Comments on: Building a Realer Robot

By: Emkaye

Emkaye — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:14:54 +0000

EastwoodDC is right. FASA got the rights to use the designs for their original mechs from the artist who did Macross himself (back when Battletech was called Battledroids). Licensing issues, rights, and whatnot became a problem sometime later, so FASA dropped those designs for something completely original. As of about a week or two ago, the original designs that haven’t been seen since 1985 have been re-licensed and are being re-released with the newest iterations of the Battletech line in the coming months.

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By: Vendredi

Vendredi — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:49:28 +0000

@EastwoodDC – Thanks for the clarification. I’ve found one of the things about Battletech mechanical design is that it tends to be all over in terms of consistency. You notice a gradual move towards their own style as time goes on, but the ‘mechs still feel all over the map; although ‘mechs like the Atlas and Mad Cat/Timberwolf are the face of the franchise, they really have very little in common with something like say, a King Crab.

By: EastwoodDC

EastwoodDC — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:38:11 +0000

My understanding is that Battletech (FASA) didn’t rip anything off, and that the designs were copied with permission and under licenses (though perhaps not great licenses). There was speculation about FASA losing a lawsuit, but in fact the gave up the legal battle because there was no effective enforcement for designs they did not own. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BattleTech and http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BattleTech).

By: Phäzys

Phäzys — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:18:43 +0000

The polar coordinates idea might also work for what Animanachronism suggested- “so a real tank would be no anthropomorphism & extremely high verisimilitude — or no verisimilitude, since it wouldn’t be imitating anything”, since it would be ‘periodic’, at some point, having too high verisimilitude would loop back to having none at all. Clarification: “Polar coordinates” in a separate sense from what fisharon was suggesting (i.e. not necessarily a triangle, but a different scheme that still uses ‘polar coordinates’).

By: fisharson

fisharson — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:59:52 +0000

Maybe you could use a triangle instead of an axis for the human-beast-tank difference?

Using ideas from polar coordinates, you could have a triangle, with each vertex identified with one of “beast” “tank” and “human”. How “close to the center” the point is could represent lower verisimilitude.

But I’m suggesting this on the assumption that the lower a show is in verisimilitude, the less likely there are boundaries between whether the mechs resemble humans or animals or whatever.

By: vendredi

vendredi — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:56:24 +0000

@ghostlightning – Looking forward to what you’ve got cooking. I have to agree on the difficulty of pinning down the conceptual roots of Battletech. It definitely has the most schizophrenic mecha design I’ve ever seen, and it’s only exacerbated by the nature of it as a tabletop game spanning over twenty years and having many designers come and go.

@Animanachronism – thanks for catching the spelling error there. I have to admit the anthropomorphism axis was the hardest to pin down. Initially, I was thinking along the humanoid – war machine angle (walking tank or iron knight), but the human-beast dichotomy is very pertinent too.
It’s tough to separate the two completely though, so I’m not sure if a third axis would be appropriate…

Thanks for the comments; I probably will eventually come back to this and do a more refined graph at some point.

By: The Animanachronism

The Animanachronism — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:42:02 +0000

I like it. I think it’s always nice to do something with two axes rather than one. It took me a little while to pick through the diagram. I think that’s partly because the subject is inherently complicated, but I think you might also be able to label it to show which quadrant is which a bit more clearly. (Also, the diagram says ‘versimilitude’ not ‘verisimilitude’.)

Thinking about the low anthropomorphism — high verisimilitude quadrant, I suppose there are two (and perhaps more) ways of seeing the anthropomophism axis: it might be a kind of scale from very humanoid (I agree that a lot of ‘classic’ shows — mecha before Gundam — sit here — the Zambo Ace in Zambot 3 comes to mind as a typical example, as it’s not only humanoid but displays different expressions on its face) to beastlike, or it might be a scale from very humanoid to very like a real war machine (so a real tank would be no anthropomorphism & extremely high verisimilitude — or no verisimilitude, since it wouldn’t be imitating anything). Hmm. That’s complex.