Well well. I've never been standing around with a friendly Flood before!

(8:06) Level 6 ('Guilty Spark 343') on Easy. In my last yeti Flood movie I showed how to keep cliff guy alive with needling, but now here's how you can keep log guy alive. Moreover, this gets at what may well be the general principle for keeping any yeti Flood alive (where viable at all). Also of interest is the novelty of being up close to a friendly Flood and seeing how he behaves. Never met a Flood like that before!

Released December 17th 2017, gameplay recorded December 5th-17th 2017.

00:02 (First case) When working on my previous log guy movie BCM262, I started using frags when managing to get close with the tag version of my 2-drop approach (see 4:15 in that movie). And one time he teleported while dropped by a frag bang. That was highly unusual, so I decided to go up and have a look in case there had been any novel consequence. And lo and behold, he was alive! The obvious conjecture was that this was the general mechanism for keeping yeti Flood alive; that he just needs to teleport while dropped (unconscious). It was certainly an explanation for how my needling of cliff guy was able to keep him alive. I assume that the needles were dropping him at just the right time, by fortunate coincidence of needle speed, geometry and scripting.

00:54 (Second case) This second case occurred the following day. No frag this time; I dropped him with a pistol shot as he was making a big leap. When I went up and found him alive, he dropped when I shot him again. That's of interest, and shows that after teleportation he can still be droppable. He's not made undroppable. With cliff guy I've still never seen post-teleportation dropping, but I now suspect that it can happen, since it can happen with log guy.

01:18 (Setting up, again) Now we get into the tutorial proper, taking things almost from scratch. This set-up work is similar to what I showed in BCM262 (starting at 1:23), except that I do the final prep in a snappier way, without using a grenade for any final delay. Pretty easy.

01:51 (Failures) I thought it wouldn't take too long to get a nice example of teleporting while dropped, now that I was specifically going for it. But it turned out to be a real pain. I did get one example after a while, but his dropped state was only barely perceptible before he teleported. I wasn't satisfied with that so I kept on, but it became very frustrating. Usually when dropped, he falls on the spot, which is no good. It's like the ground has instant stopping power. That's shown in two of these three failure examples. Ideally you want him to be a good way off the ground when dropped, so that his motion can continue through the air for a while, hopefully to the point of teleportation. I was always looking out for the times when he made a big leap, but those are uncommon.

02:34 (Success, and checkpointing) It took hours of play before I was successful again, but finally I got it with pistol fire (having earlier put most of my focus on using a shotty blast fired at his legs). A nice clear example. Approaching the Shade, I start jumping to make sure the covie spawning checkpoint is delayed. After a few seconds the panicking covies start coming into view, and at that point I briefly rely on enemy threat to continue the checkpoint delay while positioning myself for the hop. It probably would've been safer to throw a high grenade to ensure checkpoint delay, but I wanted to keep all my grenades. I eventually get the checkpoint right in front of log guy - which is possible because he's a friendly.

03:18 (Play) Most of the play I show here relates to his interest in grenades, which I'd already noticed from an earlier case. It's fun to see his reactions, and in particular the way he rotates. In one clip I tag his lashing spines, which make rather tricky targets. In another clip I show him a couple of flares. I think he likes those.

04:58 (Getting a needler) Reverting to the checkpoint, I go to fetch a nice full needler. A couple of Grunts are happy to help me out. That's nice eh? I have a bit of needling fun with log guy, and he's blast resistant as expected. I deliberately get myself launched, going high up the invisible wall.

06:04 (Flipping him) Crossing the loading point flips yeti Flood to enemy status, and this is what I now demonstrate with log guy, taking care to get a good hop rock by checkpointing and using reversion as necessary, like in BCM264. This time though, I'm using the lift after the entrance covies have spawned. Consequently the lift comes up automatically. Also notice that (1) I send the lift down before it has time to settle at the top, and (2) when the lift gets back up I jump to keep a checkpoint delayed. The checkpoint in question seems to be associated with the lift settling at the top, as best I can tell. I subsequently get some new weapons and (not shown) let enemy threat keep the checkpoint delay going while I get positioned for the hop. I get the checkpoint while still a fair way off from log guy. He's an enemy now, so you can't get it up close.

07:25 (Final play) Now that he's flipped, he behaves very differently of course. Plus, needles home and you get other aim assistance. Oh, and he's not so interested in grenades any more. Too busy trying to lash you!

Closing remarks Just to mention, you could've done the yeti Flood flip before triggering log guy, like I did in BCM264. That also means you'll have aim assistance when trying to get him to teleport while dropped. I'm not sure if it'll make it any easier though; haven't actually tried it yet.

The opening two cases of keeping him alive were from December 5th and 6th, when I was working on BCM262. The rest is from the 15th-17th.

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