I am doubting that the author, or the one adapting this to manga has really thought this through--had a fully-thought-out and written magic system that they can include in the story as needed; kinda like making a fully-rendered 3d model of a school building for a slice-of-life school manga that they can refer to whenever they need to. And to be honest, they haven't really needed to. Magic systems can be as hand-wavy as it can, it even not be consistent, but this series had more or less given the reader the expectation that their magic system has internal logic to it.
Not only was the magic system less hand-wavy because of how the writer (original or adaptation) did it, characterizing magic as "programming" made things way more difficult for them. They wrote themselves into a corner, leading to them messing up like this.
It's a bit too bad since I was intrigued at how the author would flesh out this premise of "spellcasting as programming". But at least the other aspects of this title still interest me enough to see things through.
I'm thinking you are correct on this. Honestly, it doesn't bother me "that much," I just find it frustrating when someone tries to use a system that they clearly don't understand to do something that it clearly wouldn't do... like this.
I feel like you're assuming the 56 rune letters are each a full word on their own or something, when usually these form words/sentences (y'know, as he said 'described with word')
Using English comparison:
Fire Water Earth Wind - up to 5 letters space, with 10 different unique letters overall (firewathnd)
00 01 10 11 - 2 digits of space for input, all just 0/1.
If there's only so many variation to a part of the 'sentence' that form the spell, he can simplify each section down into the smallest amount of digit required.
We have example from all the way back in chapter 3 that spells aren't written concisely.
https://mangadex.org/chapter/6b3f34dc-cf5a-4c3e-b469-56a54cec09e2/7
Heck even in this chapter:
https://mangadex.org/chapter/fc30435f-9858-45a1-a76d-c67b2f066d3b/3
And those spells still work, just very inefficiently.
So some of the 'verbose' stuffs he talked might just be the 'trash' people left in the old system (like, say, calling upon spirits/gods for power when the magic doesn't actually do that)
"I feel like you're assuming the 56 rune letters are each a full word on their own or something," No. I am not. I'm assuming that they are letters like A-Z in English (etc). Very rarely does a language have characters that make up entire words. Japanese and Chinese do this. Very little else does. So we are in agreement that they are (in effect) letters.
"Using English comparison:
Fire Water Earth Wind - up to 5 letters space, with 10 different unique letters overall (firewathnd)
00 01 10 11 - 2 digits of space for input, all just 0/1."
Ok... That's not how this works.
Let's assume you are correct for a moment here and 00 == fire, 01 == water, 10 == earth, and 11 == wind. What happens in the sequence 0110? That isn't simply "water" followed by "earth" but
also "garbage" followed by "wind" followed by "garbage"... This is easier to see in a longer sequence: 00011011 doesn't simply represent each one in turn, but also: "0," followed by "00" == fire, followed by "11" == wind, followed by "01" == water, followed by "1." This
may seem pedantic, so let me make this easier and clearer for you and everyone else who may be reading this. Let's add a third digit, what the four other representations are don't matter... 000 = Fire; 001 = Water; 010 = Earth; 011 = Wind. 0000 = ? 1000 = ? 11000 = ? ... Because you haven't defined a "start sequence" or an "end sequence" there is no "start" or "end" to the sequence. This is
absolutely and fundamentally required. A Huffman coding tree consisting of 16 (unique) characters
total requires a total of five "bits" (or characters) to accurately represent each one of them without falling into this issue.
And that ignores the totality of everything else he needs to take into consideration. You've specified "four elements" classical in "magic" but the magic he is doing isn't simplistic like that. He needs to be able to specify a position in a three-dimensional space: X, Y, Z (each of which can easily be more than a double-digit decimal -- meaning 0 to 9 -- which would itself require characters); the size in three dimensions: H, W, D; orientation: Pitch, Yaw, Roll; and velocity (which is, again, simplified as X, Y, Z). And that's just defining an object's existence and ignoring its chemical makeup. He clearly states: "The 56-type magic formula describes phenomena and chemical reactions directly in [words], so it inevitably becomes verbose." or, specifically: "describes phenomena and chemical reactions" which explicitly means he isn't taking simplified concepts as "fire," "water," "earth," and "air" but instead complicated concepts such as "gravity," "mass," and chemical concepts such as "H2O," "CH4 + 2O2" -> "(CH3, CH2O, CO, H2)" -> "2H20 + CO2" (or the chemical reaction of "fire"), or the chemical makeup of various types of rock/stone.
If we were to take this at face value then the 56-rune system likely does something that would equate (English): "Create an orb of [chemical reaction describing fire] at 3 [unit], 2 [unit], 1 [unit] that is 1 [unit] by 1 [unit] by 1 [unit] and is facing 180 degrees by 1 degree by 1 degree and will go 100 [units of speed] by 0 [units of speed] by 0 [units of speed]." to create a "fireball" at [location] of [size] facing [direction] and will go [speed] when released. This could be simplified by "create action" "shape" "chemical reaction" "[quanity] [distance unit] (times 3)" "[quantity] [distance unit] (times 3)" "[Pitch], [Yaw], [Roll]" "[velocity x], [velocity y], [velocity z]" "end function key 'word'" but anything in "[]" cannot be abbreviated as they are
variables that need to be able to be changed. So, if we assume each distinct thing in "quotes" can be abbreviated it would be at minimum: 22 + all required characters for the "chemical reaction" + all required characters for
each "[quantity]." And that's
just one spell.
That's a LOT more than four components and requires N digits for each 2^N combination.
And I want to address: "If there's only so many variation to a part of the 'sentence' that form the spell, he can simplify each section down into the smallest amount of digit required." directly. Yes, you are correct, I address "compression" (which is effectively what you are doing here) next, but first I'm going to address BINARY. Let's say you are correct and he is able to identify each separate, distinct, and unique aspect required for a spell. Binary consists of two characters, period. The original character set consisted of 56. It is entirely possible to apply compression to the original character set and not convert it into binary, and this would
BE BETTER. With the original runes he would have a maximum of 56 characters to represent one thing; once he represented 56 "things" he would require a new digit which could then represent 56^2-56
new and different things -- and this is ignoring the rules of compression (see the next segment for Wikipedia article). If he uses binary, on the other hand, he can represent exactly TWO things for the first digit; exactly FOUR for the second, exactly EIGHT for the third, SIXTEEN for the fourth, THIRTY-TWO for the fifth, and SIXTY-FOUR for the sixth... To represent the same quantity of items as ONE digit of the original character set he would require SIX characters. That's
NOT efficiency, not in anyone's wildest dreams.
Additionally, you are applying compression there, which the other person who replied to you (@
pataponnaako) brought up. Look up Huffman coding, it is vastly more complex than simply setting "words" or "characters" to a simple binary sequence. For each additional added set you have to increase the number of digits by one, check out the
Wikipedia article, evidence of what I'm saying can be seen in the block of text under the image on the immediate right.
And, as pataponnaako brought up, this would require him to know absolutely every key item of absolutely every spell to do (properly). That's unrealistic at the best of times - back when it was a game, for example - and practically impossible if it's a "real" universe.
So, while you are most likely correct that he is removing "fluff" from the original spells, that, alone, wouldn't require converting it to binary. He could still use the 56-rune system and have the same result with fewer overall "characters" required. In fact, the
ONLY way that this could apply any form of 'efficiency' is if Zorander was correct in (what I assume/read as) the universe running on binary in the first place. Basically meaning that anything that
isn't already binary has to be
converted into binary. BUT, even this is nonsense. If humanity (this one, ours, the one you and I are part of) ever develops computers powerful enough to simulate an entire universe... hell, an entire planet/solar system... it
will absolutely not use binary. As I said in the previous comment binary exists for one sole purpose: it's easier to represent on computer architecture/hardware.