04-16-2007, 05:40 AM
Progress report time! (What follows is a description of what I've done so far to try and discover the function that maps the speed number to the physical unit of tiles per second, for those who are interested in that sort of thing.)
I timed all the speeds with Chimoo Timer, plotted the data, and fit a line to the plot. The resulting equation...didn't work in practice. I tried to construct a zapper beam room where Jack rides a platform of speed 20 across the beams in a pocket of safety, and the timings produced by the function were off by a fair amount. However, they were close enough that it wasn't too hard to tune the thing by hand.
After I had tuned it by hand, I entered those numbers into the sheet to determine the actual speed of the platform. I tuned another speed by hand to get another point and ran a line through it. The resulting function...didn't work.
Then, I came up with an even more accurate (but time-consuming) way to measure time in MM. Set up two zapper beams separated by the distance you're measuring over (one full screen for high speeds, less for slower speeds (for the sake of my sanity)). Have a platform with the speed to be determined bounce between them. Get the numbers right, and the beams will flash every time the platform hits them. The previously determined linear functions give a decent ballpark to start from.
Once the true numbers are determined by this method, not only will we have a table that we can use to just look up the proper speed, but we should get a more accurate function out of it as well. It's possible the relation isn't quite linear...we'll see.
I timed all the speeds with Chimoo Timer, plotted the data, and fit a line to the plot. The resulting equation...didn't work in practice. I tried to construct a zapper beam room where Jack rides a platform of speed 20 across the beams in a pocket of safety, and the timings produced by the function were off by a fair amount. However, they were close enough that it wasn't too hard to tune the thing by hand.
After I had tuned it by hand, I entered those numbers into the sheet to determine the actual speed of the platform. I tuned another speed by hand to get another point and ran a line through it. The resulting function...didn't work.
Then, I came up with an even more accurate (but time-consuming) way to measure time in MM. Set up two zapper beams separated by the distance you're measuring over (one full screen for high speeds, less for slower speeds (for the sake of my sanity)). Have a platform with the speed to be determined bounce between them. Get the numbers right, and the beams will flash every time the platform hits them. The previously determined linear functions give a decent ballpark to start from.
Once the true numbers are determined by this method, not only will we have a table that we can use to just look up the proper speed, but we should get a more accurate function out of it as well. It's possible the relation isn't quite linear...we'll see.