New York Comic Con 2011 Update October 12, 2011
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Tomorrow marks the start of the first day of the New York Comic Con and I plan to be there. Just a quick little update about what will be going on with the site while I’m gone. I probably won’t have access to enough bandwith to contribute anything not comic con related (like a major editorial) while the con is going on, but there’s a pretty good chance you’ll find me doing regular con-related updates while at the event, either on this site or my official twitter feed.
I do have a few ideas for non-con related editorials (including another Science Check) but I don’t know if I’ll be able to complete them before the Con, and I kind of want to hold up writing another Science Check until after the Con, to further space them out. That said, I would like to post up one non-science check editorial before leaving for New York City, but don’t hold me to that.
See you at the Con!
Science Check: Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater October 11, 2011
Posted by Maniac in Editorials, Science Check.2 comments
Sometimes, you’re forced to make some severe leaps of logic as to just how plausible a video game’s grounded reality can be. Some things we’re willing to take for granted, like enemies will simply just carry health and ammunition supplies with them at all times, and you will be immediately able to make use of them.
But then sometimes there will be moments in gaming which skirt the bounds of reality and you are forced to ask yourself…COULD THAT REALLY HAPPEN? Fortunately for me, I happen to have a bunch of friends on speed dial with science backgrounds and when I ask them questions, they have no problem filling me in on just what reality would do in these situations.
So this is Science Check, where I take a look at the leaps and bounds of scientific logic that games have made over the years and check if it would indeed work, or if you tried doing it in the real world, you’d be totally screwed.
This time, I’m talking about Metal Gear Solid 3, and if you’ve played the game you know if I’m talking about Metal Gear Solid 3, I’m probably going to be asking about the Shagohod. You are correct.
For those of you who haven’t played Metal Gear Solid 3 and don’t know what the Shagohod is, please enjoy this scene from the game which goes into explicit detail about what it is, what it does, and how it works.
That’s right ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be talking about a Rocket Tank.
Inter-Contentental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) are enormous rockets which carry a nuclear payload. They are so massive that they have to be housed in missile silos, where they are buried deep underground on military owned unmarked land. The locations of these silos are pretty well-known by the opposition, and they are supposedly monitored by spy satellites constantly. During the Cold War, if one side was to launch their nuclear payloads, the deterrence was that the other side would know pretty quickly and launch their own missiles in retaliation, simultaneously destroying each other (and probably taking the rest of the planet with it).
Neither side liked this stalemate very much and each tried to do the best they could to gain an advantage over the other. The most famous of which was when the Russians tried to install WMDs into Cuba, causing the Cuban Missile Crisis. Other attempts to gain an advantage included when each side built nuclear equipped submarines, which were equipped with nuclear missiles of their own, capable of firing against their opponent, but these subs could be detected by sonar systems or the opposing country’s own submarines and turned away.
The Shagohod represents the extreme case of these conditions. Obviously during nuclear war, you want to be able to launch anything against your enemy in secret . To gain an advantage over the Americans, in Metal Gear Solid 3, the decision was made to build a nuclear equipped tank capable of firing from any point in Russia to hit anywhere in the mainland United States. Since any ICBM capable of traveling that distance would require two stages (it needed to be big enough to contain all the fuel it would need for making that distance) a standard ICBM would be too big to fit on any tank.
The brilliance of the design of the Shagohod is that in order to make up for the lack of a second stage on the projectile it was equipped with two rocket engines that could bring it up to speeds of 300 MPH, which fired a payload while at top speed with the intention that by firing the rocket while at speed, the total possible distance of the launched missile would increase by three times, eliminating the need for a second stage on the missile thus allowing it to be small enough to fit on the tank.
The idea of firing a weapon in motion is an interesting concept that goes back as early as weapons themselves. In fact, earlier cultures would train to use a bow and arrow while on horseback. The idea was that firing the bow while the horse was galloping at full speed would transfer some of that speed to the arrow while it was fired, giving the arrow the chance to penetrate the target further and increase the chance of a lethal hit. Penetration, when it comes to a nuclear weapon, is completely useless. A nuclear weapon does not explode on impact, it detonates in the atmosphere because its more effective that way. The game specifically says this method was designed to increase the total distance of the missile and that is what we’re going to judge it by.
Unfortunately, in reality it doesn’t look like something like the Shagohod would ever be able to get off the ground. The physics experts I’ve talked to have informed me that you can only transfer motion in that way if whatever is launching it has a much larger motion than the projectile its firing. In this case you have a very large tank going at 300 miles per hour firing a projectile which has a much smaller mass but travels at a much faster velocity. The problem is that the mass of whatever’s firing the projectile is meaningless, only the mass of the projectile and its velocity are what matters.
As you can see in the theoretical video, the Shagohod is firing its nuclear missile at an angle, which means it is not launching at the same exact direction that the tank is at. After any projectile leaves its launcher, it will immediately start decreasing horizontal velocity and things like gravity will start to kick in and work against it. Any initial speed it would have gotten from the launch boost would be lost in a matter of seconds.
The final nail in this coffin is the fact that rockets are designed to be fired from a standstill. You don’t want high acceleration in a rocket as it would make things harder to change. A high mass object going at high acceleration is difficult to control, and an uncontrollable weapon is not useful to a major government power.
It makes sense that something like the Shagohod was never actually made, because in reality it wouldn’t work. On paper the concept is terrifying (and makes for a great video game threat) but in reality, the physics in place would not work as the game said it would. I appreciate that the game did give specific numbers in order to make the threat the Shagohod possessed seem more immediate, but the laws of inertia are not on the Shagohod’s side.
What is id Trying to Say? October 10, 2011
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The Unknown Camerperson has been playing RAGE this week and just sent me this.
I think they were used to make Clive Barker’s Jerico.
Playstation: Advertising That Gets Me October 10, 2011
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Right now the video game media has been drooling all over this new Playstation advertisement, called the “Michael” ad, which they claim is probably the greatest video game advertisement in history. While I wouldn’t go as far as to say all that, I did like it.
But you have to remember something, that Sony had just gotten back into the groove of continuing with their highly successful advertisements starring Sony VP Kevin Butler, and the launch of the Long Live Play (LLP) campaign, all started with the return of Kevin. Kevin of course said that LLP was his idea in the first place.
Kevin of course, has understood me in the past quite a bit. I still remember the Sony E3 2010 press conference. I don’t know if I was proud or sad that I recognised the face of Jack Tretton in that advertisement, I was laughing too much that Kevin would keep a picture of Jack in his desk at all times. That was my favorite moment in the ad.
The thing is, people who have been following the gaming industry for the past ten years should be in the know that Sony has been making ground-breaking advertising since the days of the original Playstation. While no one would argue there were be plenty of ads they’ve done in the past ten years that completely missed the mark (the 1995 commercials looked pretty stupid and anyone remember that PS10 series back when the PS2 launched?) the recent wave of successful ad campaigns Sony has been riding reminded of one of their very early commercials, which hold up even to this day.
Two years ago I attended a gaming discussion hosted by Yale University which was moderated by N’Gai Croal and featured speakers like Kellee Santiago. Before the discussion began, N’Gai showed us this Playstation ad to get us into the mood.
The ad talked about the double lives we have as gamers, and that’s what facinated N’Gai about it. That we as gamers do live a double life. In the one life we have the mundane jobs and scurry about with everything in black and white, and in our gaming lives we have reached for the stars to accomplish the impossible tasks we could never achieve like command armies. Those words looked at the surface of something much deeper. Its almost as if these shared experiences almost make gamers everywhere like brothers, and whoever wrote the ad understood that. This was years before Kevin Butler was “named” Sony VP.
So, bravo Sony Marketing Department, you still get me, you still get us.
Gears of War 3 Chapter 1 Commentary October 9, 2011
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I don’t normally do a recording of the final version of a game, but while co-oping the opening of Gears of War 3, I found myself subconsiously doing commentary on the game (and annoying my co-op partner quite a bit). It turns out I know a lot of background information about the history of Gears of War, so I decided to do a commentary for the very beginning of the game.
I don’t plan to do any further commentary on the game itself, but if you’re interested, I did enjoy the game quite a lot and recomend it to all Xbox 360 owners (or even people on the fence about owning an Xbox 360). I don’t plan to do any further commentary for any other games, but hey you never know.
If you would prefer to see me have higher quality gameplay videos, feel free to check out my support page and send me a capture device!
Gears of War 3 is out and exclusive to the Xbox 360.
Science Check: Alone in the Dark October 9, 2011
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Sometimes, you’re forced to make some severe leaps of logic as to just how plausible a video game’s grounded reality can be. Some things we’re willing to take for granted, like enemies will simply just carry health and ammunition supplies with them at all times, and you will be immediately able to make use of them.
But then sometimes there will be moments in gaming which skirt the bounds of reality and you are forced to ask yourself…COULD THAT REALLY HAPPEN? Fortunately for me, I happen to have a bunch of friends on speed dial with science backgrounds and when I ask them questions, they have no problem filling me in on just what reality would do in these situations.
So this is Science Check, where I take a look at the leaps and bounds of scientific logic that games have made over the years and check if it would indeed work, or if you tried doing it in the real world, you’d be totally screwed.
The first game I want to talk about is 2008’s Alone in the Dark, which released for the PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 2, Wii and Playstation 3. This game has universally been considered a major disappointment by critics and gamers alike. It has a fantastic graphic, fire and physics engine, and I happened to like its story and atmosphere quite a bit. The gameplay, however, was totally garbage, ranging from the bad controls, tedious gameplay mechanics, and frustrating puzzles. Even the Playstation 3 port, dubbed Alone in the Dark: Inferno, which released six months after the other versions were released and was considered the superior version with its tweaks could not save what was just a badly designed game.
Eden Games was going for something interesting with this game during development. They designed a real-time inventory system that could make use of anything you found along the way, including plastic or glass bottles, tape, or glow sticks.
For those of you who would like a better idea of how this system worked, here’s the official videos Eden released showing just how the inventory system worked.
Anyone else calling bullshit on all this?
Well, first off, that sticky tape is probably some stuff that 3M would be pretty envious to have. That stuff can stick to ANYTHING, even in the final version of the game. However, adhesive, even the almighty duct tape, almost completely loses its stick when wet. Most of the creatures you encounter in the game have what appears to be a wet or slimy sheen to them. The idea that tape would stick to their skin is pretty implausible, but this kind of logic is required to get through some of the game’s many puzzles.
Over the course of the game you can find discarded bottles in the trash. Some of these bottles will contain anything from leftover alcohol (like wine) to lighter fluid. You can use various flammable fluids, either left over in the bottles you found, or if you absolutely needed to, you could punch a hole in a car’s gas tank and fill up empty bottles with gasoline and use that. Plausibility of finding those items in Central Park’s trash cans aside (I don’t think you can even bring alcohol in Central Park unless there’s some kind of event going on you can buy it) this game treats all flammable liquids the same, and in reality none of these flammable liquids would be all that useful as the game pegs them out to be.
First off, alcohol and gasoline are not explosive. If you threw a container of alcohol or gasoline and fired upon it, nothing would happen except it would disperse everywhere. If you threw a container with a lit wick attached to it (to say nothing of the fact that you’d have to be an expert marksman to make a shot like that), the liquid might have a chance to ignite in air, but it would not send out a shockwave. In the game, if you fire upon an improvised bottle filled with flammable liquid at close range, you risk the chance of severely injuring yourself from the blast wave. I’ve talked to several people knowledgable about chemicals and they agreed a shockwave could not occur from such an event, and the fluid would only have a chance of ignition if a flame had been already attached to it.
That having been said, a molotov cocktail has been a widely used improvised device for a reason, it does actually work as a flammable weapon. Alcohol is a low temperature burn fluid and very good at sustaining fire as long as there’s plenty of oxygen. Since many of the enemies of Alone in the Dark can only be destroyed by fire, simply throwing a molotov cocktail at them would indeed be harmful if not fatal if they were in the range of the flame.
Another slight plausibility can go to the ability to leave flammable trails of liquids. The Mythbusters proved that various flammable liquids like gasoline can have trails ignited, and as long as there were no gaps in the liquid trail. This is unlikely to happen if you threw the leaking container, but likely if it slowly emptied out while being carried at a steady pace. While testing this, the Mythbusters discovered that once ignited, a flame trail would take a while to hit its destination, but even with a time delay it would be good enough for its use in the game’s puzzles. It would get a pass, but I don’t recommend anyone try it in the heat of a battle with the undead.
Oh and the Unknown Camerman would like to point out what the logic would be of demons from Hell being harmed by fire in the first place? You’d think things born of the stuff would just shrug it off. I do however comprehend that the game’s logic is the body needs to be destroyed or else something that’s not alive in the first place would not be able to be killed and would just continue to get back up unless completely destroyed, and that makes…some sense…until you start to think about the next gameplay mechanic.
I want to mention something that is not shown in the demos and that is another important gameplay mechanic that is required to beat some of the larger enemies quickly, and that is fire bullets. In the game, the fire bullets can only harm the vulnerable points (depicted as body scars that can show through clothing) of the enemies, and you must target and destroy each scar to completely destroy your enemy, even though the rest of the body does not need to be set on fire. To make fire bullets, you can pour flammable liquid on your gun’s barrel while its loaded, and when the bullets fire, they will leave a fire trail in the air, setting whatever the bullet impacts with on fire. Well, I asked a gun expert about the likelihood of this working, and he said a resounding, “no.” He said any flammable liquid on the bullet would be all surface related, and would burn off instantly when the gun was first fired. It sounded to me like doing this would have a better chance of harming whoever fired the weapon opposed to whoever it was aimed at. In short, DON’T try that.
Clearly, Alone in the Dark is a broken game which used broken leaps of logic to design its broken gameplay around. If, based upon this article, you find yourself really interested in trying this game out, I must plead with you to choose the PS3 version, which trust me, while it isn’t much of an improvement, is an improvement never the less.
Batman: Seeds of Arkham Released October 7, 2011
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Famed independent filmmaking studio Bat in the Sun has done it again and released the sequel to last year’s hugely successful independent Batman fanfilms, Patient J, Batman Legends, and City of Scars with their new 8 minute short film, Seeds of Arkham, just two weeks prior to the release of the next major Batman video game, Batman: Arkham City.
Director Aaron Schoenke is clearly inspired by the same artistic vision that the Batman comic has promoted over the past seventy years of its production run, showing that the ground was fertile for further mediums like movies, shorts and video games. The fact that the concept has been successful in all of these mediums is a testament to the genius of its creator Bob Kane, and the timelessness of the concept. After watching the movie I thought the characters and enviroments appeared as ripped right from the video game, espessially Killer Croc.
If you’re like me, and you just can’t bear the thought of waiting another two weeks to play Batman: Arkham City, give this film a watch and hopefully it’ll help you out as it did for me!
You can check out all of Bat in the Sun’s previous films on their YouTube Channel. You’re also welcome to check out Bat in the Sun’s official Kickstarter Page, and help them get started on their next high quality film!
Uncharted 3 Taste For Adventure Program Review October 6, 2011
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The Subway stores in my area have finally started to support the Taste for Adventure program, and last night I picked up a special 30oz soda with the intention to use it to play Uncharted 3 a month early.
According to Subway’s official webpage, anyone who purchases a specially marked 30oz soda, sub, or bag of sun chips will receive a unique code (which may be in the form of an attached peel off sticker) that you can register on Subway’s official website or official mobile site. The site will ask you for your email, then ask for your unique code.
From there, you can choose what you would like to download. The site will give you a few options to download. These range from special Playstation Home downloadable goods, a theme, special multiplayer skins, and of course the Uncharted 3 multiplayer client.
Interesting to note that the first code I registered on the site, which was from the sticker that was attached to my drink, did not have the option to download the multiplayer client, and I had to choose a different item to download. When I registered the code attached to my special 30oz drink, however, I could redeem the code for the multiplayer client. The reason I’m pointing this out is because if you absolutely want the multiplayer client, you may need a code stamped on a drink cup to have that option.
The site said it was going to email me the download codes I unlocked but a day after I registered those codes I still haven’t gotten emailed them, so make sure when you do register your code to redeem it immediately or you might lose it if you click away from the screen.
I would like to tell you what I think of the mp client, but PSN was swamped last night and download speeds of the 3.3gig client was abysmal, so I’m going to download it at a different time.
After getting your download code, you can click the next page for the chance to see if you instantly won a prize. I didn’t. Only three codes can be redeemed a day per email address.
It’s a nice thing that something so specifically gaming related could get so mainstream. You will have to have a PS3 and PSN account to be able to do anything with these download codes, but the instant win contest is open to anyone who redeems a subway sticker or drink code. I hope more companies do things like this.
Who else would like to see the Master Chief take over a fast food chain next? Heck I’d like to see that and I don’t even eat fast food as much as I used to!
Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs October 5, 2011
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It is my unfortunate duty to inform anyone who visits this site that Steve Jobs has died.
iPhone 4S Announced October 5, 2011
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Yesterday, Apple has announced the next model iPhone which will be the premere device to house their new version iOS, iOS5. Called, the iPhone 4S, the phone will sport the same dual-core processor as the iPad 2, will have an 8 Mega Pixel camera capable of taking 1080p video, be capable of mirroring through HDMI, and feature the most comprehensive voice recognition system ever devised. These features are exclusive to the new phone.
The gaming capabilities of the iPhone is going to be greatly upgraded as well. GameCenter will be expanded and supported apps will now feature cloud saving, similar to what is already offered through supported STEAM and Playstation Plus. These features are coming with iOS5 and will be made avalible to any supported iDevice.
The iPhone 4S will be made avaible through Sprint, Verizon and AT&T and will have iOS5 already installed. Current iDevice owners (who have an iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, any iPad, or third and fourth generation iPod Touch) will be able to upgrade to iOS5 on October 12th through iTunes.
You will be able to preorder iPhone 4S starting on October 7th at your local supporting phone store. The phone will officially be on sale on October 14th, 2011.
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