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Messages - VRBones

#1
General Discussion / Triptych...
June 06, 2002, 12:10:04 AM
I thought it was a level 4 limit ?

PS: It rox, reminds me of the gem game on Megadrive, except wif blocks of jello!

(Edited by VRBones at 4:39 pm on June 5, 2002)

#2
Next Version Ideas / Easing into gravity
November 07, 2001, 11:25:31 PM
Quote: from mendel on 8:31 am on Nov. 7, 2001
I got completely confused reading VRBones post of Nov 6, 6:01pm (6:25 edit) because I could not make heads or tails of the various additional forces, steps, cycles, and waves.
Sorry, was trying to put it in more layman's terms than pure math, I'll try to flesh it out a little. Made perfect sense to me at the time ;)

I found this out by first looking at a vertical bar fixed at one end, without damping applied; if you go to 0.5 g and then take it to 1g as the oscillation is at its lower extremity, it will come to rest immediately
My second and third paragraphs are do do with this effect. Applying the second increase at the lower extremity of the oscillation cancels out each other due to the waves of oscillation of equal amplitude being 90 degrees apart. The same can be said if you apply the additional force in 4 stages of 0.25 G at 45 degree increments. Extending this you can see that if an equal amount of force is applied each step, and that the steps are applied evenly across the whole oscillation, they will cancel each other out. Although we don't know the frequency of the oscillation of each bridge, if we assume that all steps apply the same force evenly and that the time to apply these steps is greater than the minimum frequency of any bridge, this effect will come into play.  

This is all without damping though. When you introduce damping, the remaining force from the initial step that is still oscillating in the system at a point in the future is proportional to the damping co-efficient (another way of stating the definition of the damping co-efficient). Since the amount of additional force is equal at each step, the net resulting force is equal to the amount of force damped over half an oscillation. The higher the damping effect, the higher the net resulting force.

If you managed to work out the damping co-efficient of a bridge, you could also proportionally reduce the force at each step by that amount, therefore the resulting force from half an oscillation ago would equal the new force being added, thus returning the equation back into equilibrium. However, from some quick tests the damping co-efficient seems to vary across bridge designs (proportional to the amount of regidity across the whole bridge ?).

So from all that, what's the conclusion? If you had the amount of force applied each step slowly decreasing, and the time taken to apply the whole gravity greater than one oscillation, you would get a pretty stable result. The smaller the steps the better, but means the time to apply all the gravity is more, approaching infinity (and no-one is going to wait that long ;) ). I think around 3-4 oscillations worth would be reasonable, so assuming an oscillation is one second (I've seen oscillations of .5 seconds and as long as 2 secons) and that 50% or the resulting force was damped over that time, you would have the bridge gradually sink due to the strain for 4 seconds, then have a remaining oscillation of ~4% the size of the oscillation experienced now.  


(Edited by VRBones at 4:26 pm on Nov. 7, 2001)

(Edited by VRBones at 4:27 pm on Nov. 7, 2001)

#3
Next Version Ideas / Easing into gravity
November 07, 2001, 01:01:36 AM
Starting the bridge on 50% of final gravity will prevent it from overshooting the final settling position, thus keeping member stress below the final settled stress. Gravity can then be increased to 75%, 88%, 94% etc.
Good to see some analysis on this. The idea of moving to 50%, then 75% etc is good due to the insignificance of smaller gravity values to the final result, but remember that the amplitude of the 'bounce' is dependant on the additional force applied to the system. This additional force is the difference between the current gravity and the previous gravity. As this additional force (DeltaG) approaches zero, the amplitude of the bounce approaches zero. So the best solution is to make the increments as small as possible.

Although the frequency of the bounce is not known for all bridges, if an even amount of gravity was applied on each step over the duration of one cycle, the resulting waves would more or less cancel each other out with the remaining force being proportional to the damping co-efficient. That means that if there was no damping the bridge would be in equilibrium, the more damping the less equilibrium (as the remaining force from the initial step would be dissapated by the damping co-efficient over time), but that would also have a smaller amplitude due to the damping effect.

Another way to look at it would be to have the amount of energy added to the system (gravity) to be decremented each step by the damping effect. This would keep the above equilibrium intact, regardless of the natural frequency of the bridge. This would also make an asymptotic force (like the 50%, 75% scenario) which technically would never be fully applied, but I'm sure you could drop it to G when it's as close as practical.

Update: The last section is incorrect as the damping effect for each bridge is different, thus unknown.

(Edited by VRBones at 6:25 pm on Nov. 6, 2001)

#4
Next Version Ideas / Pre-tensioning Cables
October 26, 2001, 01:19:34 AM
I'm with pulseJet on this one. It's not just cables, it is steel structures and everything going from no stress (due to gravity) to instant stress. If you gradually increased gravity you would see the load applied more evenly and the bridge deform into position instead of overshooting the mark and oscillating like it does at present.

Although pre-tensioning would work, you would need to do this for EVERY section of cable, steel, internal strut etc. until you approximated all the stresses on a stable bridge. Think of trying to replicate the various shades of read/blue you see now on a bridge that has 'stabilised'. That isn't going to be an easy task.

#5
Although I like the idea of placing your own anchor points, I think this would remove the majority of the challenge though. You would always place anchors where you needed them to suit your bridge-building style, reducing the game to a clickathon. I think the anchor placement has the largest impact on the game, even more than budget or bridge length or anything else.

Personally I wouldn't mind even if the random map generator spat out an impossible one every now & then. It'd make for some interesting contests to see who gives up first ;)

#6
Problems / Short-Link physics bugs
October 24, 2001, 01:21:49 PM
I did some research on this last night as I had also pondered about the issue of length. I'd also written out an article to post here, but my modem had timed out or something, so I posted it to http://vrworld.qgl.org/index.php?id=287121" target="_blank">my crappy site.

In essence I'd started out thinking along  the lines of calastigro, while trying to disprove mendel, and ended up coming to a conclusion like Falkon2's ! So I could have waited a day and had it solved for me ;)

#7
Problems / Short-Link physics bugs
October 25, 2001, 11:33:12 PM
Thanks for the explanation CL. Looks like it killed the discussion and people's wild hypotheses ;).  To try to add something constructive to the thread, why not just add a constant value (different for each span type) to the strength after the ratio? This would then represent (Veeery roughly) the density and cross-sectional strength of the span type; properties of the material that wouldn't change anyway. This would then mimic a constant maximum shear potential as well as leaving alone the angular momentum that already looks like it's working realistically. Since it is only one addition function, it would also be a negligable impact to the overall speed.  Although it should give more natural feeling lengths, it would also dramatically change the gameplay. Dunno whether it's worth fiddling with it until version 2?
#8
Problems / Mouse missing under version 19
October 24, 2001, 09:07:36 AM
Yeah, I know what you mean, and yes, I was surfing at the time, but the explorer that I picked up on was just normal explorer, not internet explorer (explorer opened at the pontifex directory to be exact)
#9
Problems / Mouse missing under version 19
October 23, 2001, 11:48:05 AM
On 3 occasions so far (out of ~20) since installing the new version I have had no mouse support when starting the game (cursor is visible, but does not respond at all).

Still trying to figure out what circumstances were the same that differed in other times, but it appears fairly random at the moment. One thing I have noted is that once I used Alt-Tab to try to swap back to another application and it had immediately highlighted the 3rd one along, not the second as expected. This seemed to indicate that possibly the second application (explorer in this case) had focus instead of pontifex. I haven't seen it since to verify one way or the other :/

#10
Records and Hints / Normal Level Records
October 20, 2001, 02:19:54 AM
10. 46788
12. 67468

(Edited by VRBones at 9:04 pm on Oct. 19, 2001)

#11
Records and Hints / Normal Level Records
October 19, 2001, 04:52:52 PM
On the subject of the train touching water, personally I think this should be allowed, but how does everyone else feel?
Letting the train touch the water drastically changes what you can get away with as you can use it to 'brake' the train, thus eliminating undesired wobble etc. If you're counting no breaks, I'd count no water touches either. That said there should be a no-holds-barred section too ;)
#12
Records and Hints / Normal Level Records
October 19, 2001, 03:48:13 PM
Do we validate 'em somewhere ?

(Edited by VRBones at 8:50 am on Oct. 19, 2001)

#13
Records and Hints / Normal Level Records
October 24, 2001, 02:48:26 PM
Tyree, there's a 12 at  67468
Also made some slight mods on 10
10. 45108


#14
Records and Hints / Complex mode scores
October 22, 2001, 06:08:37 AM
Quote: from falkon2 on 4:52 am on Oct. 20, 2001
c09 - Uh, clean? Not me =)
c11 - Uh, clean? Not me =)

That sounds like a challenge ;)
c09 - 81186 (non-optimised)
c11 - 23402
0,H,TT
#15
Records and Hints / Complex mode scores
October 24, 2001, 08:49:07 AM
Quote: from The Tick on 6:12 pm on Oct. 22, 2001
VRBones,
Your c09, are you "droping" your bridge from above, or using the anchor to support it?
Supported. In fact I didn't know what the fuss was about as my quick bridge had only 4 broken links. Took 2 goes to get it with none, then was planning on sitting back and seeing if anyone bit before optimising the #### out of it ;)