What is Digg?106 Comments
- Duilen, on 01/07/2008, -1/+59I don't think I've ever seen a game review with this many equations.
- BlueSkyfish, on 01/07/2008, -0/+51In the beginning of the game, Rosalina gives him a Luma so he can travel in space.
- 10scott10, on 01/07/2008, -0/+50I like how he is taking a video game so seriously.
pretty interesting from the physics standpoint.
and props to the guy who pointed out the luma. - Dougman82, on 01/07/2008, -0/+41No no no, the leaf turns you into a flying raccoon. The feather merely puts a magic cape on you.
- KidTechno, on 01/07/2008, -9/+41superrrrr maahhriooo gaaalllaaaaaxeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- thebellmaster1x, on 01/07/2008, -0/+29"Due to the ratio of his weight to each asteroid being smaller, he would, in fact, have much less gravity the smaller the planet."
One word: density.
Things of the same size can vary in mass; things of different sizes can have identical masses. - TalkingBanana, on 01/07/2008, -0/+24Dude, you're looking into this too much. Remember, this is the series where you pick up a feather which turns you into a raccoon that can fly. Suspension of disbelief, man, suspension of disbelief...
- inactive, on 01/07/2008, -4/+21Either he really likes mario or is a physicist that's looking for a job and can't fill the hours.
- deltaandroid, on 01/07/2008, -1/+18I hated that the first time I heard it lol
- Chubs879, on 01/07/2008, -1/+17I didn't need complex calculations to tell me that the physics in SMG are "unlikely".
- TalkingBanana, on 01/07/2008, -1/+16Epic.
- swiecki, on 01/07/2008, -2/+17http://duggmirror.com/nintendo/The_Physics_of_Supe ...
- Andareed, on 01/07/2008, -2/+16yes
- Unremarkable, on 01/07/2008, -0/+12For the purpose of this conversation: Yes.
- thetanbark, on 01/07/2008, -1/+13While the gravity physics are really impressive, there are a few places in the game where Newton's First Law (an object in motion stays in motion) is blatantly broken. On Sink the Airship (Bowser Jr's boss level in the Kitchen), you are moving forward on the last platform right before the boss battle, and if you jump, the platform keeps moving while Mario goes straight up and straight down...
- Roger, on 01/07/2008, -0/+10Glad you're proud of your ignorance.
- ZombieSociety, on 01/07/2008, -0/+9Nobody liked it when you did it.
- MBellan, on 01/07/2008, -0/+8The geometry of the planets themselves is also interesting.
Making Scenic Trips on Irregularly shaped objects is fun.
It's almost like walking through Escher Paintings. - rompom7, on 01/07/2008, -0/+8Ever eaten a mushroom and felt bigger than you actually are?
- ariez84, on 01/07/2008, -7/+14In COD4 when you die, you come back to life. So either:
1) My charecter is actually a feline and have extra lives.
2) ITS A ***** GAME.
Now given #1 isnt easy, isnt #2 more logical? - benjorino, on 01/07/2008, -0/+7What he's saying is essentially very simple.
Basically if you take the third and fourth order differentials of the gravitational vector field, and conjugate all the variables in the x and y directions; the resultant function is a sum of the integral of the mass of the sphere (planet in this case), with respect to the Dirac delta function, and the Fermi operater of the 6th supersition of the first three low-order quantum states of the system.
This is really quite basic physics. - rogersj3, on 01/07/2008, -2/+9Me and (at this point) 352 of my closest friends.
- kopaka649, on 01/07/2008, -0/+6Google calculator converts it automatically (and that's what he was using).
- Yookji, on 01/07/2008, -0/+5Anyone who's taken a recent physics class could write that using wikipedia to find extra equations.
- atlacatl, on 01/07/2008, -0/+5I thought the same thing when I saw my son playing (he's 7). However, I felt better when I logically concluded that gravity is not a function of size, but of mass. Therefore, these little planets are as massive as earth, but in a smaller volume.
Did anyone think of the "Little Prince"? - feshmania, on 01/07/2008, -0/+5and i'm sure you've never wondered what it's like to be a superhero either, right?
- thebellmaster1x, on 01/07/2008, -0/+5@rompom7
Yeaaaaah, maaaaan. - KidVicious, on 01/07/2008, -0/+5Neutron Stars are as small as 12 miles across and can have up to 2 times the mass of the sun, so I think that a 747 sized sphere could plausibly have the mass of the earth or even a lot more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star - FriedTurkey, on 01/07/2008, -0/+5I am a huge Ratchet and Clank fan and will eventually buy the PS3 version. The new innovative stuff in Super Mario Galaxy are no where near Ratchet and Clank. Only Wii hater who never played SMG would even suggest it is a rip off of R&C.
- fwuzzle, on 01/07/2008, -0/+4!!!
That stupid little platform thing killed me more times that the boss, it bothered me so much.It's as if inertia doesn't exist.
I love the game, but they put so much time into the gravity physics that some other basic things (like control syncing) were weak. - bobotheking, on 01/07/2008, -0/+4His analysis is okay, but I'm more concerned that Gauss's law is violated in a number of places in SMG, most notably on the interior of planets or any of the side-scrolling portions. For those of you unfamiliar with Gauss's law, it essentially says that gravity cannot change suddenly around a point where there's no mass (except it's usually stated for the electric field, not gravity, although it applies to both). That happens all the time in Galaxy. Basically, if you want to run around tiny planetoids, just as the author stated, that's perfectly allowed. However, all of the fun stuff is strictly off-limits.
- gmaster999, on 01/07/2008, -0/+4Do you like ruining other people's fun?
- magoghm, on 01/07/2008, -1/+5Great answer to a really stupid question
- grumbel, on 01/07/2008, -0/+3Correct, Mario Galaxys gravity works along the normal of the surface, not to the center of mass like in reality.
- Alucard66, on 01/07/2008, -0/+3what i want to know is how does eating a flower make you shoot fire?
- missingnoh4x, on 01/07/2008, -0/+2Consider how even though each planet usually isn't much larger than the stuff on it, the planet's gravitational pull is strong enough to make other pulls from objects on the surface pretty much irrelevant. Obviously volume is no indication of mass, but the planets in SMG would have to be superdense.
Or maybe we're giving a bit too much in-depth though to a game. - nastajus, on 01/07/2008, -0/+2no, generally yahtzee of zero punctuation is covering that pretty well with his recent series of flash reviews. get to know the real nitty gritty quickly
- obrysii, on 01/07/2008, -0/+2Well, keep in mind, he does have a magic star under his hat. Maybe that provides all of the magic he needs for the physics to work?
- Metasquares, on 01/07/2008, -0/+2But he was *already* in space before that :)
- achoo5000, on 01/07/2008, -0/+2I know what you mean, lots of games get this wrong.
- nonstop87, on 01/07/2008, -0/+2Right now I care less about the gravity and more about the ***** camera that thing sucks.
- jimb0, on 01/08/2008, -0/+2Over my head...but in watching the game I am always wondering how the heck they programmed it. It's pretty flawless in it's implementation. It's a wild game. I give great kudos to the people who developed it.
- bouche, on 01/07/2008, -2/+4I can't believe that someone actually spent time to work this out for a video game based on mario. what a *****' nerd!
- dhaval1985, on 01/07/2008, -0/+1Wow, this person has a lot of free time available!! Good analysis overall though!!!!
- Alucard66, on 01/07/2008, -0/+1you know there's this thing called the internet that can help explain these things to people
- JudgeMonkey, on 01/07/2008, -0/+1Yeah, and half the texts on things like this assume you already pretty much know this crap. I can't just type "crazy complex math *****" into google and be enlightened. And my teachers insisted that my sped upbringing was equal to mainstream..... my ass it was.
- BlueTunicLink, on 01/07/2008, -0/+1Stop complaining. He says:
"So first off, clearly we’re not going to be able to do most of the things in the Mario Galaxy universe, since SMG is of course a game and obviously they weren’t trying to be realistic or imitate anything like real physics." - Alucard66, on 01/07/2008, -1/+2except it needs to have less than the mass of earth because you're substantially closer to the center of mass
- schoate09, on 01/07/2008, -0/+1Ah, but do you really think that asteroid shares the same mass as that huge planet. Is it that much more dense (or the huge planet that much less dense?)?
- Alucard66, on 01/07/2008, -1/+2actually, because he's closer to the center of mass the small asteroids don't have to be THAT much more dense.
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