2770: Tapetum Lucidum

|< < Prev Comic #2770 (May 1, 2023) Next > >|

Tapetum Lucidum

Title text: Using a reflective wall in a game to give one shot two chances to hit is called a double-tapetum lucidum.

Explanation

Bill Nye, perhaps best known for his children's educational series Bill Nye the Science Guy, wearing the same lab coat as in 200: Bill Nye, beats an unseen player (presumably Randall) in an online multiplayer game resembling XPilot, in which players pilot spaceships using simulated rocket physics and attempt to shoot and kill each other. During a laser battle, Bill Nye provides a scientific explanation for the tapetum lucidum, the layer behind the retina of a cat's eye. He explains that the layer reflects back some of the light that passes through the retina, giving it a second chance to hit the retina again. This allows a cat's eye to capture more light than it otherwise would, and thus improves their night vision. It's also why cat's eyes appear to glow in the dark.

At the same time, Bill Nye's battle tactic in the online game perfectly analogizes the point he is making. His spaceship is firing energy pulses into the path of an approaching ship in an attempt to destroy it. Due to the difficulty of hitting a small, fast-moving target, it's likely that most or all of these shots will miss. However, because Bill Nye is firing at a reflective wall, each shot that misses bounces back into the path of the opponent's ship, giving it a second chance to hit the target and effectively doubling the density of the firepower. With double the number of shots to avoid, the opponent's ship is hit and explodes. This explanation is similar to how Bill Nye would explain scientific concepts by using analogous demonstrations of other things.

In the analogy, the weapon shots fired by Bill Nye's ship are the light photons entering the cat's eye, the reflective wall is the tapetum lucidum, and the opponent's ship is a retinal cell. Destroying the opponent's ship with a shot is analogous to a light photon being absorbed by the cat's retina (and therefore seen). If the reflective wall hadn't been there, the ship might have survived, which means the retina would never have seen that photon.

Randall presumably considers this "extra infuriating" because Bill Nye is showing both his scientific knowledge in some other field and his gaming prowess simultaneously, while he lacks the skill even to win the game normally.

The title text is a pun that refers to "tapetum lucidum" and uses "double tap" in the way that online games, memes, and films refer to shooting something twice in rapid succession to ensure its demise. This phrase is used in the film Zombieland, and is the subtitle of the 2019 "Zombieland: Double Tap" sequel.

Transcript

[The comic is in four panels. In the first panel, we are watching a simple 2D video game, with triangular rocketships flying around a simple maze, firing green missiles at each other while trying to avoid being hit. The missiles are bouncing off the maze walls. One of the ships is faring much better than the other, and a voice is emanating from it.]

First rocketship: Cats have a shiny layer behind their retina called the tapetum lucidum.

Missile sounds: Pew pew pew

[In the second panel, the second rocketship continues to struggle, while the first maintains its advantage.]

First rocketship: After light passes through the retina, this layer reflects it back through a second time.

Missile sounds: Pew pew

[In the third panel, the first rocketship wins the game. One of its missiles has ricocheted off the maze walls and slammed into the second rocketship, destroying it.]

First rocketship: This extra bounce gives photons another chance to interact with the retinal cells...

Second rocketship, exploding: BOOM!

[In the fourth panel, we see one of the players of the video game sitting at his computer. As the caption makes clear, this is Bill Nye. He finishes his thought.]

Bill Nye: ...Improving their night vision! Isn't science cool?

Caption: There's something extra infuriating about losing online games to Bill Nye.

 add a comment! ⋅  add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅  refresh comments!

Discussion

Added possibility of XPilot as inspiration, as a different branch of "triangular ships in 2D worlds" from Asteroids, which is a single-player PvE with no static walls or rebounding shots. The shots from xpilot ships can, if the map is set to do so, bounce off walls. Or be distorted by gravity, so aren't lasers. (Or maybe they can be, but it's been decades since I played it and development moves on!) But I'm sure the ecosystem of clone-games arising from both these inspirations (and other predecessors to both/between their respective releases) is nigh on uncatalogued so who knows if Randall's depicting some actual specific release or just a memetic interloper that just has the right narrative features for this particular comic's "message". 172.70.85.169 12:56, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Lasers are distorted by gravity. If we are talking about black holes, at least. -- Hkmaly (talk) 20:54, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

(Technically lasers aren't distorted. The space they pass through is. ;) )

Not as much as physical things. I too was an XPilot player/hoster, a few decades ago now. Ah, nostalgia...

The "bullets" could be fired into a cluster of gravity-blocks and whip around like mad until they timed-out or managed to escape from whatever 'random' side their chaotic paths led them to. Great fun to include such features when editing maps (adding detailing and fine-tuning with a text editor to the conversion of some interesting image to the map format, often obtained via netpbm piping and a bit of other automatic/manual editing), especially with shields a disabled feature so as to make it a risky proposition to enter combat in close proximity (and a rather desperate escape-route, if piled up between walls).

Or set your map with huge time-to-die (bullets, drifting mines, etc), a high number of wall bounces allowed and skew the pickup populations with many multiple spread-shooters (front and rear) and let the players create a 'bullet soup' situation oh so easily! 141.101.99.98 22:40, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Not sure about xpilot, but these must be bullets, or burst of say plasma/energised particles, as laser beams would go from ship to wall of target (almost) instantaneously.RIIW - Ponder it (talk) 16:19, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Come on, Randall- Tapetum Ludum was right there! SaturnVI (talk) 11:49, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/18/zombieland-rules-full-list-columbus-official-and-deleted-scenes This is one of many possible references for the "double tap" Zombieland quote and annotation noting its use as title in the sequel. (talk)

"Double-tap", by that name but in various subtly different forms (that yet still count upon two shots being made from a single aiming), goes back at least to SOE training manuals in WW2. Zombieland clearly just quotes common parlance, just like Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle wouldn't be considered the source of the phrase "Full Throttle". 172.70.90.101 19:42, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree, I've known the term "Double Tap" since long before Zombieland came out, and I seriously question the idea that it's where it's best known, except among people young enough not to have heard it before. I don't think it was even used that much, it was just one of the rules he lists at the beginning. It only gained significance by being put in the title of the sequel. (And first thing I think of for "Full Throttle" is the 90s LucasArts adventure game) :) Out of interest I browsed the quotes on IMDb to find the quote to use as a citation, but nobody found it interesting enough to submit (although EXPLAINING the rule is in there). NiceGuy1 (talk) 03:43, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

is making the transcript this verbose productive? is it supposed to be a guide to fully recreate the image if it's not loading on your end? --172.70.114.127 10:57, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it should be this verbose. It is meant for the visually impaired. 172.70.134.227 14:16, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

I disagree. If I was blind, this much text would annoy me, especially if I found out how simple the comic actually is. For example, it's ridiculous to specify that the ships are isosceles triangles, "triangles" is enough. "A video game field with two triangular ships, one firing green lasers bouncing off walls at the other" should be roughly sufficient to start with, come on! There's no reason to get so overly specific, those of us who can see aren't looking at all those details, why should the visually impaired be forced to? NiceGuy1 (talk) 03:43, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

You must be fun at parties 172.70.38.126 00:29, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Yup! My love of keeping it simple and straightforward comes in handy! :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 04:35, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Agree completely. Will simplify. Jkshapiro (talk) 16:23, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Too much spam was found on the explanation page. This makes it very difficult to tell which text is spam. ClassicalGames (talk) 08:27, 3 May 2023 (UTC)