- 17,873
- 15,342
Calc here. It boils down to a character rapidly moving an elevator across a certain distance, and scaling them to the KE. The issue I have with this is that the elevator is calculated to have a weight of over 780 tons, which is much higher than any real elevator. For comparison, the heaviest and largest passenger elevator in the world weighs just 16 tons and while it's hard to find the exact weight of a normal one they seem to hover between 4 and 10 tons.
The reason the weight result is so inflated is that the calculation(s) use this scene to calculate the thickness of its walls. There's several issues with this. To get it out of the way, Undertale is a game with a very simplistic and often amateurish artstyle (this isn't me knocking it I think Toby Fox has said as much himself), and taking the scale every scene portrays literally can lead to strange results that are probably better off discarded, like an 800 ton elevator. The second issue is that even taking what's shown literally we just see the entrances to the elevator vanishing. This is likely just to represent the doors closing and Frisk no longer being able to see outside of it, and isn't actually implying that the elevator is so thick. The actual door looks pretty normal, and the other elevator in New Home clearly isn't anywhere near as thick as is being assumed here, the structure it's in is way too thin to accomodate that.
A secondary issue is that the calc assumes the entire elevator is a solid box of stainless steel. They are not, even when they have steel frames. There's also a few fair concerns to bring up about the timeframe but I'm not interested in addressing those right now. Anyways, I'll address a few possible counterarguments.
The other New Home elevator is unrelated! No reason to assume it's the same!
Well it's actually plenty related given it's in the same area and logically they would be built in a similar manner, it's strange to say one elevator is normal whereas the other that's like ten meters across is a huge super-heavy box of steel. This is doubly true given the Underground has like, two maybe three engineers? Not that much room for differing styles, not that it really matters. If you need more evidence, the doors look the exact same.
Undertale's elevators use EM force to move! There's no reason to compare them to real ones!
They do. Except, these exist in real life, it's not a sci-fi concept. Sure, you could argue Alphy's supertech could be much better than ours and carry an 800-ton elevator, but there's no reason it should need to. Engineering common sense dictates that something, especially something that moves, shouldn't ever be much heavier than it needs to be, so why make an elevator that's literally a hundred times the necessary weight for no apparent reason? It's dumb no matter how you slice it.
It's a fantasy setting, it shouldn't be expected to behave like the real world!
Well, it kind of is when the elevator otherwise looks exactly like a normal one, from the interior to the doors to the use of a kind of niche IRL movement system. There isn't anything exaggerated or cartoonish about it in the way that, say, the Hotland vents are. It's just a mostly normal elevator as far as we can tell. And sure, Undertale is a game with an often silly or exaggerated tone, but there's nothing setting up the elevator's size as a joke- in fact as discussed above the only thing implying that it's this big is one ambiguous animation.
When the only reason to assume this mass is so minor arguments about it not being inconsistent don't really hold... weight. It's like saying Sans' slippers weigh 10 tons each. Could they? Sure, if it was said as much. Do they? ... We have no reason to think so, and plenty to think they don't.
In conclusion, the elevator's current mass is not only highly inconsistent both with the in-verse portrayal and the weight of IRL elevators, but is solely based on a misinterpreted animation of the doors closing. The calculation should thus be removed or recalculated utilizing a more accurate method (such as rescaling a real elevator's weight).
The reason the weight result is so inflated is that the calculation(s) use this scene to calculate the thickness of its walls. There's several issues with this. To get it out of the way, Undertale is a game with a very simplistic and often amateurish artstyle (this isn't me knocking it I think Toby Fox has said as much himself), and taking the scale every scene portrays literally can lead to strange results that are probably better off discarded, like an 800 ton elevator. The second issue is that even taking what's shown literally we just see the entrances to the elevator vanishing. This is likely just to represent the doors closing and Frisk no longer being able to see outside of it, and isn't actually implying that the elevator is so thick. The actual door looks pretty normal, and the other elevator in New Home clearly isn't anywhere near as thick as is being assumed here, the structure it's in is way too thin to accomodate that.
A secondary issue is that the calc assumes the entire elevator is a solid box of stainless steel. They are not, even when they have steel frames. There's also a few fair concerns to bring up about the timeframe but I'm not interested in addressing those right now. Anyways, I'll address a few possible counterarguments.
The other New Home elevator is unrelated! No reason to assume it's the same!
Well it's actually plenty related given it's in the same area and logically they would be built in a similar manner, it's strange to say one elevator is normal whereas the other that's like ten meters across is a huge super-heavy box of steel. This is doubly true given the Underground has like, two maybe three engineers? Not that much room for differing styles, not that it really matters. If you need more evidence, the doors look the exact same.
Undertale's elevators use EM force to move! There's no reason to compare them to real ones!
They do. Except, these exist in real life, it's not a sci-fi concept. Sure, you could argue Alphy's supertech could be much better than ours and carry an 800-ton elevator, but there's no reason it should need to. Engineering common sense dictates that something, especially something that moves, shouldn't ever be much heavier than it needs to be, so why make an elevator that's literally a hundred times the necessary weight for no apparent reason? It's dumb no matter how you slice it.
It's a fantasy setting, it shouldn't be expected to behave like the real world!
Well, it kind of is when the elevator otherwise looks exactly like a normal one, from the interior to the doors to the use of a kind of niche IRL movement system. There isn't anything exaggerated or cartoonish about it in the way that, say, the Hotland vents are. It's just a mostly normal elevator as far as we can tell. And sure, Undertale is a game with an often silly or exaggerated tone, but there's nothing setting up the elevator's size as a joke- in fact as discussed above the only thing implying that it's this big is one ambiguous animation.
When the only reason to assume this mass is so minor arguments about it not being inconsistent don't really hold... weight. It's like saying Sans' slippers weigh 10 tons each. Could they? Sure, if it was said as much. Do they? ... We have no reason to think so, and plenty to think they don't.
In conclusion, the elevator's current mass is not only highly inconsistent both with the in-verse portrayal and the weight of IRL elevators, but is solely based on a misinterpreted animation of the doors closing. The calculation should thus be removed or recalculated utilizing a more accurate method (such as rescaling a real elevator's weight).
- Agreements:
- Disagreements:
- Neutralments:
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