Chronic Logic

Well I more than doubled my previous high score.  The bonus just kept climbing and climbing in this one.  Would've had a much higher score too, because I lost while the next window was showing a giant block to help clear the field...

http://www.seriousfortress.com/images/SeriouslyForums/easyhighscores.gif" border="0">

Just registered the game yesterday.  I prefer playing Ultra mode.  http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>  My high score on easy is 627,375 on level 16 with a max bonus of 2850.

One word: MULTIPLAYER.  Each player gets the same set of blocks coming at them, but other than that it's completely up to their skill to outscore one another.  Perhaps large combos could rain unwanted single blocks into your opponent's arena, similar to sending lines to your opponent in Tetris.  You can't see what your opponent is doing, only his score and bonus (so very little network traffic, in fact).  Option to play until the first person 'loses' or to continue play until both players stack too high and see who has the higher score.

What baggio said is why I think the gradually incresing gravity could be a good thing.

"those peak kinetic energies could fail the bridge before it is ever tested by the train. In levels where few cars are used, this means that the bridge may be failing because it can't settle nicely, and might have been able to support the train."

If you build an arch, the arch has a final settling point, and the beams all have an amount of stress when they reach that point.  The problem is that in the initial settling, the bridge goes past the settling point, and the stresses on the beams are much greater than they are when it's finally settled.  That's where it becomes unrealistic, since arches aren't just dropped into place.  http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>

What kind of mouse do you have?  The wheels on mice I've used are very precise; you move it one 'unit', and it moves once.  I think I like the wheel idea, you could really fly through the complicated parts of design that way.

Pressing the 'F' key will move back.  It's right below the 'R' key, so it makes intuitive sense to use, even though (F)orward and ®everse seem more logical at first.  http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>

Most collision-detection systems do use some form of separation.  http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>  If you couldn't keep all the links in each beam together, you could still store them in an octree or something.

I'm still very much in favor of going back to the one link per beam system of BB, but I don't really think it'll ever happen...

> So up to exactly which Z would you want to go?

Whatever the mapper has in mind.  http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>  The whole point of what I'm saying is that there shouldn't be a hard boundary.  You shouldn't have to go beyond a certain Z to turn off centering, and you shouldn't have to be within a certain Z to turn on centering.  No matter where you set the boundary, it unnecessarily limits the properties of bridges.

(Edited by Entroper at 8:20 pm on Nov. 6, 2001)

I'm exactly talking about bridges with the anchors far away.  http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>  And if the anchors aren't symmetrical, it's very likely you'll need the centering force.

Also, having the centering force be an option would allow you to turn it off for maps without a large change in Z.

I wholeheartedly agree with 2), but I think if 1) is to be implemented, it should be a map option.  Sometimes you may want large levels and be able to retain the centering force.

I don't think you can have lighting active when you're viewing stress.  Stress is shown by setting vertex colors for each beam, and usually you don't want to mix vertex colors with lighting.  Lighting uses the material settings, and that gets mixed in with the vertex colors and doesn't really look right.  You can tell OpenGL to use vertex colors as the material color, though, and that might work.

Well, if any of the segments break, then draw the segments that survived instead of drawing the simpler solid beam.  That would also make broken links very easy to spot, just look for where your bridge stops looking pretty.  http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>

But since we're on the subject, I'm sort of confused as to why the bridges are constructed the way they are anyway.  In BB, the links that you drew were the links of the bridge.  In Pontifex, it replaces each of your links with beams made up of tons of individual links.  This can actually have problematic effects, since when you want to build an arch, the square segments tend to mess up your slope and make the bridge more prone to breaking.  Why not fix that problem while saving a ton on physics calcs as well by just using solid beams?  I don't think anyone's PC would be a problem then.

King, if you add a single texture to a polygon, it won't slow down even on a TNT.  GeForce and above could add another texture layer for detail and still not break a sweat.

I think giving the bridge some textures could actually speed up the engine if you don't have a T&L capable graphics card.  If you replaced each 'link' with a cube (instead of drawing all those crossbars), you'd go from 24 cylinders to 6 squares.  Even if the cylinders only have like, 6 faces, it's a tremendous improvement -- the number of polygons would go from 288 (24x6x2) to 12 (6x2).  That cuts the polygon work for links by a factor of 24!  Similarly, replace beams with textured faces, and you get more big savings on polygons, at no extra cost for the textures.

It's not really a queue, since the order you take things out is like a stack.  It's basically a stack that overwrites the bottom elements after a certain number of elements are in it.  http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>  I think it would be pretty cool to have multiple undo layers.

I think it could be very interesting to have pre-built bridges, and you're given a budget with which to take the bridge down.  You can spend the budget on various explosive charges, and figure out where best to place them that will destroy the most of the bridge.  You could have restrictions on how many pieces are left intact to be hauled out of the river and such.  Sounds interesting.  http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>

I agree with mendel on this one; it would be about bridge demolition, not terrorists trying to blow up the bridge.  Not everything that explodes needs to be on CNN 24/7.