Dr Holly Krieger discusses Merterns' Conjecture. Check out Brilliant (get 20% off their premium service): https://brilliant.org/numberphile (sponsor) More links & stuff in full description below ↓↓↓
Goop deserve all the criticism that's been flying their way but to *only* concentrate on them is to miss the reason snake oil wellness peddlers like goop and charlatans like chiropractors are doing so well. The modern medical system is failing a lot of people.
I'm not suggesting for a moment that those highlighting the pseudoscience and danger of goop are wasting their time - especially ahead of Netflix's disappointing decision to air 'The Goop Lab', which will spread goop's BS yet further. I believe we should challenge bad science wherever we see it. I am just providing a slightly wider picture to explain why alternative medicine continues to enjoy success despite so many wonderful advances in actual medicine.
I'm a practicing doctor and like almost all my colleagues, there are many aspects of modern medicine that frustrate me. This channel deals with a lot of them. I believe we need to spend as much time turning a spotlight on the medical system as we do on the quacks and wellness gurus.
This video is about the commo pad project. The commo pad is a touchpad based device for your C64. It is made to act like a KoalaPad, 1351 mouse, or a joystick. It can also connect to your PC and act like a normal 2 button mouse with scrollwheel.
Fences have been long on the game’s todo list. Being a really neat feature described by a single word, it comes with a lot of problems to solve. How does one approaches a feature like that?
First the “wants” had to be outlined. Fences might have a number of variants and uses in the game:
Short crossable fences can be used to designate grain fields and orchards. Purely aesthetic
Medium breakable fences. Can be a weak fortification, slowing down enemy advance. Maybe they can also be used to keep the cattle
Tall tough fences can be a better fortification. More expensive and harder to break
If we think about it, fences around house building sites are somewhat related too
Next comes the problems and features exploration phase. Here’s a short FAQ I did on fences before starting the work. Each line poses a problem and has a solution below. The FAQ is not final and solutions can be changed to accomodate for unforeseen problems, but for now I’m quite happy to have most of the questions answered:
How are fence plans placed
New plan type. Placed between tiles. One side must be walkable/reachable. Cursor magnets to nearest edge and outlines it.
How fences get built
By builder. He arrives on adjacent tile, digs for a while, waits for timber and hammers the fence in place
What do fences cost
At least one wood or stone
On which side of the fence should the builder remain?
Let the fence plan direct from which side it gets built
Do builders walk through fences?
Maybe they don’t. Let the player manage the sides from which to build.
We could allow Builders to walk through fences. But this would break all the immersion and logic. Unless we show Builder hits a fence several times to remove it, walks though and then builds it back again? Builders do walk through small house plan fences though..
How fences get demolished?
Instantly in a puff of dust
How fences get destroyed?
Adding hp would be complicated. Let it be just a chance-based instant destruction.
Maybe we can have a breaking animation and fence remainders on the ground?
How tough are the fences?
We can “roll dice” each hit. Chance of destruction can be linked with warriors attack.
How do we discourage extensive fortifications, are they a problem?
Likely not. The cost is quite high after all.
Whose property fences are?
Fences belong to a player (so warriors know whose fences to break and whose to walk around)
How do fences interact with houses?
Fences should be allowed to make perpendicular contact with houses
Fences could be allowed to go alongside house border later on, but likely it ’s not needed
How to build fenced area for cattle?
To become cattle yard it needs to be enclosed
Area can be built by builders
What is a yard?
Any enclosed area of size 4+ touching the house (e.g. side). Max size is .. ?
How do animals appear inside the yard
Breeder can bring them from the house
How do animals disappear from the yard
Breeder takes them out
How does Breeder carry the animal?
Animal goes by itself on a whistle?
Animal gets “follow” order?
Animal is taken into hands? (as in KaM)
What if fence gets broken?
Yard becomes ordinary terrain
Animals can walk away
What if fence gets restored (or is built around existing animals)
Area becomes yard again
Breeder can access animals in the yard
What if player builds several yards
If they are accessible by Breeder – he can use them
What if there are odd units/animals in the yard
They remain there, if they can not escape
How do animals breed?
Breeder brings them in
What do animals eat
Grass and grain brought by Breeder
How do animals grow?
Cows/Horses grow +1 for each grain eaten
Sheep remain at the same size and just grow more wool
Do we always need fences
No, if the area is naturally enclosed it should be fine too
This FAQ covered the player-side of things. Having that done the coding could begin. The code was written in a separate SVN branch to allow for easier comparison of before/after and overall changes made.
There was a number of cross-dependent problems in implementing of the fences. Here are some of the solved ones:
Fence edges block diagonal unit passability across a vertice between tiles (just like trees and such). However a fence has 2 endpoints, so code had to be updated to let 1 object block 2 vertices.
Fences go along tile edges and thus block unit passability. All the passability/pathfinding methods had to be updated to check the edges between tiles for passability
Unlike roads and fields, fences need to be built from specified side. Fence plan list had to account for that.
Enemy fences should be breakable, so the passability for warriors had to “ignore” the fences and still plan paths through them, knowing that warrior will break the fence on approach.
Breaking enemy fences should not interrupt current warriors order
Warriors should not break allied fences. Which means the terrain traversability now had to account for player alliances.
Breaking a fence should take some time (1-3 hits depending on warriors strength). Had to come up with a simpler formula for that
There needs to be support for different fences (visually and mechanically) at least for mapmakers. Thus the fences are planned to have properties and types.
Had added dynamic script commands to add or remove a fence.
Fences had to have player color markings on them. Since terrain render is already overly complex and overlay render caused some Z-fighting bugs, fences had to be made to render via a different approach that allowed for colors.
Refactorings had to be made along the way to adjoin similar methods encountered throughout the code.
Remaining problems and features:
Own fences need to be demolishable. There’s still no support for that yet. Not sure if this should be done with a confirmation or not.
It would be nice to have own and allied fence lines to be permeable without destruction. Should the gates be added, and if yes – that’s another bunch of problems to solve
It would be nice to have fence breaking animation
Cattle yards are a whole new can of worms. They will likely be implemented as a separate feature after the fences development is complete.
Fences are available since Alpha r8455. There’s already been some testing going on and a small bunch of bugs fixed.
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