Headscratchers / Kid Radd

• Does it make any difference if a "sprite" wasn't programmed in an object-oriented language, like presumably some of the oldest ones? The term "object" seems better for them than "sprite" anyway, and object-oriented code would seem to work much better with the comic's setting.
  • Apparently not. The comic's 'rules' seem to go that anything that's stated, implied or appears to be sentient, is. Thus puzzle blocks with faces are, scenery is not.
    • Did Eversion just become creepier? To think this was even possible...
  • The FAQ explains that it's mainly about perception (best not to think about how it works). So an individual character acts like an individual regardless of programming. And a chair acts like a chair.
  • Most games after (and including) the NES were object-oriented in a way; at the very least, they had "objects" and "properties" and things like that.
  • Object-oriented languages are actually a (relatively) recent invention. In point of fact, the vast majority of NES-era games (which is roughly the time period that Radd hails from) and prior were created in raw machine language.
• Does it bug anyone else that Kid Radd has been taken down?
  • YES! I did not know that until I saw this page.
  • A piece of webcomic culture has died. I'm glad I downloaded the self-contained Firefox version before it vanished.
  • A new mirror has been established here.
• How would the main character from a first-person shooter be represented in Kid Radd's universe? Invisible except for his arms? Would he be a giant since shooter characters take up more space onscreen than platformer characters do? I'm really curious!
  • If the game had multiplayer, they have an external image. Same deal if they were showing off the graphics and put in a mirror. Or had a replay feature, or myriad other possibilities. But that can't possibly cover all the games...
    • Pretty much anything pre-Doom would have a problem in that respect, methinks.
    • Wolfenstein 3D is probably an iconic, pre-Doom exception (i.e. there are pictures/sprites/etc. of its protagonist, and it came out a year before Doom). I have to admit, though, maybe not every game can be covered (there are even earlier examples using vehicles rather than characters. So pre-Doom, pre-Wolfenstein 3-D, it gets more confusing the further back one goes).
  • Perhaps the hero would be a floating gun with an invisible hitbox. Then again, all the games that we've seen so far are two-dimensional, and most are side-scrollers., so it's hard to see how a sprite-based 3D game would fare, much less one that had polygons instead of sprites.
  • Well, the internet does seem have a 3rd dimension. it's just that, as the above troper stated, all the games so far is 2D. and it seems that most sprites haven't got the hang of it yet.
• Why would Radd have a Charged Attack that does variable damage, yet take equal damage from all incoming hits? Y'know, other than the fact that those two facts make the story work?
  • Because that's how he was programmed.
    • More to the point, Radd has "hits," while his opponents have health. Anything that would injure Radd consumes a single hit, while his enemies take graduated damage that depletes their "health."
  • Because Radd takes equal damage, but his enemies don't? Gnarl implies in his training of Koba that he has HP, not hits.
  • This question seems to imply that Radd ought to obey the same rules as the other sprites in his game. But Radd's the player sprite, the others are enemies (or NPCs, like Sheena). The fact that Bogey is the most prominently featured enemy from the game is a little misleading, he's the very lowest level enemy. Presumably most enemies would have more HP and require Mega Radds.
    • Bogeys seem to die from a single Radd beam, but Gnarl takes a lot more damage (Radd is able to charge a Mega Radd to the point at which he leaves Gnarl at one HP).
  • This is mainly because his Mercy Invincibility, when he loses just 1 HP, he in invincible for a few seconds, and the rest of the damage is prevented via invincibility. That is more clear when the Seer implements himself with the HP of a RPG character and the Mercy Invincibility of a plataformer
    • The Seer doesn't seem to become invincible after being hit, but still takes only one damage from each attack.
• The whole gag with "Street Fighter style characters being useless against platformers" breaks the story's own "sprites maintain their world rules" logic. Combos are specific sequences that can't be interrupted, not just any attacks you put together, and are thus a property of the attacking character(s) as well as the defender. Since Kid Radd doesn't come from a fighting game, he wouldn't (or rather, shouldn't) have any combos to use.
  • I don't think all fighting games handle combos the same way.
  • Remember, the game they're in is meant to be an early fighting game, a la Street Fighter II. Combos were an accident in Street Fighter II; they weren't deliberately-programmed specific sequences by any means.
  • And he... doesn't. He just attacks faster than the hit stun of his opponent.
• I am not sure about Sheena's new powers. I mean, they do not seem consistent with the way Kid Radd 2 was just described.
  • We didn't really see that much of Kid Radd 2, except for the 'power-up' artifact. That could have been Sheena's powered up state.
• How exactly was the Seer planning on making a physical body? He clearly knew more about the real world than anyone, you'd think he'd know better.
  • Hijack a car manufacturing plant (or other large industrial plant with a lot of robot arms)? Infect an existing robot prototype? Take control of the world's nuclear arsenal and demand that humanity build him a body or else?
  • Probably by convincing some human to do it for him. He puts on a good "reasonable person" act, after all, and he could use bribes or blackmail as incentive.
• What exactly is the logic behind Radd's Mega Radd changing in appearance as he charges up? At over 10,000 or so, it turns into a beam, while it gets into the millions when GI Guy is using him to destroy the Internet, it's a yellow explosion that expands outward from his position while leaving him unaffected. By comparison, the Mega Radd is a Radd beam that's wider and has a shallower curve.
  • If you'll let me use an analogy: A regular Radd beam is like a thrown baseball; it will only hurt the thing it hits. A Mega Radd is like a baseball in a potato gun; it will hurt a lot more, but still only the thing that it hits. A million-point Mega Radd is like a baseball accelerated to relativistic speeds: even though it's aimed in a specific direction, it produces a spherical wave of destruction that's very similar to the results of a nuclear bomb going off.
• Does anyone else have a problem killing bogeys in the Kidd Radd game after reading this comic?
  • Not at all. they regenerate because they are in their own game
• There's one thing I don't understand: when Radd's attack crashed the system he was in, and the rest of the heroes had to sever its connection to the outside world so that the attack doesn't spread further, how did they save him?
  • They reopened the connection after the energy blast had dissipated, but before the computer could finish crashing. Either that, or the connection reopened itself because the computer was set to retry dropped connections.
• Captain QB is from a one-on-one Fighting Game... how is it one of his freezeplay attacks hits everything on the screen?
  • perhaps it was designed to freeze the enemy instantly regardless of position, a'la Hitscan, but since a) hit scan attacks usually follow a strait line and fighting characters could theorically jump/crouch to evade and b) It is supposed to be a Flashy Desperation Attack move, it was animated as an Area of Effect attack, simply freezes any opponent on range, and just as like with Radd's charged attack, it showed some unforeseen attributes when used beyond its original system constraints(i.e: there being more than one opponent in the screen at the time)
  • The Super Freezeplay DX is a projectile freeze. He fires the attack, and it only freezes the opponent if it makes contact, meaning the opponent can jump over it. The Ultimate Freezeplay TD seems to affect the entire screen, so when QB uses it in his game, it's most likely programmed to have the freeze effect cover the entire screen, meaning the opponent would be frozen no matter where s/he was on the screen. Outside the game, where the "screen" is indeterminate, the freeze effect would target every sprite in its range, thus making it an area of effect freeze.
• What kind of game is Doom Platoon supposed to be? The actual footage makes it look like a run-and-gun game, but G.I. Guy's powers, as well as his description of his player's style, make it seem more like an RPG.
  • It's possible to have RPG Elements in a run-and-gun game.

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