Chronic Logic

Klei, if you told us which OS you were using or if that was done by a special program or OS extension (service pack etc.) that information would actually be useful.

I usually run pontifex windowed, it has no trouble switching or assigning input correctly, the screensaver knows to stay away (no wonder if it's windowed), and it does not crash.

The problem for a small shop like ChronicLogic is that they don't have the resources to do testing on a lot of platforms in a reasonable time. I agree they should soon patch these problems which have surfaced.

On the bridgebuilder-game.com forum in the Offtopic channel there's a thread about the WTC.... http://www.forum.bridgebuilder-game.com/topic.cgi?forum=4&topic=16

Detail:" target="_blank">http://www.forum.bridgebuilder-game.com/topic.c....Detail: the impact of the crash was no bigger than the load WTC was subjected to in high winds
Detail: WTC lost about 25% of vertical supports where the plane hit (don't know which tower, but should be roughly the same for each). It was designed to accomodate loss of 50%.
Detail: with only ordinary stuff burning (what was in the building), it should have stood up for hours - I guess that's what the firefighters expected. Kerosine burns very hot, and there were tons of it.
Detail: 1968 was a collapse of a tower that had the "domino" effect seen here as well. (When one of the upper floors crashes down, the load on the floor "catching" it is too great.) UK and other countries had building code in place that mandated design to consider this by 1972; the US took a lot longer.

If you want to test buildings for every imaginable disaster, why not include terrorist smuggling a nuke in there or a ballistic missile hit? You can't make evrything 100% safe unless you build a secret bunker,and even then there's the human element...

My heart goes out to victims of war and terrorists everywhere - be it in the U.S. or sponsored by the U.S. http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':('>

Has anyone yet wished for the ability to control the train? Especially in train view! http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>

oldie, you couldn't have been, you've got the URL wrong :-). Gray's site is at http://www.bridgebuilder-game.com" target="_blank">www.bridgebuilder-game.com - because "U" make the difference :-)
Btw, there's a vote there right now on whether posting scores and designs during Pontifex contests should be allowed.

Yeah, but skins are just bitmap gfx - changing the underlying body would be harder?
I think using the Urban Renewal Kit you could change the pic of a bridge in SimCity??? maybe not...

Perhaps I am wrong and it is easy after all.... ;-)

If you are a game developer wishing to add physics to your game, there are several engines out there you can use - Havoc comes to mind as a commercial example, Open Dynamics Engine if you're into Open Source.
Or you can roll your own, as Alex has done.

Putting Pontifex in SimCity (or similar) would be tantamount to saying: I like my Quake skin to be usable in "The Sims", so why can't you make the Quake engine a plugin and have the sims render all graphics with it?
The amount of code integration, graphics conversion etc. would be akin to developing a whole new game.

These topics make great April fools jokes. Unless they're done with the same codebase, different games will usually not be integrated.

wordpad will do it (sort of)

You will find out if you download and read the level editing manual from the ChronicLogic site.

Texturing is done by your 3D gfx card, not by the CPU, and should not cost much performance.

you guys know that you can get closer (right above the deck, for example) if you move "F" in the editor before switching to "test"? I made some nice shots that way..
(inside of the train, down under the bridge as the supports keel over, etc.)
Now if that stupid limit on the camera rotation was to go away....

Well, that's the way they take old highrises down - dynamite them. The challenge is to do it in such a way as to not cause undue damage in the vicinity.
What I really want to express is that this is a commonly used technique in wrecking today.
Current events have nothing to do with it.

The edit screen screenshots print quite well in black & white if you invert them first. The same should work with the test view if you set the sun low (this makes the background dark, which comes out very light when inverted).

I recommend the shareware program "Graphics Workshop". It lets you make preview "thumbnails" for all the screenshots, select the ones you wish to print and batch "Reverse" = invert them, batch grayscale (in "Effects" ) and batch print them, so it's no problem to do this with 20 screenshots at once http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'> You can get it http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/alchemy.html" target="_blank">here.

Turns are possible (sort of). Just run http://pontifex.mendelsohn.de/crooked1.pxb" target="_blank">http://pontifex.mendelsohn.de/crooked1.pxb on "easy" and see the train swerve (and zigzag into infinity), with no links broken. (Produced in complex mode with 10.19.01; alternate download http://pontifex.mendelsohn.de/crooked1.pxb.zip" target="_blank">http://pontifex.mendelsohn.de/crooked1.pxb.zip ).
http://www.pontifex.mendelsohn.de/Crooked.JPG" border="0">

(Edited by mendel at 2:24 pm on Oct. 22, 2001)

Pontifex physics has trouble handling downturns already - I built a bridge where the first section angled down 50% (30 degrees), and train cars 6 and later jump right through the air (try this e.g. with the contest bridge).

Real railway turns are rarely banked much (5-10 degrees?) because the carriages have a relatively high center of gravity and must not tip even if the train has to stop right in a turn (not to mention passenger comfort). Some modern train designs accomodate for this by banking the train instead - so called "pendulum" trains.

Sidenote: Germany's highspeed ICE train does not bank, but required extensive rebuilding of the rail system to make wide curves that are safe at high speeds. (Pendulum trains can reach high speeds on older tracks.)

Model railways usually have turns that are much more narrow than real railway turns to make them fit indoors ;-)
You would probably implement such non-realistic narrow turns in Pontifex as well.  Note: model railways usually don't have banked turns either.