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Is Erinn (the world of Mabinogi) actually flat...?
So like, at first, I wanted to let everybody know of an easy way to «time-travel» so-to-speak. On the New Year's dawn of a location like Seoul (or Tokyo or any other far-eastern location), time your flight to take off towards Seattle (or Honolulu or other Pacific-Time location), then, when you arrive, it will be the 31st of December on the previous year (I have actually done this before). Voila ! Low-cost «time-travel» !
Then I thought about doing this at Erinn (the name given to the world/universe within which Mabinogi is themed; not just the server-name)... then I «suddenly» realised... that the time-zones are the same everywhere. Dunbarton ? Tara ? Even if you sail/continent-warp all the way to Belvast or even further east all the way to whole entire other continent, like Iria, regardless of whether you are to its far-west at Solea or far-east like Filia or even further East, the time is still the same, the sun (and moon/s) is/are still in the same position/s (probably ?), then I was like... woah... perhaps this place might actually be flat...? O_O
I guess it is time again for yet another «fun» poll...!
O_O
Comments
...then there are other things I know of that I refuse to share here since that type of 12D-chess-like knowledge ain't for normies.
I tend to agree that the extent of the continents is just a few kilometers. But I also cannot ignore that over those few kilometers there are drastic topographical and climatological changes. Perhaps being Milletians distorts our perception of space as well as time. Or perhaps we have the correct view and it is the Tuatha de Danann who cannot see things clearly.
Or what space-time is different than either viewpoint?
Then again, maybe it's something we shouldn't try to understand. Like how everyone in musicals can spontaneously sing a song clearly improvised for the story (hence canonically new), each their automatically know own part, and know and share choreographed dance steps. And maybe we shouldn't worry about where the music comes from in musicals. Because if we do, we'll end up asking where the music comes from in Mabinogi.
That's an interesting point because if Mabinogi takes place on a planet the size of the actual earth and that planet was rotating once every 36 minutes then most of the surface of the planet would be travelling beyond escape velocity and the planet would fly apart. At this writing I don't really feel like calculating what the largest size the planet could be to not have this issue and then calculate time differences over a few kilometers.
Of course if we assume an old geocentric model of the Erinn universe then the sun and moon can be very small and orbit around a non-rotating world of Erinn. But at that point it might as well just be flat.
That's well beyond anything I've studied. At least formally. And even then, it's a bit much. But my guess (again, GUESS) is that since the days are 40x the time that passes on Earth, then assuming similar gravity, the mass of Erinn would need to be 40x that of Earth to balance out.
Personally, though, I've always assumed that there are undiscovered lands not shown on the map. And there almost would have to be in order for all of Erinn to share the same sunrise and sunset. We are just getting 15 degrees of longitude at best.
And now I'm trying to imagine what would it would take for Eweca to always occur at sunset. Meh, too much to think about. Maybe we just weren't supposed to think of such things.
You are correct, there are unseen landmasses. Hagi and Anju confirm as much during their quest lines.
The likely answer here is that Erinn is not flat narratively and that we should be experiencing time zones but ludicly it's easier to have universal global time.
Imagine if you had to factor in your time zone, the server time zone, and the Erinn time zone? What a headache. This has happened with Mabinogi before- NPCs initially weren't meant to forget the Milletian, but it was a pain to fix and was just adopted as a feature and added to the lore.
Interesting. I don't remember much about their story (or any other one, actually), but I suppose Scuabtuinne and Doki Doki Island are additional lands as well.
I suppose the Western part of Uladh counts as well, even if there is no ocean between it and the realised world. Of course, in this game, putting "here be dragons" ain't sayin' much.
From a purely programming perspective making a round world would make the required calculations way more complicated. I don't think I've ever seen a game that used a round world.
Like most games, Mabinogi doesn't even correctly adjust for heights in its calculations. It always takes the same amount of time to walk a particular horizontal distance on the map, no matter whether the terrain is flat or sloping. The maximum range of an arrow is always the same horizontal distance, so if you shoot an arrow at a target that is uphill, you get more range, measured along the uphill path the arrow follows than you would along horizontal ground. I've also yet to see a 3D game that correctly allows for gravity, so that arrows follow parabolic path rather than travelling in a straight line. If you allow for the parabolic path, arrows going further shooting downhill than shooting uphill, which is one reason forts are built on high ground. Correctly allowing for gravity would add a whole new dimension to the strategy of the game. I hear some 2D games allow for gravity effects like this, but at the moment it still seems to be beyond what is manageable for 3D games.
Edited to add: Probably the key point to remember is that making a game more realistic does not necessarily make it more fun. I really don't think it would be worthwhile to make a ground warfare game which correctly reflected spherical geometry.
In the real world, back when we still used naval artillery (i.e. battleships), due to the ranges their guns could fire and the flight times of the shells, they actually had to include the rotation of the Earth in their gunnery calculations. Buuut ... um ... yeah, I doubt WoWs bothers with all that and just uses two parametric equations: one for height and one for range; I doubt they even factor for air resistance.