Hasbro, after buying Atari, released Pong: the Next Level for Playstation and such. It looks like it had spin, but as a 'special move'. It also had polar bears and seals. It sounds fairly dreadful. I suppose Pong was never the game for physics geeks; Space Wars has more appeal with the gravity and inertia.
I need little particle engine jets on my paddles to make it clear that it's halfway to Lunar Lander, what with the lack of friction. In there current form, you kind of expect them to have some sort of slug-like propulsion system. They could be on top of the paddle. Living paddles should have a single rotating jet; human controlled mechanical paddles should have 4 jets in the cardinal directions. But that isn't important right now. Right now I have to make sure I get all my signs lined up properly for the spin.
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(1)
05:58:33 PM,
Saturday 31 January 2004
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So, we've got a spinning ping-pong ball. It hits the table, and some of the spin is lost, and it accelerates along the tangent of the point of collision. The question is, what is the ratio between angular inertia and mass? I suppose, since it varies depending on the distribution of mass in the object, I can simply make it whatever I want. So I need to know the angular velocity, the relative velocity along the tangent, the normal force (the force of the collision), the friction co-efficients, the angular inertia, and the mass.
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05:39:50 PM,
Saturday 31 January 2004
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What is the adjective corresponding to a high friction coefficient? Tacky? Coarse? Sticky? Or, to put it another way, is there an opposite of slippery? A sissel rug isn't sticky, exactly. I'll use tacky for now.
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(1)
05:00:39 PM,
Saturday 31 January 2004
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First to X is more emotionally satisfying than a timed game.
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03:13:03 PM,
Saturday 31 January 2004
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I'm ready for spring now. It must be February.
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03:01:02 PM,
Saturday 31 January 2004
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All the way through Bend it Like Beckham, I was muttering, Don't trust the coach, he's evil. Now I know why. He was Steerpike in Gormanghast.
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(9)
09:34:04 PM,
Friday 30 January 2004
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For future reference, should I have money:
a Front-Loading Washer with a Window
a Dryer with a humidity sensor
an Accordion
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(2)
07:15:33 PM,
Friday 30 January 2004
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I am more efficient at work if I'm listening to music, because it lengthens my attention span; I'm less tempted to click away when something takes 10 seconds to load. However, when I'm wearing cheap earphones, I don't listen to music as much. Therefore, the company should supply me with a good set of headphones.
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04:42:01 PM,
Thursday 29 January 2004
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The 8 paddles I've made so far are playing a round robin, 100 games, then switch sides for another 100. 2 minute games. Simulating a game seems to take about a second. The simulation is identical to the actual game. I seem to be having a problem where player1 tends to win, all else being equal, and this means there's probably a bug in there somewhere, either in the souls of the paddles, or in how energy is consumed. I'm also hoping I've got a rock-paper-scissors situation between 3 of the paddles, and not a simple hierarchy. It may not be a game yet, but it generates lots of data.
I'm really not far from an improved Shufflepuck Cafe, if should I take that detour. I'd sort of rather go straight to a double elimination tournament with lots of paddles that you can enter with a human controlled paddle with RPG style point assignments. I've always loved double elimination tournaments, going back to Pinewood Derby. I used to have double elimination tournaments between my matchbox cars, keep hitting them together until one of them flipped on its back. I think I'll go back and add spin first, though.
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(2)
07:13:36 PM,
Wednesday 28 January 2004
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Is there any sort of campaign against the arrogant overuse of english words with latin roots that I can join? I feel strongly about this. Particularly when someone corrects a phrase of mine, doubling it's length and muddying the meaning simply to make it more formal.
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(3)
04:37:43 PM,
Wednesday 28 January 2004
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Everyone at work today feels betrayed and dejected, because we were supposed to wake up to heaps of snow, and there wasn't any. It has finally started to fall, but now they're saying 1 to 3 inches. Phooey I say.
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(1)
10:23:53 AM,
Wednesday 28 January 2004
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I want an accordion. This probably isn't entirely rational of me.
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(4)
04:30:49 PM,
Tuesday 27 January 2004
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