While the testing continues, I’d like to begin a two-part series on the present state of fighting games. I have always founds this genre particularly interesting because it forces players to interact with each other physically. This is something computer games have never been able to do properly. In fact, physical interaction is the one solid area of design in which traditional games still outmatch every technological advance in gaming history. Furthermore, the fighting game genre continues to drive technological innovation in its own right - as we will see. To begin with, a little history...



Spring-power really came to dominate the global toy-market in the late 1800s. This was the quintessential era of the windup toy. All windup technology we use today is still based on designs from this historic period.

In February 1840, Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The prince was a scientifically-minded and forward-thinking naturalist with a penchant for machines and industry. Albert arranged the first Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations and built the incredible Crystal Palace to accommodate it.


The show attracted new technologies from around the world; including new cost-effective tin-plate windup toy designs from Germany. The Victorian period is today renowned for its mindboggling pre-electrical machines and gadgets. Technology-driven windup toys really gained momentum on the back of trade-shows like the Great Exhibition.

Then came the widespread adoption of electricity and invention of the battery. By the 1920s, the windup toy market had collapsed. Very few manufacturers continued to invest in these products as the Great Depression set in. The rationing system of World War II practically erased the last of the Western market.

Ironically, this period of downturn is often considered the "Golden Age" of windup toys as the few remaining American manufacturers, fuelled by widespread anti-German sentiment, competed for dominance in a tiny but overstuffed market. It was during this time that the "Knockout Champs" windup was released by the Louis Marx & Company.


Wind up the mechanism and watch as the boxers circle each other, frantically throwing punches. At a moment determined randomly by the internal clockwork, one of the boxers is thrown back and a bell sounds to signal a knock-out. The toy was, at best, an automation. It had no rules and no need for players. The "random" gimmick merely allowed spectators to "bet" on the outcome. Nonetheless, the Champs set was extremely popular and sold more units than any other windup toy in history. It was the crowning moment of windup design and helped establish a whole new genre: fighting games.



When the Empire of Japan surrendered to the Allies at the conclusion of World War II, a list of brutal embargos were imposed upon its industry to prevent aggressive expansion ever happening again. The idea, according to the Marshall Plan, was to protect Japan’s neighbours by limiting its ability to manufacture and produce - essentially binding its economy. Certain industries were simply forbidden - while others were debilitated by arbitrary restrictions.

In contrast, certain "minor" industries were actually encouraged by the Allies. This was an effort to establish Japan as a minor economy. The country was thereby given great assistance from the Allied nations in establishing its own tin-toy and windup manufacturing industry. In the western world, the market for such toys was considered insignificant and it was felt that allowing the crippled nation this small courtesy would not infringe upon the markets of other nations.

But they were wrong. Fuelled by the resurgent Pachinko industry and powerful American importers, Japan had completely dominated the global toy market within a decade. The affect on American manufacturers was so extreme that major changes were needed to survive. It was the 1950s and just one technological innovation would change the direction of toys forever...



Plastic allowed American manufacturers to create toys they’d always considered too expensive to produce in tin or bakelite. In fact, plastic toys were so cheap to produce, an avalanche of new games and toys poured out of the United States and destroyed even the most popular classic Japanese tin toys. Among the avalanche was the earnest successor to the Champs system: Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots.


This staple of the genre was the first commercial example of its kind. Players finally had complete control over the fight itself - every punch and dodge. For sixty years after Rock’Em Sock’Em first hit the shelves, the American fighting game genre would promote hands-on play.


Of all the games to embrace and drive new technologies, Rock’Em Sock’Em is the greatest. Its forms are many and varied, from the original boxing match to hand-helds and flying-laser clones. There is a big-budget movie (Real Steel) with its own toylines and even a hokey live-action reality TV show (Robot Combat League).

Rock’Em Sock’Em is the victorious posterboy of American toys and every second-rate hack manufacturer from even the poorest countries wants a slice of the action. But the tide of battle is changing. Next time, I’ll be looking at the Asian influence on modern fighting games and how a technology-driven modern world is exploring new forms of gaming combat.

Last time, we examined the evolution of fighting games and how the Western arm of the genre has always embraced hands-on gameplay - giving players direct control over every punch. But the traditional Eastern philosophy is quite different. While the American Rock'Em Sock'Em Robots typifies a hands-on combat approach, the Japanese Beyblade system demonstrates a much more complex reliance on autonomous combat; the blades do the fighting for us.

This week, we will discuss how the "autonomous" design of Beyblades came to be and how it has impacted on the modern evolution of fighting games.





Everybody knows that Beyblade evolved from the traditional Japanese Beigoma. But what exactly is this ancient game? What circumstances led to its enduring popularity and why did it have such a lasting impact on the evolution of Asian fighting games? The basic principles of Beigoma are as follows:

• The word "beigoma" refers to both the game itself and the actual spinning tops used in the game.
  
  
• Two players meet at an arena - usually a barrel or bucket with a heavy cloth or rubber sheet stretched over it, forming a soft bowl.
  
  
• The players each have one beigoma - a weighted spinning top wrapped in a coiled string.
  
  
• The players each throw their beigoma into the arena, keeping hold of the string and "whipping" it back to spin the top as it lands in the bowl.
  
  
• The spinning beigoma then do battle autonomously; the last one spinning or the last one remaining in the arena is the winner.
  

Beigoma are unique among fighting tops (of which there are many other kinds) for their miniature size - fitting neatly in the palm. They also lack the "stem" of more traditional tops - first because their launching method does not require one and second because the players do not interfere with the tops during the game (unlike say, a juggler, is want to do during his performance).


The first modern revival of this miniature flat-top format in Asia came in the guise of Spin Fighters but Spinjas also exhibited the classic "throw into the arena" design as well. As we have discussed previously on Formula Bei, these two games were monumental in shaping the future of the sport. By simple extension, all the modern Asian formats are uniformly based on the beigoma concept.





So what exactly does "beigoma" mean anyway? At its most basic, "beigoma" is a Japanese word meaning: shell spinning top. This is the common use which everyone in Japan and abroad understands today.

The original beigoma from ancient Japan (circa 1200AD) were made from common seashells found all around the country and collectively known as "baigai." The shell would be filed down, packed with sand, clay or lead and wrapped in a string. By throwing the shell and letting the string quickly unwind mid-air, the shell would become a spinning top. People of all castes would spin these tops in special arenas to see which one would crack first.


So a beigoma is a shell spinning top - but despite this solid definition, the modern interpretation is not actually a literal translation of the word itself. It is a complicated situation... But not incomprehensible:

There are three major scripts which define the Japanese language: hiragana, katakana and kanji. The simplest is hirigana; much like any other language, a series of sounds and symbols constructed and placed together to form meaning. Then we have katakana; a special script used when foreign words are brought into Japanese from the West. For example; "raisu" in katakana means "rice" in English.

Finally we have kanji; the most complex script (based on traditional Chinese) with meaning conveyed by the sounds and symbols themselves as well as their constructions together as a language. Kanji is a strange creature and while it directly determines most of the meanings found in the simpler hirigana, kanji itself conveys meaning on multiple levels depending on its context.

In kanji, "beigoma" is literally written as "baikoma." The difference in spelling in "beigoma" is widely adopted simply because of how the kanji version is verbally pronounced (as well as "k" often becoming "g" in Japanese compound-words) and therefore how it is written in hirigana. Baikoma is actually a compound word where "bai" means "shell" and "koma" means "spinning top." But it is even more complex than that...


Three kanji make up the word: bai (貝), ko (独) and ma (楽). Bai (貝)is the simplest and literally means: seashell. You can tell just be looking at it, right? Ko (独) is a less obvious character which literally means: alone. Ma (楽) is a complex character which literally means: at ease. So a baikoma is a shell, alone and at ease.

The meaning is less cryptic when applied practically. Being "alone" and "at ease" really means: being at ease while alone. In English, this is best represented by being independent. Koma really means: independent. By extension of English synonyms, it can also mean: individual or autonomous. The word "koma" is additionally used to describe individual playing pieces in Japanese games - such as Shogun - because each piece moves independently of every other. The word is also used in many similar applications; such as to describe each individual "frame" in a comic strip. In the context of beigoma, this means a "baikoma" is a shell that operates independently - literally an autonomous shell.

I agree this meaning is not immediately obvious. Even such reputable companies as Sonokong have misinterpreted the intention of the word. The Japanese word "bei" has multiple meanings in kanji, one of the most prolific of which is "plate;" as derived from "bei," (米) meaning rice and thereby, "a plate for serving rice". Sonokong’s spinning top game Top Plate is a translation of the hiragana "beigoma" - which in Kanji literally reads: spinning top plate or a plate for spinning tops on. You can see how they arrived at their conclusion and it is entirely appropriate for their specific game (which does involve a special plate) even if it is technically a misinterpretation.






So why did the ancient Japanese bladers use shells specifically? Other kinds of tops were just as popular at the time - why not use a heavier wooden top? Well, there are two crucial factors which led to the widespread adoption of shells in the ancient beigoma metagame:

The first is that the shells were cheap. Baigai are very common shellfish found throughout Japan even today. As food, they are mostly served in a dish where the shells themselves are included as a garnish. Obviously no one eats the shells (nor did they ever) so for the expanse of Japanese history, even the lowest castes of society have had access to these baigai.


The "cheap" explanation continues in that the shells are easily worked by hand. Rubbing the shell against a rock is enough to grind flat the "open" end; balancing the shell's weight on its "pointy" end. This means the shells require almost no manufacturing at all - and what little they do require can be performed by the owner at essentially no cost.

The second major factor is intrinsically linked to this manufacturing accessibility. The shell alone is not enough to make a top - it must be weighed down with ballast. Filling the shell with sand is enough to weigh it down sufficiently for combat. The opening is then sealed with wax or clay to stop the contents spilling out during the spin.


But there is far more to this process than just filling a shell with sand. With a little creativity, a shell can be filled at intervals with different materials. Alternating lead-shot, rock or iron-slag with sand ballast can change the behaviour of the shell as it spins by modifying the internal weight distribution. By experimenting with filling methods, the ancient Japanese bladers were able to influence the autonomous behaviour of their beigoma. This process of modifying autonomous behaviour by changing the physical characteristics of the subject is today known as:





The physical characteristics of a Beyblade will determine how it operates in battle; how it responds to its opponent, what manoeuvres it will perform and when. As we change the physical characteristics of a Beyblade, so too do we change its behaviour. By observing these behaviours carefully, we can physically modify the blade to behave however we want. This is the essence of physical programming.


If you ever attend a live performance - perhaps an orchestral symphony - you will likely be provided with a "program." The program lists all of the planned events in chronological order - perhaps the names of the songs and the order in which they will be played. When the performance begins, you will be able to track the progress of the entire presentation by referencing the program. Funnily enough, the person who devises this program is known as a "programmer" and the very act of putting together the program is known as "programming."

You will have heard this term before in relation to "computer programming." This is because the job of a computer programmer is to write programs specifically for a computer - just the same way the programmer writes programs for a live performance. Similarly, a computer program is basically a list of events. The computer, when running the program, starts at the beginning of the list; it does whatever the first item on the list tells it to do before moving on to the next item. This continues until the computer has attended to every listed item in the program.

At the conclusion of a live performance - the end of the program - the proceedings usually cease and everyone goes home. But a computer program often loops many times before ceasing - starting from the beginning again once it reaches the end of the program. What makes computer programs special is how they can be told (by items in the program list) to change parts of the program further down the list. In this way, computer programs can be designed to rewrite themselves depending on the program provided by the programmer.

Programming is intrinsically linked to the concept of autonomous behaviour. When we write a program for a live performance, we expect the performers on stage will stick to the program without constantly needing to be told what to do - the program tells them what to do next. So long as they stick to the program, we can safely leave them to operate on their own (autonomously) and even sit back and watch the performance ourselves. Furthermore, if we have access to the program, we can even predict what the performers will do next.

Just as a live music performance starts and ends, so do Beyblade battles start and end. When we construct Beyblades, we determine (through their design) what will happen in the fight. If we want our blade to zoom around the arena, we program it with a rubber-flat tip. If we want it to spin stationary, we use a sharp tip. Each tip determines (at least in part) the events the blade will be involved in during the fight. In that sense, the tips themselves are programs in their own right - combining them with other components in a blade simply makes the program more complex.

Remember that computer programs can rewrite themselves if necessary: so too can Beyblades. In a Beyblade battle, the circumstances can change depending on the opponent. We may have no idea what "program" our opponent will be using; so we need to program our own blade to cope with as many input-variations as possible. Consider the final-drive component (capable of changing its behaviour halfway through a battle) or tips like rubber-defence-flat and coat-sharp which will change their behaviour only when an opposing blade interferes with their usual programming.

As bladers, fully half our job is to create "programs" which can counter other programs. From an abstract game-design point of view, there is no difference between building a Beyblade and writing the computer program for a character in Street-Fighter. They just look different.





In recent centuries, cast-iron has replaced shells as the natural material of beigoma and the ability to program individual tops has all but disappeared. Riding on the economic reforms of the Meiji Period, people simply had more money to afford dedicated top designs. They could purchase multiple iron beigoma, each cast in different heights, with different patterns, edges, tips, etc. and simply choose the one they wanted from their collection, depending on their opponent.


This type of "solid-state programming" is reflected in the modern gaming forms of Spinjas and Spin Fighters but the creators of Beyblade obviously understood the physical programming principle; when they revived beigoma as Beyblade, the also revived the ability to program individual blades. This above all else has secured Beyblade's place in the pantheon of successful fighting games.

So perhaps the basic idea of Beyblade is not so new - even the ancient Japanese had the system figured out. But for all the hundreds of years that have passed since the programmable baigai, what beigoma have we seen which can outperform Beyblade? To be the greatest incarnation of a sport in its thousand-year history is nothing to be ashamed of at all.





The West has always embraced hands-on combat in their fighting games and nowhere is this more evident than in the brutal sport of Robot Combat. First exhibited in Britain and later spreading to America and the rest of the world, these full-metal fights now attract robot-builders from all over the globe. Much is at stake; for combat robots truly fight one another to the death - until their opponent is torn to pieces or smashed into oblivion.




But despite their namesake, the "robots" in these fights are all remote controlled. Their actions are directly determined by real-time inputs from their drivers, standing safely outside the fighting arena. There is a long-standing East vs West argument among robot builders that Robot Combat is just high-tech sword-fighting. I propose more specifically; Robot Combat is just high-tech Rock'Em Sock'Em and merely the most recent incarnation of this classic Western game.

Meanwhile, a sizable portion of the global combat robotics community is more interested in the tribulations of Robot Sumo. As its name suggests, this sport originated in Japan and involves two robotic sumo wrestlers attempting to push each other out of a circle. Unlike Robot Combat, these sumobots are not specifically designed to destroy each other. Also unlike Robot Combat, sumobots are necessarily autonomous - with no "driver" or remote control of any kind. These are true robots in the Asian tradition of autonomous combat. Frankly, I see them merely as high-tech beigoma.


Though many supporters of Robot Combat consider Robot Sumo a "lesser" form of the sport, most Western robot combat leagues will make allowances for builders who wish to enter autonomous robots in a standard fight. Admittedly, this is very rare. Yet in recent times we have witnessed the first ever victory of an autonomous combat robot over a human-driven robot (Autonomous-B vs Squirrel) so perhaps we are entering a new age where both Eastern and Western combat philosophies can coexist? With the rise of cross-culture success stories like Battroborg and the autonomous Hexbug Nano, I'm feeling pretty positive about it.





So how does all this translate into WarShell? Unsurprisingly, the fighting machines used in WarShell are known specifically as "shells" and if you have just read this entire article, it will be obvious why. But it is worth explaining why we do not just call them "beys" or "blades" like the normal spinning tops of Beyblade.


We all know the terms "bey" and "blade" are just abbreviations of the Beyblade trademark. Either abbreviation can be used to describe the spinning tops of that game, created by Takara-Tomy. But WarShell is a more complex beast. The shells which lend their name to the format's title will often contain two or more actual blades - or split into two separate machines entirely - and can even support weapons which do not actually use blades in the traditional sense. Most crucially, there is no definition which requires the "shells" of WarShell to be spinning tops at all; they might run on wheels or stabilizers with spring motors. The fact that most shells are indeed spinning tops is merely testament to the power of that design - as we will now examine:


Since the very beginning of combat robotics, the notorious "spinner" design has divided sentiment throughout the Robot Combat community. For context; a spinner is any robot whose primary weapon operates on the "flywheel" principle. The weapon (usually a thick steel-toothed disk or doubled-headed hammer) spins at an alarming rate, gaining momentum with each revolution. When it finally collides with a target, all that accumulated energy is released instantly - with an impact far greater than the robot's motors would otherwise be capable of.


Half the Robot Combat world wants spinners banned altogether. The other half uses them exclusively. Non-lethal forms of the sport such as Robot Sumo are often used as a refuge from spinners. To a lesser degree, the emerging Sportsman Class essentially prevents spinners from entering. Whichever form one subscribes to, there is no denying the basic, brutal power of the spinner.

Foremost among spinners is the "melty-brain" design - pioneered by Adam Savage and Jamie Heineman in the veteran Blendo robot. Melty-brain fuses the cumulative motive power of a spinning top with the control of a wheeled vehicle. The entire robot spins - so the entire robot is a weapon. Its greatest weakness is good-old-fashioned recoil. Flinging the entire machine around is often enough to turn its delicate insides to jelly.


Even the most novice bladers understand the dangers of recoil. Beyblade itself is a perfect demonstration of this. While melty-brain spinners only fight in a bullet-proof polycarbonate box and must be smashed completely before they are disabled - similar to outspinning - the much smaller spinning tops of Beyblade can be fully knocked out of the arena itself. For this reason, gyroscopic blades have generally responded to recoil issues more efficiently than combat robots. This is reflected in the designs of the blades themselves and in the arenas they use for fighting.

Nonetheless, it speaks volumes that the most powerful combat robots are essentially huge, semi-controllable spinning tops. The only good reason to build any other design would be specifically to counter the spinners. Such is the case with "wedges" - which maximise the recoil of the attacker:


The problem facing designers in WarShell is how to create such counters within the WarShell Construction Guidelines - keeping the shell under 75 grams and without using electricity or explosives. Innovations of this kind differentiate a "shell" from a "blade" or "bey". So the term "shell" describes something like a blade or bey but which is not necessarily a spinning top.





I feel the ancient and true interpretation of "beigoma" as an "autonomous shell" is a particularly apt description of the fighting machines used in WarShell. Consider the universal concept of the shell: you might imagine a bony, hard and often dangerous husk protecting a more delicate life-force within. In the case of WarShell, the shells are indeed very hard and dangerous and they protect the "force" which their owners have mechanically transferred into them.

Remember that the energy used to operate a shell (or even just a Beyblade) always comes directly from its owner, in whatever form he endeavours to produce; if YOU pull the ripcord, it's YOUR energy being transferred to the blade. Each shell literally contains and protects the very energy of its owner.

Just as Beyblade has retained the use of the word "bei" and just as we often call them "beys," so too do I consider the English form an appropriate substitute. "Bey" literally means "shell" and I think it is appropriate to pay a certain homage to this most influential of Japanese games. After all, it was the Japanese beigoma which first made programmable and autonomous fighting machines available to even the poorest echelons of humanity. Without beigoma, we would not have any of the modern blading formats and WarShell might never have been written.

One of Beyblade's greatest achievements is the bringing together of new and old players. Because its system is so comprehensible, and because blading skill is essentially based on practice over time, two bladers of completely different experience-levels can still compete together in fair and equal competition. Even if the less-experienced player loses, he will learn - and be better prepared to win next time. Very few games (if any) facilitate this cross-generational gameplay as well as Beyblade.

So how does this translate with WarShell? Among so many new and evolving shell designs - and countless variations of arena types - how can we be expected to research and practice? How will we know which parts are best to use against others? What security do we have that our own shell designs will not be terrible in an actual fight?

The answer we have already covered in a previous episode of Formula Bei: physical programming. Remember, physical programming is where we modify the behaviour of something by changing its physical characteristics. Beyblade is such a successful product because it allows us to program our blades effortlessly; changing the performance tip of a Beyblade is a perfect example of physical programming.

The same principles of programming a Beyblade also apply to building custom shells in WarShell. What makes WarShell so exciting is that these principles can be applied in completely new and innovative ways. This does not mean, however, that the principles themselves will be different. Aerodynamics, weight distribution, recoil - all apply equally to any custom shell you can imagine. Just as they do in Beyblade.

In WarShell, we may not be able to judge the performance of our opponent based on previous experience. In most cases, we will be fighting the opposing shell design for the first time. But we can use the basic principles of physical programming to quickly analyse the opposing design and judge for ourselves how he will perform with surprising accuracy.

Over the next few episodes, Formula Bei will be examining the basic principles of physical programming and ways of applying them in your designs. Rather than construct a simple list of principles (which would just play-out like a lesson in basic physics) I will instead use a number of case studies to illustrate the idea.

You will notice many of the principles examined here apply equally to Beyblade. This is because the two games are so very similar - and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, you may even learn something new about Beyblade through studying-up on WarShell.

So this week, I have an exclusive video of a WarShell battle from my studio - a single test round between Sumo and Terminator, whom some of you will have seen in the past. For this episode to make any sense, you really must watch the video.






Remember that a "program" is a chronological sequence of events. Some programs are more complex than others; but all programs will start somewhere and end somewhere - so all programs can be analysed in measures of time. Physical programming is no exception.

In almost every case, a shell will exhibit predictable behaviours during combat. These behaviours can be classified in "phases" of time through which the shell will naturally pass over the course of its operation. Exactly how the shell behaves in each phase depends on its unique design - but to keep things simple, we use the same words to describe each phase for all shells.


These phases are known as:

• Engage
  
• Patrol
  
• Attack
  
• Shock
  

The diagram below is an audio-waveform analysis of the fight in the video. Here we can track the progress of each shell throughout the entire conflict. Each spike on the wave indicates an impact. Each fuzzy area indicates movement around the arena. Notice how the behavioural phases are quite clear to see?




In this phase, shells are less concerned with fighting each other and devoted instead to recovering from the violence of launching. For each shell, the purpose of this phase is to engage all its mechanisms and assume its programmed behaviour.

A shell should ideally engage as soon as possible. The longer it takes to engage, the more likely it will be interrupted by obstacles (or its opponent) without first being combat-effective. Interruptions of this kind are a waste of energy and can lead to uncontrollable reactions - particularly unwanted recoil.

In the video (which runs at 30 frames per second), Terminator takes just 25 frames to engage - or 0.83 seconds. An engage time of less than a second is pretty phenomenal. By contrast, Sumo takes 106 frames to engage - or 3.53 seconds. So Terminator exhibits a shorter engage phase than Sumo, giving it the upper hand from the outset.



Once a shell has fully engaged, it will need to find something to attack. Patrolling describes the way a shell will cover ground to locate its opponent. The traditional Beyblade flower-pattern manoeuvre is a good example of patrolling. This behaviour increases a shell's chances of finding its opponent - and readies the shell for a powerful attack.

Not all shells will attempt to seek out targets. Some are so confident in their stamina that they purposefully avoid conflict all together - hoping their opponent will die from exhaustion. Tornado-stalling is an example of this kind of patrolling. Others may occupy very little floor space and will attempt to move as little as possible - becoming very small, innocuous targets for their opponents. In all these cases, we still refer to this behaviour as patrolling - because it determines the likelihood of the shell meeting an opponent.



It might seem like a shell's prime combat-effective phase should come right after its launch - or at least right after it engages - when it carries the most energy. But in practice, this is almost never the case. The best way to understand this curious paradox is by example:


Consider the shell illustrated above. If a target hits the flat, outside area of those blades, it will simply bounce off - a weak impact at best. But anything caught in the recesses between those blades is going to feel some serious pain. Furthermore, the deeper within the recesses the target is, at the point of impact, the more severe the impact will be. This is why we call those recessed areas: kill zones.

But because this shell spins at such high velocity immediately after launching, targets will have barely any opportunity to be caught in its kill zones at all. Instead, they will just bounce off the flat, outer surface. As the shell slows down gradually over time, targets are presented with ever-increasing chances of being caught in the kill zones - because they have more time to travel into them.

So the prime combat-effective phase of this shell will not be immediately after launch - because it inflicts impacts better as it slows down. This is an important attack strategy - it allows the shell to inflict heavier hits after its opponent has depleted much of their own energy.

Ideally, the attack phase should come as late as possible in the fight - for maximum effect against a weakened opponent. This must be carefully balanced against using too much energy before the attack phase begins - or the attack will not be strong enough to disable the opponent.

The exact moment a shell enters its attack phase is not always clear - though it is usually accompanied by a sudden burst of energy and aggressive behaviour. So many physical forces come into play during the attack phase that it is often difficult to keep up. This is why we always look for sweeping behavioural changes rather than analysing each impact and recoil.



The shell is still able to operate but has no real hitting power left. Once a shell has entered the shock phase, it is unable to properly participate in the fight. It should avoid all physical contact from this point forward.

Shells should endeavour to avoid shock for the longest time possible. The longer the shell avoids shock, the longer it will remain combat-effective. Largely, this factor is based on its abilities in the patrol and attack phases.

Once a shell has entered the shock phase, it should endeavour to remain operational for the longest time possible. Avoidance is a good strategy here. It also helps to disengage any attack abilities and concentrate all power on basic operation.




You will notice in the video that shells designed for stamina and defence tend to patrol for quite some time. Most shells will naturally favour one behavioural phase above the rest. This characteristic is known as: phase bias. So a shell designed for stamina might have a "patrol phase bias". By directly comparing the amount of time a shell devotes to each phase, we can gauge exactly what kind of shell it is - and which design we should employ to counter it.

Often the type of behaviour a shell exhibits will be obvious - and we will rarely need a detailed diagram to make informed design decisions. But because shell designs vary so dramatically from one fight to the next, it is worth observing the phase bias of an opponent - to make beating them just that much easier.






Sumo, as its name implies, is designed specifically to push its opponents around the arena with brutal traction manoeuvres. It sports multiple traction plates with no impact points at all. Smooth upper and lower surfaces also increase traction time. This notorious setup is colloquially known as the "chasm" design; the deep channel in the shell perimeter effectively grips onto targets and stops them recoiling away to safety.

Traction is a popular attack strategy when fighting in stamina-based combat arenas because it produces almost no recoil. When the arena is so flat, with very low walls, high-recoil designs would likely self-destruct.

The metal-wheel of Sumo is positioned low on the core. This may seem like a design flaw at first, as the wheel will contact the arena walls. But the low-recoil perimeter minimises these impacts, using traction to stabilise instead. Though not as extreme as the Terminator design, Sumo's weight distribution also makes it more likely the shell will gravitate toward the centre of the arena rather than toward the outer walls.

Sumo exemplifies a stamina-based shell with powerful attack capabilities. It is designed specifically to destabilise other stamina-based shells in high-risk arenas just like this one. Often this kind of design is known as: anti-stamina.



Terminator is recognised by its colossal height and heavy core. A solid defence design. The weight of the shell is almost wholly centred with a relatively high centre of gravity. This gives the shell extreme stability and massive leverage to absorb incoming attacks.


In the video, Terminator is repeatedly pushed by Sumo during traction manoeuvres. But Terminator's core is so strong, the shell recovers before Sumo has fully completed the manoeuvre. Terminator then corrects itself in a swift, sweeping arc of movement - avoiding the arena walls due to its strong core and unmatched stability.

Adding insult to injury, the travelling speed of Terminator induced by correcting the effect of the traction manoeuvre is enough to inflict a heavy impact on Sumo as both shells collide again. The strong core of Terminator allows it to recover from traction and recoil so efficiently that attacks from Sumo are largely negated.

Terminator is designed to attack only if attacked first. It does not hunt its opponent. Furthermore, in a stamina arena like this one, it fully expects to be attacked by shells sporting traction plates - and is designed to counter. Every time Sumo attacks, its impacts merely trigger Terminator's own attack behaviour - fast, tight, sweeping arcs of movement. Impacts from these counter-attacks send Sumo recoiling into the arena walls.

This is a perfect example of counter-design. Terminator was specifically engineered to be immune to traction and recoil. Its super heavy core gives it the shortest engage time ever recorded and huge amounts of torque against leverage from opposing impacts. Though Sumo has performed exactly as intended, Terminator is programmed specifically to counter its attacks.




In this fight, both shells use the Beylon Customs Bolt (BCB) construction method. You can see this method illustrated in the Sumo construction diagram above. The BCB method is specifically designed for using Beyblade clear-wheels in custom shell designs. It locks the clear-wheel to the core rather than pressing it into the metal-wheel. This is a significant departure from the Metal Fight Beyblade (MFB) construction method. It allows shells to be constructed in a broad range of heights without exposing their delicate clear-wheels to attack.

The clear wheel of Terminator is positioned high atop a monolith of steel. Only the tallest shells are able to reach this high. In contrast, Sumo's clear-wheel is positioned just above its metal-wheel and protrudes toward the shell perimeter. This is a design flaw; leaving the clear-wheel exposed to attack.

As the final impacts of the fight are inflicted, Terminator performs an advantageous traction manoeuvre on Sumo's clear-wheel. Because the perimeter of the clear-wheel does not hold nearly as much energy as the perimeter of the shell itself, this is effectively a one-way traction attack and Sumo is severely compromised. This is a perfect demonstration of how any part of a shell not expressly designed to inflict damage may quickly become a weakness in combat.

COMBAT MANOEUVRES: TRACTION

Throughout this report, we have made reference to the brutal traction manoeuvre. Some of you will recognise this exotic attack from the 4D Scythe design - though that design certainly did not use it exclusively. When we refer to traction, we are talking about the ability of a shell to gain momentum from grinding against its opponent - like a car wheel spinning against the ground, attempting to accelerate.

Unlike normal impacts, where a hit is inflicted and both shells recoil away to safety, traction translates the force of an impact into a constant, applied effect on the target. A single normal impact with recoil may last only a millisecond - but a traction attack can last indefinitely, depending on the design. The result is a devastating transfer of energy from the attacking shell into the body of its target.


You might be wondering: what if both shells are spinning at the same speed? Will the traction not be applied to both shells equally? Yes, traction is a dangerous manoeuvre and needs to be executed perfectly to work well. Luckily, there are a number of ways we can ensure our traction attacks perform as desired...

Attacking from below the target is essential; this gives our shell the weight advantage. A spinning top will always travel toward the average direction in which it is leaning. So when a shell attacks from below, it is naturally coaxed to lean "in" to the attack by the weight of the target above - meaning better traction and better stability with a much-reduced chance of recoil.

Meanwhile, the target is forced to lean "out" from the attack, being leveraged by the weight of the attacker underneath. The result often looks as though the attacker is chasing the target around the arena - as seen in the video. This destabilises the target as well as reduces its energy output.

Consider how a nail works best when you use the pointy end; or how a thumb-tack only goes in one way. The same principle applies to traction. The sharper the attacking surface compared to the surface of the target, the more force will be transferred into that target. Traction plates are best when they are sharp - like in the Sumo design - because they output more force than they receive in return.

(May. 02, 2014  2:51 PM)Bey Brad Wrote: Making a powerful spinning top is actually pretty easy. The strongest Beyblade would be round, small, heavy, with no projections. Part of what I learned when working on Battle Strikers is that top design boils down to: start with a circle, and then intentionally make it worse.

Why would anyone do this? Simply put, perfection isn't fun. People aren't playing Beyblade in order to have the strongest Beyblade; they're doing it to have the coolest battles, and to earn those victories. Making a perfectly circular Beyblade is the same as making a card in a game that says, "this card cannot be defeated."

What I love about this quote from Bey Brad is the challenge it issues to the world of blade, shell and arena design at large. Challenge is what this game is all about - in both combat and design. Defiance of the accepted status quo in Beyblade is where WarShell really shines.

A circular perimeter may be a strong design - but it is not actually the strongest. In fact, my experience is that there is no "strongest" design at all - only balance. A circular shell might deflect impacts and minimise recoil - but this also makes it particularly susceptible to traction attacks in return. Beyblade does not use many perfectly circular designs and its stadiums are always very deep - so we rarely see this kind of attack used well. But in WarShell, it is yet another layer of brutal strategy we must consider in our designs.

IN A NUTSHELL

Because this fight takes place in a stamina arena, the launching skill of the shell operators plays less of a part in the result. In this case then, the actual design of the shells is paramount. They each need to be able to operate at peak-efficiency - without launching guidance from their operators.

Because WarShell arenas can take almost any form imaginable, at least one shell in every cluster ought to be able to operate completely independently of operator input - regardless of how it is launched. In this way, when the importance of operator skill is minimised by the fighting environment, whole fights can be won by design alone.

Building your own shells or customising existing ones with your own parts may seem daunting at first. It can be difficult to achieve anything comparable to existing designs - such as Beyblade - until you have experimented with a few different methods. But once you have mastered the basics of getting something to spin, you will undoubtedly start to recognise the virtue of well-considered combat design.

I have been quite busy in recent months; and it may be the case for the next few - but we will eventually examine some specific building methods I have found to be quite rewarding. It's all about choosing a strategy, minimising cost and buying the right stuff. Hope you're looking forward to it as much as I am.

I bet you didn't see this coming. Yes, I'm actually posting something in the Formula Bei blog. You know I'm prone to long and rambling articles about obscure parts of Beyblade history. Well, this post is going to be much the same - but a little shorter and less-interesting than usual. Read on to find out why.


I am probably a bigger fan of the Beyblade designers at Takara-Tomy than I am of Beyblade itself. To me, the game and its designers are one in the same. I am just like that, I guess; I don't like driving over a bridge without knowing who built it. So any information I can gather about my favourite superstars is gold to me.

Which is why I am mathematically bummed that this link does not work anymore. It should lead an animated walkthrough of the entire Takara-Tomy design studio and a candid interview with Beyblade designer Haruhisa Ujita.

The interview was a step-by-step look at the process behind designing a Beyblade from scratch. It contained useful examples, exclusive concept art and notes on the manufacturing process which I have not been able to find anywhere else. In short, if you wanted to know how they make Beyblades, this link had everything you could ever need.


I stupidly did not save the content of the page. Instead I told myself I'd return at a later date, when I had more time to write a proper article. I planned to do an in-depth analysis of the process discussed by Ujita and compare it to the way I now build my own shells. But I missed my opportunity.

So instead of being overtly philosophical, I'll just try to recount everything I remember from reading the page about two months ago. Seems kind of droll, I know, but I am annoyed that such insightful information could be erased from the world just because a webpage is deleted. To be honest there's not much left - but I'm doing this anyway! Makes me think about how tenuous anything digital really is.


The interview involves Ujita and a second guy who I can't identify. I expect he is the third designer from the Zero-G series, alongside Ujita and Kenji Horikoshi, but I do not know his name. It is unclear exactly which parts of the interview belong to which designer.

The first stage of the Beyblade design process is all conceptual. At this stage, there is no manga or TV show and all the designs come straight from the designer's own inspiration. From this conceptual phase, the designers begin to extract a unifying theme for the series.

Beylon Wrote:With games and toys, it is standard practice to apply a mythological framework to guide design. Typically this framework emerges from real-life mythology, as we have seen in previous Beyblade designs. It is interesting to note that the framework later informs the manga and storyline, rather than the other way round.

It takes about a year from first designing a blade to its commercial release. The bulk of the production process is in getting the final molds right, bouncing iterations off the manufacturer and reiterating usually over 10,000 times. Remember that Beyblades are designed in Japan but they are manufactured in China; apparently there can be a significant culture-gap in this process which often slows the production down considerably.

Every time a mold variation is returned for prototyping, it must adhere to the 2012 Takara-Tomy Standards manual; which is a weighty tome describing the required safety tolerances for all Takara-Tomy products. I cannot find a copy of this document; though I am confident it is printed in both Japanese and English.

Funilly enough, the names of the blades are not decided upon until the final mold is ready. Which also means one of two things: either the series release schedule cannot be determined in advance or the entire series is designed and ready to go before the initial release. They don't talk about this specifically though.


And that is all I can remember. Dang, right? No pictures, either. One of the things I like best about writing my blog here on the WBO forum is that I can be pretty sure my work isn't going to randomly disappear overnight and without warning. I could probably host these articles somewhere else; but what if I suddenly disappeared and the pages were removed forever? What a nightmare that would be for any future anthropologist.

As a side note, I know I have not posted for some time - but things have actually been moving ahead with WarShell. After the last round of playtesting, the project moved into a more production-orientated phase. I now have a dedicated workshop and I'm exploring new ways of building shells. Unfortunately that means there's not much to write about. Once I have some pictures of the new toys, you guys will be the first to know.

Thanks for reading!