Archive: 18 posts

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Every time I create a new contraption, I'm never sure which materials I should be using. Its usually the friction between the two objects thats breaks things, I think. Does anyone have rough guide to each materials attributes. i.e weight, friction co-efficent, durability ? If we could get some numbers from MM that would take a lot of the guess work out building contraptions.

2008-11-26 10:40:00 Author: staticvoid Posts: 37

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I agree with you :/

2008-11-26 10:43:00 Author: Stix489 Posts: 2080

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Hmmm... well, let me see if I have all the materials right off the top of my head. There is sponge, cardboard, polystyrene, rubber, dark matter, metal, stone, floaty stuff, glass, dissolvable and wood. I'm probably missing stuff, but people could add to the list. Different materials have different properties. Some are grabbable, some are not. Some are heavy, most are light. There are two with unusual friction properties, that being rubber with more and glass with less. Stone and metal are famous for their weight and strength. Polystyrene and foam are famous for their grabbiness. Disolvable is also grabby but is not famous for this property. So is floaty material for that matter. Dark matter has no weight at all. It won't move, ever. Floaty has a negative weight. I suspect weight would then be polystyrene, sponge, cardboard, disolvable, wood, rubber, glass, stone then metal. If you wanted to get some accurate measures of weight, make a scale. Have a big platform made out of anything, say wood, an average sort of weight. Get some very long springs (say 20 big grid at least) that are set to stiff and with a stength of 1 so they will move a lot. Then get a largeish section of the material, say 3x3 large grid. Make notes how far the springs go down, and then you can see their "weight" with comparisons to each other. Maybe I'll do something like this if I get bored next time I am on. Two things to note though. Things tend to break when they hit each other really hard. I don't think it's necessarily the strength of the material but rather the force and angle of impact. If it's glued to something and forced into too small a place, the engine will just make that part vanish. Another thing I have noticed is that glass is a lot heavier than it looks. Though it increases sliding, it also increases mass far more than most other light materials. This can be a problem if you are not aware of it. Ah, one more thing. Sponge, rubber, floaty and dark material all have naturally rounding edges. No matter how gridded the shape you make, the engine will always fill in the gaps. That's another wierd property for you. That's my (brief) thoughts on the matter.

2008-11-26 15:48:00 Author: Elbee23 Posts: 1280

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I believe sponge is heavyer than cardboard. I think I'm going to now have to make an accurate scale via string attache to a gear on bolt to dark matter, with things for material... IE find out just how many units of, say, polystyrene it takes to balance 1 unit of carboard...

2008-11-26 21:31:00 Author: lionhart180 Posts: 200

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I've gone and poked around the engine. The idea of a pure string scale does not work, as string does not actually exist in a physical dimension. As soon as you try and put it across something, it will fall straight through. Maybe there is a work around that, but apart from making a "chain" of material I can't see any easy way to make a string comparison scale. --- I did not talk about the explode-ability of certain material. Some materials can be exploded by in game explosives, some cannot. A list of explodable material: Cardboard, sponge, polystyrene, dissolvable and floaty. Non explodable material includes: Rubber, wood, metal, stone, glass and dark matter. --- I managed to get a rough working scale up and running using springs as I mentioned above. You need material for the scale part, as well as the material to weigh. What you use to attach to the springs (the scales) affects the response of the springs and hence the weight. You have to wait a while for results to come in. Initially everything will bounce (unless the weight difference is too large) and so it takes a while to see the finer differences. I ended up using floaty material as a base. I suspect it's a 1 to 1 ratio for sackboy to floaty material to negate. I'd have to check that out, but it's good enough for a reference material. To get the exact ratios and weight scales I'd have to hall in my physics Ph.D. friend for the finer measurement ratios, but I was able to work out this much. In terms of heaviest to lightest Metal and stone have the heaviest weight. They have the same mass, which surprised me. It seems that the only difference between the two materials is a graphical one, and that they produce different sounds when hitting other things. Wood, rubber and glass are the next heaviest. If floaty to sackboy is a 1:1 ratio (yet to be confirmed) then they are heavier than sackboy. Note as well that none of them are grabbable. The big difference though is the amount of friction these materials generate. I'd need to pick my physic friend's brain to get more detailed information on this point. Cardboard, polystyrene, disolvable and floaty all have the same weight. That suggests a 1:1 ratio with sackboy. Cardboard is not grabbable, the rest are however. Disolvable disolves, and floaty will go up if it's not tied down, but it seems in terms of mass it actually has a 1 to 1 ratio. Finally, and this was a big surprise, sponge is the lightest of the materials, with a mass even lower than floaty. It's grabbable, it explodes, and it's very light indeed it seems. That's probably why it's the top material used in a grab switch. As an interesting side note, if you could split the materials into a heavier and lighter half, the light stuff will explode, the heavier stuff will not. --- So there you go. If I can work out how to shrink the results into a more viewable form or can get exact ratios of weight or friction levels then I'll get back to you. I have an idea for getting the mass out of things in terms of ratios, but I'll keep it to myself for the moment. If I can get all this in a play mode viewable format, maybe I'll release it as a technical level so you can see it all for yourselves. And if I can get an accurate reading on their weight, I might make up a table showing the properties of the various materials.

2008-11-27 08:18:00 Author: Elbee23 Posts: 1280

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I believe the difference between metal and stone is that metal is more fragile, and will disappear under stresses which stone can handle (stone may even be indestructible?). Perhaps you could try a strength test? Simply make a big block of stone fall onto a smaller block of whatever you're testing. If the block survives, place the stone higher so that it gains more acceleration from gravity. The higher the stone block must be to destroy the smaller block, the more resistant that material is. And awesome work on determining material properties. I had been thinking of doing something like this myself, but I don't get much time with LBP, so I tend to spend it more on building and trying levels than on experimenting :hero:

2008-11-27 11:29:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536

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Good work Elbee23. There are some comprehensive results there. I had a thought on working out the fricton. Recording the time it takes a block of material to slide down a slope of another material should be enough to calculate the friction. You could even us the race gates as a stop watch, though you would need sackboy to ride down with the block. Its been a very long time since I did physics at school, so I'd be no help with the maths.

2008-11-27 12:06:00 Author: staticvoid Posts: 37

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Could you make a bar graph in game? Make several spring supported platforms out of the same material and attach tall bars of flat material to the front of the platform, using stickers to give it some meaning. Then place cubes or whatever of each material on each platform. The different heights of the tall stickered parts will show how heavy each object is. Well, higher bars indicates lighter I guess. As for friction, use a slope to see how long each one stops but attach a magnetic switch that activates an emitter and magnetic keys at regular intervals down the slope to help gauge results. Get the emitter to drop an object indicating a unit of friction into something marked with a sticker indicating material. :B

2008-11-27 12:17:00 Author: AtheistSeaOtter Posts: 54

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Could you make a bar graph in game? Make several spring supported platforms out of the same material and attach tall bars of flat material to the front of the platform, using stickers to give it some meaning. Then place cubes or whatever of each material on each platform. The different heights of the tall stickered parts will show how heavy each object is. Well, higher bars indicates lighter I guess. Well, the bar idea was pretty much what I did to work out the mass. The only problem is it's so big that you can't see it unless you are zoomed out entirely. And as I don't really have a 1 unit for mass, I'm not necessarily sure of scale. Initial testing was showing that stone and metal might be 6 times the weight of what I was using for a one unit, that being floaty, cardboard, polystyrene and disolvable. Considering as well, that sponge is even lighter than those materials, it makes for a very large scale. It's not nearly as intersting visually to look at some stickers on a board next to some springs, it's much more interesting watching the weights move in real time. After I finish work on my current project I might try and get a more scaled down version built. That might take a week or two though to do, I tend to be slow and detailed. I'll keep tinkering around with stuff in between level design breaks though and see what I can do.

2008-11-27 13:24:00 Author: Elbee23 Posts: 1280

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What I'm doing at the moment s puttinga big wheel of dark matter in the air on back layer, with a second wheel of cardboard in front of it, bolted. The I have wo scales of cardboard below it. Then I just atached the left one to left side of wheel and right to right side via string. Thus if the left one is heavier than the right, it pulls the whole wheel and it rotates the system, lifitng up the right side and lowering the left.

2008-11-27 21:07:00 Author: lionhart180 Posts: 200

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What I'm doing at the moment s puttinga big wheel of dark matter in the air on back layer, with a second wheel of cardboard in front of it, bolted. The I have wo scales of cardboard below it. Then I just atached the left one to left side of wheel and right to right side via string. Thus if the left one is heavier than the right, it pulls the whole wheel and it rotates the system, lifitng up the right side and lowering the left. Hmmm... if I understand the idea correctly, this will show whether one object is heavy than another or not by the fact that a bolt rotates. I guess by extension you could try and find a unit value for the weight of material by how much of one thing you need to have another balance... But if I get the system correctly, it may not reset easily. I'd have a balanced neutral version that you can place weight on, and then copy or capture it in case it won't reset when you take weights off. I'd also be wary of the stiffness of the bolt. If it's set too high then the results won't be accurate. A setting of 1.0 should work fine though. You might find it easier to use a square for the middle point that you are attaching the strings to though. If the object behaves as I think it will, it won't spin continuously, but will at most make half a turn one way or another. Having a square where you can attach the string to a mid point would be more accurate than a circle. It might also help to have a sticker on the mid point so you can see when it's level and not moving easier. I'd also build everything using grid mode and also copy one platform to put weights on to the other, to try and get as accurate a measurement as possible. I'm certainly for other experiments that build upon getting an accurate comparison of weights. You never know where my methodology might have gone wrong. I suspect floaty does not equal one unit of cardboard, but rather that it cancels out one unit. It all depends on whether floaty has an inheritent mass in and of itself or whether it is a negative mass. It is a game, after all. :o Hope all this helps, but of course, feel free to ignore any details suggested. That's the thing with pure experimental science. You never know when someone will come up with a better or different methodology.

2008-11-27 23:38:00 Author: Elbee23 Posts: 1280

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I know I am techinically double posting, but I've been doing more research and I always make long posts. If I just added to my previous post, then it would be super long and the extra discussion might be overlooked... Well, anyway, I built a balance scale. It was a variation on what lionhart180 suggested, and this was what was made. Please note that some of the dimensions might not be right, but it was balanced and measured correctly. A small circle of dark matter was placed. A large wooden 1 thin layer thick sign was put behind it that was 3 large grid wide (assume all measurements are in large grid unless stated otherwise) and about 10 long, or whatever the length of the balance beam was. I used stickers on this sign on the middle grid point so that I could see visually when the scales were perfectly balanced. Then was built a 10 long (it might have been 11 or 12, but it was around that length) 1 think 1 wide cardboard beam, and bolted it onto the centre of the dark matter using a normal bolt with a tightness of 1.0, which I think is the lowest setting. I then made 2 identical carboard "scales", 3 high 7 wide so that a row of up to 2x5 of large grid material could be placed inside, with the possibility of stacking it higher if need be. 2 strings were attached to the top of each U point, then placed at the end of each side of the balance beam. The 2 U shapes were cloned so they would be identical in size, the strings were checked that they were an identical length, and the grid was used to make sure everything was lined up and exactly identical. This carefully measured master was copied and made into an object. Whenever the scales went funny, I would make another perfectly balanced copy. So I did some measurements using this scale... some good news and some bad news though. Let me put out the results that I managed to find. Definite results Units mentioned here are 1x1 1 thickness large grid. Sponge was found to be heavier than the polystyrene/cardboard/dissolve weight. A sack boy weighs one large sponge grid. 2 wood/rubber/glass = 1 stone/metal. 5 sponge = 1 wood/rubber/glass. Therefore 10 sponge = 1 metal/stone. And now for the bad news. This scales was found to be not senstitive enough to give accurate readings in regards to polystyrene, cardboard and dissolve. 1 sponge would equal 2 polystyrene, but it would also equal one dissolve. Then I found that 3 polystyrene would equal 1 sponge. But then 4 poly did not equal 1 sponge... and 9 poly managed to equal 1 rubber, which did not make any sense. Disolve and poly had 2 different weights as well. Well, sometimes they did, and sometimes they did not It just was not making any sense. I had a suspicion. 1 poly/disolve/cardboard one one side by itself was so light that there was no movement in the scales at all. The only conclusion that I could come up with was that it just could not accurately measure the lightest of the materials. I tried changing the material of the metal, that's the support beam and the scales. For the cardboard scales, my sackboy could make it move by just standing on a scale or walking along the support beam. With the metal version, however, it would not move at all. Removing the wooden sign had no apparent effect on the scales. So it looks like we have some rough figures. Let me try and type it all out. From heaviest to lightest (revised) Metal/stone are the heaviest. 1 of them is equal to 10 sackboys. Wood/rubber/glass is next. 5 sackboys will equal one of them. Sponge is a middle wieght. It equals the weight of one sackboy. Polystyrene, cardboard and disolve are the lightest. They equal possibly 0.33 sackboys, but this would need further testing to get an accurate level. From the spring readings test that was mentioned earlier in this thread I could see that the 4 weight categories are the same. It's just at the moment I can't seem to get a reading fine enough for the smallest of weights, and I had misunderstood the sponge results. It makes sense that sponge = 1 sackboy and is a middleweight. And just a comment on floaty. This scale system is not very good at measuring floating at all. You can put floaty under a scale, but then the weight of the scale itself seems to have an impact on the measurements. More tests would be needed in this area as well. And one final, final improvisor. Due to the lack of sensitivity of the scales, some of the ratios may not be exact. But hopefully this will help provide at least a rough guide when building.

2008-11-28 15:20:00 Author: Elbee23 Posts: 1280

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Unfortunately it's more complex than even that. I came across the 'tin foil' cardboard material, and guess what? It is HEAVY. It even says so in the material's description. Why this is classified as cardboard, I have no idea...

2008-11-30 01:29:00 Author: Risen Posts: 251

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I made an accurate weighing system, with the following setup: Dark Matter at the top of the level, connected with a 0.5 strength spring to a pink bubble platform. Measured how long the spring would stretch when dropping a 1x1 large grid, thickness 3 metal block on the platform. The measured distance was set to 100, which is the weight of HEAVY materials. Then, compared lighter materials to this weight. Results: Weight of different materials: 100 = HEAVY (Metal, Stone) - REFERENCE WEIGHT 50 = NORMAL (Wood, Glass, Rubber) 10 = LIGHT (Sponge) 5 = VERY LIGHT (Cardboard, Styrofoam, Sackboy) 0 = FLOATING (Pink Bubble) -5 = FLOATING UPWARDS (Orange Bubble) N/A = INFINITE (Dark Matter) NOTE: TEST MADE WITH 1x1 LARGE GRID MAX THICKNESS BLOCKS NOTE2: These weights are exact. Ensured the results by testing that a cardboard block 20 times the size of a metal block weighs the same as the metal block.

2008-11-30 02:31:00 Author: Linque Posts: 607

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Now for more things... Do things like string, elastic, bolts add weight? If you could, I may, build a scale, and stick a billion strings on it... See if they weigh anything. If they dont, then you can in fact make a square of floaty material and stirng it to a block of metal, and see how many squares of floaty it takes to hold up one unit of metal... If this works like it should... we can actually use physics formulas to find other things, IE work out the maximum velocity of a falling sackboy sicne he weighs just as much as a sponge. Simply make a scale with 1 unit of sponge on one side, and a sackboy object of sponge on other, then simply resize the sackboy til he weighs as much as the sponge. Make a floor of dissolve material, set your sack boy to normal mode and put the sponge sackboy beside you, and dissolve the material and see if they do fall at the exact same speed. also, on another note, is their air resistance in lbp? Simple enough to tes to. Make a square and circle of sponge and see if they fall at same speed or not. We can test if the true law of gravity applies, a sqaure of metal should fall at exact same speed as a a block of sponge... Anywho, now that we've gotten this far we should lay down some official measurements for the game. I think it goes without saying that we should use metres/centimetres so on, since its what all physics formulas apply to. So, let's set one, large grid, unit of single layer sponge is exactly 1 cubic metre, and weighs one kilogram then? Thus one medium grid sqaure should by a 50x50x100 centimetres, and weigh 0.25 kilograms? And one small unit of sponge will weigh... um... 0.06 kilograms roughly? and will be 25x25x100 centimetres... So we can then drop a unit of whatever, and calculate the maximum velocity, not that hard, just need to have it hit a scale and see how much it lifts) then use (Vi-Vf)/T = -A(grav) From there we can do anything... Sorry if I come across as geeking out on you guys, but I think it's sweeet MM actually made the game this accurate, who knows, maybe we'll find out gravity is set to exactly -9.81 ms2... =o AND FRICTION! We could then calculate the coieffecients of friction for all the materials, and then find out exactly how heavy a mass of them can be before they become immovable by a sackperson, muahahahha

2008-11-30 07:26:00 Author: lionhart180 Posts: 200

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Okay, here's an update: Material weight tests done with 1x1 large grid thickness 1 blocks. The reference weight is the same in both tests, so the lists are comparable. Weight of different materials: 100 = HEAVY (Metal, Stone) - REFERENCE WEIGHT 50 = NORMAL (Wood, Glass, Rubber) 10 = LIGHT (Sponge) 5 = VERY LIGHT (Cardboard, Styrofoam) 0 = FLOATING (Pink Bubble) -5 = FLOATING UPWARDS (Orange Bubble) N/A = INFINITE (Dark Matter) NO WEIGHT = TOOLS (Bolts, Strings, Other Tools) 15 = SACKBOY (This means that Sackboy weighs exactly the same as a 1x3 large grid thickness 1 cardboard block) Weight of different shapes: 20 = Thin Block 100 = 1x1 Block with Thickness 1 200 = 1x1 Block with Thickness 2 300 = 1x1 Block with Thickness 3 120 = 1x1 Block with Thickness 1 + 1x1 Thin Block 340 = Three 1x1 Blocks with Thickness 1 + Two 1x1 Thin Blocks Conclusions: Strings, bolts etc. don't weigh anything. If you have an orange bubble 20 times the size of a metal object attached to a string, their combined weight is 0 and the object floats in the air. An object with thickness 3 does not weight the same as an object made out of 3 thickness 1 + 2 thin blocks. Thin blocks weigh one fifth of what a normal thickness 1 block does.

2008-11-30 12:23:00 Author: Linque Posts: 607

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Okay, here's an update: Weight of different materials: 100 = HEAVY (Metal, Stone) - REFERENCE WEIGHT 50 = NORMAL (Wood, Glass, Rubber) 10 = LIGHT (Sponge) 5 = VERY LIGHT (Cardboard, Styrofoam, Sackboy (NOTE: This means Sackboy weighs exactly the same as a 1x1 large grid max thickness Cardboard block) 0 = FLOATING (Pink Bubble) -5 = FLOATING UPWARDS (Orange Bubble) N/A = INFINITE (Dark Matter) NO WEIGHT = (Bolts, Strings, Other Tools) Weight of different shapes: 20 = Thin Block 100 = 1x1 Block with Thickness 1 200 = 1x1 Block with Thickness 2 300 = 1x1 Block with Thickness 3 120 = 1x1 Block with Thickness 1 + 1x1 Thin Block 340 = Three 1x1 Blocks with Thickness 1 + Two 1x1 Thin Blocks Conclusions: Strings, bolts etc. don't weigh anything. If you have an orange bubble 20 times the size of a metal object attached to a string, their combined weight is 0 and the object floats in the air. An object with thickness 3 does not weight the same as an object made out of 3 thickness 1 + 2 thin blocks. Thin blocks weigh one fifth of that a normal thickness 1 block does. I'd be interested in hearing more about how you determined the weight of a sackboy. My scale experiments suggested they weighed the same as sponge rather than the ultralights. Although the scales were not hyper accurate, this was the reading I got... 1 sack boy on one side, 1x1x1 sponge on the other makes equal readings. A 1x1x1 ultralight would show the sack boy as heavier.

2008-11-30 13:10:00 Author: Elbee23 Posts: 1280

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My test was done with 1x1x3 blocks. If it were made with 1x1x1 blocks, Sackboy's weight would be at 15 (1,5 times a sponge block in your test). I'll re-test this though, to make sure. I'll also change the reference weight to 1x1x1 to make it easier to understand.

2008-11-30 13:12:00 Author: Linque Posts: 607

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