Algodoo

WOW! The first thing that I see is an explosion (total chaos), and eventually all of those little neutrinos coalesce into a colorful fractal pattern (total order). How you did that looks like magic, but that's what makes the scene so interesting. Nice work!

Both you and FRA32 get a solid 10 from me.

EDIT: Oops! I see that you have ratings turned off for this scene. So, I'll give FRA32 a 20 in order to compensate for this one.

I think you uploaded the wrong scene! This scene is just like the "color wars" scene that ADHLPTX recently uploaded. If this was in fact a mistake, you can delete it and upload the correct one. If you have trouble deleting it, let me know here in the comments and I will delete it for you.

Thanks!

Xray, one of the Algodoo Admins.

I first learned about dashpots back around the early 1960's when my brother showed me the internal components of his high-end tape deck that was made by American Concertone. If I recall, there were two dashpots that were mostly used to dampen two negative effects of the capstan drive that were known as "wow" and "flutter". I recall how impressed that I was because of the fact that the dashpot cylinders were made of glass, and the pistons were made of graphite. The precision fit between the piston and cylinder was just amazing to me, as they made a virtually perfect seal. Tiny adjustment screws at the ends of the cylinders were used to adjust the level of desired damping.

I found a video that describes real-world applications for these glass dashpots: Motion Damping with Air Dashpots

s_noonan said: ".... I suspect that the dashpots were on tape tensioning arms,"

You are very likely correct. It was a long time ago, and I would be the first person to admit that my memory is far from being non-volatile!

Thanks for the suggestions and the nice comments. I appreciate it.

Concerning my duties as Admin, I am still an Admin here on Algobox and on the Algodoo forum, but due to personal reasons I had to greatly reduce the time that I was devoting to watching over the kindergarten, ummmmm, oops, I mean Algobox. Wild bill took over about 90% of the work that I was doing, and I still occasionally help him out when he is busy or during the times when he is away. I don't like what Algobox has become, but there is HOPE for it. I now start to see more kinetic and physics scenes being posted. So it's not all camps and marble races, although I was getting rather concerned about it for a while.

Thanks again!

Nice job on the coding! Your use of some local variables and functions is quite clever, and you just might see some of your work in one or more of my own future scenes!

BTW - That "zine" thingy in front of the guy's face is much preferred over spawning the rounds because I agree with you that spawning looks so fake, but that weird thing practically hanging from his nostrils looks perfectly natural.

(I'm being sarcastic)


Summary: Except for that mysterious cartridge conjuring mechanism from the Twilight Zone, the scene was very well done, and worthy of a high score. Nice going!

No "magic" at all. Those of us who have used Algodoo since it's early days of development (around 2009) have known about this strange water behavior. It isn't anything new that you discovered.

This has many inaccuracies when dividing. For example, it doesn't produce decimal results (examples: 7/11 = 0, and 11/7 = 1). It also doesn't flag invalid operations. (example: 7/0 = 7/0). Also, most calculators will clear the display and begin a new calculation when a result is being displayed, and the user punches in a number to start a new calculation. Instead, this calculator puts the new number to the right of the right-most digit of the previous calculation's result. Not a typical action. Also, it allows punching in nonsense, such as: 5+3/*817/+- = Although the calculator allows punching in nonsense, it does not attempt to calculate the nonsense (a GOOD thing! LOL)

That all for now.

By the way, with all the calculator scenes in the Algodoo archives, why upload another one? Just curious. No sarcasm or disrespect intended.

Q: Don't those buttons look cool?
A: YES! They have that Windows "3D button" look to them, and they even function like 3D buttons. Good job!

Now, if you could make the display emulate a real LED or LCD calculator display, then that would add some realism to the scene.

You said: "I started with How to Make a Calculator in C# Windows Form Application Part-1, converting C# to Thyme....." I have been trying very hard to emulate a fairly simple game that new Computer Science students often learn in their first year of programming. It's called either "Animal" or "Guess The Animal". There are examples of the game on-line written in some form of BASIC, and also written in a couple of other easy to learn languages. I have struggled for many hours trying to duplicate the game in Thyme but with limited success. The game requires a lot of reads and writes to/from disc with each action, which is the part that I am having most trouble with. If you care to give it a try just search for the original BASIC version of the game. If you cannot find it, let me know and I will send you a copy of the program. If you decide to take a look at it, let me know if you think it's doable, or if you think I would continue to waste my time because maybe it simply cannot be done with Thyme.

Thanks!

Where are the instructions that explain the controls? I see NOTHING that explains how to start engines, how to climb and descend, how to raise and lower flaps, etc. Are we supposed to read your mind?

You said: "All you need to know is in the scene..."
Are you kidding?

You said: "I would advise against using any file manipulation and suggest using a "scene.my." array." That's a great suggestion! I was thinking that I needed file read/write commands in order to save the game (and to add to the menagerie) but if scene.my arrays can be saved and recalled, then that would be even better than using files. I'll give that a shot.

Thanks again s_noonan!

When I search for "calculator" in the title, I get 43 scenes in the result. Many of them (well, actually MOST of them) do not qualify as desktop calculators, and some of them are quite bizarre! Anyhow, I agree that your calculator was well made, and with only a few embellishments, could rival kilinich's calculator. Nice job!

Although "Guess the Animal" is a fairly simple game, it's not simple to program. Most versions that I have reviewed use a Binary Search Tree (BST) which is not easy to program with Thyme script. I have spent many frustrating hours attempting it with little success. Maybe it's just the case that my programming abilities are simply not as strong as they need to be for such a project.

Would you like to work on a collaboration project with me? If you are interested, I suggest that you work on the area of the game that involves figuring out how to code the BST, or if you might have some other method of reading existing animals, and writing new animals to the menagerie. We need to be able to save the edited menagerie so that it can be edited each time the game is launched and played. I will work on the GUI and the Human interface which are about 75% completed. If you do not want to do the collab, that would be Okay with me too. I will just have to struggle through it without your expertise.

Thanks!

Okay, sounds good. If you prefer we can chat over the Algodoo PM system, or I could PM you my regular Email, and we can chat that way. Either way is fine by me.

Hey, that sounds great! Let's give that a try. When you are ready with a partially completed Algodoo version of the game, you can post it, and then immediately delete it. I have access to all deleted scenes, and so I can download it and add my portion of the scene to it. When finished, I will post it on Algobox, with both you and me as the authors. If I see any issues, I'll let you know what they are so that you can either explain them or fix them. Same thing goes if you see any issues with my code.

How does that sound?

Added note: If you make any functions or subroutines that I need to use or know about, let me know input and output variables, any constants it uses, any special or unusual behavior of the routine (such as timing constraints, etc), and any other of those sorts of things.
Thanks

@MasterGamer - I think that "hacked" is a great word to put in the title, and that's why I did it. It doesn't matter what YOU think anyways because this is MY scene. When you make your own scenes, you can put whatever words you want in them (as long as the words do not violate the Rules, of course).

@SuperLuigiTV - I was like thanks.

Good start, but it has some problems, as follows:
1. The up and down arrow keys operate the winch backwards. I found that I could hold the up arrow key pressed until the winch wraps the rope in the opposite direction. Then, eventually, the winch will move in the correct direction with the Arrow keys!
2. The winch does not automatically stop when the hook reaches the top, and so it falls off the top pulley, and then everything starts to shake and go crazy.

With some work, I think you will have a nice crane.

This scene is confusing because you do not define what an enclave and an exclave are, you only explain what some of their problems and challenges are. In order for this to be a good tutorial, you need to first define each of those words, and then explain about their problems and challenges.

Hey, that's a great idea.... using fixjoints to visualize complex mathematical patterns! You are correct that they require very little CPU time to create and to maintain them. I plan to experiment with them to see what possibilities they provide.

There is only a handful of math experts here on Algobox who contribute some truly amazing scenes, and you are one of them, FRA32!

Found a couple of glitches: 1. The red "Exit" box in the upper right corner is redundant (unless you have future plans for it). 2. This calculator allows multiple decimal point entries which causes erratic behavior in some situations.

Then stop looking in the mirror.

Looking good. What else?

No problem, SmartJacob. You recognized your error in what you said, and you modified it. You even apologized for what you said. That is the sign of a manure and caring person. Thank you.

@Hard Hat Beaver -- You can add your pet to the zoo, and then it will show up on the list next time you play the game (as long as you SAVED it before exiting Algodoo.

@Twisted malachi31673RBLX -- Thanks!

@s_noonan - Thanks a lot. I appreciate your comments and feedback.


EDIT: By the way, how do you like the way I did the buttons? You may not have noticed the change because it is very subtle, but after I mention it, you will notice it on every push of a button from now on! Previously, when you push a button, the text remained stationary. Now, when a button is pushed, the text appears to move in and out of the page, as it would appear with a real-world button. My attention to detail (or maybe my OCD) won't allow me to settle on something which doesn't look, act, or feel quite right.

That's a great idea, using textures for the buttons. I will play around with that and see what I can come up with.

Thanks

When I click on the "Close" button, it deletes all of the scene's components, and then I am left with a black (blank) screen, and no scene to do anything with. Maybe doing a simple "Exit" when the Close button gets clicked would be the best (simplest) way to handle it.

I didn't consider the fact that you might want to make the calculator phunlet-compatible, but now that you mentioned it, the current behavior makes sense.

Maybe you can have the scene close in two different ways, depending on if it's being used as a phunlet or as a stand-alone scene. I'm not sure how that can be done but it might be worth looking into.

@s_noonan -- Fixed. Thanks for the heads-up!

I wasn't quite sure how to fix that. THANKS!