1. Announcing Mekorama on the Web!

    Now anyone can play levels from the forum online, with one click!

    Dismiss Notice
  2. Psst! If you're new here, welcome! Please visit these pages first for information about the forum and Mekorama:

    Welcome! ¡Bienvenido! Selamat datang! Добро пожаловать! Willkommen!
    and
    Everything you want to know about Mekorama

    Dismiss Notice

Stored and then released energy in mechanisms

Discussion in 'Level Creation Help' started by explorer, Nov 9, 2016.

  1. explorer

    explorer Active Member

    Messages:
    55
    Levels:
    70
    Albums:
    3
    Likes Received:
    178
    Joined:
    Oct 1, 2016
    In a few explorations, I've looked at how strongly the parts of a moving assembly will remain attached, to the point where the mechanism will stop moving rather than break the assembly. Here's an example.

    image.jpg

    I recently discovered that moving pieces, if rotated, will snap back around to as close to the position/orientation they should be when the rotation goes more than halfway. In this case, a motor forces a slider to rotate more than 180 degrees beyond its orientation on a rail. At that the slider suddenly flips the rest of the way to its original orientation, taking the motor and its attached arms with it.

    Here's an easy level, rubber bnd twist, which demonstrates the idea in action.

    The win?
    Stand on the green and grab some sky!

    I like this better than mechanisms which are player-actuated, because the movements are more consistent and the results more predictable.

    The slider's attraction to the rail seems to be less than the attraction of other assemblies. In that first magnetic test example, even adding a wedge of opposite slope to the path of the motor once separated, so the motor at the arm's end has to travel across two wedges in the same general arc it would travel anyway, results in the mechanism balking and refusing to continue spinning. That's why I was surprised that the arm motor in rubber bnd twist was able to force the slider off the rail. It could be that the slider isn't actually off the rail, and instead is still "connected" according to the physics of mekorama, just forced out of its orientation.

    I always like mechanisms which lift an object in mekorama higher than its starting position in an inobvious way. In this case, B moves up four levels.
     
    SFH and Astral_Mage like this.
  2. Astral_Mage

    Astral_Mage Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    137
    Levels:
    38
    Albums:
    5
    Likes Received:
    462
    Joined:
    Jul 28, 2016
    That is brilliant, I think I'll have to do some experiments of my own, nice find!
     

Share This Page