1st Term Paper: Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe
Ragnarok Battle Offline
The continent of Rune Midgar is filled with adventurers. Many begin their lives as a weak novice and want to become as strong as they can be by ridding hostile monsters. Why? That is because they are stuck in a world that only allows them to beat stuff up to gain upward mobility. Ragnarok Battle Offline (RBO) is a doujin (Japanese fan-based) beat-em-up side-scroller satire of the Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), Ragnarok Online. The game have interesting adaptions of a side-scrolling action with a 2D fighting game physic system by having its own jumping action, the influence of agility, and its suspended force.
Jump Action
Many characters’ jumping height varies. I will use Female Acolyte as our sample character as she is between the lowest and highest jump, having straight side-view pose, and has magic ability to manipulate Agility among other characters.
Let’s assume Female Acolyte is 6 feet tall, her straight up jump height is about 9 feet at the apex in the air. However, her jumping height is lower if she jumps forward or backward. Her moving jump is 7 feet. In both jumping case, the vertical velocity slows down as she reaches to her apex height, then the vertical velocity accelerates downward until she touch the ground. For moving jump, the horizontal velocity stays with centripetal force with no slowing acceleration from the ground moving to jump. She cannot change her horizontal velocity while in the air because of the centripetal force, however, she can still turn around her body as much as she wants.
Female Acolyte can also jump once more while in air, this is called “air jump.” When she attempt air jump, it creates a blue repulsive wave below her feet, resetting all velocities to 0. The velocity reset caused by Female Acolyte’s body exerting high air pressure towards her, while low pressure around her push outward causing a blue wave effect. Which means no matter she is in the middle of jumping upward or falling, the air jump make her as if she was jumping from the ground again. The air jump gives her an additional 9 feet in the air. If she jumps in the apex of the regular and air jumps, her total jump height is about 18 feet. Likewise, the moving air jump is additional 7 feet. Having both moving jump apex is total of 14 feet. Therefore, if Female Acolyte chose straight up jump and then forward air jump or vise versa, that is 9 feet plus 7 feet equals 16 feet.
Another feature that all characters can perform is called “air recovery.” These feats normally appear when the characters are attempting to take action while being staggered or hurt during airborne. The character releases their inner energy releasing low pressures from the attacker’s blow. The low air pressure allows the high air pressure wreath the character. This causes a harmless blue shockwave ring effect and the falling vertical velocity resets to 0, which the character will do an additional 3 feet jump.
There are several characters that have their own jumping feat. Such as Male Thief has “air dash,” he crouch his body in mid-air and pushes his legs backward to create the air pressure’s reaction while his upper torso pushes ahead allowing his action tilts forward. The pressure can be seen as the air makes a blue air barrier-like effect that concaves his direction. His air dash also resets all vertical velocity to 0 and allows him to have a forward horizontal velocity. The gravity increases the falling vertical velocity after he pushed himself forward. He can only perform this feat once in the air without interrupting his available air jump.
Other characters, Male Archer and Female Archer, have a unique “air hop” feature while firing arrows from their bow in air. Male Archer always shoots horizontally straight. As he pulls the bowstring, the string forces the arrow straight. Once the arrow is fired, it gives an air pressure that keeps Male Archer momentarily hover in the air and recoil him backward. Female Archer always shoots downward-diagonal. She is pushed backward diagonal by the arrow release pressure, which gives her addition 1 foot above the air. Both archers resets their vertical velocity once their pull their bowstring before they release their arrow. They can air hop shooting at any time as long they are in the air with more than 1 arrow in their inventory and it does not deplete their force for attempting the single air jump. Lastly, the archers can nearly stay in the air as long they keep pulling their bowstring quick enough.
Influence of Agility
Most speed of actions in RBO’s world of Rune Midgar is based on the characters’ Agility statistic parameter. It is one of the valuable feats that determine the nimbleness, jumping speed, mobility, attacking, passive evasion, and spell casting. Generally, the higher Agility the faster vertical and horizontal velocity, acceleration, friction, and attack motion. In terms of jumping and falling, the Agility determines the mass no matter how fat, thin, giant, or tiny the characters and monsters are.
Agility influences how quick the vertical velocity and acceleration towards the character’s jump height apex. Higher Agility causes the character to jump and fall down faster. When Female Acolyte decides a straight up jumping with only 1 point of Agility, it takes 750 milliseconds to reach to the apex and 750 milliseconds to fall on the ground. That is total of 1.5 seconds in the air. Female Acolyte with 50 points of Agility, it takes 500 milliseconds to the apex and 500 milliseconds to the ground, totaling 1 second. If she has 60 points of Agility, it takes 250 milliseconds to the apex and 250 milliseconds to the ground, totaling 0.5 second. Agility seems to have some sort of ratio, as it takes 50 Agility cut down 0.5 second from the 1.5 seconds of 1 Agility point, but from 50 to 60 Agility cuts 0.5 seconds as well. Agility within the character has a terminal nimbleness with their body. The character with 80 Agility hardly any difference from having 90 Agility.
Suspended Force
When the attacker strikes a victim from either ground or air, both attacker and victim are frozen in time for less than a second. Everything and the environment around them remain in constant motion. The striking force is equally balanced with the impacted force for about 200 milliseconds. All motions are suspended, for attacker, their motion and velocity is halted, while the victim becomes the staggered state and their velocity resets to 0. After being suspense time for about 200 milliseconds, both attacker and victim return to their normal motion of the world, the attacker’s attack motion and velocity continues from where it was suspended; whereas the victim continues the velocity given from their staggering state.
In a case where both attacker and the victim are in the air, both are still suspended for about 200 milliseconds in the air. As the attacker strikes the victim, both receives each other’s action and reaction force, causing both stay in the hair until the pressure passes after 200 milliseconds. Characters and monsters takes advantage of suspended force in air, as long they are the attacker they can keep their rhythm of attack. This aerial suspended force attacks are usually known as “air combos.”
However, if another victim runs into the attacker’s suspended motion, the new victim will also become suspended in a staggered state and the attacker continues to be suspended because the striking inertia still taken place. If the victims are parading towards the attacker’s suspended strike, the attacker is stuck in the attacking pose until all the victims are staggering away. Keep in mind that the attacker in the suspended attacking pose is still vulnerable to any incoming attacks as the environment outside of the attacker and the victims are still in constant motion.
Conclusion
Ragnarok Online, in which Ragnarok Battle Offline based their satire on, was a standard 3D symmetrical grid world with RPG system combating monsters. Ragnarok Battle Offline gives a different gameplay aspect of it. RBO combines the basic attack and jump feature from the typical 2D beat-em-up side-scroller genre. It adds air jump, air dash, air hop, and suspended force that give a pause time that featured in most Asian 2D fighting games for players who wants more tastes of beating monsters for fun with air combos and such. It lastly retains the statistic parameters, such as Agility, from the MMORPG system that actually had its functions that matters in a side-scroller game. Those systems together in RBO make jumping height and velocity does matter on how the players want to manage their air control for evasion or aerial attacks. The game physics maybe visually funny and weird, but the flow of the gameplay feels fluid as it seems to be part of their world rather than being jumbled and clunky. The combination is the necessity to makes the feeling of both game genre look and at least to feels like playing all those features.
