game
sciencepunk | June 10, 2011It's been a while since we had some Friday Flash Fun here at SciencePunk, but this one really blew me out of the water.
SpaceChem is currently causing quite a stir amongst the gaming websites: Escapist Magazine gave it the Genre Buster award and Rock Paper Shotgun hailed it as "one of the year's best indie games". Deservedly so, in my opinion.
SpaceChem puts you in the shoes of a junior materials chemist, blasted into the depths of space to work for a pan-galactic mining corporation. Your job is to build complex molecules from the basic chemicals mined out of these planets. At your…
rallain | January 20, 2010I stumbled on this flash game Bloons. The basic idea is that you (the monkey) throw these darts and try to pop some balloons.
Well, what is the motion of these darts like? Is it constant acceleration? Time to pull out the free and awesome Tracker Video Analysis.
I threw a few shots and captured the screen with Mac OS X's quicktime X (which does screen recordings now). Then I chose a few of the motions to analyze. I was going to use Tracker's autotracker feature, but I am not sure how well it would work since the dart changes orientation (of course I didn't even try this to see if it…
rallain | December 23, 2009One of my students showed me this game, Fantastic Contraption. The basic idea is to use a couple of different "machine" parts to build something that will move an object into a target area. Not a bad game. But what do I do when I look at a game? I think - hey! I wonder what kind of physics this "world" uses. This is very similar to my analysis of the game Line Rider except completely different.
Fantastic Contraption gives the unique opportunity to build whatever you want. This is great for creating "experiments" in this world.
The first step is to "measure" some stuff. The game…
sciencepunk | August 13, 2009
A new game developed by experts at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam puts you in charge of a global war against an emerging pandemic. The Great Flu, created by Ranj Serious Games, is designed to give the public an insight into how disease control is managed on a world-wide stage.
Players are given various tools to try and halt the pandemic - early warning systems public information campaigns, face masks and anti-viral drugs, as well as improved research centres and medical services. In addition you can suspend public transport and close schools and businesses, and forcibly…
bioephemera | June 10, 2009One of the challenges we faced with our new blogosphere initiative, Silence is the Enemy, was how to mobilize people to do something about the plight of rape victims. It's not that people don't have empathy for rape victims; it's that the experience of living in a war-torn nation where rape and murder are routine facts of life is so foreign and horrifying to us, we tend to tune it out. Part of the way to deal with this is to give people a clear mission - something simple they can do; in our case, donating to Doctors without Borders (as I am for the month of June), or writing to Congress, or…
sciencepunk | May 14, 2009
From CrazyMonkey, the powerhouse of internet Flash fun, comes Cosmic Crush, a deceptively simple game of meteor might. The rules are straightforward: propel your sentient lump of rock through space, absorbing smaller asteroids whilst avoiding the gravity wells of larger planets. If this sounds fun, you've been conned. It is fun, but it's also fiendishly difficult.
Unfortunately for you, large planets wield a gravitational pull that extends far beyond the visible screen, meaning that by the time you see them, it's too late. Driving blind, you must be sensitive to the minor tugs and drifts…
sciencepunk | April 30, 2009
Sex is fun, but it's nothing compared to the thrilling life-or-death struggle spawned by passionate, unprotected lovemaking. Thankfully, to promote Channel 4's The Great Sperm Race, Flash game maestro Johnny Two Shoes has conceived a game that puts you in the cockpit of a humble gamete struggling to become whole again.
Like a super-fecund cage match, 250 million enter, but only one leaves. Can you safely navigate the acid-filled folds of the vagina and outwit the hungry leukocytes to bury yourself into the egg in an explosion of zygotic glory? Find out now!
sciencepunk | March 20, 2009
Gravity Pods isn't a new game, having hit the net back in 2007, but it's certainly worth a look if you haven't tried it before. The physics-based game runs on a simple premise: get your green rocket to the purple swirly thing. To do this you'll need to navigate the gravitational fields of numerous 'pods', which will pull your rocket off course. Of course, like the boffins at NASA / ESA you must learn to use these gravitational fields to slingshot your craft to its destination. There's a lot of trial and error involved, and your map is slowly painted in delightful swirly patterns showing…
sciencepunk | February 20, 2009
The Space Game might not have the most inspired title, but beneath the nondescript exterior lies a jewel of a real-time strategy game with some interesting quasi-bioinformatics. Made by the Casual Collective for games portal Candystand, it runs in-browser and saves your progress as a cookie, and games last a nice 10-15 minutes - perfect for a short break.
The principle of the game is fairly straightforward - you control an asteroid mining company and your job is to extract as much mineral as you can whilst fighting off bands of space pirates. Enemies come in different flavours and you…
rallain | November 17, 2008Atwood's machine is the name of a device that looks like this:
Also known as "two masses on a pulley". Surprisingly, this simple device comes up a lot in intro physics texts. It also brings up some interesting issues. I will go over the basic way to solve a problem like this (as an example) and then talk about the other interesting issues it brings up.
Problem: A small, low mass, pulley has a light string over it connected to two masses, m1 and m2. If released from rest, what is the acceleration of the two masses.
Where to start? This is actually a very difficult question for…
rallain | October 28, 2008Yes, I did some experiments with [Fantastic Contraption](http://fantasticcontraption.com/) ([Water sticks in Fantastic Contraption](http://blog.dotphys.net/2008/10/water-stick-springs-in-fantastic-contra…), [Torque from rotating balls in FC](http://blog.dotphys.net/2008/10/torque-produced-by-balls-in-fantastic-c…), [Basic stuff in FC](http://blog.dotphys.net/2008/10/physics-of-fantastic-contraption-i/)). But apparently, there is a wiki with some of the answers:
[List of physics parameters for Fantastic Contraption](http://fc.therisenrealm.com/wiki/List_of_physics_parameters) I assume these…
rallain | October 28, 2008Here is what is cool about [Fantastic Contraption](http://fantasticcontraption.com/) - it's like a whole new world, a world ready for exploring. I am Newton, and I can see if this world follows the models that I propose.
In this post, I am going to explore the elastic nature of the "water-sticks". If you have played fantastic contraption, I am sure you noticed that the water-sticks are springy. How does these springy sticks work? Are they just like the springs we have in the real world? An excellent model for springs in the real world is Hooke's law. It says the force exerted by a…
rallain | October 26, 2008The fun part about exploring the physics of [Fantastic Contraption](http://fantasticcontraption.com/) is coming up with new setups to test ideas. Torque is not too difficult to set up. Here is what I did:
In this setup, I have a "turning ball" with a wood stick attached to the side. I increased the length of the stick until the ball does not turn. At this point, the torque from the gravitational force on the stick is equal to the torque from the ball. I can use [Tracker Video Analysis](http://www.…
rallain | October 23, 2008One of my students showed me this game, [Fantastic Contraption](http://fantasticcontraption.com/). The basic idea is to use a couple of different "machine" parts to build something that will move an object into a target area. Not a bad game. But what do I do when I look at a game? I think - hey! I wonder what kind of physics this "world" uses. This is very similar to [my analysis of the game Line Rider](http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/2008/09/the-physics-of-linerider/) except completely different.
Fantastic Contraption gives the unique opportunity to build whatever you want. This…
rallain | October 6, 2008Popular demand (from a few people - you know who you are) requested another level for the force game. I am open to naming this game. Ideas for levels have been suggested also. There is a new rule change. You must be stopped (or almost stopped) in the red circle.
Learn more about this project
Update:
I guess I didn't include instructions on how to play the game. Just click on the applet window to make sure it is active. Press the space bar to start the game. Once the game starts the objective is to use rocket thrusters (the arrow keys) to move the rocket (the black rectangle) into the…
rallain | October 6, 2008I already said I like [scratch from MIT](http://scratch.mit.edu). After building a simple rocket model, the kids said it should be a game. I caved. Here it is:
Learn more about this project
To play, press the space bar. The arrow keys are rocket thrusts. The goal is to get to the red circle in as little time. If you hit the wall or the sides, you start back at the green circle. Please forgive me masters of scratch (I know who you are - you find something to complain about in my program).
rallain | October 1, 2008I actually have some important things to do. However, I thought I would make another scratch program. Yes, this will all lead to something useful (that is what I told my wife). Anyway, in this program, I made a spaceship with 4 thrusters. The great thing about this is it show what forces do to the motion of an object. I already had a suggestion to make it into a game with a score.
Learn more about this project
Use the arrow keys to turn on the 4 thrusters.
rallain | October 1, 2008I can't remember how I found this, but [Scratch](http://scratch.mit.edu) is a graphical programming language developed at MIT. My kids love this. In order to make sure they don't know more than I do, I created my own scratch program. I am sure someone from the scratch community will attack it for some reason, but I am ok with that.
The program shows a numerical calculation of the motion of a box with a constant force on it. You change the mass and the force. It "sort of" plots the position as a function of time. Don't worry python, I still think you are the best.
Learn more about…
rallain | September 14, 2008Friction in Line Rider
Is there friction in Line Rider? Does it function as physics would expect? To test this, I set up a simple track:
Basically, a slope with a flat part to start with and to end with. Let me show you something simple before further analysis:
This is the x-position vs. time for the line rider on the first horizontal portion of the track (before he or she goes down the incline). This shows the rider…
rallain | September 13, 2008There is no air resistance in line rider. Sorry to spoil the suspense.
To test for the presence of an air resistance force, a track was created that let the rider fall.
(note the markers on the side. These are used to keep track of how the origin is moving).
Below is the y position of the rider as a function of time:
In this situation, the rider falls about 100 meters. A quadratic line is fit to the data…