Sci-Fi Contest Roundup: The Valve Universe

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While most of the entries to our Sci-Fi contest come from movies and TV shows, a select few are based on the Valve universe, including a few builds based on Portal and Team Fortress 2.

Deadly neurotoxinGLADOS

Who wouldn’t want a gigantic articulated sociopathic robot hanging around? Two groups are building a clone of GLaDOs from the Portal series. and already the builds look really great.

[AmarOk], developed an open-source personal assistant called RORI that intends to be a more helpful version of GLaDOs, without all the testing and killing. He, along with [Peterb0y] and [n0m1s] are turning this personal assistant software into a GLaDOs replica.

Taking a slightly different tack, [Eric] and [jjyacovelli] built a GLaDOs-like robot with a camera in the ‘face’. This camera connects to a Google Glass and tracks the user’s head movements. There’s also a Nerf gun attached to the end of the robot body, triggered by double winking. Yep, it’s a heads-up display GLaDOs, perfect for punishing your test subjects.

Heavy load comin’ through!

Sentry

Not to be out done by a malevolent, hyper-intelligent artificial intelligence, [Tyler] and [Ryan] are building the cutest gat’ dern weapon in all of west Texas. It’s the level one sentry from Team Fortress 2, and the guys are turning one into a paintball sentry.

The TF2 sentry is a cute little bugger capable of motion tracking and perimeter defense, filling enemies with lead should they ever come too close.

While the end result probably won’t be as large or as heavy as the “official” real-life turret, a smaller table-top sized model is probably a little more practical. Even if it doesn’t live up to expectations, upgrading the sentry is simply a matter of whacking it with a wrench a few times.

 

There’s still time for you to cobble together an awesome Sci-Fi project and have a chance to win some awesome prizes.

6 thoughts on “Sci-Fi Contest Roundup: The Valve Universe

  1. Hey, look, buddy. I’m an engineer. That means I solve problems. Not problems like, “What is beauty?”, because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy.
    I solve practical problems.
    For instance, how am I gonna stop some big mean Mother Hubbard from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind? The answer: use a gun. And if that don’t work?
    Use more gun.
    Like this heavy-caliber tripod-mounted little old number designed by me…built by me, and you best hope…not pointed at you.

  2. Just an observation, these roundups are cool, but also kinda wonking out the competition. The paintball turret for example has yet to have a project log, but now has a bunch of skulls and followers. Of course now I just sound like sour grapes, so whatever :-P

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