Jump to content
Stray Fawn Community

Post Your Projects!


Recommended Posts

52 minutes ago, Ookami-sama said:

It seems to be a problem of stability rather than force, or number of blocks. Blocks pushed forward collide with the frame that keeps them from going sideways, as seen in the following examples.

2

You're right; if it were a compounding of forces, the blocks on the right would be the first to be crushed, and instead, it's the opposite.  Are they connected in a stack or all to one part?  Could the order of the stack be influencing the stability?  (For instance, if each part is connected to its rightward neighbor, perhaps the successive connections give the leftward blocks more flex to be unstable with.)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The order has minimal influence, but even that seems necessary to work with. Lastly I have been using three sets of blocks, with two spaces between each member of a same set.

Thrasers.thumb.png.cf17627e462aa2fcdb6526c0fadab1ce.png

I will try to rotate them, see if that improves anything seeing as how every component seems to be a little skewed. Lasers less so than thrusters, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Ladies and gentlemen! I give you regenerative armor! 

Nimbatus_GIF_201901041659553876.gif.f3a6d49119c8484242968a0fc44e26ea.gif

This bad boy was designed to laugh in the face of anything short of a mamma snake, and boy does it.Nimbatus_Screenshot_201901041726177964.thumb.png.5dd737d851211f5e66c3711f5bf57306.png 

After taking enough damage, the outer hull will automatically repair itself. It can do this quickly enough to render it effectively impervious to weapon fire and it can withstand a hit from a hammerhead with no lasting damage to the ship. It can do this by taking advantage of light parts with high HP values, and converting the loss of signal from a button in the armor into a build order on a corresponding factory. While effective, it takes a ton of programming. 

Nimbatus_Screenshot_201901041722254441.thumb.png.ee4eac187cc921f36465eb1ccaa2d80f.png

The featured blasters are modified with sticky bullets, increased force, and multiple projectiles. This effect repels enemies and causes them to spin uncontrollably, negating things like a hammerhead's hard front end and preventing them from attacking. Nimbatus_GIF_201901041659340627.gif.64a4ff375a816379eff33f9e2baa4802.gif

That's what I've been up to lately! 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've done a few like this, but not on the same scale; one rammer used a factory-built ramming surface.  Nice work there.  How do they deal with fire?  Is there any issue with the armor re-building and re-igniting?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So far, the armor has been fairly good at preventing fire from crossing into the internals, but that hasn't been heavily tested. My best guess on how fire works is that a heat value transferred to any given part will then begin to dilute that value among other parts nearby. If that's the case, the fact that the armor continuously respawns helps to soak heat before it can jump to the main body. The distance between layers also seems to help. I'll mess around a bit and see if I can get a decent example gif out of it.

Thanks for the question; I have more testing! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think heat does dilute into nearby parts, but fire is definitely self-sustaining and generates more heat of its' own.  I did suspect it would do exactly what it's doing here.  Unlike heaters, though, fire only spreads heat via direct contact, so I wasn't worried about your internals much.

One solution to this might be to inhibit regen for a time; the only way I can think to do that is, for every logic block, have a switch that can mimic it's signal, to stop regen while it's on.  Let the externals burn out, then turn it back on.  The logic required for that could be burdensome, but it looks like you are keeping your logic elsewhere.

One idea I've toyed with is a ship that can completely rebuild itself as long as the core and a factory aren't destroyed in a stage-by-stage rebuild, with each stage adding more thrusters, fuel, power, and weapons, so that it's never completely helpless unless it's nearly completely destroyed.  I believe factories still don't exempt the children of factories say to start unbuilt from adding to their construction time, though, so it's not very useful right now.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good points. A redundant switch could work to override signals. Or a AND or NOR gate with a switch. The drawback being having to program 70 more logic blocks. 

Alternatively, I could rig the armor logic blocks to dynamite, blow them up, then reprint them after the fire is out.  😆

Update: I found a quicker work-around. I'm using a large series of NOT gates already, so I added a uniform input command to each one. Now they're basically NEITHER gates. This way, I could input a single variable to toggle on and off with a switch rather than having to simulate every unique button signal. Being able to toggle is fairly useful in collisions as well, since whatever you hit has a tendency to destroy the first reprint if it's still in the way. With the automated repair off, it prevents wasted prints and their associated cooldowns. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had actually assumed you had a timer on the logic for each block, to make sure bits had a chance to fall away.  In any case, your logic isn't on-board anyway, (If logic gets localized, this'll need some updating,) so more gates isn't really a barrier, just a pain in the butt.

Those reprints ALSO do damage to the enemy that's in the way though, yeah?  My big worry would be reprints getting lodged in terrain and tangled with any broken drone bits.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

The enabler lies with the propulsion.

When the head pulls on the body, the body distorts because of the interaction of mass and force. So long as a directional force can use less energy to alter a part's orientation than it would use to alter the position, then that applied force will always alter a part's orientation first. If the body was mass-less, it would be impossible for a force to alter it's shape.  

So I concluded that the greater the difference between the mass of a fluid object and the force applied to it, the more the object will distend and I fooled around with a bunch of different thrust settings.

It failed completely. But. I noticed that while pulling on a curved semi-fluid object reduces the curve, pushing it causes the curve to increase.  Apply a pull to the top of the curve and a push at the bottom and you get a collapse at the top and a ballooning at the bottom. So. I thought if I could apply a simultaneous push and pull throughout the entire structure of the curve equally, the curve wouldn't collapse. 

I tested this by building a drone with segments that each contain identical amounts of thrust, causing the collective mass to resist a constant amount of pull and push. Hopefully, so long as the forces remain equal, when the craft turned the curve would be unable to collapse. 

Evidently, it worked. Further proof of evidence is the way the curve still collapsed near the tail; there was no longer enough push behind the curve to maintain it. I might be able to stabilize it some by adding more thrust at the very end, but in order for my conclusion to be correct, the curve near the last segment must collapse. 

I bear little hope the design will prove useful for anything practical, but it's really cool to watch.

SCIENCE!!!! 

 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Speaking of drone swarms: I think I have modelled the behaviour of a band of children following their leader.

Nimbatus_GIF_201901311429208649.gif.ea23ac3f3385509710ce1093b1e1d258.gif

Hey! No pushing! And in rows!

Nimbatus_GIF_201901311429316946.gif.848d0377229f61f0071887d791b138ca.gif

Much better. And they even are eager to hear the leader's speech, seeing as how they are unable to stand still. I have fallen in love with this game all over again, I believe.

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow.  The vector thrust makes things almost TOO easy.  

This is a basic swarm drone.  A vector thruster on a bottom-heavy drone, so the thruster leads it.  Reverse it to avoid crowding in the front, strafe thrust on the side responsive to their sensors.  This is babytown frolics.  A nine-part swarm drone; kinda weirdly easy.  I'm not used to easy.

Nimbatus_Screenshot_201901312004073629.png

Nimbatus_GIF_201901312017581566.gif

Nimbatus_GIF_201901312018131120.gif

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I actually very much enjoy these coloured lights. The only thing that bothers me (a tiny bit) is that it is all default colours instead of pink: not exactly fancy, and that is a major drawback to my antsy fancy dandy drones plans.

I mean... Does this not look like a world ready to be discovered? (I made one with lasers too)

Nimbatus_GIF_201902012351502177.gif.103ed32e9c9b7085744525d3dad2cf7b.gif

You know you want it. Do not listen to the voices telling you there is better to do with your time: they are lying.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/31/2019 at 5:46 PM, Lurkily said:

Hum.  I wonder about swarms on racetracks.   Just . . . because.

I went up against a couple of these. I haven't seen many small drones able to navigate a course as well as the larger ones, and by nature of a swarm, you're restricted to smaller drones. They also had trouble avoiding each other on a narrow track. 

Also, I haven't been able to upload GIF files since yesterday. I found a list of my uploads in my profile, but didn't find any options for managing them or whether there is a limit. Is there something I should clear?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The design I posted above, seeking the rabbit, did just fine; but they strung out in a line, since they didn't have a 'center'.  If a rabbit-seeking drone was their target it might be more problematic.  What I really wanna see in this thread is @Entity's 25-second racer.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I started working on something I had teased earlier.

Nimbatus_GIF_201902061542506906.gif.1389e38b9d15f18d199fd4edbcc938a9.gifNimbatus_GIF_201902061555284029.gif.d16bf00b1f33983ee86166b9c0537658.gif

It was really mobile when I started, But you know as you start adding more it becomes more and more heavy.

Nimbatus_GIF_201902061614002185.gif.270b25eb68278dd4c07e5a36b816e62a.gifNimbatus_GIF_201902061745054921.gif.d2b140a66cd00b70d0e4b5a97d0628a2.gif

The Head of the drone nearly doesn't even fit into the editor camera!Nimbatus_2019-02-06_17-54-04.thumb.png.d319fb242972277b56c5f231b412f69b.png

I am in the process of making the tail piece, After which I can finally make the full drone!

  • Like 3
  • Confused 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...