Wreck-It Ralph

Also, presumably, the rabbit is in his own game, so even if he dies, well, he'll just repop.

Does that still apply in games where characters aren't supposed to die and thus they don't have a respawn mechanic built in.

Like, in Sugar Rush, the first movie had that joke about Vanellope executing everyone who was ever mean to her. Her bullies seemed legitimately terrified for their lives in a way that wouldn't make sense if they'd just respawn five seconds later.

edited 4th Mar '18 9:40:07 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Kart Racing games have a respawn mechanic, so that wouldn't be a problem anyway. Presumably, they thought Vanellope would drag them out of the game and off them outside.

The "respawn in their own games" rule applies to everyone, because otherwise it wouldn't make sense as a plot point. Barely any characters are intended to die: Ralph, for example, never dies in his game.

edited 4th Mar '18 10:08:05 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Rich Moore said on Twitter that the bunny regenerated.

My guess is that all characters are safe in their own games due to the code saying that they're there or something.

edited 4th Mar '18 10:18:06 AM by MewtwoWarrior

How does death even function in this universe?

Like. As noted, Ralph doesn't actually die in his game. So why does he have hit points? We know hit points are a thing because Felix is a One-Hit-Point Wonder as demonstrated during his party scene, which means any time he's outside his game, he's a minor scrape away from Critical Existence Failure.

But why would Ralph have hit points? And if he doesn't have hit points, then how can he die? His life was clearly imperiled when he made his Heroic Sacrifice attempt at the climax of the first film, but why would the soda lava kill him if he was never programmed to process damage and self-terminate in response to it in the first place?

Wreck It Ralph's setting and mechanics are extremely reminiscent of Kid Radd - even moreso now that they're going off on an adventure on the internet - but one thing Radd's system had that Ralph's doesn't is NPC invulnerability. Characters not specifically designed to be killable, whether as player characters or enemy characters, could not be harmed by any means because they had no hit points to reduce.

edited 4th Mar '18 10:57:28 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Well everyone is basically data, right? Maybe if they die outside of their game, their data is completely erased because it's not supposed to be there in the first place while if they die inside of it, everything is there to immediately reconstruct said data.

So their sense of survival isn't necessarily based on hit points and more on them trying to keep their data safe. If you're supposed to die in your own game, then it's just a coincidence.

edited 4th Mar '18 11:12:18 AM by LordVatek

This song needs more love.

Right, but what constitutes dying outside the game for someone with no hit points to lose? If you're someone like Ralph, death is not determined by hit points. So what is it determined by? How do you define the arbitrary distinction that soda lava is lethal and chocolate swamp water is not? Outside of hit points, what even is lethality? Why can Ralph die?

What's interesting is that the movie actually answers this question without ever asking it for the one character for whom it matters: Turbo, the only character death in the movie. Turbo gets eaten by a Cybug which somehow causes his code and the Cybug's code to blend into some kind of gestalt entity.

That's never really explained beyond "something something virus?" but it does provide an adequate answer for how Turbo can die at the end of the film. In merging with the Cybug, Turbo is forced to terminate upon entering the makeshift beacon because that's how the Cybugs are programmed. They see the beacon, fly into it, and are promptly destroyed. Under Radd logic, the Cybug merger made Turbo killable; it created a condition under which his data would be deleted.

But this isn't Radd logic, so the question remains: how is it possible for Ralph to die if he doesn't have hit points to lose?

EDIT: Musing on it, I feel like this entire question could have been avoided by making Ralph a boss monster, rather than having his defeat be a scripted ending sequence.

edited 4th Mar '18 11:23:37 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

It is explained how Turbo merged with the Cybug. The Cybugs become what they eat. A Cybug ate Turbo. So the Cybug became Turbo.

Fair enough. I'd forgotten that part.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Honestly the best answer I can give is that the game developers are god-tier programmers who account for every possible variable.

This song needs more love.

Their universe is a simulation which they are completely aware of

Weird

New theme music also a box

It does seem like Sugar Rush may have originally been intended to be something other than just a racing game. There's parts of the game world that don't make sense to exist, most notably the hilarious candy stripe trees.

When Ralph first shows up, he has a brief altercation with Vanellope in which she's able to outfox him because he keeps grabbing the wrong branches. Double stripe means the branch will vaporize. Only the single stripes are safe to grab.

This is a fun mechanic that would probably make for some interesting platforming except that this is a racing game and thus there's no reason for these platforming trees to exist. They might be an orphaned game element from an older concept, before the decision that Sugar Rush would be a racing game was finalized.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Maybe the "lava" is programmed to just incinerate anything that touches it- characters, karts, and items or otherwise?

So even if Ralph isn't assigned HP values, he'd be vulnerable to it as long as he isn't physical world terrain.

🏳️‍⚧️she/her | Vio Rhyse Alberia

I think, in general, it's along the lines that outside their games characters are basically "normal." Not counting general superpowers, characters take around the amount of punishment of a believable movie character (the type that can take injuries when they're funny, but is in life threatening danger from the same stuff when if its dramatic) - they can drown, they can burn to death, they'll die if they fall a great height, etc.

If they expire in a place where they have no code to regenerate from, they disappear forever and their code - back at their machine - sits dormant forever.

Felix' death is complicated by the fact that his death scene is caused by the thing that's specifically supposed to kill him during game play. It's not clear whether he'll literally die from any injury, or whether falling rubble and/or ducks are just his kryptonite.

He does, however, take injury without dying in the NesQuiksand.

My take is that Sugar Rush was intended to have a lot more racetracks that were condensed to only a few. The double stripe trees, for example, I could see as obstacles or even parts of the racetrack that disappear after racers interact with them.

edited 4th Mar '18 11:59:49 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

I think the striped trees are just part of some minigame, like the Kart Factory. There might be a "climb the tree" minigame during the loading screen, with your racer trying to go as high as possible without falling down.

edited 4th Mar '18 1:00:32 PM by Julep

I checked, and it turns out the pancake scene has become REALLY popular with certain users on deviantART.

Not that I'm surprised. In fact, I would've been surprised if it WASN'T popular.

What a brutal representation of integer overflow.

Heh heh heh data vampire becomes data vore XD

edited 12th Mar '18 12:48:55 PM by blkwhtrbbt

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

Speaking of overflow, I wonder what that kind of cheat looks like in Wreck-It Ralph style cyberspace. Like, the Civ 1 Gandhi bug or Missingno.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Oh yeah, I remember the "Bunny with a pancake on its head" image macro!

We have stills, exclusive from USA Today.

USA Today link with better quality images.

edited 30th May '18 10:15:20 AM by kyun

The bit in the trailer where Ralph blows up the bunny kind of rubs me the wrong way.

Mostly because Ralph should totally know better by now than to barge into someone else's game and mess around, especially while someone is actually playing it. In his world, people die over that shit.

First shot of our villain, perhaps?

edited 30th May '18 10:19:01 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

If it's voiced by Alan Tudyk, he's either gonna be a villain, a villain red herring, or a comical dimwit.

Using Alan Tudyk in the same role for the second consecutive time would be pretty boneheaded casting.

To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."

I meant the woman in blue.◊

edited 30th May '18 10:27:22 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

villain red herring,the real big bad is one of the Disney princesses

New theme music also a box