And falkon, nice try, but I know you *thought* to answer something else and would have if I hadn't dared you :-)
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Show posts MenuAnd falkon, nice try, but I know you *thought* to answer something else and would have if I hadn't dared you :-)
Perhaps some quiet new-age instrumental stuff (sounds of the earth etc.) would help, but I think it is highly personal which music (if any) makes you creative.
You might as well ask which food makes you build better bridges (and I know what falkon will reply to that ;-).
Not exactly my favourite music, but the text is to the point...
So up to exactly which Z would you want to go? Surely not 256?
> And if the anchors aren't symmetrical, it's very likely you'll need the centering force.
Yes, then the deck might sag differently on each side and tilt slightly.
> Also, having the centering force be an option would allow you to turn it off for maps without a large change in Z.
I thought you could always make a bigger Z you're not using, but that costs game speed.
Another idea: centering force only on deck pieces and rail texture! That would be harder to implement, though.
Unless you're thinking about a bridge where the anchors are far, far away to the side.... and even then the train should run straight most of the time even without centering?
Changing the map format to allow for centering off might break existing maps, unless some high bit on a low number is used (e.g. use a negative Zsize if centering is off).
2) I got bitten by nonintuitive and possibly non-documented engine start placement. I raised the ground and put the left width line to the edge of the grid, and Pfx started the train at the usual height. Since that was below ground, I was not thrilled. Moving the green line inwards solved it.
Why can't the train just start above the yellow "rails" line? (That's what I intuitively assumed, but that's not the case now.)
Again, this should not break most levels, and if it did, it would be easy to fix.
The latter is practicable right now. I solved one of my problems with my lame contest bridge design that way.
I used to have it so the cable tower was built on the lower anchor and had the first deck joint integrated in its steel structure. This resulted in the second deck piece taking a lot of strain, because one joint was fixed in the heavy-steel-supported tower, the other was cabled and connected to sagging rest of the bridge. The stress was noticeably reduced when I built the tower past the first deck joint (removing the angle in the tower, too!) and suspended the first deck joint from that same or an auxiliary tower, I don't remember which. What I do remember is that this setup made the first joint sag a little, too, and that allowed it to distribute some of that stress farther to the outside, resulting in a more even stress distribution and a better bridge.
(Actually, this is a "current version" idea, so I'm a little bit off-topic here :-).
What you could do would be to build the deck at an angle, so it's allowed to sag a little, thus stressing the cables. The problem with this is that the deck gets stressed, too - and that should not be happening with a sus bridge...
If the members were still pin-jointed as they were in BB, the sag would not induce much extra stress, so instead of demanding prestressed cables, we could instead demand a no-diagonals beam (demanded elsewhere on this forum as well, if I recall). I dub this "swinging bar".
Swinging bars could be easily implemented as a new material type without changing the current file format, and it could even use the same colors now used for light and heavy steel.
I had a case today of a single beam breaking; a short time after that, a second one. I couldn't find the place! It was on the back of a beam on the other side of the bridge deck - a really mean place to hide.
(Edited by mendel at 12:43 pm on Oct. 29, 2001)