards the Spy for meshing well with enemy groups, and playing his part right up until he lays his trap. After all, some of the most interesting Spy encounters are when you "protected" the enemy point as a Demoman, or when you sat for 3 minutes nervously pretending to watch an enemy Engineer's gear for him.

I also included the sapper placement models, so Valve can use this as a building sapper. This is just for completeness sake. While sapping, the transmitter on the bottom spins.

Excuse the video a tad, it's using an older prop model of the sapper. I noticed it at the last moment. The portable terminal in the manual page was abandoned a while back, so it never got fully polished.


Version 2: (Aug 6, 2015)

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So, this item was pretty much hanging on by a thread. I came very close to canning him entirely. I never much cared for his design or his stats. Looking at them now, I kind of cringe a little bit. He's definitely the weakest item in the set.

Rather than post a new item up to the workshop, I would rather update this one instead. First off, I removed the obnoxious description. I have no idea what I was thinking back then, but it definitely was too long. Most of the images are updated as well. The old video was kept in order to illustrate the animations.

This guy had 4+ textures. WAY too many for a standard item. I trimmed it down to a single texture, threw out a lot of the weird clunky parts, and slimmed down his rig a bit. This was mostly just a gutting job, removing the features that made little sense. I'm still not very comfortable with the design, but switching over to a "taser" style mini sapper is definitely better than the previous "clamp" design.

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