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The Twins (Terraria)

"This is going to be a terrible night..."


The "Twins", Retinazer(laser) and Spazmatism(fire), the first formal Hardmode fight encountered in Terraria. They are a duo of giant mechanical eyeballs, which tag team their target with fast firing lasers and hot green flame. During their first stage, they wear a facade, masquerading as Eyes of Cthulhu. Once their health is brought down, they shed their disguises and reveal their metal reality.

This was an absolutely exhausting boss to make, and I'm partly to blame for this. I was very resistant to the idea of simply reskinning the Eye of Cthulhu to be the Twins. I took a different approach, completely redesigning everything from their internals, their weapons, and their power supply. It took the better part of a month to hammer out their design and get them into working shape.

The Twins are mechanical eyeballs, that much is true. However, they are unlike the other mechanical bosses, as they parade around as the Eye of Cthulhu when they attack, before dropping the act after sustaining too much damage. I originally saw this as a sort of "Terminator" motif, in that the player was chipping away at their disguise, and their metal core was being exposed by the player's attacks. I also thought about how they might relate to the aliens and the Moon Lord, in that they were made by the Moon Lord's servants in the image of his devious eyes. Or perhaps they were made by some third faction? Who knows.

After brainstorming a bit, I threw out my designs, and went into it with the mindset that the Twins are space fighter-craft, like something out of Star Wars or Star Trek, with things like a functional engine and a living pilot. They project and image of the Eye of Cthulhu as a scare tactic, and they have drop the disguise when they can sustain it no longer. The "souls" dropped by the Twins after their defeat are an alien engine fuel, that Terrarian's simply mistake for "souls". The fans in front lend to the idea that the twins are eyeballs, and also stabilize the ship when flying in an atmosphere(air feeds, science bullcrap, etc). The cockpit features an adjustable seat, so that different types of pilots could fit into the chair. It's the little bits of detail in this model that really make me marvel at how it turned out.

Though not quite obvious, Spazmatism features a updated look. I was going to make Spazmatism a teethy mechanical eyeball, but when compared to Retinazer, it simply didn't make much sense. I experimented with the idea that Retinazer and Spazmatism might be painted up with war paint, similar to WWII fighter planes. I set about painting on Retinazer and Spazmatism's features as war paint onto their shell(Retinazer had cracked metal features around his laser, and Spazmatism had his teeth painted on), but I could never get the effect to look right.

I ended up taking a different route, making Spazmatism into a damaged version of the ship. The sheered metal from the exploded cockpit creates a teeth pattern, in reference to his teethy look in Terraria.

If you read this far, Thank you. The length of the description is usually based on the amount of work I put into the model. I imagine some folks won't care for my designs, and I'm totally fine with that. Reinvisioning the Twins as spaceships was a bit of a stretch, but hopefully people can get hyped over what I've pulled together.

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-If you are looking for the phase 1 version of Retinazer and Spazmatism, that is packaged with the Eye of Cthulhu. It didn't make much sense to post the Eye of Cthulhu again with this submission.

-boss_twins.mdl is the base model for both Retinazer and Spazmatism. You need to spawn the base model first, then plug in your weapon of choice.

-Both Retinazer and Spazmatism's weapons are featured separate from the base model. Retinazer's lazer is "_lazer", and Spazmatism's flamethrower is "_flamer". They also have damaged variants. Simply lock one of these to the ship's "cannon" bone and bind them.

-boss_twins_damaged.mdl is both the damaged version of the ship(the weapon exploded in the barrel), and it's Spazmatism's base model.

-Because the weapons are separate, you could also make custom ship weapons for a custom twin(perhaps a chain gun, rail gun, rocket launcher, etc).

-Contains a "action" animation sequence, which is the ship in its landing position, with the cockpit and cannon posed as well. You can import this sequence on individual bones for quick posing.

-The interior of the ship for boss_twins.mdl is bodygrouped, and defaults to on. You can turn this off to increase performance for shots that do not feature the interior.

-Various internal components are bodygrouped, and can be turned off.

-You can turn the internal soul engine(and exterior engine lights) on and off by changing the current skin. Skin 0 is on, Skin 1 is off.

-Toggling the engine off will remove the souls.

-The side thrusters around the backside of the ship are for strafing the ship and readjusting trajectory.

-The front and back fan, and the souls trapped in the engine are bound to separate bones. Spin them with motion blur on for cool effects.

-The tendrils on the back(the cables around the engine) utilize the same rig as the Eye of Cthulhu. You can bind either model to the other.

-The cockpit is fully rigged, featuring an adjustable design, meant to fit different size pilots. It's made with most of the TF2 characters in mind, but it can also fit smaller or larger pilots.

-The cockpit chair raises and lowers, to bring the pilot up to eye level with the computer screens.

-The cockpit arm rests swivel towards the chair, raise up to arm position, and extend outward to fit the hand position of the pilot.

-The computer screens(Left, Middle, and Right) feature bodygroups that determine whether they are Off, On, or Cameras. The default is off. Switching to bodygroup 1 displays a dummy texture(EyeOS, get it?), but you can override this texture and display your own readouts. Bodygroup 2 is a render target, which let's you set up an exterior camera for the ship.

-Though I did not get around to implementing this, you can also add a crosshair onto the render targets for your computer screens. I believe the Source Developer Wiki talks about this on the "Rear View Mirror" page.

-Though not pictured, the Eye of Cthulhu was given a cloaking channel in its submission. You can bind the Eye of Cthulhu to the Twins, and then cloak the Eye of Cthulhu away when you want to make the Twins appear to be dropping their disguise.

-Features a laser "beam" added into the submission, which can be freely posed and scaled. Very handy for laser effects in general, and can be posed, animated, and colored. Responds fairly well to motion blur.

-There is no umbilical cord model for binding the two ships together. I simply didn't make one.



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


Includes:
terr\models\bosses\boss_twins.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_twins_beam.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_twins_damaged.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_twins_flamer.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_twins_flamer_damaged_back.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_twins_flamer_damaged_front.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_twins_lazer.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_twins_lazer_damaged.mdl

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Map: Lost Forest Map by theFaceless
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=252027525