This is something, after thinking about it, I suspect isn’t a big deal. The so called “Manhattan Length” still works for horizontal/vertical, diagonal and in between lines, but it will report a longer distance than magnitude, so normalization ends up making the length just a little bit less than 1. If that turns out very rigid looking, give the rope some “give” to it, like using a .25 or less instead of .5 on each end to solve a spring. Eventually, you’ll make it to equilibrium, and everybody will think you’re a mastermind.

Hehe, I’m soooo very tempted right now to throw together a little prototype of this. . I have a strange suspicion the entire rope, Umi-style, can be done with no roots and only 1 division. I doubt it’s something we don’t already know of, just aspects are handled by clever tricks you use on crap old hardware. Reciprocal tables instead of division, shifts for cheap doubling/halfing, fixed point instead of floating point.

> conveyor belts

Ah yes. I forgot about those. Well, that just goes to show that either A. They don’t sleep the rope, or B. you sleep it in the middle. If you’re right about the 8 bends (another nicety of the tile map), then the need to sleep part of the rope is irrelevant. Perhaps it’s not so much sleeping, as it is just creating a list of bend points, and you only deal the bends on the outskirts (first and last). As a bend no longer bends, the next one (or previous respectfully) becomes the bend of note.

I’m also making the assumption that the rope is solved as a whole rope, at least given my less than satisfactory results with a segmented multi spring rope where each segment has an individually solved length. Individual segments are fine for a “rope ragdoll”, but not so good for a bent around edges rope.

> your blog post uses the past tense.. you’re not making the rope game anymore?!

Well, like you guys with N and N+, I have my little game PuffBOMB, while nowhere nearly as successful as N, it has proven itself. With my rope game, while I have control scheme I like, I lack a well developed universe/mythology or such. PuffBOMB as a concept has been stewing in the noggin’ and sketchbook for 4 years, since I made the original prototype game in 2003.

I started the rope game because I thought it suited a game pad better than PuffBOMB (a previously mouse driven game). It did, but I decided I could probably make PuffBOMB work. Why waste 3 years (at the time) of notes and ideas by not doing the remake. So I did that, and added a variant that works better on a pad. It wasn’t really a radical shift either. We simply started making PuffBOMB appropriate content using the tools.

And besides, there’s nothing stopping me from using ropes or ropey things in PuffBOMB. I love the idea of tethering things or the character to a bungee cable. Paddle ball with explosives.

And you bring up a good point, I don’t think I ever actually announced I was “back” on PuffBOMB via my blog. I just sort of invented new topics to confuse my 2-3 readers.

Anyways, the specifics we can take to e-mail (or try to), so long as I’ve not completely lost your interest as of the switch.

> Umi-link!

Cool! Thanks for the link.

-non-axis-aligned/arbitrary sloped surfaces, including acute corners! (which is something mario never had)

-conveyor belts: we’re still trying to figure out how to simulate these well — any of the arbitrarily-sloped edges of the world can be a “conveyor belt” which will move the grapple along itself, around corners, etc..

-both ends of the rope are simulated; when you’re attached to an enemy or a moving platform (in later levels there are platforms which you can pull up/down!) both ends of the rope “swing”

The rope is really short, so no matter how much work they need to do, there will be at most maybe 8 “bends” in the rope. Still, it is _amazing_ that they got that working so well — we haven’t found any collision/sim glitches yet. Whoever programmed that is a genius!

p.s - you used the past tense.. you’re not making the rope game anymore?! why not?!?!?! damn it!

p.p.s - some technical info on umihara.. not really useful though: http://tasvideos.org/UmiharaKawasePhysics.html