I'm not talking about just speed. I want to specify the axes of rotation, the rotation speed in RPM instead of a number that behaves in an unexplained way, and whether the rotation speed is constant or accelerates. I want to be able to build a ball-and socket joint. This part should be an "ideal" physics abstraction, in the sense that it doesn't need a fancy 3D mesh to look cool, or have an offset for the rotating bit. If I configure it as a single-axis rotator, it should have an axis and a collar that spins around it, and nothing else. Save the extra polygons, most builds hide the rotators anyway. If I configure it as a ball-and-socket joint, it should be a just a sphere with a socket around it, and each of them with an attachment point.
Explosive bolts
The only way to separate subassemblies from a build, at present, is to use detachers. But they're terribly wobbly, causing your multistage rocket or bomb-carrying aircraft to look like it was put together using rubber bands. I'd like an explosive bolt part that holds things together as securely as a vice, until you activate it. Just like explosive bolts in real life.
OK, you should've just said "a light that stays on when fuel is above 0.01 and below 0.25". Anyway, here's how to achieve that.
You want a light that comes on when two conditions are met:
(Fuel > 0.01) AND (Fuel < 0.25)
If the developers had included boolean operators in the update, it would've been easy. But they haven't, so it'll take some work.
The Fuel > 0.01 condition can be represented as:
max(0, Fuel - 0.01)
The Fuel < 0.25 condition can be represented as:
max(0, 0.25 - Fuel)
Now we want to condense both these formulae into an output that's positive when both conditions are true. To make this easier, let's apply a ceil() function. This function takes any value and rounds it up to the nearest integer, i.e., if you give it 0.0123 or 0.999, it will round it up to 1. So we get:
ceil(max(0, Fuel - 0.01))
and
ceil(max(0, 0.25 - Fuel))
Both the above formulae will evaluate to 0 when the condition is not met, and 1 when the condition is met. How do we combine the output of these? Simple, we multiply them together.
@enzoBoeing757 Well, first of all, thank you. Second, you shouldn't feel bad about how your planes compare to anyone else's. I've put in quite a bit of time into the game and have some unique skills. If you go around comparing yourself to other people you'll always feel terrible, because there's always going to be someone better than you at most things. I can't run as fast as a professional sprinter or lift as much as a pro powerlifter. And that's fine by me :) The only person you should be competing with is yourself. Every day, try to be a little better at something than you were yesterday, and you'll be happy.
@Looney I couldn't agree more. But in this community, the only kind of effort that counts is the mindless, repetitive, manual labour of sticking parts together one by one, adjusting the sizes, offsets, and angles for each one by hand, uploading your work as an unlisted build to get the orthographic views, comparing the orthographic view against blueprints, making adjustments, then repeating the process until you've got a crude replica. I kid you not -- doing this will get you oohs and aahs and an absolute avalanche of upvotes. The longer you can claim it took you to build, the more admiration and upvotes you'll get. Claiming that you were sick while building it will probably propel your build to land among the highest-rated builds of all time. Presumably, if you built it while sitting on a bed of nails with a wolf gnawing on your leg, it would be even more admirable.
However, if you dare to use your brain to invent a better way of building... be prepared to be cast out and chained to a rock like Prometheus.
Now this is the kind of build that I like to see. I'd suggest that instead of using different materials to simulate texture on the curved sections, you decrement the frontScales and rearScales by a small amount every n iterations to give it an actual physical texture. Also, if you make it smaller, it'd be accessible to more users, and the flight module could use some tweaking. But a brilliant build nonetheless.
Getting the shells to reach that far away is the easy bit: you just increase a number (detachForce) until you get enough "muzzle velocity." But you can't hit what you cannot see, so I had to make a spotter drone to observe and direct the fire. That's the black box you see hovering in the screenshots.
Then you need traversal controls fine enough to be able to aim in steps of a fraction of a degree. Rotators hooked up to VTOL and Trim just won't cut it. So I built the howitzer on a platform of wheels, and used jet engines to rotate it. This also means you can use the compass to record the bearing for a given target. If you look at the screenshots (open them in a new tab for the full size), the bearing for the eastern bridge on Krakabloa is around 17 degrees, and that for the pyramid on Maywar is around 118 degrees.
Finally, you also need a way to measure elevation, because with indirect artillery fire you aim above the target to account for the fall of the shell due to gravity. So I used throttle to elevate the gun, so that once you get the elevation for a given target, you can record the throttle setting. Again, looking at the screenshots, the elevation for the east bridge on Krakabloa is 31%, and that for the Maywar pyramid is 61%.
And I don't like "realistic." If I wanted to play RealPlanes I'd get a pilot's license. To me, the entire point of SP is a game where the limitations of real life don't apply, where an SR-71 can have plasma cannons and turn within a few thousand feet at Mach 6. I find your and others' obsession with realism boring and indicative of a crippling lack of imagination. It's like we're in the Matrix, and I'm saying "hey guys, we can do anything in here! We can leap tall buildings, we can fly, we can punch through concrete!" And a bunch of guys are shaking their heads and saying "No, no, we must re-implement all the limitations of real life. Because all that is too much fun."
You don't have to comment on this.
Yes I do. If you post a critical comment on my build, I will reply. If you don't like your points rebutted, don't start an argument. It would be much more pleasant for both you and me if, instead of starting out by criticizing, you were to ask questions. For instance: "How/why does it accelerate so fast? What's the optimal landing speed and stall speed? Why doesn't it have missiles? Why are the guns so powerful?" Etc.
@Spectre2520 It'll work on anything that has a browser, but you can only save the XML files to devices that allow that. Linux, Mac, and Windows are all good. I might create a tutorial tomorrow.
@ChristianFennell Is that what they're saying now? The motives dumb people ascribe to others reveal more about themselves than the person they're talking about. It's a waste of time trying to reason with the unreasonable.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to find more recruits for the Cult of the Sled.
@BaconRoll Oh, that. That's exactly why I made the script, because it's a complete waste of time trying to reason with unreasonable people. To put it a few different ways:
You can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into in the first place.
The reason I don't want to talk to those people is the same reason I don't talk to people who believe the Earth is flat.
It's a waste of time trying to act in good faith towards people who are acting in bad faith.
Don't be upset. The world is full of unreasonable people. The only thing you can do is block them out of your life so they can't drain your precious time and suck all the joy out of your life. This is exactly why any major social website offers a setting to only see messages/posts from people you're following or have approved to send you messages. I actually thought of offering the developers money to implement that feature, but then I realised it's quicker to just write a script.
@FinalGambit What, no 'Sleddy boi?' Nothing about how much you despise me, or what a "senile old dotard" and "full-of-himself f*er" I am?
It's very simple: you (and your friends) are not quite as clever as you think you are -- not by a long shot. You can change the way you write, but you can't change who you are, and your nature will always give you away.
Your problem is that you're fundamentally dishonest. Until I made you post this here just now, you were still doing what you used to do. Behaving badly in public, and apologising in private. Fundamentally, deeply dishonest.
As for your apology: are you aware of how much damage you have caused? Maligning my reputation, insulting me, trying to cause a fight between me and the SPMC, throwing tantrums to force a moderator to censor my profile (not because I said anything about you, I just posted a link to a screenshot of what you said), using social manipulation to get a lot of people to upvote your crappy builds, getting other people to build stuff for you and passing it off as your own... the list goes on.
Even with your "final gambit," with this supposed turning over a new leaf, what were you planning to do? To hide your identity and then reveal how you'd outsmarted everyone.
I'm sure this final gambit included getting me to give you my scripts, so you could boast to your dumb friends how you outsmarted me. Correct?
You're a pathological liar, a thorougly vile person, and a wannabe social manipulator (which is why I blocked you in the first place). Until you change that, you will never ever be friends with quality people. You may trick them for a while, maybe, but you'll be found out sooner rather than later. I can promise you -- with absolute certainty -- that if you don't change your ways now, you will grow up into an even more horrendous person and your life will be full of nothing but disappointments and frustration.
I don't believe people can change their basic nature, so the deck is stacked against you.
As for forgiveness, it's very simple: can you turn the clock back and undo the damage you have done? I don't think so, so no, I don't forgive you.
Now go on, report this post for name calling or whatever.
Try this. I set calculateDrag=false on all parts, and it seems to have fixed it. Really cool build, by the way, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.
@ThomasRoderick Absolutely, we must only upvote builds that actually deserve it -- anything else is corruption. I don't give out upvotes to "return the favor," or out of pity, or friendship, or anything other than build quality. So if I upvote your build, you can rest assured it's because it's a good build.
@KrAkenAtomic As a matter of fact, the structure itself is literally made entirely out of airbrakes. The only other parts are engines, wings, cannons, and a couple of fuselage blocks to hold everything together :) The funny thing is, I never used airbrakes before I started using them this way.
Thanks. Well yeah, this is just about the closest thing to a P-51 replica you'll get out of me. The canopy profile is exact, I just left out the metal lip around the rear bubble because why would you want to obscure your vision? The fuselage profile is also accurate, it's just a bit thicker from side to side, because I like my airplanes muscular. As for custom landing gear, it's about part count, me not liking rotators on aircraft, and so on. And what good are weapons if they're not overpowered?
@Treadmill103 Chase just makes me dizzy; I like to have the world stable and the airplane moving. I do like flyby view for one thing, though: when the airplane flies towards the camera, then banks and peels away when it comes close.
Oh? Did I tag you on my post? Or are you saying I shouldn't respond to comments by you and other mods?
Dorian cares about you as much as any other user
(scoff)
giving the advice of trying to build something from scratch was just a kind gesture.
Whatever kind of gesture it was, I didn't ask for it. Let me be very clear: in my book, anyone who thinks like you do is not even wrong. I sincerely believe that you and your friends are not even remotely qualified to give me advice on any topic whatsoever. If you think that makes me egotistical/arrogant/whatever, that's fine by me.
deleting comments that you personally disagree with does seem a big egotistical and arrogant
That's your misconception to bear.
Funny how you didn't mention dorians first point however.
Thanks, @Mumpsy. Yeah, imagine a game where we could build our own enemy bases out of components like AA guns, missile batteries, ships, submarines, air bases, factories/power plants, etc., and share them using XML files. It wouldn't be much work for the developers, and would add tremendous value and replayability to the game.
@Treadmill103 It's a sad day when we're reduced to bombing palm trees... this game desperately needs more destructible targets that blow up spectacularly.
Thanks for the laugh, but if it ever becomes true that you can't generate enough revenue to run the website or maintain the game, I will be first in line to pay for a new version, or a subscription, or whatever it takes to keep the game going. @AndrewGarrison
@F4f879
Configurable rotators
I'm not talking about just speed. I want to specify the axes of rotation, the rotation speed in RPM instead of a number that behaves in an unexplained way, and whether the rotation speed is constant or accelerates. I want to be able to build a ball-and socket joint. This part should be an "ideal" physics abstraction, in the sense that it doesn't need a fancy 3D mesh to look cool, or have an offset for the rotating bit. If I configure it as a single-axis rotator, it should have an axis and a collar that spins around it, and nothing else. Save the extra polygons, most builds hide the rotators anyway. If I configure it as a ball-and-socket joint, it should be a just a sphere with a socket around it, and each of them with an attachment point.
Explosive bolts
The only way to separate subassemblies from a build, at present, is to use detachers. But they're terribly wobbly, causing your multistage rocket or bomb-carrying aircraft to look like it was put together using rubber bands. I'd like an explosive bolt part that holds things together as securely as a vice, until you activate it. Just like explosive bolts in real life.
+3@Type2volkswagen
OK, you should've just said "a light that stays on when fuel is above 0.01 and below 0.25". Anyway, here's how to achieve that.
You want a light that comes on when two conditions are met:
(Fuel > 0.01) AND (Fuel < 0.25)
If the developers had included boolean operators in the update, it would've been easy. But they haven't, so it'll take some work.
The Fuel > 0.01 condition can be represented as:
max(0, Fuel - 0.01)The Fuel < 0.25 condition can be represented as:
max(0, 0.25 - Fuel)Now we want to condense both these formulae into an output that's positive when both conditions are true. To make this easier, let's apply a
ceil()function. This function takes any value and rounds it up to the nearest integer, i.e., if you give it 0.0123 or 0.999, it will round it up to 1. So we get:ceil(max(0, Fuel - 0.01))and
ceil(max(0, 0.25 - Fuel))Both the above formulae will evaluate to 0 when the condition is not met, and 1 when the condition is met. How do we combine the output of these? Simple, we multiply them together.
ceil(max(0, Fuel - 0.01)) * ceil(max(0, 0.25 - Fuel))This formula will evaluate to 1 if and only if both conditions are true and 0 in all other cases, which is what you want.
+3@Zanedavid Thank you :) A little appreciation goes a long way.
+3@Ryn176 Thanks, I'm quite pleased with it myself :)
+3@enzoBoeing757 Well, first of all, thank you. Second, you shouldn't feel bad about how your planes compare to anyone else's. I've put in quite a bit of time into the game and have some unique skills. If you go around comparing yourself to other people you'll always feel terrible, because there's always going to be someone better than you at most things. I can't run as fast as a professional sprinter or lift as much as a pro powerlifter. And that's fine by me :) The only person you should be competing with is yourself. Every day, try to be a little better at something than you were yesterday, and you'll be happy.
+3@Looney I couldn't agree more. But in this community, the only kind of effort that counts is the mindless, repetitive, manual labour of sticking parts together one by one, adjusting the sizes, offsets, and angles for each one by hand, uploading your work as an unlisted build to get the orthographic views, comparing the orthographic view against blueprints, making adjustments, then repeating the process until you've got a crude replica. I kid you not -- doing this will get you oohs and aahs and an absolute avalanche of upvotes. The longer you can claim it took you to build, the more admiration and upvotes you'll get. Claiming that you were sick while building it will probably propel your build to land among the highest-rated builds of all time. Presumably, if you built it while sitting on a bed of nails with a wolf gnawing on your leg, it would be even more admirable.
However, if you dare to use your brain to invent a better way of building... be prepared to be cast out and chained to a rock like Prometheus.
+3Now this is the kind of build that I like to see. I'd suggest that instead of using different materials to simulate texture on the curved sections, you decrement the frontScales and rearScales by a small amount every n iterations to give it an actual physical texture. Also, if you make it smaller, it'd be accessible to more users, and the flight module could use some tweaking. But a brilliant build nonetheless.
+3@Texasfam04 Not bad, huh comrade? I make joke, glad you like. As to your question, I've used that technique plenty of times:
Although it's understandable why you think this is the first, as the curves are really exaggerated on this one.
+3@Jim1the1Squid
Getting the shells to reach that far away is the easy bit: you just increase a number (detachForce) until you get enough "muzzle velocity." But you can't hit what you cannot see, so I had to make a spotter drone to observe and direct the fire. That's the black box you see hovering in the screenshots.
Then you need traversal controls fine enough to be able to aim in steps of a fraction of a degree. Rotators hooked up to VTOL and Trim just won't cut it. So I built the howitzer on a platform of wheels, and used jet engines to rotate it. This also means you can use the compass to record the bearing for a given target. If you look at the screenshots (open them in a new tab for the full size), the bearing for the eastern bridge on Krakabloa is around 17 degrees, and that for the pyramid on Maywar is around 118 degrees.
Finally, you also need a way to measure elevation, because with indirect artillery fire you aim above the target to account for the fall of the shell due to gravity. So I used throttle to elevate the gun, so that once you get the elevation for a given target, you can record the throttle setting. Again, looking at the screenshots, the elevation for the east bridge on Krakabloa is 31%, and that for the Maywar pyramid is 61%.
+3@randomusername
And I don't like "realistic." If I wanted to play RealPlanes I'd get a pilot's license. To me, the entire point of SP is a game where the limitations of real life don't apply, where an SR-71 can have plasma cannons and turn within a few thousand feet at Mach 6. I find your and others' obsession with realism boring and indicative of a crippling lack of imagination. It's like we're in the Matrix, and I'm saying "hey guys, we can do anything in here! We can leap tall buildings, we can fly, we can punch through concrete!" And a bunch of guys are shaking their heads and saying "No, no, we must re-implement all the limitations of real life. Because all that is too much fun."
Yes I do. If you post a critical comment on my build, I will reply. If you don't like your points rebutted, don't start an argument. It would be much more pleasant for both you and me if, instead of starting out by criticizing, you were to ask questions. For instance: "How/why does it accelerate so fast? What's the optimal landing speed and stall speed? Why doesn't it have missiles? Why are the guns so powerful?" Etc.
+3@Spectre2520 It'll work on anything that has a browser, but you can only save the XML files to devices that allow that. Linux, Mac, and Windows are all good. I might create a tutorial tomorrow.
+3This is your best build yet. Though I think you could've chosen better screenshot angles.
+3@Chancey21 Good thing you mentioned that, or I was going to make a stunt plane that stalls at 300 mph :)
+3@EternalDarkness @Chancey21 @Spectre2520 It's a scientifically proven fact, yellow stripes get more upvotes.
+3Thanks, @CRJ900Pilot. That's what the enemy said, right before the missiles impacted...
+3@RailfanEthan Sugary legumes
+3Sweet beans
+3@GermanWarMachine Says who?
+3Thanks, @F104Deathtrap. The problem with your theory is that I get along very well with dogs...
+3@CRJ900Pilot Cool, maybe I'll make more of these.
+3@ChristianFennell Is that what they're saying now? The motives dumb people ascribe to others reveal more about themselves than the person they're talking about. It's a waste of time trying to reason with the unreasonable.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to find more recruits for the Cult of the Sled.
Ominous chanting intensifies
+3@BaconRoll Oh, that. That's exactly why I made the script, because it's a complete waste of time trying to reason with unreasonable people. To put it a few different ways:
Don't be upset. The world is full of unreasonable people. The only thing you can do is block them out of your life so they can't drain your precious time and suck all the joy out of your life. This is exactly why any major social website offers a setting to only see messages/posts from people you're following or have approved to send you messages. I actually thought of offering the developers money to implement that feature, but then I realised it's quicker to just write a script.
+3Thanks, @PorkyClown3. As to why some people have a problem, I think it's pretty obviously plain old jealousy.
+3@FinalGambit What, no 'Sleddy boi?' Nothing about how much you despise me, or what a "senile old dotard" and "full-of-himself f*er" I am?
It's very simple: you (and your friends) are not quite as clever as you think you are -- not by a long shot. You can change the way you write, but you can't change who you are, and your nature will always give you away.
Your problem is that you're fundamentally dishonest. Until I made you post this here just now, you were still doing what you used to do. Behaving badly in public, and apologising in private. Fundamentally, deeply dishonest.
As for your apology: are you aware of how much damage you have caused? Maligning my reputation, insulting me, trying to cause a fight between me and the SPMC, throwing tantrums to force a moderator to censor my profile (not because I said anything about you, I just posted a link to a screenshot of what you said), using social manipulation to get a lot of people to upvote your crappy builds, getting other people to build stuff for you and passing it off as your own... the list goes on.
Even with your "final gambit," with this supposed turning over a new leaf, what were you planning to do? To hide your identity and then reveal how you'd outsmarted everyone.
I'm sure this final gambit included getting me to give you my scripts, so you could boast to your dumb friends how you outsmarted me. Correct?
You're a pathological liar, a thorougly vile person, and a wannabe social manipulator (which is why I blocked you in the first place). Until you change that, you will never ever be friends with quality people. You may trick them for a while, maybe, but you'll be found out sooner rather than later. I can promise you -- with absolute certainty -- that if you don't change your ways now, you will grow up into an even more horrendous person and your life will be full of nothing but disappointments and frustration.
I don't believe people can change their basic nature, so the deck is stacked against you.
As for forgiveness, it's very simple: can you turn the clock back and undo the damage you have done? I don't think so, so no, I don't forgive you.
Now go on, report this post for name calling or whatever.
+3Thanks, @RailfanEthan. May thy beans ever be sweet, and thy chili hot. Amen.
+3@Sadboye12 Because your stuff is always good...
+2Try this. I set calculateDrag=false on all parts, and it seems to have fixed it. Really cool build, by the way, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.
+2@Rawhide Now there's an idea...
+2@Belloaka What, me worry?
+2Very cool. You can stop the torpedoes blowing up when they hit the boat by setting disableAircraftCollisions="true" on them.
+2@ThomasRoderick Absolutely, we must only upvote builds that actually deserve it -- anything else is corruption. I don't give out upvotes to "return the favor," or out of pity, or friendship, or anything other than build quality. So if I upvote your build, you can rest assured it's because it's a good build.
+2@Alta2809 I'm sure you do. I just happened to notice this one.
+2@soundwave And the v-stab, and the elevators...
+2@KrAkenAtomic As a matter of fact, the structure itself is literally made entirely out of airbrakes. The only other parts are engines, wings, cannons, and a couple of fuselage blocks to hold everything together :) The funny thing is, I never used airbrakes before I started using them this way.
+2@Alta2809 For dogfighting, you probably want a ~200 part build, but yeah, this one should do quite well.
+2@ThomasRoderick
Thanks. Well yeah, this is just about the closest thing to a P-51 replica you'll get out of me. The canopy profile is exact, I just left out the metal lip around the rear bubble because why would you want to obscure your vision? The fuselage profile is also accurate, it's just a bit thicker from side to side, because I like my airplanes muscular. As for custom landing gear, it's about part count, me not liking rotators on aircraft, and so on. And what good are weapons if they're not overpowered?
+2@ThomasRoderick Thanks. As the saying goes, when life gives you airbrakes, make smooth variable-geometry shapes...
+2@Treadmill103 Chase just makes me dizzy; I like to have the world stable and the airplane moving. I do like flyby view for one thing, though: when the airplane flies towards the camera, then banks and peels away when it comes close.
+2@Tully2001
Oh? Did I tag you on my post? Or are you saying I shouldn't respond to comments by you and other mods?
(scoff)
Whatever kind of gesture it was, I didn't ask for it. Let me be very clear: in my book, anyone who thinks like you do is not even wrong. I sincerely believe that you and your friends are not even remotely qualified to give me advice on any topic whatsoever. If you think that makes me egotistical/arrogant/whatever, that's fine by me.
That's your misconception to bear.
I did.
+2@Nuclearbomber36 Well, maybe that'll teach you not to place people in convenient little categories :)
+2@anonymoususer976 Well, it fires at a fixed velocity, so...
+2Thanks, @Mumpsy. Yeah, imagine a game where we could build our own enemy bases out of components like AA guns, missile batteries, ships, submarines, air bases, factories/power plants, etc., and share them using XML files. It wouldn't be much work for the developers, and would add tremendous value and replayability to the game.
+2@Treadmill103 It's a sad day when we're reduced to bombing palm trees... this game desperately needs more destructible targets that blow up spectacularly.
+2Thanks, @Treadmill103. Yeah, the poor Beast takes a lot of punishment on my machine...
+2Thanks for the laugh, but if it ever becomes true that you can't generate enough revenue to run the website or maintain the game, I will be first in line to pay for a new version, or a subscription, or whatever it takes to keep the game going. @AndrewGarrison
+2@grizzlitn Sure, whenever you like. And I'm not going to apologise for my bad French, so you don't have to apologise for your English :)
+2@Belloaka Well, if you have any questions, just ask.
+2@Evenstsrike333 Arigatto.
+2@Gameboi14 Assuming you live in the Western world, there's so much choice out there that I'm sure you can find something even better.
+2@SovietBun So... all the benefits of alcohol, without the liver problems?
+2