Speed with tiny flag.

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Triumph of the Soul
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Speed with tiny flag.

Post by Triumph of the Soul »

Recently, at "The Two Casltes" by "Viper", I somehow got the strange idea that tanks with the tiny flag go slower than normal tanks. "sos" disputed me on this hypothesis and we decided to have a race. Although the race didn't go completely as planned, (sos was destroyed while the race was in progress =D) it turned out that the tiny tank, (me) and the normal tank ("sos") appeared to move at the same speed. But this puzzles me because we measure speed by the amount of time it takes to move across a certain area (For example: Miles/Hour). With this in mind, I still am led to believe that the tiny tank moves slower than the normal tank, because it crosses a smaller area in the same amount of time. Is there some sort of programming sequence somewhere that programs the tiny tank to go faster at it's top speed than the regular tank? Something tells me I am thinking too hard about this. But I would like to know if anyone else has any thoughts about this. Thanks.

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Post by Hannibal »

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
No, Tiny does not cause a tank to go any slower.
Games don't make people violent, lag does.
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Post by joevano »

I think I see where you are tripping up on this, and yes you are over thinking it (or I am over thinking your statement :D)

Tiny affects the size... not the speed. Size has noting to do with speed and I think that is where you are getting confused. If both tanks have to go 1 mile, you start measuring from the front of the tank, one mile. The one mile is the same for each tank, and if they move at the same speed the front edge of the tank move at the same speed. If the fronts of the tanks are moving at the same speed they cross the finish line at the same time. The amount of tank that is behind the front edge of the tank makes no difference!

Hope that answers your confusion.
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Post by Triumph of the Soul »

donny_baker wrote:I think I see where you are tripping up on this, and yes you are over thinking it (or I am over thinking your statement :D)

Tiny affects the size... not the speed. Size has noting to do with speed and I think that is where you are getting confused. If both tanks have to go 1 mile, you start measuring from the front of the tank, one mile. The one mile is the same for each tank, and if they move at the same speed the front edge of the tank move at the same speed. If the fronts of the tanks are moving at the same speed they cross the finish line at the same time. The amount of tank that is behind the front edge of the tank makes no difference!

Hope that answers your confusion.
Hmmm... What I had pictured in my mind was the speed of the tanks being measured from their center, not their front. But that's beside the point.

What I am mainly getting at here is that even the ratio of change (miles/hour) is the same for both tanks, their sizes judge when the tank will cross the finish. As an example: Certain species of deer fly travel at speeds that a human may be able to run faster than. But the deer fly is on a different scale than the human. Let's say that the fly's ratio of change is 6/10, but for a human, which is much larger, the ratio is 60/100. The ratios are the same, but the human will cross the finish line first because they are not on the same scale. That is why I got the idea that tanks with the Tiny Flag go slower. Or mayber the two tanks' ratios are so similar that it is impossible to test in a physical experiment. Arg, I am almost starting to confuse myself. I hope others understand what I'm trying to say.

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Last edited by Triumph of the Soul on Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Saber »

I see what you mean but I think it's not working that way. The tank speed is not based on the tank size.
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Post by Hannibal »

If both tanks' fronts start at the same line, then they will hit any given parallel line at the same time, should they be going at the same speed.

A marble and a bowling ball are dropped from the same height off the ground. Which hits first?
Neither, they hit at the same time. This is somewhat like what I am saying.
Games don't make people violent, lag does.
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Post by Triumph of the Soul »

Hannibal wrote:If both tanks' fronts start at the same line, then they will hit any given parallel line at the same time, should they be going at the same speed.

A marble and a bowling ball are dropped from the same height off the ground. Which hits first?
Neither, they hit at the same time. This is somewhat like what I am saying.
That is a completely different matter alltogether. When you drop a bowling ball and a marble, you are trying to determine how weight affects speed. But the tanks are different, as we know they weigh the same. We are trying to determine how size affects speed.

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Post by Green Manalishi »

Hannibal wrote:A marble and a bowling ball are dropped from the same height off the ground. Which hits first?
Neither, they hit at the same time. This is somewhat like what I am saying.
i used to suck at physics but i'd think unless the marble is made of a very special substance the bowling ball would hit first. :|
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Post by Saber »

The size isn't affecting speed because the unit of speed isn't the tank size. If the tank is small or big, the unit won't change and the tank won't be faster or slower.

I'll take an example with tank size and jump. I played on a server once and the tanks were huge. When you normally jump your tank will be around 15 or 16 high on the small numbers at the right of the mouse box (with default settings) and even with the huge tanks it was at 15. The jumps were looking smaller and slower but it was the same thing.
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Post by Brave Sir Robin »

Green Manalishi wrote:i used to suck at physics but i'd think unless the marble is made of a very special substance the bowling ball would hit first. :|
Evidently you still suck at physics. :wink:
Because air resistance is negligible at these scales, gravity accellerates both objects at 9.81 m/s^2 - they both go the same speed.
http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~physics/P ... ndex.shtml
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Post by L4m3r »

You guys are analyzing this game too much. :p

All distances in the game are measured by the mysterious "bz-meter". This is a fixed distance, independent of tank size. If I was to fathom a guess, I would say that speed in the game is measured in "bz-meters per second". Meaning, the same distance is covered regardless of tank size.

Remember, when you measure position of a tank in a race, it has to be taken from the same fixed point on each tank, each time. Visually, the front is the easiest. In terms of code, I would think that bzflag uses the center of the tank.

also, afaik, the game has no concept of mass or weight whatsoever, so don't even go there. :p
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Post by joevano »

Even in real life... if motorcycle is going 20 mph and a Tractor-trailer (Semi) is going 20 mph they stay even with each other, even though the semi is about 10 times larger (length, hehe and maybe width too). Scale and size have nothing to do with actual speed. Scale has to do with the SCALED speed, the apparent speed of the item IF both items were scaled exactly the same. It is just a comparison, but has no meaning in the real world or when you are talking about two items in the same environment. The best way to think of this is with a child’s race car track. The claim is that if the cars and the track were scaled up then the cars would be traveling at 600 mph (hypothetical for easy math). The cars are at let’s say 1/60th scale, so that would mean that “1 mile” of toy track would actually be 1/60th of a real mile. So in real, life the real race car would go 600 miles in one hour, while the toy car would go 10 miles (600 toy track miles * 1/60 scale = 10 miles). So the actual speed of the toy care is 10 miles per hour, the SCALED speed is 600 MPH, but the real ACTUAL speed is still 10 MPH. In the real world (ie both cars in the same environment) it would still take the toy car 60 hours to travel the REAL 600 miles, because its real speed is only 10 MPH.

The other issue that you don’t quite have a grasp on has to do with the start/finish line. If you were thinking of starting from the center of the tank, then you must count the finish from the center of the tank. If you start from the center and end when the front crosses the finish line the larger tank will always win by ½ the difference in size of the tanks if the two tanks travel at the exact same time. That is why when they have any race you put your toe on the line, the bumper of the car up to the line, the horse up to the line. They don’t go out there and measure your center and put it on the line. Start and finish must always use the same point of reference to be valid, other wise other variables such as size creap into the equation. I think that we all can agree that a race (foot, car or tank) has nothing to do with size and everything to do with speed.
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Post by Green Manalishi »

Brave Sir Robin wrote:
Green Manalishi wrote:i used to suck at physics but i'd think unless the marble is made of a very special substance the bowling ball would hit first. :|
Evidently you still suck at physics. :wink:
Because air resistance is negligible at these scales, gravity accellerates both objects at 9.81 m/s^2 - they both go the same speed.
http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~physics/P ... ndex.shtml
*scratches his head looking bewildered at that page* meh, whatever. i'm a metaphysician anyway. in the near future i'll start using black magic on people i hate, starting with physics teachers. :evil: :rip: :twisted:
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Post by t2m »

I could swear that there was a web site (shellshock?) that had the "specs" of the bz tanks along with hypothetical rates. If memory serves, Tiny is about 85% of standard tank size and is 5% faster than your standard tank, but I can't confirm this because the site has been changed... I think it was/is Dutchrai's old site.


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Post by JeffM »

you don't need some website. you have the code

tiny does not increase speed. it only seems it does because you are smaller.

velocity, thief, agility, and burrow are the only flags that change the max speed of a tank.

As as been stated before in this thread, the speed is in world units per second. When you get tiny, your tank just gets smaller (40% of normal), but still moves the same number of world units. From the tiny tanks perspective the world has grown, so it seems to you that a world unit is larger, and since your traversing these new larger world units in the same time, it looks to you like your going faster. Your brain still thinks about the normal scaled world units, not that you have shrunk.

And those that say they "suck at physics" I mean DAMN, that's not even real physics, like basic newtonian stuff ( from the late 1800's), what are they teaching you these days?. They teach that stuff on Sesame Street !!! Gravity can be expressed as an acceleration that affects the speed of all objects the same. The mass of the object only comes into the picture when you talk about the forces involved, not the speed or acceleration ( F=MA), so your bowling ball and your marble will hit the ground at the same time, but the bowling ball will make a larger dent.
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Post by Green Manalishi »

what you learn in schools including physics formulas are sesame street in general.. i refused to learn physics, but i learnt other things.. hmm you do sound like a physics teacher..
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Post by Skeeve »

Green Manalishi: The last brave fighter against the laws of gravity! :D
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Post by Sky King »

JeffM2501 wrote:From the tiny tanks perspective the world has grown, so it seems to you that a world unit is larger, and since your traversing these new larger world units in the same time, it looks to you like your going faster. Your brain still thinks about the normal scaled world units, not that you have shrunk.
Are you sure? When I'm riding in my tank, my view out the window, my dot on radar... nothing at all about me has changed whether I am full sized or tiny... So why would world units look bigger to me? My screen doesn't shrink 40% when I have tiny.

Others see me as being smaller, and my kill zone may shrink, but to me, I don't perceive anything differently with, or without the Tiny flag do I?
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Post by Teppic »

Brave Sir Robin wrote:Evidently you still suck at physics. :wink:
Because air resistance is negligible at these scales, gravity accellerates both objects at 9.81 m/s^2 - they both go the same speed.
http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~physics/P ... ndex.shtml
Depends on the size of the drop though, surface area to mass would be the key here, and that is what would determine terminal velocity. The size of drop shown is hardly a good demonstration of Newtonian physics, not even an HS camera.
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Post by JeffM »

Sky King
but to you all the buildings are larger :)
the illusion of speed is the difference of what your mind tells you a world unit is ( based on your tank not shrinking) and what the game says a world unit is ( the buildings didn't get bigger ) :)

I'm probably just not explain what I mean well.

I checked the code, tiny does NOT affect speed at all, and all speeds are in world units. So the time it takes you to go from one end to another on a 10 unit long box is the same at any size. That is unless tiny is implemented by some whackass modification of the handicap speed ( I could not see it being done like that )

gnomes have the same issue in WoW, everything looks larger so they think they are bookin :)
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Post by Triumph of the Soul »

It's funny how popular this topic is. And how contraversial it is. I mean, who would have thought a friendly conversation about the game would turn into something like this:
Evidently you still suck at physics.
or this:
*scratches his head looking bewildered at that page* meh, whatever. i'm a metaphysician anyway. in the near future i'll start using black magic on people i hate, starting with physics teachers.
Well, I'm just glad I got peoples' thoughts (and facts) about this. Even if my ideas are not plausible to the others.

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Post by Sky King »

JeffM2501 wrote:but to you all the buildings are larger :)
But they don't... my view out the window, including the size of the buildings, is identical in every way with or without tiny.
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Post by sos »

Hello A Distraction. Remember that race.. was fun until I was killed. :o

Look Im a Recruit.hehe. Sir YEs sir!!
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Post by tadd »

There are /set instructions that affect how high off the ground the world is viewed from, as well as changing how high off the ground that the bullet is fired from.
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