Combot

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This article is about the early mechanical Scanner. For its successor, see City Scanner.

For other uses, see Scanner (disambiguation).

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Combot
General information
Faction	Combine
Type	Mechanical
Individual information
Weapon(s)	Blinding flash Gas
Game information
Entity	npc_cscanner
Designer(s)	Dhabih Eng

 

The Combot is the direct predecessor to the City Scanner.

Overview

Several concepts for the Combot, including a different design.

• Mostly the City Scanner with a different skin, it is the first known mechanical Scanner to have been scripted. The other differences with the City Scanner is that it throws deadly gas, has slightly different sounds and a tail shorter than that of the City Scanner. It is featured in the Half-Life 2 leak and can be found at the very start of the maps d1_trainstation_01 (where several are seen in various places) and devtest (on the Borealis). Concept art also mentions it was to fire from small ergots on its two sides as a defense mechanism.

• The mechanical Scanner design was initially modeled after the shape and movement of a piranha.

• Interestingly, the Combot can be dated, from the timestamp attached to its model and sounds, to around the same time as the rest of the Half-Life 2 leak's City 17 ambient sounds -- June 2000. This is also the date of the 'Timelapse Opening' vignette, and a month before SIGGRAPH 2000, which is stated by some sources as the place where the Get Your Free TVs! demo reel was first shown off.

• 11 sound files found in the Half-Life 2 leak file directory /sound/npc/scanner indicate that the mechanical Scanner was to talk directly to people via prerecorded messages. Spoken by a robotic female voice, they are spch_attention1: "Citizen, stop", spch_attention2: "Citizen, do not move", spch_attention3: "Attention, citizen", spch_failure1: "Failure to scan. Retinal imprint taken", spch_proceed1: "You may proceed", spch_proceed2: "You are free to go", spch_scan1: "Submit to be scanned", spch_scan2: "Present your ID band", spch_scan3: "Hold still for scan", spch_scan4: "Hands on your head", and spch_violation1: "Violation has been noted".

• Valve tested a few different combat mechanics for the Combot, before cutting its combat features for unknown reasons. In the Half-Life 2 leak, the Combot uses a gas attack against enemies, however a few other attack features are hinted at in sounds and concept art. Sounds exist for an energy discharge, and the concept art (left) states the spokes on each side are a kind of firing mechanism.

• Other sounds found in the very Combot folder also indicate it was to charge itself, possibly at undefined Combine charging stations.

• Several Combots appear in the Half-Life 2 E3 2002 Trailer (set in the map e3_terminal) as well as in the E3 2003 video "Kleiner's Lab" (set in the map e3_lab), where two discover the lab, and a destroyed one is lying on a desk (replaced in the final game by a destroyed Manhack).

• The Combot appears in most of the oldest City 17 maps from the WC map pack.

• Dog originally had a scrapped Combot for a head, which was changed to a City Scanner when the latter succeeded to the Combot.

• The name "Combot" is likely a portmanteau between the words "Combine" and "bot/robot".

• The Combot has three sharp prongs that it can unfold ("flare") from around its eye. Whenever engaged in combat, it will fly with those prongs out, and retract them if no enemies are present. There are no actual attack animations or melee behavior that use them, however.

Gallery

• 

  Side view.

• 

  Combot with its prongs out.

• 

  Combots in the map e3_terminal, as seen in the first Half-Life 2 trailer.

• 

  Combots in the map c17_04_38.

• 

  Dog's texture sheet featuring Combot flaps.

List of appearances

• Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar (Non-canonical appearance)

See also

• Other Scanners

References

Combine OverWiki has more images related to Combot.