Algodoo

Thanks again! I'll go ahead and make those changes and let you know how they turned out.

Concerning the dance moves, it's easy enough to make another dance routine, and I want to make one that's a little longer and cuter for the demo.

Thanks a million for all your help! (my check is in the mail).

EDIT - Okay, I made the changes and it works great!
I'm going to add a little "polish" to the scene before uploading the final version. I'm not going to worry about adding a Step function unless it's easy to do (but I have a feeling it isn't).

Yes, YOU DA MAN!

Okay, thanks!

I couldn't have done it without your expertise.

Nice game! I hope you make more levels.

s_noonan said: " This is positive proof of the Heisenberg (Werner Heisenberg, not the "Breaking Bad" guy) principle."

Well, I'm rather uncertain about that.

Anyhow, prior to making this Geiger counter scene, I had thought about making a multichannel analyzer (an instrument used for GAMMA SPECTROSCOPY ) ), but to do it right would require a lot of time and effort which I don't have right now.

Very well made. Good job!

Yum. Good tasting coffee!

I should patent this idea, and maybe Tektronix will pay me royalties if they use it in their future models!

Actually, this is not weird at all. For the boxes with + attraction, all four fixed boxes are pulling on the center box with equal intensity. But if the center box just happens to move slightly toward any of the fixed boxes, then it will stick to the box like a magnet. For the boxes with - attraction, all four fixed boxes are pushing on the center box with equal intensity, and so the exact center area between the fixed boxes is where all four forces are equal, and so the small box tends to stay in that central area where all forces around it are equal. For the boxes with mixed + and - attraction, the small box will move toward and stick to one of the two boxes with + attraction. If you give the box a little push, it will move toward the upper or lower box and will stick to it.

So, the bottom line is, the small box behaves exactly as expected. Nothing weird going on at all that I can see!

I was expecting an explosion when the fingertips touched each other!

Just so I understand what you are asking: You want a laser to hit an object, and every 1 second add 0.2 to the color Red? If that is what you want, then Yes, that is very easy to do. Of course you would have to stop the laser when Red gets to a value of 1.0 which is the max value for RGB colors.

Is this what you want?

Sorry!

DON'T READ THIS! SERIOUSLY!

How is it supposed to work? When I start Algodoo, nothing happens.

That's funny! Good job!

Good points! Thanks....

When I first added the "Press L key..." text, I used keys.isDown to set the density of the text box to zero to blank it out when L key is pressed. But the L key is also used for one of the Algodoo tools, and therefore keys.isDown does not activate the first time it is used with a tools key! So, I changed the script to using seen.my.loop. Since the Loop function L key is triggered via a laser, it does not have the same annoying "ignore the first keypress" as keys.isDown suffers from.

Also, I changed the thumbnail picture by zooming in on the two Aliens, but it takes Algobox a while to update the thumbnail picture. It should show correctly some time later today.


**** some time later today **** Okay, the thumbnail looks correct now.

You're welcome!

This is certainly very strange, but I'm sure there has to be a logical reason why this is happening (I just can't explain it right now!).

I'm going to devote some time to figuring out this one, and unless someone else beats me to it, I'll give you an answer as soon as I do.

The power to accelerate the circles must be coming from SOMETHING!

UPDATE: Here's what I've figured out so far (no, I did not solve the puzzle, I just figured out a few things about this scene):
1. The circle's angular velocities appear to be feeding off of each other. What I mean by that is, because they are mechanically tied together, when one speeds up slightly, the velocity of another one of course also speeds up, but it's almost like it's in a feedback loop. In other words, it's operating like a perpetual motion mechanism!

2. I noticed that the axles on the ends of the three bars are attached right on the very edge of the bars at exactly the half-way point of each axle. I'm not sure if that is causing this strange behavior, but if I move the axles just a tiny amount further onto each bar, then the system no longer accelerates. Placement of the axles appears to be very critical to making this odd thing happen.

3. As an experiment, I removed the center circle. The remaining two circles still accelerate, but at a much lower rate.

4. If I turn off gravity and air friction, the acceleration occurs at a faster rate, and the circles speed up and slow down rather chaotically.

5. This part is really strange. I found that I could not only delete the center circle, but I could delete all three bars and connecting axles. I then move the edges of the remaining two circles together so that they are just slightly touching each other. I give them a spin, and they ACCELERATE! The acceleration rate is very small, but the fact remains that they do accelerate. So, with no power input to the system, and they are obviously accelerating, I've reached the conclusion that this is a BUG in Algodoo. It just should not happen. I would like to hear someone else's explanation if different from mine.

I made another mod (not uploaded yet) which seems to be very handy. Instead of using the < and > arrow keys to change positions of the axles, I used the left and right mouse buttons. BUT I found that I had to click the "Toggle Play Mode" button (in the upper left corner next to the "Open Options" button) to disable the tools. If I did not do that, then when I click the mouse buttons, the Move tool or the Rotate tool will become active and will sometimes mess up the position of the axle that I'm trying to adjust. But I find that using the mouse is much more convenient than using the arrow keys, mainly because you do not need both hands to do the action! Let me know what you think about this.

Oh, and the change from arrow keys to mouse buttons was simple and straightforward by editing the scene with Notepad++.

Yes, unfortunately, the drag tool is still active. There may be a way to disable all tool functions (maybe in the console?) but I don't know how to do that. If one is careful not to accidentally drag stuff, I find that this method is faster and more convenient than using the arrow keys. I even slightly increased the angular velocity of the axles which makes setting the dance moves even quicker.

I'm currently developing another feature which may or may not be useful. Currently, if a person wanted to share his/her dance routine with others, they have to upload the entire Dancing Aliens scene to Algobox. But I am developing a way to save and recall only the dance routine with just a single box geometry as the memory (sort of like a USB "thumb drive"). The box can be labeled with text to indicate what the dance routine is (for example: "Steve's Awesome Break Dance"). It can be then shared and downloaded and brought into an existing Dancing Aliens scene as a Component (I think they were called "phunlets" or something like that). Once loaded into the scene, you press F3 to load the dance routine into the scene. Of course, the current Dancing Aliens scene would need some added script to make that happen.

I tend to be a little verbose. Sorry about that!

Can't you simply select a polygon (Ctrl-C) and then paste the copied polygon into the onCollide or other section of a geometry? Why do you need to access the surfaces?

How does it work? I do not see script in any geometries.

a,d buttons don't seem to work.

@electronicboy - That makes a lot of sence, and is probably the best answer to this weird problem!

I would like to be able to select cream and sugar!

Since the lag is so bad, why don't you edit the scene, maybe with less water, to reduce the lag? Many people with computers not quite as good as yours would appreciate it!

That's Sponge Bob Armstrong!

Good game, and very nicely done!

The lag is REALLY BAD! You should try to edit the scene to reduce the lag so that people could possibly run the scene on average and low-grade computers. If you do not reduce the lag, then you limit the number of people who could run your scene. In most cases, severe lag is caused by too much water.

Thanks

Holy cow! This is awesome! This feature-rich scene is virtually as good as a commercial software product.


Now a couple of suggestions:
1. Gumby is rather light weight, and so when he does certain moves, his body bounces up in the air, and then topples over. I found that increasing the weight of his feet to about 20 KG each, helps to stabilize him. Another possible fix is to hold him to the background with springs, like I did in my dancing aliens scene.

2. The controls are rather complex for a first-time user. Therefore, it would be helpful if you could make a YouTube video that shows how to use all of the control functions.


MORE: I added the following code to onKey in the "Add" box:
keys.isDown("ctrl") ? {
scene.my.recStep = scene.my.recStep + 1;
scene.my.state = "add";
_timeLastHit = sim.time
} : {}

This added code allows me to press the left Ctrl key each time I want to add a step instead of having to move the mouse cursor away from Gumby each time. Adding steps is faster and more convenient this way.