Chronic Logic

Ah, you are right.  The 'good' bridge does fail if you wait longer than about 15 seconds to start; I don't know why that is.

However, my question remains: why do the bridges act differently, even though they are the same in construction, same price, everything?

I didn't copy the file, and I discovered this by accident: I was playing with the bridge, and copied the entire bridge off to one side to try something different.  When I copied it back, it didn't work anymore, even though all the links where there and the price was the same.  I am just using the copy/paste functions inside Pontifex II.

Argh!  It feels like this program has something wrong with vehicles passing over bridges that I can't control with construction.

I believe I found a bug where I have the exact same bridge, however in one case the truck makes it across fine, and in the other case the truck crashes.  There is no difference between the bridges; found this bug when copying and pasting the entire bridge.

Download http://home.att.net/~bmowrey/Pontifex/Samebridges.zip" target="_blank">Samebridges.zip for the files.  Play with it and see if you get the same results!

For the good bridge, the truck always makes it across regardless of the timing.  For the bad bridge, the truck sometimes makes it across, but never if started immediately (using pause/restart/test/unpause) or if started after 20 seconds.

What's going on?!?   The bridges look exactly the same!!  Please help me understand the difference here.  Thanks!  http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>

Yeah, the cost on that one is tough to match.

http://home.att.net/~bmowrey/Pontifex/hard6.PNG" border="0">

Good luck! ;)

On extra 6, you can get around it by building a deck segment from the anchor in the other direction from your bridge.  Put one end of the deck at the anchor, and the other end a little bit above the ground farther away, and don't put any other connections to it -- just leave it floating in space.

When you run the simulation, the far end of the deck falls to the ground, no links broken if you didn't put it too high, and the vehicles drive on the bridge just fine.  It appears that the map texturing slopes the ground just slightly as it approaches the bridge anchor, causing the vehicles to be below the bridge, and fall through.

Ah, great job all.  I had a cable bridge (nowhere near as nice as the winners), but didn't submit it because I thought it was 'cheating' that the cables went through the land on the right side.  Guess not!  Should have read the rules better. . . Congrats all!

I've submitted a 94K bridge. . . but I believe the winner will get to ~85K.

Those cables are tricky!

Hey, I think its a great value -- buy it on the assumption that updates may/may not be forthcoming.

You don't have to buy P2, but I believe the game is well worth the money.

(Edited by bmowrey at 10:46 am on Nov. 5, 2002)