#mechaphile

(eg, their lack of omnidirectional motion, which they had to solve by transitioning to a psudoquadraped both with the Akito of Exile's 4-leg mode using its arms as walking limbs and the Queen Asura, which is not the same thing as a psudotetrapod because a quadraped has a abdomin structure closer to a jumping spider with the legs arranged inwardly for the front and outwardly for the back, and a tetrapod is radial pushing legs out at square or diamond angles relative to the abdominal centroid)

...and of Artos/Armored Trooperoids of Votoms [...]

(which had problems of a small tarus or hoof style foot with zero longitudinal arch which results in a lack of clearly defined calcaneus and thus no formal heel which would allow terrain gripping via the relative motion of the arch and phalangal body of the toes the heel like a beak -- all to encorporate the wheel in the arch-space -- which the design partially compensates through the use of a talon mechanism, and an optional structure fitted to the ankle which folds down to form an extended front foot -- which Armored Core's 5th generation later references in the folding falanges of the UCR series -- and late,r the Blue Knight variant directly addresses by extending the foot by 50% to improve the contact leverage with ground surfaces)

This is accomplished by using the stair-climber mechanism as a heel, but encorporating a scissor mechanism. Right now I'm not happy with where it is and I'm still figuring out where the hinge would go to keep it omnidirectional, which again is the common failure of leg-design in these platforms.

This is a MASSIVE amount of information to take in even in this light summary without diagrams to explain what's happening and I'd need help to really express what I actually want to accomplish.

I'm right now deeply conflicted as to how deep I should actually go because we can get very lost in the weeds and I'm not very skilled at diagramming the points I want to make and I have an entire taxonomic and anatomical language for mecha that I remove from my work when I present it to the public most of the time.

Like do I go into the development path, do I go into the evaluation of evolutionary paths I see like throughlines connecting things like how we got from knightly designs in Panzer World Galient or Dunbine (the first isekai) informs Tekkaman Blade informs Xi Gundam informs Escaflowne informs White Glint informs Unicorn Gundam and Banshee informs NWGIX/V, etc, etc?

Like there's an entire lineage and family line there being Albidimiles -- albidimiles being a portmanteau of albido (white) and miles (knight) -- not to be confused with the line Samonaut, which are essentially samurai-astronauts commonly belonging to Gundam.

Since we're dealing with design memetics, common concepts of conventional phylogenetic development don't apply since through a genetic lens, mecha is incredibly dependant on horizontal transfer -- eg, passing of information via contact, so adaptions happen not always convergently but frequently in direct parallel, as an arms-race does.

So that's an example of what this is like when I don't filter any of it for an audience, and it very quickly goes off into the weeds.

What I really need to go to the next level is an editor who understands the concepts I'm dealing with; for example, do I talk about the inherent transness of the L-Gaim Mark II and Nagano's own history with gender expression as a mechanical designer and how he expresses those feelings of femininity in his work, or do I go full schizo and present the world with my wild "Nagano-Egg Fashion-Sapphoid-Mantis" theory which is in itself a total fever dream born of conjecture gleaned entirely from his work and photographs of him leering at Tomino instead of his wife at his own marriage?

I need someone to reign me in, but also be able to support me in this capacity -- ie, a research partner who's happy to let me toil in the weeds and then is happy to help me represent these ideas and understand what you as an audience can actually make sense of.

What has happened is I accidently over-studied the design part of mecha and understudied the illustration part which I'm actually very poor at.

I can go so much deeper than I do regularly, but making sure I don't lose people is a challenge I've never managed to solve so I mostly just write for myself and then only turn it into a post if someone has a question.

Holding another button will then go into one of the remaining sub-folders until the system runs out of folders.

If we associate the buttons with different properties at different times. One moment they might be (grapple/strike/parry/block). If we hold strike (option 2), it becomes FAST, with the full list now being STRONG/FAST/HIGH/LOW. If we hit the bumper without holding any other buttons down, we'd get our fastest strike, something ideal for creating openings to string a combination of hits together.

If we then held STRONG next, we've told the system that our priority is attack strength over precision. Hitting it now would result in a mix of fast and strong, where some of fast is sacrificed to make strong at a ratio of 50/50.

STARTING WITH GENERALIZED ACTIONS: MOVING TOWARD SPECIALIZED ACTIONS:

These menus are using loaded language which gradually become more and more specific as we go, culling options which don't match the context of our scenario.

For example, if you're in ballistic combat and you're holding a rifle, reloading the rifle's epack is probably more important than switching to another weapon right now but if you lock onto an opponent who's in close range (say you have a dedicated button which just auto-faces you toward and locks up the nearest opponent) you're probably want to use the context specific weapon in this scenario -- the beam sabre. If you're already holding someone in a block or parry, this will be taken into account by the solver.

WHY THIS, AND NOT A COMBO SYSTEM?

By drilling down into these menus, we get 256 different options, and they can be input faster than any conventional combo, they can be navigated carefully in special situations and they don't immediately demand you act instantly meaning you can have the action ready and choose the timing of when you trigger the action (which is an important strategic option missing from fighting-games which place emphasis on frame data memory tests over having different actions ready to trigger at the right moment which is closer to sword-fighting).

Likewise, in some situations, you might also want to hold the order of buttons and then adjust the input precisely with a control-cross or D-pad. Say for example, you want to launch a signal flare to a carrier. Here, an applette window is generated, showing the options the D-pad modifies above the history path, and the appropriate input can be chosen and then the bumper pressed to trigger it.

The applette probably remembers the last one you had selected so if you have to move back out to general combat, you don't have to start putting a new combo in again: You can just do another instant hold-order and trigger it, then while that action is performing, also then run the flare order.

WHAT DO WE GIVE UP, AGAINST A COMBO SYSTEM BY DOING THIS?

Clearly, its far more versatile, transparent, and visible to a user because the command-tree is visible, so the input tree itself can be searched using language that's plain English. While its higher maximum number of inputs possible is lower than a combo system, 256 is likely in excess of what's generally needed for pure hands on stick operation, especially when applettes are considered.

Its a system about sending commands into the system as fast as possible, and as easy to navigate as possible, forgoing blind memorization whenever possible, but also rewarding it by making sure the list itself is as consistent as possible. We also gain unlimited input windows, where a user can spend as long or as short as they want performing a combo, without having to "type faster or slower" or otherwise risk losing their string, and that search is non-committal, so a user can search, explore and memorize what they choose to since the command system IS the move-list by design.