Algodoo

Ummmm... It would be helpful if you printed some instructions on how to use this scene. It is not at all intuitive or self-evident. Thanks

Maybe you can get some ideas from THIS SCENE by s_noonan. He also posted two other scenes which are responses to user nxdt's scene: "hovership". s_noonan's hoverships use thrusters and lasers for levitation and directional control. Search on s_noonan and the word "hovership" to find them. The scenes are of the same type of vehicle but he uses different methods to control their movement. s_noonan has a good understanding of control systems, and so you should be able to learn a lot from his scenes.

Nice job on the game! Next, maybe you can make a scoring system for it?

If I said, "That's a good looking wolf", I'd be lion. (bad joke)

Anyhow, I have an observation and a suggestion....

Observation: The animal's body doesn't look natural because it is very rigid while walking.

Suggestion: Add some "edge blur" to all body parts, especially the articulated joints. The fur will look more natural and "blended in" with other parts.

Just for kicks, I adjusted the positions of the framework parts so that it looks somewhat human, and walks on two legs. I then stuck some human textures on the framework. When it walks, it looks very "other-worldly" and just plain creepy. But it's fun!

MarioBro1337 said: "We all know that Algodoo is a physics simulation game..."

That's not a correct statement because Algodoo is not a game. It is a physics simulation program which can be used for creating your own custom games.
Most of the kids and younger folk use Algodoo like a social interactive game in which users cast their votes on favorite athletes which are cartoon stick people. That sort of game-play is way outside of the original intent for Algodoo and Algobox, which is why I will continue to delete those types of scenes. Marble races are Okay because they require at least some creativity, and the scenes are meant to be "Run", unlike the Algocathlon type scenes which are static. When you use Algodoo as if it were a "Paint" type of program, you are using only a tiny percentage of its capabilities.

I tried to connect some of those components together with wires, and I placed the "electron" inside one of the wires, but when I start the scene, everything just floats away like helium balloons! I obviously am not doing something correctly.

Again, it would be helpful if you gave some instructions and also show a couple of examples of how to connect an electrical circuit. You still have not done that! I have been an electronics technician and engineer for most of my adult life, but I cannot figure out how your scene is supposed to work. I suppose that a YouTube video of you putting together a circuit and making it function would be very helpful.

Okay, you do it however you want to. I gave you my suggestions and if you don't want to take my advice, then we shall see if anyone else can figure out this weird scene with such scant instructions. Good luck.

UDG04 wrote: "I have taken your advice on this scene"

My reply: No you did not. You wrote only two sentences: "Note: parts must be filled entirely with electrons AND they must be glued together. Otherwise pieces will fly away from each other or fail to function." That is not what I would call "instructions".

You also wrote: "im only human, you know."

Well, is that your excuse for being lazy?

No offense intended. I truly want to help you succeed here on Algobox, but I feel like I'm wasting my time when my advice is not taken very seriously. When you upload a technical and fairly complex scene, it will sometimes require instructions for how to assemble and use it. Just because YOU understand your own design, does not mean that everyone else understands it. A scene like this one requires a lot of explaining and a lot of examples. It would be very helpful, in fact, to make a YouTube video which shows exactly how to glue the components together, how to fill the circuit with electrons, and how to activate the circuit. A single sentence or two are not enough information for people to understand your scene.

If you don't want my help any more, just let me know. There will be no hard feelings at all.

Nice job on the scene! It looks great, and it functions perfectly as designed.

The only issue that I have with it is the fact that the Walschaerts valve gear was used to regulate the flow of steam to the pistons in STEAM ENGINES. The type of engine you show in your scene is an internal combustion engine, which does not make sense! And there is also one important component missing from this Walschaerts valve gear, and that is the control arm which allows the train Engineer to adjust the efficiency of the valve timing, and also allows him/her to smoothly change the direction of movement of the train between forward and reverse.

Except for those details, you did an excellent job on the scene. It's awesome!

@rorziz -- This scene was downloaded by other users over 4000 times so far!
AMAZING!

I clicked the RUN button and the entire scene exploded!
What's going on?

@Mr Fire Cat -- I have been pushing to split up Algobox into two different sections. One for the children and non-technical users, and the other for the older and technically-minded users. But, Algoryx (the company that owns the Algodoo web site) will not devote any more resources or manpower into updating it (except for occasional minor improvements or bug fixes to the web site). Algodoo is now over ten years old, and because of the fact that it no longer produces revenue for the company, it makes no sense to continue to support it. Those of us who enjoy Algodoo and Algobox very much appreciate the fact that the company has not (yet) shut it down completely.

********************************* THANK YOU ALGORYX! ******************************

@matto -- Sorry, but I must say that this is a very bad example of how to use the onCollide event. This example of generating hundreds or thousands of circles has no practical purpose, and it can cause some serious lag when running this kind of script with an older or inexpensive computer. Most new users will be very disappointed with the results. Also, you are attempting to explain how to write a script to a beginner who has little or no programming experience, which is complicated enough to confuse them. If they continue to enter the wrong syntax for a command (for example), and the computer constantly shows errors or maybe even locks up, they will probably give up out of frustration because you say nothing about what to do when they encounter exceptions.

This is NOT the proper way to teach anyone how to write script programs. I know that you are trying your best to help others, especially new script writers, but you are going about it the wrong way. You should first learn how to teach before you attempt to teach anyone how to learn!

Please do not take this personally as an insult. I am only giving you some friendly advice.

Thanks!

matto - You misunderstood what I was telling you. Your method of teaching new users how to write onCollide scripts is WRONG! In your very first text panel you wrote: "The first step to using the On Collide script is to copy and paste an object into another object's script menu." NO, NO, NO! That method of using onCollide is almost never used by experienced script writers. When a new user reads that, they will believe that copy and paste an object into another object's script menu is the ONLY way to use onCollide, but of course it isn't. Many onCollide scripts have only 6 or 8 or 10 lines of script. Very simple! Your method makes using onCollide very complicated!

I'm not saying that you cannot teach this way, I just want you to understand that there are much better ways to teach scripting than the approach that you are taking. Please think about what I am telling you. Teaching a technical subject like this one is very difficult because we do not know the abilities and the knowledge that the new users have. Some are very smart and have no problem with technical subjects, and others, well, they simply cannot understand any technical information at all. I tried teaching some basic script writing here on Algobox a few years ago but I gave up after the first few lessons because of how difficult it was to do it correctly. Something for you to think about!

s_noonan wrote: "I don't know what the best way to teach thyme is..."

I don't know the best way either, but I'm pretty certain that it should (ideally) be taught in a classroom setting just as any other computer language would be taught. A novice student needs to understand the basics of things like data storage and manipulation, variables, constants, arrays, and some math before he/she can start learning how to write programs. They also need to learn the basic syntax of the language, or else they will have to deal with tons of exception messages.

Obviously we are faced with some difficult limitations here on Algobox which makes teaching scripting difficult to impossible. I learned Thyme scripting fairly quickly because of my previous programming experience, which is something that few users here on Algobox have. So, I think that the best teacher to have is the student themselves. They can learn a lot by seeing what others have done, and by asking questions. If a person is very serious about learning Thyme scripting, they will dig right into it, and experiment with "OPC" (Other People's Code). They can learn what works and what doesn't work this way, and they will learn a lot quicker and more completely than if they had someone attempting to "teach" them here.

Just my humble opinion.

Agree? Disagree? Let me hear your thoughts...

Nicely done.

@usef -- When an Admin (currently me) needs to post an important message for all Algodoo users to read, we put in a request to the employee at Algoryx who is responsible for maintaining this web site. That employee has the tools for changing those things that you mentioned (including the "Date") which will make the message a "Sticky". That means, it will stay in the number one position for as long as we want it to.

matto -- Thank you for your excellent comments. You have expressed exactly what people wanting to learn Thyme scripting need to hear. You mentioned what worked for you, and I believe that what worked for you will also work for most new users who have little to no programming experience.

As long as this scene doesn't violate the "Rules". I do not see any reason why it should be deleted. I will leave that decision up to you.

Thanks again!

matto -- The text in Sblock-6 and in Sblock-7 are exactly the same.

True. Those are legal notices that Algoryx and possibly their attorney deal with. I assisted with creating and updating only the rules regarding scene creation, and some information about the duties of the Admin.

UnityDogGaming04 -- You are correct! I did not realize the fact that the Rules link does not show in the Algodoo built-in browser. So here is a direct link that you can click on: RULES

I will let someone at Algoryx know about this to see if maybe they can fix that.

Thanks!


UPDATE: Emanuel from Algoryx fixed the Rules link in the built-in browser. Thanks again for bringing this to my attention.

@The Linkage -- Sorry, had to delete your comment which contains a url to some other web site. The only links allowed are YouTube videos that are directly associated with the user's scene. We needed to do this when someone started promoting porn sites and other garbage links in his comments. Rather than for me to waste my time (and possibly my virginity) by checking out every link that someone posts, we simply do not allow any external links except for YT, as mentioned above.

FRA32 -- I haven't yet checked out your scene, but I am very excited about it. Your math skills are far beyond mine, but I am always ready to learn new things, even if they are so complex that my head starts to split open when trying to understand them.

Concerning my "3D challenge" I was half joking about it, because I don't even know if it's possible. But it surely would be interesting if you can do something like that!

@FRA32 -- Okay, I played around with it a bit, and I have a couple of comments and questions about it....

1. The first time I ran the scene, the initial image of a waveform that you placed there sort of jumped erratically, and a copy of the curve floated away and bounced around off some of the other objects in the scene. I'm sure that wasn't supposed to happen, but after I deleted your initial curve along with a box with data in it, I then was able to draw my own curves and run the program. Any idea why that happened? It happens each time I start the scene after loading it freshly from Algobox.

2. I tried to draw a sine wave in the time domain with the brush tool, but because of my shaky hand, the sine wave was anything but perfect. I was wondering if the thickness of the brush stroke has any effect on the calculations? What sort of input do you recommend instead of trying to draw waveforms freehand?

3. How many data points does the time domain signal have? Is it changeable with a variable, or is it not user-changeable? If it is changeable, does the number of data point have to be equal to a power of two (as is the case for FFT)?

4. Does this scene actually display a resulting frequency domain plot? If so, can you please explain where and how it is displayed? It doesn't seem to display things in a way that I am used to, and so this scene must be functioning differently than what I expect. The issue is ME not understanding it. It's NOT because of the way you made this scene! LOL

5. Since the input waveform is not continuous, I assume that you had to incorporate a windowing function (Hanning or Hamming?) to handle the end data points. Is that the case or am I (again) not understanding how this calculation functions?

Thanks again for your interesting scenes!

OH YEAH!!! I like the updated scene, especially the waveform plots, much better than it originally was shown. Excellent work! Definitely a TEN rating.

There really is no need for people to "sign up" for a contest. Simply upload your contest scene, and explain in your scene what your rules are for the contest. People who want to join the contest only need to upload a "Response Scene" for your contest. You can also explain how the winner of the contest will be chosen. Anyone who uploads a contest scene is automatically signed up for the contest, and so there is no need to make a separate "sign up" for it.

Thanks for the question!

I don't think this was caused by a "floating point glitch". It was caused by you creating and placing an object way outside of the normal X and Y coordinates of the program. For virtually any scene that anyone would ever be creating with Algodoo, this would not be considered an issue of any concern.

If you wanted to report this strange behavior for some reason, the proper place to do that is in the Algodoo Forum, which you can get to via a link near the top of this page. Just be advised that Algoryx no longer supports Algodoo with program updates or bug fixes. Therefore, any bugs that get reported will probably never be fixed.

SUGGESTION: Instead of screwing around with Algodoo and trying to make it do weird things, why not work on creating some interesting and fun scenes that people would enjoy using? Just a crazy thought.

I once dated an FEA Stripper. She was such a...... um...... never mind.
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Excellent scene. Good job as usual, Steve.

It's not your scene, vinimed. You stole it from s_noonan!

Okay. Thanks!

tensiro -- Nope. A survey scene is just like any other similar type of two-way communication in which you are asking for opinions, or votes, or ratings, and those sorts of things, which is NOT what Algobox originally was intended to be used for. Some people here on Algobox are either bored or lonely, and they desperately seek comments from other people by asking for surveys, opinions, ratings, and those sorts of things. If people are lonely and want to chat with other people, they cannot do it here on Algobox. Sure, you can chat about a particular scene, or make suggestions to improve someone's scene, and stuff like that. But we do not allow Algobox to be used like a chat room. Go chat on FaceBook or some other type of social media web site if that's what you want to do.

Thanks for your question.