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Skeletron Prime (Terraria)

"The End."



Skeletron Prime, Skeletron's twisted mechanical doppleganger.


... and here we are, the last piece of Terraria content I'll be making is finally completed.

I can't tell you exactly when I first blocked out Skeletron Prime, but I'm going to guess it was some time late into 2015. Back then, I was still a bright-eyed workshopper, with aspirations of building a community around the content I was creating. It wasn't just that I wanted to create workshop items, I wanted to make videos and start building a youtube following.

Skeletron Prime was to be featured in a video, with all sorts of props, effects, sounds, transistions, etc. I had plotted out the storyboard and some stages already in the making. Prime would be assembled in a hanger, with various cuts to different parts being screwed on. Eventually, his faceplate would be mounted, and he'd be ready to be unleashed upon the world. Think something similar to the Starcraft 2 trailer.

However, making a single good looking poster takes maybe an hour; Making a full 3 minute video with all the modeling, texturing, animating, sound design, and so forth, takes months. Completely impractical for my aims.

So I put it off.


After years away from my workshop, the single thing stopping me from returning to finish Prime was his complexity. There was so much detail in his original form and all of his props that I couldn't bring myself to complete him. Each time I booted him up, I was immediately overwhelmed. I simply couldn't do it.


...until now. In an effort to finally conclude my workshop, I decided it was time to strip away everything related to the video stuff and polish what I had. After three weeks of work, he's finally done.

This was the last boss I had unfinished. The rest have either been released or deleted. There will be no more Terraria 3D content. I've also decided that this will be my last Source Filmmaker submission.


I want to thank everyone for following my workshop, creating content with my submissions, sharing my stuff around, and leaving comments and likes. From the humble beginnings of Eye of Cthulhu, to the Destroyer, Moon Lord, Guide. It's been quite a journey, and I'm glad to have went on it.

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-So you're probably wondering what "Phase 2" is. The original version featured a fully constructed Skeletron Prime head with various parts that snapped together. The idea was that Prime was fully buildable, and was going to be snapped/screwed/welded together during the video I had planned. I junked the video, but I had to decide what to do with all the stuff that was already modeled. Considering it was only one extra texture, I decided to include his internals as a "Phase 2". It seemed wasteful to throw it away otherwise. I'm well aware Skeletron Prime does not have such a phase 2.

-Skeletron's eyes are toggled on and off using the skin toggle.

-There is a sequence for extending the spikes from the side of his head.

-The engine on the back follows the similar theme of the mechanical bosses being soul powered, originally set down by Twins and Destroyer. It features a fully animated soul swirling energy core. The engine also features fueling ports, which were going to be in the video, but were scrapped. The fuel hoses that were supposed to connect to these fuel ports have also been scrapped.

-The internals of Prime feature a brain with various wires, a speaker and various sensors in the roof of his mouth, and pistons in the back for pushing the spikes out.

-Skeletron Prime's textures were modeled after Destroyer, with some notable improvements. I tried to apply some color theory to vary up the original Destroyer style, but it is still a bit on the bright side. Tweak the ToneMapScale to prevent the metal from blowing out in certain scenes.

-Each arm uses Skeletron's left arm as a base, hence the leftover clavicle bone. I could not find a graceful way to rig a fully four armed one head Prime. I will not be providing a script to rig this either.

-Prime's original arm designs were extremely bland, so I teched them up to something that feels more futuristic and mechanical.

-Along each arm is a pulsing hexagonal series of plates at the joints. These are "anti-gravity" panels, for lack of a better term. I wanted to have some mystical/science fiction way to explain how they float. There are also radar dishes for communicating between the joints.

-The cannon arm features a rotary barrel for firing mines. In the original game, Prime fires stock bombs that are comically large. This does not translate well to 3D. I decided instead to scale the bombs down and make something more personalized to Prime. The barrel sports a tri-barrel to accommodate the new bomb size.

-The saw arm features actual functional saw blades. Use the saw_idle sequence to spin the blades. You can speed them up or slow them down by stretching the animation's time in the motion editor.



The original concept and design of "Skeletron Prime" is the intellectual property of "Re-Logic".


Includes:
terr\models\bosses\boss_skeletron_prime.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_skeletron_prime_arm_cannon.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_skeletron_prime_arm_laser.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_skeletron_prime_arm_saw.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_skeletron_prime_arm_vice.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_skeletron_prime_mine.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_skeletron_prime_phase2.mdl

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