Zumlin Player and Skins
Contents
Introduction
Zumlin Background Story
About Zumlin
Zumlin Specs
About the Author
Zumlin is a Plugin Player Model (PPM) for deathmatch play in Quake2. It is an entirely
new model with all 20 animations, 6 skins (including 2 CTF skins) with corresponding
icons, a new weapon along with a set of view weapons, a complete set of original sound
effects, and, finally, a story explaining his existance in the Quake2 universe.
Author:
Rowan "Sumaleth" Crawford
Zumlin Background Story
By Rowan 'Sumaleth' Crawford
The mission briefing listed a rather vague, "assess situation", leaving Zumlin
wondering exactly what he was supposed to do. Perhaps the lack in clarity was simply
trying to imply a relaxed set of rules on this particular mission, suggesting that the
council were possibly a little worried about what might evolve on the Strogg homeworld.
The station located on a planet in the Strogg system had reported a fleet of huge
battleships coming out of warp in an imposing pattern, mostly situated directly above the
main Strogg city. The reports suggested that the ships were of reasonable technology from
an unknown species, both points were sure to have caused more than a little concern in the
council. The Strogg had been a known enemy for nearly 10 thousand generations now and so a
certain comfort had developed on the Zargraan homeworld, a comfort that was easily upset
when a new, powerful race was introduced into the equilibrium.
The Zargraan homeworld was located on the 3rd of 5 planets orbiting the closest sun to the
Stroggs solar system, a locale that was both beneficial to a point, but often annoying to
the Zargraan race.
Being the nearest star always meant the Stroggs would explore there first after they
developed the warp drive - a technology the Strogg had discovered first - and chances are
that the Stroggs really hadn't expected to find anyone living there, let alone a race whos
evolution, both spiritually and in technology, was well in advance of the Stroggs. They
were more than a little unprepared. Even so, their greed, and need, for fresh body parts
was so great that little thought was given, with a full on attack launched soon after the
discovery was made.
The Zargraan were totally surprise bythe ensuring onslaught yet, after a little confusion,
they were able to convincingly destroy the Strogg army to within an inch of their life. A
lesson that would have gone completely wasted had the Zargraan been an offensive race, but
luckily for the Strogg, the Zargraan were far more passive than their fighting skills
would suggest.
The Strogg had limped back to Stroggos to lick some fairly deep wounds, but that encounter
was forever to change the way the Zargraans structured their civilisation. Their aim,
above all else, was for a peaceful existance with the universe, but it was now apparent
the universe had little say in the predisposition of the lifeforms inhabiting it's vast
shell.
The biggest change the encounter forced apon the peaceful Zargraan race was the
introduction of the warrior caste. Originally a highly benevolent race, even more so than
the Strogg, the Zargraans had taken their entire civilisation to the brink of total
annihilation, culminating in a massive war covering the entire surface of the planet. The
devastation of loosing more than 97% of the population inside a single orbit lead to the
collapse of the existing governing structure, and the system which built up in it's place,
over many generations, was intent on creating a far different existance.
Zumlin owed his own existance to the Strogg, for without the upset in the Zargraan way of
life, he would never have been born. After the final civilian war, the Zargraan had worked
diligently in mapping out their entire DNA structure, intent on identifying the elements
which gave Zargraan their benevolent traits. Their worked payed off, and only 3
generations after the war ended they had began the process of removing those genes from
their population entirely.
A process was never found that would allow removal of those traits from living beings, and
so the process was one of simple genocide; every fetal Zargraan was duely tested for the
gene, and if the gene was found the fetus was aborted.
The Strogg incident had shown a need to reassess the laws and look at the possibility of
allowing the survival of a limited number of psychotically unstable Zargraans in the form
of a well controlled warrior caste. A group whos sole purpose was to keep an eye on the
Strogg and keep the Zargraan race free from external hostilities.
Zumlin was proud of his role in the Zargraan structure, and understood the purpose of the
warrior caste. Their existance was not a comfortable one orginally, but no one again
questioned their need after the Strogg launched a second offensive against the Zargraan
homeworld, not even 200 generations after the initial attack.
The Stroggs were far more prepared this time and while the Zargraan would still have been
little match for the Stroggs, the existance of the warrior caste created such massive
devastation for the Stroggs that there had been no further attacks more more than 9
thousand generations. The Zargraan had quickly moved the focus of the war from their
homeworld, back to Stroggos where the resulting mass destruction had left the Stroggs more
than a little frightened of their nearest neighbours. Frightening the Strogg would have
once been considered a laughable idea, but the Zargraan had achieved it.
The Zargraan monitoring of Stroggos was never questioned by the Strogg, they just accepted
it; the Zargraan had twice shown no interest in conquest and so the Strogg simply got on
with their own plans. There were lots of stars in the sky, afterall.
For 9 thousand generations the Zargraan witnessed countless Strogg missions head out into
the stars, all but a handful of times returning with the body parts they required to keep
their culture alive. There were a lot of angry alien races out there now, a situation that
left the Zargraan with a sense of unease. Sooner or later the Strogg would surely find a
race with both more powerful weapons, and a more benevolent attitude. The Strogg would
lead them back here, and the Zargraan homeworld was so close...
But the Stroggs had developed into a fierce race with power that few distant races were
able to put up more than even a token fight. The Strogg life was built entirely apon the
need for war, or more clearly, bodyparts, a fact which lead to frightening advances in
armorment, but the Zargraan enjoyed a view of the Strogg development others lacked which
allowed them to always be three steps ahead. They had no delusions - the Strogg would try
again one day, it was inevitable, so eternal vigilance was compulsory.
The Zargraan outposts had seen, first hand, two alien attacks on the Strogg's own
homeworld, obvious signs the Strogg weren't out making friends on their journeys. The
first was early in the Strogg's war development, and while the Strogg were far too strong
for their arachnid-like adversaries, the war was long and heavily damaging on the planet
itself.
The Stroggs were perhaps lucky for this encounter since, while they were able to
comfortably win the struggle, they were plainly shown the problems with their own defense
systems. They were setup as well as possible to cope with the Zargraanian style of
offense, but other races worked differently. Very differently. Changes were needed.
The resulting system of planet based "big guns" was the first of the more than
200 revisions they have seen since. The second Stroggos attack lasted little more than a
planet rotation, the attacking force picked out of orbit one by one by the big guns. The
Zargraans watched intently, knowing that a purely orbit based assult had little hope of
making an impact, but they didn't interfere. It if didn't effect them, they were happy to
let the situation find it's own resolution.
It had been a long time since the Strogg returned basically empty handed. Their force had
grown so strong since the original Zargraan assult that they were picking off alien races
basically at will.
But they had recently returned, this time not only without with a full bounty, but in what
appeared to be at least a partial retreat. A sign that they come up against a force almost
equal to their own, or perhaps they simply understimated their prey. Either way, the
Zargraan felt it important to find out. Just in case.
They had barely begun intiating spy activities when their questions were answered in full
as a fleet of heavily armored battleships appeared in orbit around Stroggos. A decent
technology, showing a distinct lack of experience on the designers behalf, yet at the same
time proving the race to be highly capable in many areas.
The Zargraans sat back and watched, interested in how the attack would progress, but
always more than a little worried about this new race the Stroggs had dragged back to this
part of the universe.
It initially looked like they would be launching an orbit attack, with thousands of bombs
dropped onto the now heavily fortified Strogg cities. The Zargraans began guessing how
long the attackers would survive, but it didn't take long to realise that there was more
thought gone into the attack plan than original observation had suggested. Someone had
done their research here.
There was only the one massive drop at which point the battleships quickly disappeared
into the characteristic distortion of warp travel. They had probably gone just far enough
away that they would be ready to return when the time was right.
The bombs didn't explode on impact, suggesting that they were instead individual capsules
holding a single soldier. A clever tactic really, since shuttling down groups at a time
would have been easy cannon fodder for the Stroggs, whereas thousands of small high
velocity targets were all but untouchable by the Strogg defenses. They had built cities
strong enough to weather bombing, but had overlooked the possibly of a landing force
"bombed" onto the planet. Notes were taken.
Zumlin sat strapped into his craft, along with three others from the warrior caste spy
division. A short flight would find them on Stroggos where they were to observe the war
first hand and evalute the attacking force. That is, to "assess" the
"situation".
About Zumlin
Zumlin is my second PPM, the first one being Morbo which is available at the Impact web
page too. Whereas Morbo was more a learning experience (hence I kept him fairly
straightforward), I was fairly keen to do a lot more with Zumlin, particularly in the area
of animations.
Zumlin Specs
Polygons: 629 Zumlin
63 weapon
691 TOTAL
Frames: 198
Animations: 20
For comparison:
Male: 590 + 72 = 662
Morbo 449 + 51 = 500
Programs Used:
Modelling: Lightwave Modeler
Animation: Lightwave Layout
Skins: GraFX2
Utils: qdata (special Lightwave version)
qME (misc testing)
JAWmd2 (excellent for testing the skin while working on it)
NST (used to fix the skin problems for v2.1)
Zumlin was tested ingame exclusively using Ridah's Eraser bot (also available
on the Impact web page).
About the Author
Rowan 'Sumaleth' Crawford
Email: sumaleth@starfury.apana.org.au
Fun Web: http://impact.frag.com
Work Web: http://www.animagrafx.com.au
Cool Web Hosters: http://www.frag.com
Past Quake Projects: Quake Rally, Quess (mods)
Morbo/Brawn (Plugin Player Models)
Thanks to everyone who helped out.