How do I make on object hard?

Originally Posted by DickBaldwin

It also illustrates the dangers of the designers trying to anticipate appropriate behavior in advance and building that behavior into the object (with no opportunity for the programmer to modify that behavior).

A very good point!

Game engine design - including how to include "just enough" - isn't really a subject for this forum - but for those interested, look at the Blender site http://www.blender.org/ and their game engine stuff or at the Irrlicht Engine site http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/ .

Madden: I'm afraid you have "the Knack" - see http://www.guzer.com/videos/dilbert_knack.php

[madden]

Originally Posted by DrJim;

Madden: I'm afraid you have "the Knack" - see [url

http://www.guzer.com/videos/dilbert_knack.php[/url]

um...ok

P.s drjim you need a poptart

[madden]

I made this... Try it out

P.s Keep away from me! http://www.lastpersonwins.com/pixel/...nny%20face.jpg

The lack of collision detection was excused earlier with the argument that the system designer would not know what particular action was appropriate for the collision. But that is the entire point of event processing (Java ActionListeners etc). There could be an Alice event:

When xxx collides with anything do yyy

in analogy with the

When the mouse is clicked on anything do yyy

event. That would leave the consequences up to the programmer.

I suppose I was the one who is guilty of excusing the lack of built-in collision detection with "the argument that the system designer would not know what particular action was appropriate for the collision"

The idea of a collision event does have merit. Unfortunately, it still leaves open a lot of interesting questions, that would require decisions on the part of the system designer that may not agree with decisions that would be made by the programmer.

A fundamental example is the question of exactly what constitutes a collision. Consider the case of two oddly shaped objects that happen to be in close proximity to one another as shown by the stick figures below (monospace font required for proper viewing). Try to envision this as two fighters (with very small heads). Pretend that a leg and foot of the fignter on the left is represented by ====& The fiighter on the left has attempted to kick the fighter on the right.

Also pretend that @==== represents an arm and a fist belonging to the fighter on the right, who has attempted to punch the fighter on the left. Pretend that the dots represent free air space. (Actually, I had to put them there to take up space in the final text presentation.)

Note that neither fighter has succeeded in striking the other fighter. However, the bounding boxes of the two fighters overlap significantly.

...........
..0.....0..
..X.@===Y..
..X.....Y..
..X===&.Y..
..X.....Y..
..X.....Y..
...........

Is this a collision? If the definition of a collision is based on the intersection of the bounding boxes of the two fighters, the answer would be yes even though the fighters haven't made contact. If the bounding box isn't used as the criteria for a collision, what could be used in its place?

Life's questions rarely have simple answers.

Dick Baldwin

WELL PUT !

Only the person programming the scenerio actually knows all of the facts !

Isn't that what programming is all about - solving problems ? Granted the age group here wants to develope the latest NUKE 'EM game and live in the fantasy world where dragons fly and pigs walk on two legs, but . . .

HOW DO I SOLVE THIS SHORTCOMING IN ALICE TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM ?

Hmmmmmm - This would be a GREAT teaching exercise for beginners!!

Might I suggest that we teach PROBLEM SOLVING, and not BASHING the teaching tool ?

M$ Windows has never had any problems, once released.
Quicken was NEVER sued
M$ Paint is NOT involved in several law suits

It's easy to complain folks, it's GREAT to find work-arounds or simply accept that this software does not do EVERYTHING we want it to do.

You know what? You didn't pay anything for it and if you do not like it - GO buy the perfect software. Java's NOT perfect -

I'll get out my soap-box now,
lanceA



Just my thoughts,

Originally Posted by DickBaldwin

If the bounding box isn't used as the criteria for a collision, what could be used in its place?

Scratch seems to be having a lot of success with "when xxx is touching color yy." This lets the designer pick what "hits" can cause damage for rather abstract shapes. Of course Scratch is 2D - not sure what the 3D equivalent would be.