#i'm also too lazy to get more clips so i keep reusing the same ones xd

[uhohmichio]

Song: Shoulders —  Big Thief Game: Yakuza 3

[melodylandmouse]

Jackie died 3 times for science, but it's okay because Mumble also sacrificed 3 cog summons for this which is Definitely the same level of investment here. Completely.

Anyways,

Results are in, and I gotta take the L on this one. x'D

It does kinda depend on the cog, tho! On bois with fat heads like that Number Cruncher it very neatly comes out the top, but on cogs with the really tall heads like Backstabbers or Penny Pinchers, it actually just. clips through the top of their head. I'm sure that..works physically, 10/10 looks great, Disney. Always in awe of your early 2000s coding prowess.

Guys with tapering heads, however, like that Flunky up there who have more chin than forehead, it comes out lower, which in practice winds up being the back of the head or, potentially, the back of the neck. <- (my stubborn stance) This probably also applies to Legal Eagles since their head is a bit of a trapezoid as well.

I included the Head Hunter though, ironically, as the most definitive evidence that it is *intended* by the original developers to come out of the top of the head. 🎉🎉🎉

If y'all want to hear me geek out for 9 years about why I very specifically worded it that way, though, then keep reading!

My semi-educated guess as to Why this minor variation happens (but lazily so seeing as I'm too lazy to Actually open up the game's model files myself rn I've already spent an hour on this as it is and I've seen enough from those models in the past to never want to do that again in my life) is that in order to save time, the propeller model, origin, and animation is the same for every cog model, which makes sense! Since it's a low-poly art style, the emphasis is very much not on detailed models, since the textures are where the detail is added in order to be less demanding on your graphics card.

One way to both optimize your giant multiplayer game and save time on modeling and animated dozens of different enemies, is just to reuse the same common models. Every cog's head is a separate model, and there are only 3 different suit models, just rendered with different scaling and textures depending on the cog being loaded in. The propeller is also a common model; there doesn't need to be a different one for every cog, so there isn't.

When the propeller spawns in, it's most likely that its origin—the coordinate on the model that decides where the base of it is, to put it Overly simply—is level with the base of the head, about in the middle of the hole where the head goes on the suit. We don't see the base of the propeller, but it renders in there anyway because remember that this is getting applied to all cogs at once; some of them have shorter heads, so if the propeller's origin is too far above the suit, it might not appear attached to certain characters, especially once they're animated to move their heads! The result is that the propeller just clips through wherever it clips through; most of the time that's right through the top of the head. But on certain head shapes or cogs who move their heads forward when they take off or land, it's not.

This isn't a huge problem for most of the models since most of them don't have necks, or are just modeled with the propeller in mind. However, as much time as using this one model the same way every time saves, making the origin and scaling of the model the same for every suit does create some minor funkiness. Hence the way the taller headed cogs get their wigs snatched by their propellers, or it clips out of weird spots on a select few models. Because this One Singular Time, Disney decided that they only needed the one model. I am staring DIRECTLY at the unnecessarily gendered toon models, yes, but this is long enough so I'll spare the full rant.

Doesn't matter that the single model clips weirdly Some of the time though cuz 10 year olds aren't paying that much attention to it. <3 And even if you are paying attention to it, your suspension of disbelief is already so far gone by the rest of the low-poly art that objects clipping through other objects isn't going to break your immersion unless it's an obvious glitch, and this isn't one of those.

[inhales] ART!!!!!!

All that being said, we can go back to that wording; it was intended by the devs to come out of the top of the head. So if this game wasn't low-poly or didn't use the Exact same propeller for every cog, then perhaps the developers would've included a little spot on the top of the cogs' heads for the propeller to actually come out of! If that were the case, we wouldn't have those little accidental variations at all, since the propeller would spawn differently for each model.

They didn't, though, and as far as my own headcanons are concerned, I'm gonna stick with the back of the collar for my guys' propellers. Not to rain on the cartoon physics parade, but I like my cogs to be boring and that means pointing out that their shoulders are more durable than their necks, so it'd make more Physical sense for them to at least be Attached from there, regardless of where they stick out from. On the plus side, though, this means my toons can have the propeller hats all to themselves. ;)

I’m kinda curious about something cause @melodylandmouse on discord told me that a cog’s propeller comes out of the cog’s back but I may or may not be wrong about the propeller coming out of the of the head but hey guys does the propeller come out of the cog’s head or the back?