Sci-Fi Contest Roundup: The Valve Universe

April 21, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

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 neurotoxin

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.

Beautiful Replica Team Fortress 2 Weapons

March 6, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

gun

We’ve seen our share of replica props, but [Nathan]’s replica of the spy’s sidearm from Team Fortress 2 is the bee’s knees.

The build began as an off-the-shelf Airsoft gun. After removing the barrel and cylinder, [Nathan] used Apoxie Sculpt and a whole lot of sanding to turn a stock piece of metal and plastic into something that came straight from the Mann Co. store. The in-game version of the Ambassador also includes an engraving of the object of the spy’s affection, replicated by [Nathan] with some very careful Dremel work. Once the prop was done, [Nathan] built a mold box out of plywood and filled it with silicone rubber. This allowed him to make several castings of his prop weapon

This isn’t [Nathan]’s only TF2 replica prop; he also made a replica of the stock sniper gun and scout’s scattergun and a megaphone from Borderlands. In an effort to out do himself, [Nathan] is gearing to build a gun that fires two hundred-dollar, custom-tooled cartridges at ten thousand rounds per minute. He has yet to craft any hats.

TF2 Kill Counter, Binary Style

December 30, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 27 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Pft-GPQWU]

After getting some fun new toys for Christmas, [IceColdFreezie] set up this kill counter for Team Fortress 2. At first glance, we weren’t that impressed. It’s an Arduino and a few LEDs. Then we saw that it was counting the kills in binary. We’re not sure if it gets much geekier than that. You can download the source code and try it out yourself. Just don’t make more than 31 kills.

[via littlebirdceo]