New challenge... Build the strongest (I.E. least deformation) bridges for all the levels.
Which bridges are stronger? They obviously must be clean, but you can build as much as you want as long as it's in budget.
I think a nice feature for the next version of Pfx would be a "max tension" percentage, sorta like the max stress indicator in the current build, but giving you the highest stress value among all the joints
But for now, an easy way to gauge the percentage of stress toward the breaking point would be to set your stress colors to white as no stress and black for both expansive and compressive tension.
Quakes are very unprediactable. Some times they will bring a bridge down in two seconds. sometimes they will bring it down in two minutes.
gauging tension: set colors as falkon describes, take a screenshot, measure the RGB levels using a paint program for exact values.
Another way is to measure by train cars and broken links.
How about having a way to measure how Quake-resistant the bridges are? I find that bridges that are very sturdy to trains, collapse at the slightest tremor sometimes. Its a whole different force on the bridge.
Currently i do it manually timed: bridge has to sustain 5 sec of depressed Quake button, and then the train must be able to pass. Wanne make it harder? 10 sec Quake.
yeah but there can only be 11 train cars and many bridges can handle this many with 0 broken links.
The "5 seconds" measure doesn't work well, because pontifex speed seems to scale (among other things) with CPU speed, and thus would translate into a different number of "frames" on different machines.
Try this: Build an object 8 squares off the ground.
When testing, press reset, then immediately "Quake"
until object hits ground.
Adjust height as needed.
I don't know if the shape and size of the object would make a difference.
We need to be able to adjust the weight of the train cars. Then we could have contests for heaviest single car clean bridge, and constests for total wieght clean brigdes(any combination of weight and # of cars).
Actually, if you have access to a paint program, you can test the strength of your bridge as a percentage as follows. (this is using PSP)
1) Take screenshot of max stress after train has run completely.
2) Open up in Paint Shop Pro, go to adjust/Brightness & Contrast
3) Turn contrast to 100, and brightness to 100.
4) Now slowly decrease brightness to -100. The moment you see black creep into your bridge members, record the brightness level, divide by two and add 50. This will give you percentage upon hundred of the strength of your bridge.
the wheight is adjusted by the difficulty level.
ummm, what quake button are you refering to?
The quake button can be found only by people who solved all "Normal" levels. If you can't do this, move to Los Angeles instead.
Ah! That's why I didn't see it, I got bored with the normal levels and went on to bang my head against the complex ones... thanks!
The one problem with Quake-testing a bridge is that even if the bridge is subjected to 5 seconds of "bridge-time" quaking, the way the game does earthquakes is random, and so in that time, the quake my jolt side to side harshly and quickly, or just wiggle back and forth a little, producing extremely different results.