Chronic Logic

Unfortunately, I think it would be impossible to build some of the spans in bridge builder because they're just too wide.  Perhaps I'm wrong, but certainly, you can't just "triangle spam" as it's become known.  But, go for it man, and see if it works.

Hmmm, instresting...  Thanks all.

I have an old 486DX 33MHz PC with 16MB of RAM and a SB16 which for some reason cannot support high DMA without windows running.  If anyone has knowledge of old hardware, I would appreciate any thoughts as how to rectify this problem.  I would like to be able to support 16 bit digitized sound so I can run M.E.S.S.

Yeah, this is all being discussed in "Next Version Ideas."  I agree that all of these extensions would improve Pontifex.

Instead of easing into gravity, perhaps the force of gravity could start in the center of the bridge, and work its way outward, thus effectively simulating the removal of scaffolding.  That is to say, the gravity should affect regions of the level, perhaps 4 HD blocks of space, and it would affect the centermost region while the rest of the level was still zero-g.  Thus, that section could settle with the rest of the bridge not having any support issues.  Then you would move to the regions on either side, and settle those two, and so forth.  Or, perhaps for some bridges you may want to work inwards towards the center from the edges.  This could be an option, but either way, you would eliminate flop almost entirely.

Andy does have a point about suspension bridges.  The cables still have too much flexibility, which gets us right back to the topic that this thread was broken away from.  Hmmm....

My vote is for having a settle button in the editor that briefly turns on gravity to determine how much give to give (eeek) the cables.

I think having a stiffer kind of cable would be indispensible.   Rather than stretching out so much, this kind of cable should just be able to absorb a higher amount of stress without expansion of any kind.  This is analagous to heavy steel.  You can put a very high amount of compression on heavy steel that simply does not register as a deformation of the truss.  I think this same principle would alleviate bridge flop, especially for a catenary suspension bridge (or parabolic as the case may be).

How fast is your palmtop's chip anyway?  If it's not measured in GHz, you're going to have 0 fun.  And I have a feeling it isn't.

Or you could have a dead color in Stress mode.  Bright white perchance?  Or a custom color, whateva.

That's a good idea, you should've posted it to Gray's thread though.

Whuah?!?!?!  I think he's talking about the load bridge screen.  At least, I hope so.

Also,
-- figure out why internally braced columns fail
-- fix alt-tab/inactive program issues in WinNT/2k

also, somebody else mentioned this elsewhere:
-- being able to move the HAV while physics are paused
-- perhaps dampen interia on HAV to remove drift

In response to Klei, BridgeBuilder uses OpenGL, so I don't know if your D3D settings would still have any effect.  Regardless of that workaround, it is a perfectly valid request to have several things happen when an OpenGL or DirectX program is running.  They are as follows:

1) Disable the Screensaver if the program is fullscreened and active
2) Don't switch to new windows when the program is active (this causes a great deal of problems with point 3)
3)  Ignore all user input (keyboard, mouse) when program is inactive
4)  If the program has the option of windowed mode vs. fullscreen, you should be able to work in other windows without the windowed mode OGL program crashing.

This is something that I think needs to be fixed as soon as possible.

(Edited by beaujob at 8:16 am on Oct. 28, 2001)

You don't really need to test a program on multiple platforms.  Just do your development in Windows NT or Win2k, and if it works there, it'll work in any other environment.