Marleys Ghost

M'kay .. you asked what I did to "prevent the monster trucks from flipping over when they make a tight corner" .. and what I did was lower the vehicles centre of mass.

Sure ... just a bit though ... require("scripts/class")

Things topple over for a reason .. try moving the vehicles centre of mass lower.

Monster trucks that is, not the big teeth, flesh eating scaled skin variety. This started as a thought exercise and turned into the start of vehicle AI. The truck has auto steering which will steer the truck to a designated point, as demonstrated in the opening of the video. Currently the truck has no brakes an a far too high torque acceleration, but it was more fun. Eventually the nodes that are used for steer to points will become info nodes that will set things like braking distance and max speed amongst other things. This was recorded realtime in the Leadwerks 2.5 editor with the trucks AI scripted in Lua.

Its looking good Ken, very nice work.

of people in rubber rooms beng force fed copious amounts of industrial strength prescription pharmaceuticals? .... maybe just a lil bit ..

no, not happened to me ...

mack? amazing? well I am sure some probably think that, but they are soon apprehended and returned to thier rubber rooms and cocktails of strong prescription drugs ...

ok, a small revision for those that have shown interest. I had an hour to kill so have added dynamic animation speed to the shark mesh. Each individual Boids swimming animation speed is now controlled as a function of that Boids velocity vector magnitude with respect to the Boids maximum allowed movement speed, basically the faster the Boid goes the faster the mesh "swims". The only difference to the controls in the app is that when the shark mesh is selected (number key 7) the "Animation Speed" adjustment will be for the maximum animation speed possible. All other Boid meshes remain the same for the moment. Controls

@Ken: Yes, Red did a while ago when trying to reinstate an earlier version of Leadwerks water: http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/1364-oh-no-i-broke-joshs-waterplane/page__hl__waterplane__fromsearch__1

Thanks Mack, once I get the basic flocking streamlined I can then think about adding other behaviours, next on the list though is to tie in the individual Boids velocity magnitude and acceleration to the animated Boids animation speed.

I never said you did make up a post for no reason Andy. Just found it odd you could not find any reference to time functions.....

Ok, heres a demo of the app I am currently using in my testing for those that have shown interest, its not that user freindly interface wise, but it was not written with "public" release in mind. Rules: Cohesion - Boids try to fly towards the average position of local flockmates in a given radial volume of 3D space Separation - Boids try to keep a small distance away from other local flockmates in a given radial volume of 3D space Alignment - Boids try to match velocity with other local flockmates in a given radial volume of 3D space, velocity is speed in a given direction. Keys 1 -7 Change Boid Mesh 1 - qBoid 2 - Poly Arrow 3 - Fish 4 - Butterfly 5 - Seagull 6 - Parrot 7 - Shark Controls: Cohesion Radius - Q increase - A decrease Alignment Radius - W increase - S decrease Separation Radius - E increase - D decrease Reset Boids - R Number of Boids - T increase - G decrease (min 10 - max 500) You will need to Reset - R - the Boids for a change in the number of Boids to take effect. Boid Max Velocity - Y increase - H decrease - N Apply Boid Max Turnig Force - U increase - J decrease - M Apply Max Velocity and Max Turning Force are not realtime adjustments and need to be applied to take effect, as they are tied in directly to the individual Boid Type structure which I will be using later for some additional individual behavioural functionality. Update Cycle - I increase - K decrease The update cycle changes how many cycles have to pass before calls to the update Boids functions are made. When set to 1 this means every update cycle, 2 means every other update cycle and so on. Animation Speed - O increase - L decrease For those Boid meshs that have animations, this will increase and decrease the playback speed in realtime. The B key will toggle on and off the outline of the confinement volume, and the Z key toggles an application speed attenuation function which attempts to keep the Boids moving at roughly the same speed no matter how many, this will have very little or no effect when Vsync is on. Toggles: Z - Attenuation X - Wireframe Mode C - AntiAlias V - VSync B - Outline of the confinement volume P - Mesh Freedom Mesh Freedom changes the rotational constraints of the Boid mesh "Pitch - Roll - Yaw" means it can rotate about all axes (X,Y,Z), "Yaw Only" means it will only rotate left and right (Y axis)

Really? yet its in the Lua 5.1 Reference Manual, and mentioned in posts on this forum?

@Pix, Aggror & knowledgegranted: Thanks, I had a request for the exe that I used in the "Fish" video, it became a little more complex since that was recorded, as its now a small app I use to check for bottlenecks in the code and avenues for operational speed improvements. If I find time today I will update the demo.

depends ... where are you saving the export to .x? are the textures in that folder are you saving the full texure path ... who knows unless you explain how you are actually doing something.

well, the lack of a "T" in the material box says no texture is assigned to that slot ..

A white model in what exactly?

I think you need the Decimator plugin, which I dont think is free.

Thanks Pix, yeah fish shoals are working .. had a small glitch in the mesh alignment function .. but had a little time today so rectified that. @Diedir & Ken: Thanks, it's still very much a WIP.

Thanks Paul, it's a lot more stable now than my first "early Sunday morning" draft version when all the flocking flockers flocked off ...

@Mack: Thanks m8, working on your fish now lol @Roland: Thanks and no, I did not read his papers but I did read one of his webpages, and another by Conrad Parker just to get a written definition of the rules down, I explain why I did it that way on my blog, as technical reading was the last thing on my "must do list" yesterday morning after a "busy" Saturday night lol ...

I tried your texture in two apps written in Blizmax using LE, one using framework the other not, and it was fine in both.

Works fine for me in Blitzmax...