Dude!!! Thank you so much for the comment!! I'll be sure to implement these into one of my new designs I'll be making. The feedback for real means a lot.
I sort of tried making the timetolive variable with the speed of crank, using 1/4 rotations because I wanted each piston to push the crank 90 degrees further at their optimal time. It's further cut down though with vtr so the actual timetolive of each circle is only 2/3s the time it take the crank to rotate 1/4 around. I figured I mess around with the ratio of timetolive to 1/4 rotation time and see if one worked better then the other. I'll try and make each piston push for a longer period of time perhaps?
I'm definitely gonna try and make a collision spawning method instead of laser. As well as I'll be increasing the density and getting rid of restitution completely, it's currently only on the pistons and top block the circles collide in between. I'm not entirely sure how I'd go about variable ignition timing, if I'm understanding correctly that would mean the spot of fire for each piston would change depending on the rpm? It's currently set up statically so that each piston fires in the same spot already traveling downward.
And for the upwards lift on the high densities spawns, I've experienced that before, that's part of the reason I don't put them so high, but considering it'll help the performance a lot I'm going to try. Perhaps instead of thrusters I could have a second fire happen at the same time at the bottom so a piston is pushed up and one's pushed down? to counter act the upwards force? I don't like using thrusters for anything that doesn't fly lol. I will if I have to though.
I really do appreciate the feedback and ideas. I'm definitely going to try to add all the things you said.
