‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 401

Also, Porto del Fama is incorrect Italian on purpose. Sorry Italians.

Oh, and totally forgot to mention that the previous page marked 400 pages of NAV. Woot!

Random Info: One of the reasons TENka's game became so popular was because it was the first game to offer rather realistic different levels of gravity. Even better, if players obtained the right stuff and gathered enough esones and power, they could design their very own island and pick whatever gravity level they wanted.

53 Comments

Maybe there’s a DBZ island with 100 times gravity. 🙂

When I first read that the gravity would be lower I thought Danni might be happy, because when you’re lighter you can move faster. But I see how she might have problems if she jumps and can’t come down for quite some time. Yet I don’t think the comparison to the mists applies here, because in the mists there was 0 gravity.

And here I thought that they’d finally log in, but no, there has to be another page of them talking. T_T

Btw: http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-257/
Ok, so Kat doesn’t need any luck, because it’s her game, huh? Now I see why she’s so confident.

Err, 100 g is the sort of acceleration you see in a serious car crash, and is very deadly very quickly.

100 lbs of body weight @ 1g = 100 lbs
That same body @ 10g = 1,000 lbs
That same body @ 100g = 10,000 lbs
For comparison. The world record in strongman competitions (partial deadlift with wrist straps from 18″ off the floor with high bending bar) is 535 kg (1,180 pounds) by Tom Magee in the 1983 World’s Strongest Man competition.
So even if you could survive 100g. You probably couldn’t move. Unless you are a cartoon character who trained for weeks at progressively higher g. ala DragonBall.

That being said, I think Danni will like moon jumping and dancing in 1/2 g. Ballet is all about seeming to defy gravity. (running around on tippy toes, jumping, leaping ect.)

Well, of course 100g is a no-go in real life. I mean in DBZ abridged the Professor even warned Goku that it would crush his bones. But this is 1) a comic 2) whose characters play an MMORPG, so who knows how strong they can get.

But honestly I wasn’t really serious about the 100g thing, because this comic hasn’t been about power levels at all. It’s closer to One Piece where many characters fight by using completely unique abilities, and battles have been more about creativity than about strength so far.

I could imagine something like 1.5g though.

Ballet seems to defy gravity, but it is actually based on perfectly accurate movements. A change of even 1% in gravity could throw off her entire timing.

I wouldn’t say it was ‘zero’ G, more that it was subjective gravity with the pull and force being customizable by the individual.

Maybe, but is there an actual difference between customizable gravity and simply steering a character by using the arrow keys on a keyboard?

If the difference were that gravity always accelerates you, then I’d say it’s not gravity but some steering command.

It could be that simple for folks not using a Kido device, but given Dani’s difficulty ‘stearing’ I don’t think it’s a matter of a simple WASD/Arrow key set up for her.

In D&D/Pathfider, players would orient themselves with a DC 15 Wisdom Check (Moderate Difficulty/Challenging).

With the Kido it’s probably a simple ‘imagine the ground before you and you’ll head towards it’ scenario.

Time to nerd a bit:
You won’t move quicker in a lower gravity environment. Your muscles are not depending of gravity (or a lack thereof) to function.

Your Body can’t stand high gravity for too long periods of time (4G is what you might experience on a rollercoaster for a split second, and you will fall unconscious if exposed to it for a good couple of seconds.)
100G would crush your body. (Gravity is a force … not an acceleration @ Kessy)
if you have half G, there is less friction present between your feet and the ground … you need friction to walk so Dannis movement ability would be impeded on a half G island. (imagine it like walking on the moon. You end up hopping around in slow motion rather than walking.)

Actually, gravity is a deformation of space-time that makes our usual frame of reference on the Earth’s surface a non-inertial frame. In other words, we’re all constantly accelerating up away from the Earth just by standing still. The force of gravity isn’t really a force at all but an illusory force like centrifugal force or the force that seems to push you back into your seat when you’re in an accelerating car. So when you’re sitting in your chair, there isn’t really a force of gravity pushing you down into your chair. There’s only the force of your chair accelerating you upwards in the same way a rocket would.

It’s kind of hard to wrap your head around, but it’s all about your frame of reference. Whenever you’re in an accelerating frame of reference it always seems like there’s a force acting on all objects that’s proportional to their mass. Think about being in an accelerating car. Inside the car it feels like there’s a force proportional to your mass pushing you back into your seat. There’s also a force acting on your drink in the cup holder making the liquid slosh toward the back of the cup. And there’s a force acting on the pack of tissues on your dashboard that makes it fly backward off the dash. All of these forces are purely the result of the fact that you’re measuring them in an accelerating from of reference. Someone standing outside watching the car go by would not see any of those forces at work, only the forces of the car pushing against everything inside to make them accelerate forward.

Or think about it in terms of dimensional analysis. The gravitational field of an object of mass M is defined as G*M/r^2. M is in kilograms, r is in meters, and G is the universal gravitational constant, which is in Newton meters squared per kilogram squared. So you have (kg/m^2)(N*m^2/kg^2) The meters squared eat each other up, and the kg in the upstairs kills one kg downstairs, so you’re left with Newtons per kilogram, N/kg. Recall that a Newton is a kilogram meter per second squared (kg*m/s^2) and the remaining kg’s eat each other up, leaving you with meters per second squared (m/s^2), which is an acceleration.

This is a terrible strategy session. It’s fake enough that the people are telling the players what to do, but real enough that they don’t actually care if the players manage to do it or not?

I mean, REALLY. Telling a player to kill another player and then say that they are actually only saying it so the victim can fight back, survive and get more popular but, hey, if it happens, it happens? Game start!

Yeah, no. It’s not like they can’t rehearse fighting scenes to make it *look* like Mary’s trying to kill Danni off, instead of *actually* trying to kill Danni off.

Problem is that if they rehearse it, it might look rehearsed. Of course, Danni’s probably pretty good at acting out a routine. The thing is, it seem she’ll be kicked out in 2 weeks if she doesn’t get popular enough, and the only way she can get that popular is if she’s a battle goddess. Basically, they can’t script everything she does. If she’s not good enough to defeat Jane, she’ll probably be kicked out anyway. She’ll get backup from Kat as well. Bandit won’t care, and Branden will be too scared to intervene (I say it this way because Jake DOES care, and the cowardice isn’t part of the Dude persona).

I pretty much agree with BaufenBeast. I think Sandra is aiming for spontaneity in the group’s performance. A little rehearsal is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

I think Danni is hilarious when she’s reacting like that. Letting one’s characters suffer for the fun of the audience is part of many good webcomics.

But I am starting to wonder why Sandra wants to go this far, because if Danni dies, everyone will be in trouble, too, because parties must have 5 members, unless they get special permission. See here: http://notavillain.wikia.com/wiki/The_Game
She must have a backup-plan.

Also, you have to remember something important: Although it’s called a ‘game’ and originally was a MMORPG, The Game is more of an improv theater than a video game. People clearly don’t do it simply to pass time with friends or anything like that; rather, it’s done for the money or the fame. Like acting, their success is measured by their popularity rather than their skill. People put on personas in order to gain more views.

In a way, you can compare it to Let’s Play Youtubers. Popular Youtubers, in general, are the more entertaining ones: the ones who put on an amusing act while playing for the camera, or the ones that make the watchers feel involved, or the ones who try out new and interesting things and have exciting reactions. People who just play video games, on the other hand, don’t try to involve an audience that isn’t there. Nobody cares if a gamer jumps in fright during a game and shrieks loudly then panics and makes their character run around blindly. Youtubers and actors alike do this and people like them for it.

This is more like opening night in a stand-up comedy routine, and there’s literally no time left for training. The only hope for the two least popular actors (Danni and Mary) and the actor who’s losing favor with the crowd due to an unpopular choice (Kleya choosing Erbana) is to start off the season with a bang. Because the only interesting thing Danni did during the tutorial was fighting the Fiendi (the rest of the time, her acting stunk like someone who had never done it before), that’s the only way for her to become popular enough for the impending deadline. Because both Morto and Erbana are uninteresting to watch on their own, Sandra and Mary came up with a ploy that will immediately set up an interesting rivalry between Mary and Kleya, and the audience will watch because they want to know who comes out on top.

So, basically: Jake-Bandit is pretty much the only one who is safe, due to his popularity and flashy style, and Brandon is good enough to survive to the deadline, when they can come up with a better plan to become popular. Mary and Kleya’s only hope is to immediately set up an intense “Will someone die or won’t someone die?” question every time they come online, and Danni’s only chance is if she immediately gets into a serious fight (because otherwise she won’t be interesting enough) and it’s so interesting that she becomes popular enough. With all these requirements, the only real choice they have is for Mary to make Danni think she’s seriously going to kill her from the get-go. Otherwise, the party just won’t be interesting enough to watch.

G in capitals is the gravitational constant. g in lower case is what should be used here, as for any acceleration ie. “half g”.

If G is changed, then g will change by the same scaler factor. So in fact, either way is correct.

The Gravitational Constant of Each Island and location is different.

The upper case G is correct.

G is a constant used to calculate gravity it doesn’t change EVER. (physics student here) and since it’s used with respect to normal gravity then g would be correct. But seeing this is a fantasy world then different laws of physics can be valid.

Love this comic by the way 🙂

Concur with Kammy here, G is the constant used in Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation; the pull between two objects is determined by their mass (m1 and m2) and their distance (r^2); G remains constant for every object.

Actually… it depends on the mass of the islands. If a small island can have more gravity than a big island, then G is changing. Since people can just set the gravity level of islands, it seems like they’re messing with the universal constants rather than adding mass to islands.

Unless the islands have a density something like that of neutron star material, their mass is far too small to affect gravity. In any case, all the islands exist in the larger context of The Mist, and since you move through the Mists by thinking, clearly normal physics does not apply. I look at it as that the conditions on each island are determined by unknown properties of the Mists, and are therefore pretty much arbitrary.

Kessy Athena

II think the same. Kleya said that the gravity varies between 1/3 to 2/3 inside the same island. They choose their gravity well, ie more than with G they are messing with the square of the distance. In any case fictitious arbitrary formula.

This is where you are mistaken. In the case of these Islands the Mass of the Island is not what determines the Gravity of the Island rather a change in the constant used in the calculation of that force.

By Example the room your in is calculated with a constant consistent of the Universal Law of Gravitation. However the next room over all objects have the same mass but the gravity is half of the room you are in. That gravity is calculated with a constant that has been halved. The mass of the objects did not change. The constant Did.

That is why G is appropriate here.

To further illustrate my point

Room A is calculated at 6.673×10?11 N?·?(m/kg)2

Room B is calculated at (6.673×10?11 N?·?(m/kg)2) / 2

You guys are nitpicking. In any case, technically speaking, “G” in this context is a variable used by The Game’s code to calculate how objects move in the virtual environment, so it’s whatever the programers used.

I would also point out that there is also the question of grammatical correctness. “G” as in the universal gravitational constant is almost never used in ordinary speech outside of equations. “g” as in the acceleration of gravity is also rarely used outside of technical contexts, except when preceded by a number. You could consider G in this context to be the initial of “gravity,” and thus should properly be written as “G.” a capital G with a period.

In short you could come up with a justification for writing it any way you please. Ultimately it’s arbitrary how it’s written. The important thing is that it conveys the speaker’s meaning, avoids confusion, and is not too linguistically inelegant. Writing it simply as “G” meets all three criteria, in my opinion.

Kessy Athena I totally concur.

Ooh, ooh, I wonder what’s the range of gravity level to choose from. It would be neat if it’s possible to set it to negative (reminds of Patema Inverted), that’s what I’d do for my island.

Wow, I didn’t know about Inverted Patema, I just watched the trailer and it looks great, I will look for it.

Thank you! 🙂

Kat should give Danny tips on how to move properly. Then again, it was her computer…
Maybe Danny could do moves that work better in lower gravity? Focusing on jumping attacks would probably be the way to go

Yeah, jumping and then just hanging in the air for several minutes – slowly falling, being able to kick and punch but not to dash or dodge – is the best idea alright.

You seem to be thinking of much weaker gravity than we’re talking about here. Remember the astronaut jumping and saluting the flag during Apollo? Luna’s surface gravity is 0.17g, so the lowest gravity the group could be encountering is twice that. Think about jumping straight up in normal gravity – normal humans can only get less than a second of hang time. In 1/3g you’d get three times that long, so maybe a few seconds at the outside. It’ll look impressive, but not as impressive as you’re thinking.

Incorrect Italian? I’m trying to learn Italian, lemme see… so “del” should be “della,” and it’s Port of… Hunger? *googles* Oh, Fame, right. Gotcha.

Lovely language, and I think you are guessing right 🙂

However with “Fama” we don’t really know. It could be “fame” or a misspell for “hunger”, we can’t be sure.

On the other hand, reduced gravity could be really compatible with her dancing.

Oh man! That might mean that Danni’s fighting style will probably be that much more eye-catching! Seriously, doing leaps, spins, and tall kicks in 2/3 G or less? That would be awesome!
Or maybe terrible. I don’t do ballet/ was kicked out of dance school as a little kid, so I don’t actually know.

I’m looking forward for that. I would love it 🙂

Variable gravity, surface friction, and air density are some of the things that I really liked about Source Engine games back when it was new. It’s kinda fun to turn friction down to a negative value and go flying accross the map.

I think, once Danni gets the hang of moving in lighter gravity, she is going to be awesome; she just as to think of how far she can travel in a jump, how magnificent she will look in a leaping spin…total wire-fu, even if she’s never seen a martial arts movie in her life.

Ha! Gamer grammer! [sic] [tm] 😉

I thought these panels looked familiar! Also, I love Danni’s expression in panel 5.

Are we going to see any “islands” where gravity is above normal like 1.5 or even 2 Gs maybe?
I would think a place like that would affect someone like Danni even more then the others.

The manager lets Danni go in not knowing about the gravity level?

Let me get this straight–Danni is supposed to go down utterly stupid about the game, looking awkward because she can’t even really move because she didn’t know the gravity level and didn’t prepare moves? That seems to be the manager’s approach. This will raise their ratings? While the real appeal will be the Erbana player trying to defend her. Or the mindlessness of the easy slaughter, or the twistedness of whatever Jane comes up with cuz it’s so easy. What does popularity mean I wonder.

This still seems more like a set up for testing Kleya.

Even allowing for limited time and a scummy assignment, a good team manager would be thinking at least as fast as the players here, barking out orders and information and what she would like to see as outcomes. Unless she really does want totally independent, professional players–more like a team owner than a manager–and has no use for a Danni at all.

The mask will have to come off when she and Paddy learn about the life support problem. I bet that she doesn’t care. But maybe she does; people have guessed that she’s protecting a wounded woman behind Jane. We’ll see.

“This still seems more like a set up for testing Kleya.”

This is the only excuse I can see at this point for how Sandra is behaving. Sending the team into the tutorial fragment with no prep made no sense to me if Sandra wanted them to make a good impression. Sandra claims she and her backers want more non-TENka players in the Game, and they’re willing to back Kleya with fans and money, and accepted Danni as a requirement for Kleya to play along. Kleya has already considered quitting and starting over again once and only stayed because Danni is counting on her. Sandra may not know that, but she ought to have some hint that Kleya will not react well if Danni dies in the Game directly because of decisions Sandra made.

Maybe they’re trying to use Danni’s weak status for leverage on Kleya? I think they ought to know by now that threatening Kleya just makes her stubborn.

I hope there’s something clever behind the scenes here….

I just hope they use an ever-present and omni-directional gravity system. It bugs me when I find certain engines only use gravity when an object is off the ground, and only as a linear value. There is so much that is lost to fun physics puzzles and interesting situations.

But given the way Kat describes it, I suspect they cut corners to make a simpler (and less dynamic) gravity system. Probably doesn’t even effect people unless they are off the ground.

What do you mean, “only use gravity when an object is off the ground”? You mean, there’s no torque if something is on the edge of a platform? Most physics puzzles I’ve seen have some sort of torque, and omni-directionality makes sense in most contexts because gravity doesn’t vary significantly over ordinary spacial scales, so unless you’re making a space game of some sort (or a game with an atypical gravitational environment), constant gravity is usually a sufficiently-close approximation to be regarded as accurate…

I think what he means is gravity is actually at 1g for all interactions, including friction. So you can move turn duck and dodge as if you were in normal gravity, but any leaps are calculated using 1/2 g.

In many many games, particularly any that just operate in a standard world where you walk around like normal (ie, don’t walk on walls, don’t orbit small planets, etc) a lot of the physics that actually effect the player are substantially reduced. If the player spends 90% or more of their time walking on the ground, why bother calculating gravity when all it would do is not move the player at all?
And unless the game specifically needs an ability to walk on walls or such, why add an extra layer into the basic input to set which way is “up” and “down”?
So in most games, gravity is only calculated if the player leaves the ground, and even then it just a linear variable that pulls in a universally constant direction.

One, this saves A LOT of processing leaving the game more free to focus on other effects. Two, this makes it A LOT easier to refine a player’s controls and movement so the game feels and plays smoother.

But the flip side is that you can’t have players walk on walls, rounded edges, or really anything more complicated than saying exactly how strong gravity is.

Congrats on the mile stone! 🙂

Thank you for clarify about the language. No more grammar heads up then 😉

I don’t understand why danni is so clueless about the game. She went through 5 partners and lots of practice and cost to get to the preliminaries, her life now depends on doing well and she seems to have done no research at all into the game. Not even watched it on free channels?

Actually, most game physics engines (Unity and Unreal at least, I haven’t fiddled with Source) do have gravity apply at all times, even when you’re on the ground.

The air/ground friction awkwardness you observe is actually from a combination of other things:
1. Player controllers are not implemented using friction and gravity – rather, they get a target velocity based on player input (which might be a velocity of 0, for no input), and accelerate to that speed with a maximum force. This is called the “Player Motor”
2. Keeping up with a moving platform is sometimes done by the Player Motor – the platform’s speed (or, in the case of a rotating platform, the speed of the exact point on the platform where the player is standing) is added to the player’s target speed, but it’s on the player motor to keep up with sharp turns. This is technically realistic (with the player motor’s maximum force representing static friction) but it feels very floaty because you can’t make the player feel the inertia, which leads to…
3. In other games, moving platforms are implemented by transform-parenting, which means that velocity doesn’t transfer at all, and jumping off the end of a speeding railcart won’t carry you any farther than jumping off the end of a stopped railcart. This feels more natural to the player when going around sharp turns, but leads to technically incorrect physics behavior when getting on and off of moving platforms.

There’s other awkwardness where certain objects (items in Elder Scrolls come to mind) are put into sleep mode when they haven’t moved for a while, at which point passive forces like gravity stop applying to them to save processing power, but “wake up” if anything collides with them, which is why you see youtube videos of people who’ve managed to make stacks of soul crystals in mid air, but that never applies to player avatars.

This was intended as a reply to Marscaleb, up above. Also, I can’t seem to find the login page. [/meta]

Left sidebar, underneath the AneekaChannel button is a link to the login page.

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 401