Antlions...Are they new

the_rebel_medic

the_rebel_medic

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I'm pretty damn sure that in Op Force that you see antlions about halfway through when your down in the sewers. if anyone has any theories, please post
 
dodlover00 said:
Day of defeat source beta is out!!

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STOP POSTING THIS SHIT! IT'S HORRIBLE ENOUGH THAT YOUR STARTING THE SAME THREAD OVER AND OVER, BUT HIJACKING SOMEBODY ELSES TO GAIN SUPPORT FOR YOUR MIND BOGGLING IDIOTIC SCAM? GO GET A LIFE! BETTER YET, GO GET A GU...

No, I won't say it. Not at the risk of being banned. Even IF your parent's should have used condoms, it's not worth it.


Anyway, about the topic, I don't know. I always thought I had seen them before in the other games, but people keep saying otherwise. I never finished OPFOR, or HL1, but they looked oddly familiar when I first saw them.
 
No, you only see the Voltigores. Big, fat, ugly, gearbox made creatures.
 
yes my friend had them at one point in time as pets. maybe something from black mesa or the combine had mutated them...hmmmm
 
It is very interesting to speculate on how antlions came to be. If indeed they are an evolved species it would stand to reason that alot of rapid evolution has occured sence Gordon was put in stasis in hl1. This is apparent when Breen in one of his adresses to the citizens of C-17 refers to a "lung fish" who apparently evolved from a sea creature to a land animal. How this rapid change occured is anybodies but Marc Laidlaws guess, although the introduction of Xenian life forms most definately dislodged a few species from their niches. I believe two things in relations to ant lions and the state of earths ecosystem in the half life universe in general. One that the antlions are a terrestrial species and Xenian species that merged. Two is that one theory on evolution states that it occurs in short burst that incur mass changes in a species and little or now evolution occurs inbetween bursts of change. This could explain some of the odd changes on earth.
 
This is apparent when Breen in one of his adresses to the citizens of C-17 refers to a "lung fish" who apparently evolved from a sea creature to a land animal.
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He is refering to the fact the the lungfish came to land and promptly became extinct and that humanity should not do the same.

And antlions are most likely a Xen inhabitant.
 
ríomhaire said:
He is refering to the fact the the lungfish came to land and promptly became extinct and that humanity should not do the same.

And antlions are most likely a Xen inhabitant.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung_fish
Someone resurrected the lungfish! :O

I really can't picture an antlion guard on Xen..
 
Another thing I'd thought I'd never see a lawyer say, especially you.
 
ríomhaire said:
And I couldn't picture a pengeon in the Sahara
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Uhh... Okay....

How would the antlion guard get around on Xen anyway?
 
Samon said:
We didn't exactly see of all Xen though, did we.
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Adrians Xen = Floating rocks in various sizes
Barneys Xen = Floating rocks in various sizes
Gordons Xen = Floating rocks in various sizes

Pretty safe to say that there isn't much more to see of Xen.. Unless you saw something in the skybox?
 
Mith' said:
Adrians Xen = Floating rocks in various sizes
Barneys Xen = Floating rocks in various sizes
Gordons Xen = Floating rocks in various sizes

Pretty safe to say that there isn't much more to see of Xen.. Unless you saw something in the skybox?
Click to expand...

Well, they entered Xen, while operating at Black Mesa. Is it not to say that they all did not enter relatively the same area, since they all were operating in the same area during their visits to Xen? Not the exact same spots, mind you, but perhaps the same Xenian country?
 
Well, there's gotta be something holding the rocks in orbit, no?

-Angry Lawyer
 
My Earth = Green fields and forests with a few cities and a good few towns and villages with very variable weather
My neighbour's Earth = Green fields and forests with a few cities and a good few towns and villages with very variable weather
The guy who lives 50 miles from me's Earth = Green fields and forests with a few cities and a good few towns and villages with very variable weather
A guy in the Sahara's Earth = A great big thing full of sand with occasional civilisation and a little water and water falling from the sky would be a sign of the apocolipse
A tibe in the middle of the Amazon's Earth = A tree filled wet place with about 5 other tibes where water not falling from the sky for a few weeks would be a sign of the apocolipse
 
Also remember that during Gordon's game we did see the large inner caverns of Xen (one of the places Nihilanth teleports you), and since antlions are subterranean...it's not hard to imagine how they got around. In addition to that, we didn't see ALL the floating rocks; if the Gonarch inhabited a three-section island all by herself, it's not unreasonable to think that the antlion king and a horde of antlions dwell on some large landmass in Xen.
 
Regressor said:
There are real animals called Antlions.
They dig a hole setting a trap for ants. When an ant approaches it sences the vibration on the ground, and laches out of the hole digging up the ground round the ant, making the ant wall down. That's where the refferance comes from I guess.
http://www.ivyhall.district96.k12.il.us/4th/kkhp/1insects/antlion.html
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Amazing enuff, Headcrab-like creatures exist Half life is takin over the world :p
 
Sufferin-rebel said:
Amazing enuff, Headcrab-like creatures exist Half life is takin over the world :p
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Um... headcrab-like? The only creatures I've heard of randomly lashing onto people's heads are bats. And that's usually by accident.
 
Arden said:
Um... headcrab-like? The only creatures I've heard of randomly lashing onto people's heads are bats. And that's usually by accident.
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That cat when I was 5.

I fear cats.
 
ríomhaire said:
He is refering to the fact the the lungfish came to land and promptly became extinct and that humanity should not do the same.

And antlions are most likely a Xen inhabitant.
Click to expand...

hmm... this is the first time that i have to disagree with you. I don't know the speech word for word but he says something to the effect that the lung fish crept forth into from the abyss and into the light while their bretheren remained content wallowing in the dark, never to see the world around them. I think he was trying to imply that failure to collaborate with the combine would leave us unenlightened and blind to the massive universe around us. However my part about antlions is purely a guess, not an educated guess, just a guess so i could be swayed either way.
 
He's talking about pitdrones, not antlions, which go along with shock troopers, shock roaches, and voltigores.
 
Antlions.. are not as new

Any one that has watched starship troopers (1 or 2) would aggree that the antlions portray a striking resemblence to the alien bugs that the army fight. The only difference i can see is that the antlions ones fly for short distances.
 
The only difference i can see is that the antlions ones fly for short distances.
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And the head is completly different, and it has a thorax and it has 6 legs and its back legs streach out to the front and the front legs to the back, but besides that...
 
ríomhaire said:
And the head is completly different, and it has a thorax and it has 6 legs and its back legs streach out to the front and the front legs to the back, but besides that...
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Sure sure...

Give me a break though, are you telling me you didn't think of Starship Troopers when you started fighting Antlions enmass?

They are insect-like, or 'bug'-like if you will... and they attack in big nasty swarms.

Just like the Bugs in Starship Troopers.

As for where Antlions come from...

Probably Xen. They certainly aren't from Earth... they still don't strike me as very Xen-ish though. I can't immagine the landmasses we saw in Xen being nearly big enough to support a hive of those creatures.
 
However, in Xen, the ability to jump long distances would be very handy.

The Antlions could take over an entire rock and jump to others to gather food.

Just a thought.
 
Raxxman said:
However, in Xen, the ability to jump long distances would be very handy.

The Antlions could take over an entire rock and jump to others to gather food.

Just a thought.
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You know... that's true.

They could probably get some good air and maybe even fly in a place with low gravity like Xen.

Of-course for all we know some of the land masses there were much bigger than the few we were shown.
 
however if we review the theory that xen was destroyed by the combine shortly after the original half lifes last expansion pack in game time chronological order than the antlions would not have time to teleport. for the reaallllly long version of part of the theory visit HL resistance fanfic
 
Yeah but was the atmosphere dense enough for wings to be any use at all?

I think it's likely that Antlions come from Xen but I don't think we should rule out tyhe possibility that they are some sort of mutation of earth insect species brought on by some Xenian catalyst, or even maybe a Combine biomaterials spill or something.
 
Sulkdodds said:
Yeah but was the atmosphere dense enough for wings to be any use at all?

I think it's likely that Antlions come from Xen but I don't think we should rule out tyhe possibility that they are some sort of mutation of earth insect species brought on by some Xenian catalyst, or even maybe a Combine biomaterials spill or something.
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Mantas were able to glide pretty well in the Xen atmosphere. I'd guess that Antlions would be pretty adept at jumping between the rocks.

-Angry Lawyer
 
I reckon they were mutated by the Black Mesa disaster. They possess all the similar features of the insect form; detect vibrations on the ground, they got killer jaws, and they can burrow into the sand and stuff. They also use pheromones as a form of communication (my guess), much like conventional ants. And looking at it, an antlion would be awesome if it were mutated into a flying spiky killing machine, I think maybe thats what the team went for.
 
Sulkdodds said:
Yeah but was the atmosphere dense enough for wings to be any use at all?

I think it's likely that Antlions come from Xen but I don't think we should rule out tyhe possibility that they are some sort of mutation of earth insect species brought on by some Xenian catalyst, or even maybe a Combine biomaterials spill or something.
Click to expand...

right now with the very little info we have on Xen and the Combine for that matter, nothing can really be ruled out tbh.
ur scenerio is just as likely as the other ones posted...so i supposed Aftermath might answer some of these questions but most likely raise more new questions along the lines.
 
Certainly we've already observed mutagenic properties related to headcrabs; it might not be that much of a leap to Antlions having originated from Earth species.
 
But the leg arrangement, and the lack of eyes and antenna is unlike anything on the Earth. I'm definately pinning them down to an off-world origin.

-Angry Lawyer
 
FCBob said:
It is very interesting to speculate on how antlions came to be. If indeed they are an evolved species it would stand to reason that alot of rapid evolution has occured sence Gordon was put in stasis in hl1. This is apparent when Breen in one of his adresses to the citizens of C-17 refers to a "lung fish" who apparently evolved from a sea creature to a land animal. How this rapid change occured is anybodies but Marc Laidlaws guess, although the introduction of Xenian life forms most definately dislodged a few species from their niches. I believe two things in relations to ant lions and the state of earths ecosystem in the half life universe in general. One that the antlions are a terrestrial species and Xenian species that merged. Two is that one theory on evolution states that it occurs in short burst that incur mass changes in a species and little or now evolution occurs inbetween bursts of change. This could explain some of the odd changes on earth.
Click to expand...
Just to clarify the theory of "Short Bursts" is called Punctuated Equilibrium. Orthodox Evolutionists consider it much ado about nothing they didn’t already know. See Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker chapter 9 titled Puncturing Punctuationism. The theory’s main proponent is Steven J. Gould (coincidently Steven wrote Wonderful Life: the Burgess Shale and the Natural History which was likely the influence for Dr. Breen’s comment about the Burgess Shale during the lungfish speech) who most evolutionists love to hate. Even in Gould’s theory evolution does not take place within a time span observable from the perspective of a human lifetime. Of course something else entirely could be going on… but not Punctuated Equilibrium.

Also Breen’s point about the lungfish (which FCBob pointed out already but I would like to state again for clarity) was that it came to land spawned amphibians who spanned reptiles who spawned mammals who spawned primates who spawned us. Did the lung fish refuse to breath air? It did not. It went forward while its brethren remained in the abyss with lidless eyes forever staring at the dark. In other words the lung fish did not reject the next step in its evolution but the resistance is doing that by refusing to be modified by the combine.

But back on the topic of Ant lions… has anybody put forth a theory that the Antlions may be stowaways? Perhaps, if their larva or eggs are very small for instance, they are a pest that ends up going wherever the combine goes. Like Rats or Roaches do with humans. Just a thought.
 
I think, if they were from the Combine world, the Combine would have developed a way of exterminating them much more efficiently.

-Angry Lawyer
 
I had something really interesting to say, but I've forgotten what it is. Damnit.
 
Oh no Is This Tea is gonna kick all our asses.
 
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