Chronic Logic

I do believe the purpose of the HAV is to simulate trainview for your own amusement.    Controlling ships though, that gives me the idea for perhaps canal builder.  You'd have to make locks and channels and whatnot to navigate a change in altitude.

Even better, how about having water bridges like they do in der Neederlands?  Then you can have boats going across the bridge, and ships going under it!  http://www.pontifex2.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>

woah

I think what tjensor is talking about here is comparable to the whole UNIX movement.  If indy game developers around the world all wrote really cool games, and then said, hey, you know, lets all make one big game, and call it, "the matrix" you'd start to be able to have that kind of integration.  Then, in like 50 years, after they got their shit together, and people were used to having their computers plugged into their spinal cord, a couple people in sweden would write a really good version of "the matrix" and distribute it for free.  I wouldn't mind doing kung-fu in the shadow of a bridge that I built while death and a clown get it on in the bathtub next door, but that's a long ways off.

All this talk of extra features has made me think... it'd be nice if the buttons for Pontifex were in MFC instead of yucky flat OGL bitmaps?  You could then ameliorate a lot of the problems with the input catcher and talking to windows since MFC does all that for you.  Plus, having drop down menus and scrollbars and stuff is really very spiff.

The graphics side of Pontifex is definitely very weak.  I don't know of any basic system requirements offered by ChronicLogic, however, the intense physics calcuations dictate a fairly high processor.

If you have a crappy video card, like my TNT 2, or a Voodoo 3, you're not going to be able to do as much physics if you have to do more eyecandy.  This is a cunundrum indeed.

I do think, however, that with some massaging of the graphics code, you could free up some GPU/CPU power for stuff like rippling water and hilly ground and god knows what else...  I'm not certain that textures affect the rendering speed at all.  They certainly won't eat up any processor unless you have like, a S3 VIRGE.

Bottom line, I'm already gonna go buy a new video card for this game, because the physics and video calculations can't both live on an Athlon 800 and a TNT2 Ultra.  So, as far as I'm concerned, it's okay to throw in some nice graphics features to give my hot new GeForce 3 something to play with.

I don't think it's be too much of a change to just make beams into a single actual physical piece of metal shaped like, interestingly enough, a beam.

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the strength and rigidity of the I-beam has been universally recognized.  Also, a big plus of the "I" shape, very little problems with bending in one direction.

So, a graphical representation of stresses could just show red or blue on either side of the beam to indicate bending to one side or the other.  This would look very slick to  have the one beam all kinds of different colors in various patterns based on the different forces acting on it.

As to the difficulty of this, since ChronicLogic know a thing or two about physics, I don't think they'd have much trouble implementing this sort of physics.

Good workaround.  But you shouldn't have to use a workaround if there isn't a problem.  ;-)

Though, it's good that he mentions the Undo button.  I would like to see a deeper undo stack.  Perhaps keep track of the last 10-20 operations?  Sometimes you make two mistakes in a row before you realize that the first mistake even happened.

Since CL's got a way to store the last step, then all they need to do is make a dropout stack of that data structure.  It's very easy.  Just have a static array, and pretend it's a ring, then keep a pointer to the most recent step.  As you undo/redo, you can move the pointer backwards and forwards.  You also keep a pointer to the tail so you know when you've gotten to the bottom of possible undoing.  This is something they teach every sophomore CS student.  (like me last year.)  :P

That is an excellent idea.

That's a clever idea, and as long as you mention the HAV, how about making the HAV neutrally buoyant, or at least not a slippery helicopter.

Trying to make the HAV go around is kind of hard.  It has no friction with the ground when you want to turn or stop, and the controls make it function somewhat like a helicopter i.e. counterintuitively.

In my opinion, it needs to either be a blimp, i.e. maintains whatever altitude you have it at, or an aeroplane, i.e. flies in the direction you are pointing, not upwards.

If you want to drop the HAV suddenly, then you could press some button to drop your gondola, or use an ejector seat or whatever and just have the HAV plummet into the ground at maximum speed.

While I am greatly angered by the attacks of the 11th, and vow that I will give my life if necessary in the service of my country to see terrorists eradicated from the face of the earth, I think it is important to keep things in perspective.

That said, are we going to forbid our children from playing "Bomberman?"

Refer to the thread discussing alternatives to "Structured beams" in General area

Whoever mentioned the 3 viewport bridge design scheme was on the right track, so to speak.  :-P  If you're going to make a bridge that doesn't just go in a straight line from point A to B, you're gonna have to have a pretty hardcore editing interface.  The most refined 3d editor that I have ever encountered is, strangely, Worldcraft, which is well known to all Quake II and Halflife mappers.  While less powerful than some, it's very intuitive and obvious how to make stuff.  This sort of thing seems WAAAAY beyond what CL is trying to do with Pontifex though.  A lot of criticism of any extensions to Pontifex is based on the statement that Pontifex is simply about solving the puzzles related to building a bridge for less than X dollars.  In the case of making a true 3d editor, I think that statement is a valid counterargument.  That can definitely wait till Pontifex II.