Chronic Logic

Building standard type suspension bridges (where the pillars are somewhere in the water, not at the end of the bridge), the tricky point is to bend the suspension cable connecting the pillar tops with the anchor points on land just enough to balance the pillars against the weight of the middle section. and here the game seems to be a bit unrealistic: If you look, for excample, at the real Golden Gate Bridge, the middle section of the suspension cable is much more bend than the landside sections. In the pontfex II game, you should try to bend all sections similiary. The suspension cable seems to be very heavy, so even small balancing failures destroy all kinds of materials you´ve made your towers of.

I apologize for this unclear description, it´s as good as my English is...

I spent some nights on this seemingly impossible level, until I found out that "deck" is much stronger than crossbeams, both in compression and suspension. So I switched to "complex" and built an arch made of deck below the railroad deck. looks funny, but works. Still, it needs some try and error, but finaly you´ll make it!

For reasons unknown to me I never had this problem. If the train passes once it certainly passes again without any problems.

Thanks, Gray, I think you´re right with your answer. Starting with the camera on the far left side of the level is only useful with experimental levels.
Klei, I just misspelled "another". My wife is an English teacher here in Germany, please don´t tell her...

Wazza80, great mechanism, your skylift! I downloaded it from your site and had some fun with it. Since Pontifex has no hinges, the cabels needed to simulate these are annoying.
I tried for some time to create a catapult (like mine, see above) with a deck (like yours), but the thing is far too big and wrecks itself before anything useful happens. For the next version it would be a good idea to have a sizeble scale, like: how many meters is one grid HD. So the mechanism hasn´t to be sooo big.

(Edited by mikaiser at 1:41 am on Dec. 15, 2001)

Yes, that´s what I ment. Sorry for bad "german engeneering", I´ve corrected it now.

Mendel, I will post the pxb as soon as my home computer works again. Somehow this catapult hit something inside the machine...

Gray has posted the catapult (see above) at his site www.bridgebuilder-game.com/
Meanwhile I tried to fine-tune the trebuchet (which is the correct name for gravity-powered siege machines like this). The best performance measure is how far it hurls the projectile.
Since the horizontal trajectory of the thing is exactly along the grid, it is easy to find out. The one posted and to be seen above throws it´s payload for app. 184 HD grids, measured from the center of the counterweight.
Since the grid ends at 240 HD grids from the counterweight, I was fumbling with new levels where the trebuchet is buildt at the extreme left position. But I find it annoying to search for the catapult every time I enter the level, since the simulation seems to start always at the center, some 200 HD grids from the machine.
Anyway, my best trebuchet (a tuned version of the one above, more space for counter weight to travel downward, fine tuned release point, some tuning of the throwing arm) hurled the boxlet some 250 HD grids. So, that´s my personal record for now. Anyone up to beat this?
Rule: even ground, measured from the vertical projection of the center of the counter weight to the impact point.
For more informations about real trebuchets chek out www.ripcord.ws/ (I have nothing to do with that site, just find it amazing)
And a nother question: Is there any method to tell pontifex to start the simulation/edit view at the left side of the grid instead centered?

(Edited by mikaiser at 1:46 am on Dec. 19, 2001)

(Edited by mikaiser at 1:01 am on Dec. 20, 2001)

For me this game is the best I´ve seen so far. No other game ever made me stay up half of the night, and I´ve tried some of them. Congratulations, CL!
It´s like having my old LEGO-stuff back, simply great!This catapult throws a link box until it disapears in the distance.
Works like the real ones did. The magic is getting the "payload" desintegrate at the right moment. This time, the "short link bug" works to my advantage.

This software is great not only to bulid bridges! Create your own levels and find out how a crane, for example, is stressed if the load is swinging back and forth. It took me some hours to get this 12-story-monster balanced and rigid enough to hold a swinging heavy steel beam.

did anyone create interesting no-bridge levels?

I love to create other things than bridges. Often, the mechanism becomes to big and is not stable enough. If I could downsize the scale, the physics of smaller dimensions would be different and mechanical functions could be designed without worrying about - say - the weight of a beam. Also, hinges would help, but this was already mentioned at other topics.

My idea of variable scales is not worked out in any way. I guess, with a smaller scale, things happen much faster on the screen and therefore we all need supercomputers or we accept slow motion shows, so, it´s just an idea. Changing some physical parameters while changing the scale should not be too hard for CL.

(Edited by mikaiser at 3:37 pm on Dec. 15, 2001)

I ran into the "exploding sections" problem, too. I could solve it most times by simply changing one "heavy" link against a "light" one. That´s exactly the reason why my tower crane (see "New Levels" thread) is made of mixed heavy and light beams.
The idea of using this effect for "explosive charges" is fun, but without collision detection it would just blow up some air, wouldn´t it?

falcon, I like your style!

I´ve spent some nights on this one: no broken links on HARD! Change ANYTHING and it will fail, so it´s not recommended for public use. If someone scratches the paint, who knows...
Sorry for the tiny picture, but my provider charges me enough, anyway.

<edit>: correction, since I use release 10.19.01 some 100 links will break, but the bridge survives 4 passes. The problem seems to be the pull on the deck close to the edges. And there is no more money left for some cables.

(Edited by mikaiser at 11:35 am on Dec. 12, 2001)

I´ve found a way to show a picture, but only from a website. That´s a tiny view of my MP_Level_15 bridge: