Grrl Power #540 – Bubble trouble
Ok, I will admit, that pool is ridiculous, especially considering it’s on like the 10th floor of the building. Actually, more like the 7th through 10th. I don’t think it’s probably even possible to do that. The weight might be manageable, but the outward pressure the water would exhibit on the walls would be considerable, so let’s just say some metal-kinetic helped build it or something.
This seems like a pretty dumb mistake for Sydney to make, but consider this. Imagine you’re playing a Grrl Power video game, and when you’re playing as Sydney, you have to hold the left bumper to pull up a radial menu to select an orb for her left hand, and the right bumper to do the same for the right. (Or Q and E on the PC, obviously.) Tell me you wouldn’t at least one time, while flying over the lava level, accidentally replace the shield orb with the Lighthook, and comically flail around with the whip as Sydney turns into a sparkler then tumbles into the nearby bubbling caldera, forcing Krona to pop her checkpoint on you. (By the time the game comes out, she will have worked out the bugs.)
Dabbler’s level would be a Boris Vallejo-esqe scanty clad world, only she’d be shooting the trolls with railguns and chain lightning spells. Also her other level would be the alien bazaar. Maybe that would be her hub area. Yeah, I think about this stuff even though I don’t know how to program or have any time to work on a game.
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I’m going to add to the chorus of “why is she bothering with an air-filled shield when she’s wearing SCUBA gear anyway?” questions. It would solve a lot of the problems they’re dealing with to have her just leave the shield orb off and use fly-orb to maintain stationary position underwater with however much SCUBA gear she wants. Or not to bother, since she can wear a belt for neutral buoyancy, and thus keep two hands free for other orbs. They’re surely not planning to test her shield against Maxima while underwater AND trying out the other orbs, are they?
Reply to add, since I can’t edit:
By the way, the art on the water and air effects is spectacularly done.
because the purpose is to test things and doing stupid things in a safe environment is part of that.
It’s not doing stupid things in a safe environment. It’s doing stupid things in a semi-controlled environment.
well, given the result shown, above i would guess that they predicted correctly that she’d inevitably let go of the shield orb by mistake while testing. and thus had her wearing the scuba gear as a preventive measure. (though i suspect they didn’t anticipate the gear would slip off her face)
I’m wondering just HOW she managed to rip a full face scuba mask off? They only come off when you physically loosen the straps. Or rip you jaw and face off…..
Depending on how long they are down there she would need at least a breather and oxygen supply as it has been pointe dout that her shield is quite solid even to gases, including air. If she stays within a complete shield for too long without a breather andoxygen supply, the air trapped inside the bubble can be used up, nessesitating the dropping of the shield, or pasisng out for lack of oxygen.
I would have thought it was because of the limited amount of air Sydney has inside the Orb + the amount of time they intended her to be chained-down under the water experimenting…
Umm… Maxima specifically stated on the previous page that she wanted to “try the unknowns under water, but also with you submerged while in your shield.” She isn’t always going to have scuba gear, so testing with an air filled shield makes perfect sense. That, and as others have pointed out, the diving gear is a prudent precaution in case of, well, Sydney.
I don’t understand the advantage of having an air filled shield for this test. Maxima wants to test the orbs with the shield up and down. You can do that with a shield full of water just as well. In the unlikely event that Sydney needs to learn how to do something with an air filled shield underwater, that is a task for training not experimentation with the orbs.
You test for *everything*. The Orbs might react differently to being used when wet, when underwater and wet or when underwater and dry (aka. in the air-filled shield), heck… one or both of the unknowns might be specifically for one of these situations. They know very little about the orbs in general and can’t scan them with magic or technology currently available to them (established fairly early on). So you find out how it works the old fashioned way. Through comprehensive testing. And with shit like this, you’d test for even the most ludicrous and unlikely stuff.
I don’t mean something as far-fetched as, say…standing on one leg, while wearing a clown costume and singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” while trying to activate the orbs, but how they act in a variety of under-water scenarios? Makes perfect sense. To me, anyways.
I think it’s more to make sure Sydney survives whatever she might unleash.
Shockwaves under water are extremely deadly over a long distance compared to in air, so if she were to create one there she might mush herself in the process.
That’s atleast my idea.
Sorry, but no I would not make that mistake in HER position where you physically and literally need to hold a hand sized object.
Not a pad bumper/trigger, or a key on a keyboard, which require finger dexterity.
Can rack it up to training a n00b, or Sydney not taking things serious, or any other justification, but I have a hard time buying in on any of those.
But, nonetheless, I will enjoy the hilarity that should pursue!
..probably along the lines of her ‘accidentally’ figuring out what one of her powers are, while flailing around underwater.
I’m kinda with you on that. It seems to be a particularly hazardous way to control life-or-death mechanisms. Then I considered the following:
: no instruction manual. This may not be the way the designers intended the orbs to be used. Example: they might have been “jewels” in a crown-like device. They might work from hands only due to needing the massive number of nerve endings in our fingers to connect to the human’s feeble mental interfaces.
:They may not have been designed for humans. They certainly weren’t designed BY humans. They may have intended to be held in some alien mouth or stomach, or by an alien with larger, 20-fingered hands that could hold all seven in one of their 6 hands.
: These appear to be just the “keyboard” of a larger device, that is, they are the controllers only, not the actuator. They all share a set of common functions (ie, same interface method), despite their outward differences. there’s still a lot to be discovered here.
It’s stuff like that this that makes me still prefer old fashioned text-only sci fi to graphic novels. So many questions and cool ideas; I can imagine more action than a Bruce Willis movie with help, so just GIVE ME (fictional) SCIENCE !
“… a Bruce Willis movie with OUT help…”
sigh.
“20-fingered hands that could hold all seven in one of their 6 hands”
They could play every key on a piano at once and still have a hand left over to turn the sheet music.
Getting a manicure on that planet would be a HUGE undertaking.
Soooo crown…. where did them flying (halo formation) comes into it? Or the fact that they bind to the user like they did with Sydney?
They bind to the user so the crown would be designed to be worn all the time, and the halo formation is because the orbs want to stay in the formation they would be in if they were mounted to the crown.
weak neck muscles? plus the requirements that a> they can’t lost or dropped unrecoverably and b> unauthorized persons can’t steal and use them, unlike every tool, computer, starship and weapon in all of the Start Wreck and Star Wars universes.
jebus, did the humans in Star trek completely forget what keys and password are good for?
you make excelent points, except missing one.
flight and bind makes the crown completely obsolete.
Also, what about the levelup menu. would the crown just jump out of your head float in front of you?
the crown would also obscure the lines.
i cant see the crown making them in any way better than they are now. it would be a permanent nerf and obstruction.
Or like infinity stones and the infinity gauntlet.
You would never, ever forget which two of seven objects, identical except for color, you’re holding in which hand?
The fly and shield balls aren’t that different in color, even.
no
Typically it is folks who feel certain, about something that they have never done, who wind up in the morgue. “I am certain that gun will not be able to shoot through that book.” being a tragic contemporary example.
I have seen people (with very good memory and mental acuity) make such definitive statements in the past. Even about things that they are familiar with from day-to-day use and decades of experience. And have also seen them fail at the very things they declared they were infallible at.
It is not being an idiot… It’s the ADD…
lol right? ffs… people seriously underestimate how much of a handicap that can be.
To quote the LEGO movie “I think I got it, but just in case… Tell me the whole thing again I wasn’t listening”
I can claim the knowledge firsthand.
you do remember we’re talking about a hyper-adhd/add person here, right? Idk if there’s anyone in your environment with ADD, but try asking them to hold a phone in one hand, an equal-sized block of wood or plastic in the other, pay attention to you talking to them, then throw the wood into a bin in front of them while counting the number of vowels you use. Taking bets on them throwing in the phone.
Then again this would work on normal people too.
I don’t hold things in my hands for longer than it takes to do what I picked them up for. for example, keys – I pull them out of my pocket when I’m at the door I want opened. Any object I hold in my hand for longer than I’m actually using it will get put down…somewhere. Even though I know this and try to rigorously follow the “empty hand” rule, I lose things this way. At least 3 or 4 times each week, I have to go looking for something that “disappeared” from hand.
Adhd really sucks. So do jokes about it.
Equally the Specific Learning Difficulties often turn up together, and Sydney’s definitely clumsy enough to be dyspraxic. And dyspraxia doesn’t just make you physically clumsy, it also means you have less working memory than most people, so things get bumped off the ‘I currently need to think about’ stack and forgotten. This is why I ended up having to defrost a birthday card the other week. (Put it between two pizzas to stop it getting bent on the way home, put the pizzas in the fridge when I got home. Several hours later ‘Now what did I do with the birthday card?’).
This may have already been addressed somewhere and I just missed it, but why is Sidney even using her shield and fly balls underwater here? I mean, if nothing happens just trying the various orbs underwater by themselves and you want to move up to trying them in combination, fine. That would be methodical and make perfect sense. But why /start/ with the shield and chains? She’s got scuba gear and she knows how to use it. Why isn’t she just hanging out underwater, treading water to stay in place?
Aaaand, in the time it took me to type that and figure out how to click the “submit” button (comment boxes do weird things on my phone…) I see someone else has already asked the question. I swear I scrolled through the comments before making my own >.<
Situational applicability – Sydney doesn’t usually carry SCUBA, so if she Were to find herself in/under water – Shield Orb would make the most sense as a primary go-to (First, don’t drown, Second…)
.
At that point, figuring out what works Second is what they’re going for.
Well, one thing I see that tells me this is “no biggy” is that Sydney is SCUBA trained, and part of said training is what to do to recover a lost mask/respirator while under water. Sydney knows what to do, how to do it, and will have practiced it many times before getting her certification.
Although, thinking about it, solo diving, such as when she found the orbs, is taught to be a big no-no, so she obviously didn’t pay total attention in class…
Oh yeah, and just what the hell happened to Dabbler? She was the first one in the pool…
Still need that edit function, Dave…
I second this thought – it’s the first thing they teach noobs to do there, too, though I suppose losing your mask in calm is a bit different to have it blown off by probably a ton of water…..
thinking about it – that’s probably more like 3-4t of water (1 tonne water = 1 cubic meter water, and that sphere is easily 1m radius – go look up the formula) and as such – shouldn’t that potentially stun her? (we need someone to get a to of water dropped on ’em to test this)
For those that want to know the equation for volume of a sphere it is pi*r^3.
Nitpick – 4/3 pi * r^3
The water pressure wouldn’t be that bad. Sure, it would probably hit two atmospheres by the bottom of the pool, but if it’s not going to crush a human it’s certainly not going to break the walls of the pool.
But all that water is certainly going to be heavy, so there must be a lot of engineering going into properly supporting that pool.
i would just assume that it’s a dozen or two steel i-beams supporting and containing it, so that they don’t need multi-foot thick reinforced cement/concrete walls.
Probably a combination of structural steel, high strength reinforcement, and very high strength concrete (5000+ psi). Saw one of these being built years ago, and it was pretty amazing.
The secondary hull probably also raises the degree of difficulty.
Then again, having supers at your beck and call probably means access to exotic materials and building techniques. For all we know the pool is made of unobtanium, adamant, and orichalcum.
If we don’t get a fast joke out of this I do not k ow why I am reading
This is not the plan I thought Max had. I thought she had seen how the orbs reacted when Varia touched Sydney, and was planning to have three hands in there holding the needed orbs.
I’ve long suspected one of the unknowns provides breathable atmosphere, which wouldn’t do anything you’d notice when not needed, ala Spectral of the Strangers (https://comicvine.gamespot.com/spectral/4005-1287/), who didn’t discover this power until they went to the moon.
It also fits well with the idea of the balls being an exploration suite (mobility, manipulation, defense, offense, scouting).
Fun fact: there’s at least two points in Portal 2 where if you accidentally send the wrong colored portal out, the game will switch the old portal for you.
The first case, the other half of the portal is out of sight, and playtesters got frustrated by making it to the end of a complicated section, only to die because they forgot which half of the portal they used.
The second case is at the very end of the game, and I suppose Valve figured it was better not to spoil the climax.
Did not know this. Interesting.
i REALLY want this game now.. make with the programing and animating damnit!
It would have happened either way. If she dropped the fly ball she would have dropped to the bottom of her shield, if not THROUGH it due to the sudden fall causing her to possibly drop the shield ball.
Actually, she would only fall to the end of the chains, as the shield remains centered on her when she moves.
Doesn’t mean the snap wouldn’t hurt, though…
Just like to give a shoutout on the GORGEOUS water action going on in this day/chapter/whatever.
Wonder if Dave will do things like less visibility in less pure water, etc, later on.
Panel 5 (I think, assuming the inset panel in panel 1 counts as its own panel, and not “panel 1.1” or something) is amazing. I mean, it’s all good, but panel 5 is dynamic and makes *great* use of effects.
To put the pool weight into perspective, I just looked up the weight of the World Trade Centers. The lobby floor on each tower was holding up about 500,000 tons of weight, or (engage Carl Sagan voice) one BILLION pounds.
The water weighs about 50 million, and the shell of the pool is probably that again. So we are already 1/10th of the way to the billion pound mark, before considering the entire rest of the building.
I am beginning to believe that the sole purpose of this exercise is to give DaveB a reason to play with underwater textures.
Totally worth it. Loving every panel of it.
MAXIMA: Sydney! Are you… relatively unharmed and flailing comically.
A Harsh Lesson in Orb Management
i can’t tell you how many times while playing portal i get half way through a puzzle and then shoot the wrong color portal and have to start completely over. I understand your pain sydney
Wow love the detail in all the water light interaction (specific name for that?) but that must have taken some time.
I’m tempted to say chairoscuro
(uncertain of the spelling)
I approve of the idea of a Grrl Power video game, that sounds ridiculously fun.
MARKETING SURVEY
1) For Grrl Power the video game, would you prefer to play specific named heroes, with pre-built power sets, or have design-your-own characters, with power sets which can replicate the heroes?
2) Single-player oriented or massively multiplayer online game?
3) Any special features you would like to see in the game, which would help to capture the essence of Grrl Power?
Points to note:
1) Answering “Both” would most likely lead to a mismatched game that could not be properly balanced for playability. There are ways to try that, but companies which attempt that usually end up with severe problems.
Pre-built has an advantage in being able to create specifically balanced missions, to give each player an enjoyable experience, despite mis-matched power levels.
e.g. “This mission for 4-6 players, one for Halo, one for Dabbler, plus 1-2 others with power ratings above 5 star and 1-2 with powers below 5 star.” With game rewards being boosted for those who manage to achieve results with the weaker characters.
Similar things could be done with the customisable characters, but players will be able to min-max characters to make it much more challenging to build balanced missions. Especially when factoring in that players can make bad design choices or simply end up missing some key powers that might make some missions much harder.
“What do you mean, that none of us can fly? How the heck are we meant to get that thing up there? Has anyone bought ‘extra tentacle length’?”
OMG Make an original character mmorpg! Special features? You can accrue special faction with the various groups that allow you to get special missions, titles, vanity items or even training that unlocks special power choices. You don’t have to be a bad guy to admire Deus but you might have to work pretty hard to get him to admire you back.
If a player chose to play as Harem, how would you enable him/her to control multiple on-screen characters?
Can we include a mini game where you can play as a paparazzi and score points by getting candid shots of the main characters (and survive long enough to get them back to the office)?
2 character control, is easy to enable by sacrificing camera control but more than that would not be anywhere near as simple.
Two routes:
1) Don’t try. Each body would be played by a separate player. Especially useful if you have anyone at risk of going AFK, they can just say ‘put me in storage’, boosting the remaining Harem players’ strength scores, until they return.
However what they would get is sensory input from the other bodies. So I envisage a split screen (or for those with fancy two-monitor set ups, a separate display for each), with their own character on one side and the other four (or as many as are operational) on the other.
Obviously this option would only be viable in multi-player (or MMOLG) versions.
2) Same sort of set up as above, but having the other bodies AI controlled. Obviously the player would get to choose their behaviour individually (e.g. ‘attack any enemies’, ‘defend only’, ‘retreat if engaged’, ‘complete mission objective only’, etc). However the player could switch active bodies at a click (or number press).
There are plenty of platoon-type games that use mechanisms which could be used instead of or in addition to the above. The only addition would be to allow continuous sensory input, from all the bodies, in whatever fashion is most useful to the player.
Yes, but they will have to be vulnerable to being attacked by any players (and AI characters). Preferably with permadeath enabled. We should not encourage such anti-social behaviour by giving players enjoyment at such activities. If they really want to be peeping-toms, with a means to publish their trash to the world, then they will have to get used to re-rolling new characters.
must have a “make Maxima say Bingo” minigame.
+5
Could easily replace achievements.
It have to be a RPG. Anything else would be a waste of Halos orbs.
Being a born role-player, you would not find me complaining if it went down that route.
But you can still make good use of Halo’s orbs (and skill tree) in other kinds of video games. Most nowadays have some kind of power-up or advancement mechanisms.
Here is just one example:
A MMOLG team fighting game, with the following factions:
1) Archon
2) The Twilight Council (at a stage when they are no longer allies with Archon, of course)
3) The Dark Council (those council factions which have aligned with Selina)
4) The super villains alliance
Players who choose top-tier characters (e.g. Halo, Maxima, Dabbler, Math, Vehemence & Selina) will be strong from the outset, but develop very slowly. Whilst those with weak characters will be able to earn significant bonuses for any kills (or assists) of stronger players, and will get other significant advantages to balance the inequity of those choosing the Halo power set.
For example being able to buy uber-armour upgrades to avoid Heatwave-knife-in-foot-syndrome. Potentially even including space-marine type powered armour upgrades.
In a world full of Halo and Maxima type supers, the rest would need to find ways to level the playing field, and their various factions would do their best to assist them in that. Courtesy of Deus’s Machina Industries highly profitable World At War program.
1.) I’d want to play as a single named and highly customizable character- that is, Sydney (with her full skill tree), with alternate characters being selectable companions. Maxima would not be selectable except as a post-game secret unlock character.
2.) Single player, x1000. Way too many crap MMOs as is, and the amount of effort required to make an MMO vs a single player game is different in orders of magnitude.
3.) A lot of clever environment interaction and orb interaction. So selecting the lighthook and the shield would allow you to slam enemies into the shield, say. Combining the shield with the flight orb lets you kamikaze. lighthook + beam = easy targeting, etc. A clever plot, comedic situations, and snappy dialog would be ESSENTIAL- the tone of the comic would have to be maintained.
Overall, I’d want the game to be an action RPG similar to X-Men Legends, or such. Maybe some light puzzle elements too that would teach you how to use the orbs in clever combinations.
+1
design of gameplay for Harem as an rpg is gonna be a killer problem. but really really cool if someone can figure out how to make it work.
You could go super meta with it, and either position the game as an authorized game commissioned as one of Arianna’s PR moves. So everything about it would be in-univers Arianna PR spin. And avoiding “classifed” abilites like the Truesight, and Dabbler’s non-terrestrial status.
Or as an Unauthorized “fan” project ;P . Which gets almost everything completely wrong and makes all kinds of assumptions based on “publicly” sourced information.
Lots of choices. Although I’d stay way from “MMOs”. Sorry @wraithedge, but that’s a quick way to kill a project. It adds a level of complexity in development that would mean you’d be waiting for a Grrl Power game for 5 years, if not a decade.
=====
Personally I think a single-player (or limited co-op) pre-built game, focusing on select ArcSWAT members would be the easiest to achieve. Doing it as a Meta-joke in the form of an in-universe Arianna PR campaign allows it to be decidedly non-canon to the Comic’s story. You can also excuse things like Voice Acting if/where needed, with non-canon voices.
Those are some good arguments against an MMO.
Singe-player game with co-op options à la X-Men: Legends would definitely be a good idea. I loved the way this game was played.
And named characters are a necessity to avoid both the “unadapted powers” issue raised by Yorp when asking the question, and the “Harem” issue of O.B. Juan: Harem would never be given as a playable character, only as support.
I like the idea of the “Archon-sanctioned video game”. The only thing that would make it bad is that it would make it difficult to justify letting the player use (and thus know of) the com ball’s abilities. Having obstacles to overcome by using this ball would be really interesting (getting an entry code by hanging beside a window as a “hologramme”, setting a distraction to draw guards somewhere…).
The telepresence isn’t classified as far I remember, it’s kinda hard to hide that one. The True-Sight aspect is the one that is absolutely classified, and I’d imagine the teleportation as well. At minimum telepresence was outed during the restaurant fight for sure.
Most of the team’s overt powers really can’t be hidden, and would be better off sold as spin. Anvil would be an example of a character who’d function differently in a “PR Game”, as her kinetic absorption is being played as a more typical “brick wall”. Ren (super adrenaline) and Varia would also likely be slightly different, depending on what kinds of details ARCON wants to try and obfuscate. The biggest obfuscations will come from exact information, such as how fast Maxima can fly, or exactly how heavy Stalwart can get. Dabbler would be “human” with her temporary “battle form”.
Isn’t the telepresence connected to the com ball? But yes, you’re probably right that it was only the true sight power of the orb and I extended it in my mind. (true about the teleportation, but as, for me, it was a package deal, I did not mention it :-) )
I agree with you on everything you added. But this would indeed be fun, since people not reading the comics could enjoy the game and those reading it could enjoy comparing the PR version with the “real” version… :-)
I wonder if Vance would be depicted as a spider hive… It could be really fun. :-)
Vance for optional megaboss. Make the wrong story decisions and wind up mummified.
Very interesting angles. I had hoped to be able to come back on this, in more depth. But have been tied up elsewhere.
People are saying “Action RPG” with named characters is the way to go and I agree. Levelups, heavy character focus and achievements (preferably with minor functionality like in Borderlands, not just the trashy sort forced onto most modern games) are all a must to replicate the feel of the comic but so is fast paced action and the ability to utterly wreck things, given the superhero genre as a whole.
When I say utterly wreck things, though, I mean utterly wreck things. There’s a lot of focus on realism and attention to surroundings in Grrl Power that could easily manifest itself as destructible and usable terrain elements.
And, while I can’t say the MMO possibility appeals to me at all, co-op would be a massive plus, even if it would require implimenting some functionally very different to Sydney player characters.
if we had a really good modder you could start with the engine from one of the newer Lego games. they do actually use both pre-defined powers and build your own. and I’ve seen ones where they use at least temporary multiple powers. (gamer kid from dimensions comes to mind)
Here is another idea that isn’t the RPG angle. Anyone remember the original Rainbow 6 (1998) game?
How about a “Super” Tactical Shooter/Action game? You could either do real time, like the way Rainbow Six does after a pre-planning phase. Or you could do something like X-Com that is more turn based. This plays to the S.W.A.T. aspect of ArcSWAT, the fact that they are supposed to be tactically thinking super cops.
You could always imagine having some parts of the game following this pattern. You could have mostly an Action RPG with mini-games with huge changes in gameplay, such as tactical preparation and turn-based action (notably, a scene with Math where you have to choose among options to predict his foe’s actions and determine his own, then you hit the “fight” button and let it play out), “chases (but with super powers, meaning flying chases among buildings and with enemy snipers here and there or parkour-style chases for characters like Math or Pixel), sniper missions (Peggy, of course), pure puzzles (Dabbler or Krona having to reorganise, correct or simply trace glyphs, Leon having to crack security or protect a framework from a hacking attempt…), and why not also a rescue mission or two, where you have to coordinate the Arc-SWAT members to locate and help people trapped in wreckage (collapsed buildings, bombed-out streets…).
Of course, this would mean developing five or six different game engines (well, the rescue missions could probably be done using the main engine, but with the use of the less fight-oriented abilities), but they may be a little less complex, since they would not be used extensively, and some would not need much (puzzles and turn-based, probably)..
huh… Max is wearing a respirator, so she can drown?
In the final panel we can clearly see there is a tube supply air, presumably from a tank on Maxima’s back, given that is where it goes. As such it is not a respirator.
Do bear in mind that Maxima has a personal force-field, which extends to cover her gear (meaning that some design criteria will be different for her to normal divers) and has some very specialised custom-made gear (for example her gun is uniquely made tor her needs).
As such we should not make assumptions if the appearance is similar to some other piece of off-the-shelf gear. Their functions may be radically different. (Plus the artist may simply have chosen a reference picture that looked cool, even if it turns out not to have been the right item).
It has already been established three times (including now) that Maxima needs to breathe oxygen. During flight testing for Sydney, during the fight with Vehemence. And now :)
Yea, that was not the point of the initial comment though. A respirator is not an underwater breathing device. It is used to filter out contaminants (such as smoke particles) from air. So the point was well-made from that point of view. If that is what Maxima was wearing she would not be able to breathe and would drown.
When they were testing Halo’s altitude limit, Max wore an air mask, too. Presumably, then, she does need to breathe.
Without a mask she couldn’t talk to Sydney under water or at high altitudes so that may be the real reason for it.
The collapsing bubble would have killed sidney, it’s the equivalent of a 10 ton acme anvil dropping on you from a couple of meters up.
The author has previously stated that the orbs can compensate for rapidly changing pressure levels. This is an extreme example of how effective that function is.
Note that his comment was in answer to a reader noting that making the shield bigger/smaller should cause dangerous pressure differentials (risking the bends and similar effects). Although that was an answer to do with air, both air and water share properties that mean the function should work fine.
My only assumptions being that it can have that effect even 1) without the orb being held and 2) without the shield still being up.
Halo is not dead though, so I think my logic holds water. (Strictly non-canon though, as this may simply have not been something the author considered to be a risk).
Hm, well the water wouldn’t rise up from below, so it’s a combo of it falling from the sides and above. You can compress a fair bit , but yeah, then eardrums…
The perspective prolly skews it a little, but Sydney’s roughly the same height as the space between each chain anchor point, so… cast page is broken, so can’t see if her height is listed, plus her space between the 3rd and 2nd depth of the points, plus a tad, lets go with… 15 feet down? So, 5 meters.
Top of head n shoulders is 0.1 square meters, water is 1 tonne per cubic meter
5000 kilos, x 0.1, so yeah, 500 pounds of weight just dropped on Sidney… 9.8m/s is Earth’s acceleration… let’s say half a meter from the top of her shield bubble to her head… https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1224852055 … 3.131557120667 m/s at moment of impact…. F=MxA, sooo… 1565 lbs of force just went into Sydney’s skull/neck.
Funny thing there is that 1565 lbs is not much. A 20 cm drop (8 inches) headfirst into the floor is about as forceful. You’d hit the ground at about 2 m/s, and there is maybe a couple cm for compression in the neck, so your deceleration occurs in .02 s, giving 100 m/s^2 deceleration, or 11 g.
11 times normal weight (150 lbs or so) is 1650 lbs force.
One of the most important measures is the pressure per square centimeter, with the force being spread over all her body, Something that has not been factored in is that she is not in a vacuum, but does actually have non-compressible air surrounding her. So Dave’s portrayal here may be reasonable.
Especially when factoring in a thought that struck me. as follows. We do know the orbs can compensate for pressure. A sensible design would simply not allow the shield to be lowered when the external pressure is dangerously high. However, when near the surface, it is reasonable that a user may wish to lower the shield.
Therefore the design might actually match the air pressure to the water pressure, when close to the surface, to allow the user to do so relatively safely.
This was the first thing I thought of; maybe not dead, but the rapid implosion would probably blow her eardrums, stun her, and then she’d get smacked in the face when the very non-compressible water hit her. this would be a serious situation, at least. Probably not fatal though.
Consider panel 3 through – between letting go and getting hit she has time for a really long thought, considering. maybe a full second or two – that would take the hit from “instant death” to “hard smack in the face”. She should least have a nosebleed though.
Hmmm. Hydrodynamics that I don’t know enough about. She’s what, 10 feet down? That’s an extra 1/3 of an atmosphere of pressure. So what happens when the shield drops? The pressure in the air bubble increases from ~14.5 psi to ~19.3 psi. The bubble shrinks to 75% of its original size (using simple math which may or may not be correct for this situation). So Sydney does not get instantly slammed with tons of water. She is still inside the air bubble when the pressure goes up. The air then starts to shoot violently upward. This will likely carry Sydney with it for a ways. But it won’t stay a cohesive, singular bubble. The turbulence will throw her about and get her tangled up in the chains. So rather than having a 10 water anvil dropped on her, it is probably more analogous to falling out of a speeding boat.
No actual physics were harmed in the generation of this hypothesis. Someone should go submit the question to “what if” on xkcd. Or do actual calculations yourself.
thats one way to blow your eardrums.
If Sydney went with full scuba gear with radio comm in the mask, she wouldn’t need the shield at all underwater, would she?
:)
But then again, a setup like this would be needed if she wanted to test other orbs in conjunction with the shield for the purpose of how being underwater affects her powers.
I want that video game, DaveB. Make it for Xbox One… easier to get indie games sold there :)
I would buy the crap out of a Grrlpower game.
hey, her hair is floating on panel one, but she’s supposed to be surrounded by air, not water!
The flight orb creates a zero G zone around her and her gear (but not any others inside the shield). She could fly in any orientation. She is just being polite by keeping the same direction as Max.
(I am still waiting for the scene where she tries to take a drink from her canteen while hovering and gets a cloud of floating blobs around her.)
Not zero G. The fly orb has its own gravity direction, which is how Sydneys hair stays in place when upside down. If it was zero G, her hair would be all over the place whether upside down, rightside up, or any other direction.
Halo’s got a new way out of such situations if it comes to her mind. Comm-ball Teleporting. As long as she’s got time to maneuver the Comm-ball to a safer (doesn’t have to be 100% safe) spot, she can *blip* away. Not great for emergency twitch reaction escapes, but solid otherwise.
However such a new skill takes practice to reach for, and then use correctly in an emergency.
Ofc, knowing Halo’s current dilemma, I’m not sure Maxima knows about it yet.
It was in Sydney’s debriefing ramble post “W ars” warehouse fiasco. The question is if either of them remember it in a bit of a panic situation. Even if Max remembers, she’s doing the “safe” thing and moving to assist.
and we discover one of the unknowns lets her breathe underwater.
AKA: a “power you’d never know you had unless you either A: are part of a group where it is a common power, or B: happen to be in the deadly situation where it can present its self where you might have died otherwise.” or C: someone with power detection is around to tell you that you have that power.
-radiation absorption, cloud walking, survive in a vacuum, breathe poisonous gases, immune to venom, ect… type powers on that list.
Environmental adaptation would be a great power. :)
As far as cloud walking goes, having somebody in your party with the power to speak to inanimate objects, (and have them answer,) works as well. Just don’t forget to protect against curses.
Or ‘speak with dead’. Which could then unlock other powers along that path, like ‘travel to the other side’ and the much more useful ‘and back again’. Plus the less risky ‘raise dead’.
I suspect a super hero might have ‘turn undead’ though, rather than ‘animate dead’. But, even though the Council advised Sydney that there are no zombies, that would not preclude Halo having that power, even if nobody else did.
A company in sacramento made a steel rooftop pool
https://www.nmiindustrial.com/
So, on a serious note, are you actually planning to start work on a game? Because as a student game designer, I’ve already been highly interested in making videogames on a few of my favorite webcomics that lend themselves to this in terms of story, character and world building.
Problem is, I most definitely lack the skill to do any of them justice at present.
cue orb of water breathing.
Personally I wouldn’t mind a video game about this. There ain’t enough female platforming protagonists if you ask me.
There are actually a ton of female gaming protagonists nowadays. When I am not on my smartphone I can list a fraction of them that will take up an entire page off the top of my head. Sone of my favorite games actually have females as the main or co-main protagonist, or are games where the gender can be chosen as male or female.
Nevertheless I would love a grrlpower video game :)
Okay I’m home so I’m going to start making a list off the top of my head of female protagonists in video games, starting with my favorite ones. Just a few since otherwise I’ll be writing a spammy amount.
Lara Croft (especially from the reboot of Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider)
Ellie (from The Last of Us – co-main protagonist along with Joel – and she’s main in Part 2 also)
Alice (from American McGee’s Alice and the even better Alice: Madness Returns)
Juliet Starling (from Lollipop Chainsaw)
Chell (from Portal series, and GLaDoS is the best villain, also a female…. well female AI anyway)
Clementine (from Telltale’s The Walking Dead series – although you play her as a main in season 2)
Nilin (from Remember Me)
Nina Williams (from Death by Degrees)
Jill Valentine (from Resident Evil)
Faith Connors (from Mirror’s Edge)
Aloy (from Horizon: Zero Dawn)
Shepard (from Mass Effect – I know it’s male or female but the female one is more awesome looking)
Claire Redfield (also from Resident Evil)
Jade (from Beyond Good and Evil – and will be in the second one too)
Bayonette (from Bayonetta, duh)
Samus Aran (from Metroid series)
Kate Wilson (from Hydrophobia)
Rayne (from Bloodrayne)
Aya Brea (from Parasite Eve)
Annah (from Planescape: Torment)
Tifa Lockhart (from Final Fantasy series)
Ms. Pacman (duh)
Xian Mei and Purna Jackson (Two of the four characters in Dead Island series – the better ones btw)
Joanna Dark (from Perfect Dark series)
Kate Walker (from Syberia series)
April Ryan (from The Longest Journey)
Aurora (from Child of Light)
Anastasia and Shao Jun (from Assassin’s Creed Chronicles Russia and China, respectively)
Aveline de Grandpre (from Assassin’s Creed Liberation)
Catwoman (from Batman Arkham City – co-protagonist)
Evie Frye (co-main protagonist from Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate)
Supergirl (in Injustice 2 – lets face it, when it comes right down to it, she’s the biggest main character in the storyline, along with Batman)
Alisa Landale (from Phantasy Star series)
Ada Wong (also from Resident Evil series)
Rosetta (from Kings Quest 4 – The Perils of Rosetta)
Laura Bow (from The Colonel’s Bequest)
Clone Wars (for DS and Wii) (Ahsoka Tano)
Alex Roivas (from Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem)
Alyssa Ashcroft (from Resident Evil: Outbreak)
Amanda Ripley (from Alien: Isolation)
Angela Prophet (from Psychotoxic)
Anya Romanov (from Stolen – LOVE THIS GAME)
Oni (from Oni)
Max Guevara (from Dark Angel)
Sydney Bristow (from Alias)
Should I bother to keep going? Because again – this is off the top of my head, not including all the playable main characters in fighting games, RPGs, and games where you can choose to be male OR female where it doesn’t affect the outcome at all)
This is not to say that I wouldn’t love more. :) I more care about the game being awesome than the character’s gender (since Syberia 3 sucked and the Last compass sucked too, and not because of the main character’s gender – it’s just the dialog and gameplay was awful). That being said, a GrrlPower game WOULD be awesome. And I would buy it.
maybe green is the orb of healing (troll orb) and its use will heal sydney’s soon to be broken leg
Krona solves so many video game checkpoint logic issues all by herself. It’s like the sand mechanic in Sands of Time. Screw up and die? Time sand reverses time. It’s nice to have some logic as to why you can die and continue on.
Im kinda sad/perplexed by this strip. As I had understood her control over the orbs, it is as bending your arm or lifting your leg, an extension of herself. She even used all the orbs to fight Math controlling each one in its own path, like we would throw punches with our two hands. I would not think that she would be thinking – ‘oh now i hold the shield-orb in my left hand’ any more than she would be thinking – ‘oh now my left hand is at the end of my left arm.’
Yeah, but there have been plenty of times, especially while trying to mentally juggle a half dozen things, where I’ve performed inexplicable actions just because some mental switch failed to trigger.
It’s like the joke of the artist who has their drink and their rinse cup, and takes a drink from the wrong one. Or whatever makes a person leave their car keys in the fridge (outside of inebriation). All done with perfectly smooth muscular actions. It’s just the logic part that fails.
Exactly. People can still make mistakes, even with stuff they might have done a thousand times previously without error. It happens.
As an example, it is well-established that the single most common mistake pilots make is forgetting to lower the landing gear of the aircraft prior to landing.
It seems funny, but think about all the other stiuff they have to worry about at the exact same time – altitude, airspeed, rate of descent, spotting the runway, etc., etc., etcetera. Easy for one relatively simple operation to get lost in the shuffle under the rigyt circumstances. Which is why modern aircraft have checklists for literally everything – and all sorts of warning sustems to help prevent this.
Humans are silly, there is an obvious solution to paw.
All it requires is hiring
Bad kitty, no stepping on mouse, when the pointer is over the submit button!
Ahem, to conclude….
All it requires is hiring a new breed of pilots.
… by rule of narrative smoothity, I think we’re gonna find out what one of those orbs does, and it’s basically some type of “Oh Shit” button.
And potentially the only one that can basically activate itself?
Up to this point have we actually seen a moment when Syd was in legit mortal peril? Like, not the THREAT of death, but something truly, desperately imminent.
The time reset. She actually ‘died’.
Fair nuff. That one did slip my mind.
That is one GIANT pool. And it looks like Sydney and Maxmaia are over 30′ under water.
Shift Max over to the building side and she’s about 1.5 times her height beneath the surface. Call her 6 feet and that means her head is about 9′ under and her feet about 15′. Sydney looks to measure about the same depth if you look at those anchoring points for the chain.
Lots of tall buildings with pools on a high/top floor. Can probably spot several by satellite.
As for this one, I would lose my damn mind in a second.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/clear-bottom-swimming-pool-hangs-over-buildings-edge
Check out the movie “The Mechanic 2” with Jason Statham. It has one of those… heh heh
And if we’re only 10 storeys up, add in a bunch of cruise liners as well. Though most aren’t as deep.
It’s a heavy load, but no heavier than a few storeys of building. The Burj Khalifa, with a pool on the 76th floor, has another 87 floors above it, call it about a third of the entire building’s 450,000t structure given it narrows. An equivalent 10m deep pool would be about 125x125m and I don’t think ARC’s is quite as big.
Random observation that someone else probably already made: Sydney found the orbs under water. Assuming they didn’t land there by falling from the surface, (a) at least some of them may cave been designed for this environment, or (2) at least one of them may fail spectacularly in this environment…
Btw, in case anyone still doubts, I have known two ladies named Sydney.
Honestly, I find the suggestion that there are men named Sydney to be more unlikely.
I know there is the Australian city named after her. But, you are right, I really could not see parents naming a baby boy after a heroine. He would get mercilessly teased at school. Almost as bad as being called ‘Sue’!
Other than, of course, Sydney Schoville III. Hopefully she will be a girl though. But keeping a family tradition in important, if not.
She summons them from out of sight perfectly but flubs on the hand release. Orb/Brain Connection > Hand/Brain Connection or she has better control of this artificial addition to her body than her actual body. (probably because there is an artificial intelligence in the orbs adding and extra layer of Anti-Whoopsie to these mental requests… )
If Myworld (the action rpg maker) is successful it may open a world of competition that will spawn the game maker for you DaveB.
People can still goof, even with stuff they may have done flawlessly a thousand or ten thouisand times previously. It happens.