Quantum Plane Flag

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Sparky1
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Quantum Plane Flag

Post by Sparky1 »

Here is perhaps my craziest BZFlag idea so far. A new Flag that I like to call the Quantum Plane Flag (or QP). Basically the bullet behaves like a quantum, where it starts off like a wave and has multiple locations, has the capability of tunneling through boundaries, and when encountered by a tank collapses into a particle resulting in that tank collapsing into a reality where that tank may or may not be killed (like Schrödinger's Cat).

When a tank shoots, the shot does not have a specific location, but rather a probability distribution along a plane parallel to the ground at the same altitude the shot was made. This "quantum plane" would have the same color as a bullet, however it would be brighter and more opaque where the probability of the bullet's location is higher, and more translucent and not as bright where the probability is less, in other words it would look like a flat electron cloud.

The Bullet would have zero probability of being in an object, so OO tanks are safe, however the bullet can be inside hollow areas closed off from the area where the tank shot the bullet (i.e. rooms), this allows for quantum tunneling. The probability distribution is determined by the boundaries formed from the cross section of the map in the quantum plane, in other words the wave has to be a standing wave that resonates within the boundaries, thus the particular probability distribution would be found by a partial differential equation.

When a tank intersects the plane, the probability of that tank being hit by the bullet is calculated by a double integral, where the tank's cross section is the boundary. Then a random number generator determines if that tank is shot or not shot, and the chances of either way is determined by the the tank's probability of being shot. Once it is determined either way, that particular plane collapses for the tank that intersected with it, thus the plane does not affect that particular tank anymore nor does that tank see it, so to that tank the plane doesn't exist anymore, however it can still affect other tanks that have not collapsed the wave function. The Quantum Plane exists until all the tanks intersect with it, or until it expires after the amount of time it takes to reload a regular bullet.

It is possible for more than one tank to be killed by the same Quantum Plane, however it is also possible for the QP holder's teamates and even the QP holder itself to be killed. In fact as soon as the QP holder fires, it collapses the Quantum Plane in its perspective, because the holder automatically intersects with the plane.
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Post by Winny »

I'm going to go out on a limb and say this will be voted as too confusing.

It sounds more or less like a "Random Death" flag, or something.
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JeffM
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Post by JeffM »

wtf?

seriously... wtf?

how can that be fun at all?
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Post by Sparky1 »

JeffM wrote:wtf?

seriously... wtf?

how can that be fun at all?
Quantum mechanics has a lot of cool properties, there is a great deal more to work with in Quantum mechanics than classical mechanics, and I don't see too many games that take advantage of QM's tremendous potential. I'm just throwing around some suggestions that may be able to expand BZFlag's possibilities. I'm not sure if any of these quantum concepts would work out well for this game, but I'm guessing that's why we have these forums, to kick around ideas and see if we stumble across something cool.

Perhaps as an alternative instead of killing tanks, the Quantum Plane could transfer momentum to all bullets it comes in contact with (i.e. randomly redirect the paths of the bullets)?

Or perhaps have the QP"entangle" with all bullets that intersect with it, which would change all those bullets, including the enemies, into the QP Holder's?

Or maybe the Quantum Plane could be the tank itself, nad your hud has a superposition of all the locations which would give the sence of a multiverse, and each tank location moves in the same way and shoots at the same time, but only one bullet from one of the tank locations can kill and when it does the QP collapses into the tank that made the kill, however the QP holder could be killed by it's own bullet, but only if a tank location gets hit by its own corresponding bullet (not bullets from other location tanks), and the tank could also be killed by enemy/freindly/world weopons, if that happens before the QP Holder hits another tank it collapses tothe tank location that got hit and gets killed.

Instead of a flag maybe there could be a game mode where Quantum properties could be utilized.
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Post by Teppic »

Sparky1: If hbar (no symbol on the KB) was 10, would it be safe to cut open a water melon (200mm across with pips weighing in 0.1 gram) ?

Once the whole BZ community can explain the answer, I'll help you write the code for Quantum Physics flags, at least then people would have a chance of understanding why they are dead.
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Post by JeffM »

ummm... just because you are REALLLLLLLY interested in a subject does not make it fun.

All new features and flags must add fun to the game. Nothing you have proposed sounds fun at all.

the random nature of this all would not be fun to anyone. Imagine playing and randomly dying, and not being able to do anything about it? That is not fun .
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Post by Mets »

Teppic wrote:Sparky1: If hbar (no symbol on the KB) was 10, would it be safe to cut open a water melon (200mm across with pips weighing in 0.1 gram) ?

Once the whole BZ community can explain the answer, I'll help you write the code for Quantum Physics flags, at least then people would have a chance of understanding why they are dead.
That'd be an absolutely amazing day lol.

As a person who minored in physics, a quantum flag would be pretty cool. I actually always thought having a relativity flag would be neat. You could do it from the observer reference frame (i.e. the other tanks on the map). It would increase your max speed, to simulate time dilation, and the faster you drove, the smaller other tanks on the map would see your tank (length contraction). But it wouldn't be permanent, like Thief flag or something. If you stopped, your tank would go back to normal size. So basically you'd have to keep moving in order to take advantage of it, and the changes in length would have to be dynamic, encouraging you to drive fast. You'd just have to work out some way so you don't run over your own bullets.

That being said, Tepic's right. If your background isn't in this area, you probably just think we're nuts. Which we are. But that's a different issue :)
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Post by Sparky1 »

Teppic wrote:Sparky1: If hbar (no symbol on the KB) was 10, would it be safe to cut open a water melon (200mm across with pips weighing in 0.1 gram) ?

Once the whole BZ community can explain the answer, I'll help you write the code for Quantum Physics flags, at least then people would have a chance of understanding why they are dead.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but no it would not be safe, as soon as the knife makes contact with the water melon the pips would fly out at random directions in which the product of all of any particular pip's velocity vector components would equal about 2.387324146*10^17 m^3/s^3 (v_1*v_2*v_3 approximately= 2.387324146*10^17 m^3/s^3), which would indicate an extremely high speed that would make real bullets seem like an annoyance. This results from the product of all the delta momentum components and the volume of the water melon equal hbar cubed ((4/3)*Pi*r^3*delta_p_1*delta_p_2*delta_p_3= hbar^3). We know that the pips are somewhere in the water melon, so we would find its volume ((4/3)*Pi*r^3= (4/3)*Pi*(.1m)^3 , here we're approximating the water melon as a sphere). Since we also know the mass, following from the equation that momentum is mass times velocity (p=m*v), we can come up with an equation to constrain the pips' velocity. ;)

Good analogy, perhaps instead of calculating the chances of being hit upon intersection with the quantum plane, a bullet could appear at a random (dependent on the Quantum Plane's probability distribution) location, on the Quantum Plane traveling at normal shot speed, and initially move from that location at a random direction parallel to the Quantum Plane. How the Plane collapses into the bullet depends on the tank that intersects with it, so two tanks that intersect with the Quantum Plane would most likely experience two different bullet trajectories, and each tank would not be affected by another tank's "collapsed bullet". The bullet would last for the remaining time the Quantum Plane has until the time the quantum plane would expire had it not collapse.
JeffM wrote:the random nature of this all would not be fun to anyone. Imagine playing and randomly dying, and not being able to do anything about it? That is not fun .
There would be some control, you could aim for less dense parts of the Quantum Plane which would increase your chances of survival. This would certainly give you better chances of survival then if your teammate was hit by a geno. Plus there would be a risk to the QP holder, but the QP holder and its teammates would have the same opportunity to control their chances of survival, not to mention the fact that the QP holder decides what altitude the Quantum Plane has, as well as when to implement it. So thinking in term of comparing this flag with the geno flag, this flag would allow for the opportunity to have more skill.

Mets wrote: I actually always thought having a relativity flag would be neat. You could do it from the observer reference frame (i.e. the other tanks on the map). It would increase your max speed, to simulate time dilation, and the faster you drove, the smaller other tanks on the map would see your tank (length contraction). But it wouldn't be permanent, like Thief flag or something. If you stopped, your tank would go back to normal size. So basically you'd have to keep moving in order to take advantage of it, and the changes in length would have to be dynamic, encouraging you to drive fast. You'd just have to work out some way so you don't run over your own bullets.
I like the concept.
Last edited by Sparky1 on Sun Apr 06, 2008 7:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by JeffM »

Sparky1
you still have not mentioned anything about how this makes the game more fun.
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Post by Spazzy McGee »

Sparky1, you seem to be forgetting that quantum behavior is a very specialist subject. For the majority of players, they won't have a clue what's going on.

I like to think that I'm a fairly competent at basic physics, and I have studied some quantum effects over the past year. Even so, most of what you have said goes straight over my head, so I don't know what you expect most of the bzflag community to think when you're trying to explain it to them.

It doesn't help that the quantum world is probably the most difficult to understand of any concept in physics.
Quantum mechanics has a lot of cool properties
Yeah, it does, but they don't fit into a game like BZFlag.
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Post by Teppic »

Mets wrote: That'd be an absolutely amazing day lol. ~~snip~~
That being said, Tepic's right. If your background isn't in this area, you probably just think we're nuts. Which we are. But that's a different issue :)
Spazzy McGee wrote:I like to think that I'm a fairly competent at basic physics, and I have studied some quantum effects over the past year. Even so, most of what you have said goes straight over my head, so I don't know what you expect most of the bzflag community to think when you're trying to explain it to them.
They pretty much sums up what I was trying to say, the art in understanding quantum physics is the ability to model in your mind that which you cannot experience, hell, most average joes who try to explain what gravity is get it wrong, and they can see the effects of that all around them all the time.

You'd be better off blowing tanks up randomly for no reason and calling it the 'bad karma effect', people would be more likely to accept it.
JeffM wrote:Imagine playing and randomly dying, and not being able to do anything about it? That is not fun .
Like the Laser flag?

Oh, and the answer to the melon question is 'Yes, as long as you wear appropriate PPE i.e. safety goggles.'
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Post by JeffM »

Yes, geno and laser can be 2 of the least fun flags in the game.
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Post by F687/s »

Sparky1 wrote:When a tank intersects the plane, the probability of that tank being hit by the bullet is calculated by a double integral, where the tank's cross section is the boundary. Then a random number generator determines if that tank is shot or not shot, and the chances of either way is determined by the the tank's probability of being shot. Once it is determined either way, that particular plane collapses for the tank that intersected with it, thus the plane does not affect that particular tank anymore nor does that tank see it, so to that tank the plane doesn't exist anymore, however it can still affect other tanks that have not collapsed the wave function. The Quantum Plane exists until all the tanks intersect with it, or until it expires after the amount of time it takes to reload a regular bullet.
Aagh...my head.

And that's exactly the point. There are probably people who are still struggling with the concept of the PZ flag. And while it might make good sense for a select few people, I wouldn't suggest we add a whole new flag in just so that only a few people would benefit.

Of course, if you want uncertainty, just play at a really laggy server. Then you won't be sure whether ANY of your shots will connect. ;-)
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Post by The Red Baron »

JeffM wrote:Yes, geno and laser can be 2 of the least fun flags in the game.
unless of course - you are holding the flags.
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Post by JeffM »

The Red Baron
Exactly. They are prefect cases of the tendency for flag evaluations to only happen from the shooter's perspective. They are also some of the most abused and complained about flags.

I think we need to seriously look at ALL aspects of every new flag for feature we add so we understand exactly what is doing to the gameplay.
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Post by Quantum Tank »

Sparky1.... No offence but this sounds more like showing off your knowledge then an actual suggestion for a flag :wink: .

Anyways, as everyone else has pretty much made clear, quantum physics is probably something 1 in 75 average people know about at all, and there are much less people who actually know about it even slightly in depth... So sorry but yes that doesn't actually sound like an addition that would actually benefit the game (very impressive description though).
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