I was discussing games based on engineering concepts. I brought up heat transfer as a possibility.

Quote:

Me Here is a concept using those principals: The game starts as an empty 2-d bin that objects fall into tetris style. The objects are single square blocks which are either: styrafoam, ceramic, or steel. After a certain number of pieces (countdown in corner) there will be a large crusher block that will fall that can not get heated. Higher levels increases weight and drop height of block. (it could have a sensor on top and be made of one of the three materials.) At the same time a burner is turned on at the bottom. styrafoam: High thermal resistance will get crushed, will get burned. ceramic: medium thermal resistance will get crushed and will shatter in large blocks, will not burn. steel: low thermal resistance will not crush, will not burn. The pieces will be given in random order. They will be able to be placed in a half step format (think brick wall) constant display of heat transfer will be given. Special puzzle mode where specific pieces are given. Drop piece will tip and fall if unbalanced. The ideal would be to create something like this: G = goal piece, cannot be heated D = Drop piece(steel) F = foam C = ceramic S = steel B = burners G DDDDDDD DDDDDDD SFFFFFS SFFFFFS SFFFFFS SFFFFFS FFFFFFF CCCCCCC BBBBBBB The ceramic prevents the foam from burning, and the foam slowly crushes to prevent the ceramic bloc from being shattered by the steel. The steel is placed on the outside to minimze the heat conduction.

A fairly primitive and derivative puzzle game. Any ideas for improvements? PS the ascii art didn't transfer well.

ahhhh, a game about materials properties, i feel compeled to post.

I like the idea, however, i don't quite understand the goal piece yet, (do you want to keep it unheated for the longest possible time, or get it into the fire asap?. Anyways interesting situations can be created either way. Heck, you can even have several goal pieces with different goals for each one (get this one in the fire, keep this one out of fire)

Ideas:
Add other Block types if needed: Wood,Ice, ect

Im not sure how you're gonna display temperature, but here's an idea. Make all blocks have a cold hue at first (blue, green)
As temperature of the block increases, change hue through color range (yellow, orange, red, white)

Incorperate Thermal Capacity as well as Thermal Conductivity (Concrete is a ceramic with high T Capacity, but low Conductivity)

Make the Steel meltable (but only at maybe white hot, and it will take a while to get there, due to steel's high thermal Capacity.)
This makes steel a good structural member, but not if the player leaves it next to the burners for a long time.

Ice will melt at a much lower temperature, but will imbue the blocks right below it with higher thermal capacity and flame resistance temperarily (ie, wet wood doesn't burn right away)

Many ceramics can withstand a high compressive load, but can shatter if hit with too much force (like, landing a steel block on it). Make landing a steel block on a ceramic possible, but only if there is a foam layer in between, which destroys the foam layer.

Heat transfer will be pretty easy to handle, Each block has thermal properties: Temp, Thermal Conductivity, Thermal Capacity, Melting Temp, Burning temp, Energy of melting.

Using these properties, you can have calcuate how much heat passes through tha block, how much stays in the block, if the block melts/burns, ect, for each iteration.

The only sources of heat/cooling would be the burners, ice melting, and the heat given off by burning fuel (wood, foam)


I realize my ideas might be a little too complex for a simple puzzle game, but most of my ideas dealing with move complex properties will be more "behind the scenes", but the consequences should make sense to the player.:)

good luck.

I'm a bit confused. Is it like Tetris where once the block has landed you have a certain amount of time to move it around before it stays in a fixed position? If this is the case then how are you gonna correctly construct your layers if the pieces are random.

What is the main objective of the game?

Sounds interesting to me. A puzzle game with intelligent concepts.

So is the object to get the goal piece as high as possible?

simple block ideas:

Burning coal piece - It burns long enough to burn/melt 3 styrofoam blocks or heat up a steal block 3 levels, or something like that. After that you can either have it turn to ash and disappear or turn into a diamond.

Ice blocks - puts out a Burning coal piece or slowly melts when near burners. Turns a burner off for a round or two.
.

I am going to try to reply to all of your responses ala Wavinator style[smile]

Quote:

Original post by cbass2 ahhhh, a game about materials properties, i feel compeled to post.

I am glad that there are others out there who feel that same as I do. Namely that too many of today’s do not incorporate subjects that bring out the joy of engineering.

Quote:

I like the idea, however, i don't quite understand the goal piece yet, (do you want to keep it unheated for the longest possible time, or get it into the fire asap?. Anyways interesting situations can be created either way. Heck, you can even have several goal pieces with different goals for each one (get this one in the fire, keep this one out of fire)

I originally was just considering keeping the goal piece as cool as possible for a certain length of time after it dropped, but now that you mention it burning the stack might be an interesting alternative. I will have to think about this one. The only problem I see is that I don’t want to be able to destroy the steel blocks in any way. But it would be interesting to see how hot you can get the goal piece when you keep getting foam pieces thrown at you.

Quote:

Ideas: Add other Block types if needed: Wood,Ice, ect

I think I will start out with just the ones I have listed for simplicities reason. However, those would be interesting goal pieces to make sure the stack stays cool.

Quote:

Im not sure how you're gonna display temperature, but here's an idea. Make all blocks have a cold hue at first (blue, green) As temperature of the block increases, change hue through color range (yellow, orange, red, white)

You are thinking exactly the same thing as me. I meant to write that down in the original description but I see now that I forgot to. Another idea I had was to put a number in the block to say how hot it was. 1-9: 1 being cold and 9 being hot

Quote:

Incorperate Thermal Capacity as well as Thermal Conductivity (Concrete is a ceramic with high T Capacity, but low Conductivity)

I absolutely see where you are going with this, but it is not quite the effect I had in mind. I realize that the stack will eventually stabilize at a higher temperature common throughout according to true heat transfer. I actually was envisioning that each piece lost some heat so that even a stack of solid metal would stay cooler at the top than at the bottom. I suppose I could call this radiative heat loss through the “window” of the computer screen. Speaking of radiative heat transfer, I was thinking that open spaces should transmit heat through __________ current. (gosh dang! what is that word? Circular motion of liquid caused by heated less dense material rising from bottom. Grrrrr. Conduction, induction CONVECTION.)

Quote:

Make the Steel meltable (but only at maybe white hot, and it will take a while to get there, due to steel's high thermal Capacity.) This makes steel a good structural member, but not if the player leaves it next to the burners for a long time.

No.. I don’t want to go down this path. Lets say the heat being produced is roughly cooking heat, so foam will melt, but steel is unaffected.

Quote:

Ice will melt at a much lower temperature, but will imbue the blocks right below it with higher thermal capacity and flame resistance temperarily (ie, wet wood doesn't burn right away)

Great idea! Unfortunately I want to keep it simpler. Maybe version 2 [smile]

Quote:

Many ceramics can withstand a high compressive load, but can shatter if hit with too much force (like, landing a steel block on it). Make landing a steel block on a ceramic possible, but only if there is a foam layer in between, which destroys the foam layer.

This is Exactly what I had in mind. Not only will the ceramic shatter but so will any next to it. Kinda like the ceramic is all one solid block. Hmm that made me think of something. Later..

Quote:

Heat transfer will be pretty easy to handle, Each block has thermal properties: Temp, Thermal Conductivity, Thermal Capacity, Melting Temp, Burning temp, Energy of melting. Using these properties, you can have calcuate how much heat passes through tha block, how much stays in the block, if the block melts/burns, ect, for each iteration. The only sources of heat/cooling would be the burners, ice melting, and the heat given off by burning fuel (wood, foam) I realize my ideas might be a little too complex for a simple puzzle game, but most of my ideas dealing with move complex properties will be more "behind the scenes", but the consequences should make sense to the player.:)

I like the ideas. But I think it complicates things unnecessarily. I am planning this to be a very simple trade off game of strength versus heat conduction. Version 2..

Quote:

good luck.

Thank you for replying. I appreciate the thought you put into your post.

Quote:

Original post by Mr_Ridd I'm a bit confused. Is it like Tetris where once the block has landed you have a certain amount of time to move it around before it stays in a fixed position? If this is the case then how are you gonna correctly construct your layers if the pieces are random. What is the main objective of the game?

Okay. Yes you should have some time to move the piece around before it drops. Your post got me thinking as far as which method to use. One would be to drop the piece from the top and where ever it falls is its location. This would encourage relatively solid building from the bottom up and would challenge people when crappy pieces were given.

The other way I could do it is place the piece in the barrel and have it fall from that height. With this approach I could also use similar piece fusing. I mean if you place a foam piece next to a tall tower of foam it will join wherever you place it instead of falling to the lowest point. This also brings up the possibility of dropping pieces in wrong spot. If you drop a steel block from too high of a height directly onto ceramic, the ceramic should shatter. With this option the player will be able to create large open spaces inside there stack. To me this seems like the more interesting option but it will be harder program and for the player to under stand. Maybe as an option…

The main objective as I originally thought was to keep the goal piece cool for as long as possible. The goal piece would drop down after a specific number of blocks and would cause the crushing to occur (I was originally thinking along the lines of the first paragraph) hmmmm. More to consider.

Quote:

Original post by onthetweek Sounds interesting to me. A puzzle game with intelligent concepts.

I am glad you like the sounds of it. Hopefully, I will create it before we both die of old age.[grin]

Quote:

Original post by Kars So is the object to get the goal piece as high as possible?

It’s not to get it as high as possible, although that would be an interesting option. I had envisioned a set number of blocks to be used each round. The other possibility is to do a continuous feed of blocks as long as blocks can be destroyed somehow. I think I understand where you and cbass are coming from. With Tetris the blocks disappear eventually. That was not my original goal in this. IN fact I was planning on deducting points for each destroyed block. Like I said to cbass……version 2.

Quote:

simple block ideas: Burning coal piece - It burns long enough to burn/melt 3 styrofoam blocks or heat up a steal block 3 levels, or something like that. After that you can either have it turn to ash and disappear or turn into a diamond. Ice blocks - puts out a Burning coal piece or slowly melts when near burners. Turns a burner off for a round or two. .

I like the coal piece idea! Hmmm the more I read your comments the more I am rethinking this. Unfortuantely, I want to have some differnce between this and say gemdrop or tetris. Thanks for the ideas though.