Chronic Logic

I like to drop the hav from extremely high altitudes on my bridges to see how resilient they are to stress, and it seems to me that the speed of the hav is capped.  

Any thoughts?  If it is indeed capped, it should be uncapped, at least for freefall anyway.

Quote: from mendel on 5:31 pm on Oct. 24, 2001
In original BB, getting rid of the cars makes the engine accelerate to infinity... or close :-)That was cool.  In god mode, I broke the engine from the rest of the train, and I got it going about that fast in Pontifex.

It also seems odd to me that you can't test a level with 0 cars. Why can't I just use the engine. Lilke the HAV, but with an ability to run on its own?

I think the speed of the train is capped too.  I've tried to make levels with a huge approach slope to get the train moving quickly, but it doesn't really work.  I wanted to make a jump and have the player try to build something strong enough to catch the train.  

The HAV does seem to be able to go faster than trains, but a 10-car train seems to be about as slow as a 1-car train when running down a slope.

Perhaps things reach terminal velocity quickly in the Pontifex world. It may be that the speed of objects is limited in order to simplify the physics calculations, but I doubt it. Just one more physics bug which is not that damaging, but big enough to get noticed.

It's probably friction caused by all those gearwheels and pistons and things. Probably. Or something.

as kvinge said, TERMINAL VELOCITY.  speed is capped in the real world (for falling, that is), so why not in a good phisiks engine?

Quote: from Entroper on 12:10 pm on Oct. 25, 2001
The HAV does seem to be able to go faster than trains, but a 10-car train seems to be about as slow as a 1-car train when running down a slope.
Have you tried seeing the difference going up a slope... the 10-car train seems to do a better job.  Momentum maybe?

Terminal velocity, as I understand it, is caused by air resistance, so like, when a skydiver reaches about 200 mph, his body offers so much drag that he can go no faster.  I really don't think that the Immortal Engine takes any air resistance into account.  And if it did, a bullet-nosed train doesn't offer so much resistance that the train would have its speed reduced at all on an incline.

Maybe all the cars have engines too

While they don't have 'air resistance', per se, could they not inpliment a terminal velocity as faux air resistance?  Same deal with lots of programming stuff:  Make it look like you did more work than you actually did.

Is it not reasonable that a game impliments a common rule of phizzicks without the cause for the rule (ie: chicken, but no egg)?

Quote: from falkon2 on 2:34 am on Oct. 26, 2001
Maybe all the cars have engines tooWhy am I still up? No, I know that isn't true.  I've had bridges where only the engine has fallen off. Then the rest of the cars started backing down the slope with the engine hanging off the bottom.

Give CL a break it doesn't make much difference whether or not objects stop accellerationg at a certian point. and capped speed on the ground is actually pretty realistic.

Yeah, I've noticed that a train will be able to go up a steeper slope in hard mode than in normal mode, on complex level 16.  Don't think it's intertia, because the train doesn't start with any speed before it hits the incline.

I don't think speed should be uncapped.  kvinge was onto something, it could lead to serious problems with collision detection when objects move too far between calculations.  I'd just like to see the cap increased since the train really doesn't move very fast at all at its top speed.  It seemed to be able to move much faster in the original Bridge Builder.

Quote: from beaujob on 11:29 am on Oct. 26, 2001
Yeah, I've noticed that a train will be able to go up a steeper slope in hard mode than in normal mode...Didn't realize that the skill level played into it.  Doesn't that just make the train 2 times as massive?  Seems as if some inertia is taking place.  Besides, the CG of the train moves futher back with added cars.

If we assume that there isn't a moment associated with the inertia, then that means that the train with 2 cars will accelerate as fast as a train with 10 cars, but the train with 10 cars will have a momentum to carry it further up a slope.  This would also mean if you doubled the mass, it would also carry further.

In original BB, getting rid of the cars makes the engine accelerate to infinity... or close :-)

i've made bridges that are ttable, clean, and 0bl, but only on hard.  they will not work in any other difficulty level.  i find that halarious...

I did some experiments with www.pontifex.mendelsohn.de/tslope1.pxl - the file contains 7 different up slopes. It runs very slowly on my machine, I would appreciate if someone would run other  tests. The cables at the bottom can be used to determine how much of the train got up the slope, just line them up so you know you're not looking diagonally. I need the cables to hold the deck because anchor-to-anchor building is not allowed - for any type of material. If do timing, provide your times compared to a ground run in the same level - it would be best if you changed only 1-2 deck pieces between the comparison runs because these changes can affect the sim speed.

My result so far:
A 1-car-train can only get the engine up a 3x3y slope on the first go before sliding back. A 10-car train gets the engine and 8 cars up on hard (6.5 cars on easy), and it is still accelerating when it is (my imagination) passing the 1-car-train! This means the 10-car-train has a stronger engine, which is the explanation why short trains are not faster.
The strongest engine would be a 10-car engine on "hard"; if you could separate it from its cars, it should go very fast ;-)