Friday, January 21, 2011

Red Ash Turns 3

Red Ash is now three and still under development. A lot of work has been down and even more is to do.

Currently the resizing is continuing. I had miss placed my old formula for figuring the base weight of a given size. So I had to make a new method and finally settled on one based of of a cylinders volume. the idea came from a forum I had read on estimating weight (in the specific can, of a blue whale) and one responder stated an easy way to do it was to use the formula for determine a cylinders volume. Once the volume was determined they could multiply that by the mass of water.

An interesting approach and one that was simpler than my old method. So a played with the numbers and came up with some rules that will span the entire range from Speck (size #1) to Gargantuan (size #19). Now I will need to work on changing my database structure to support the new work, change the species script to use the new data and make adjustments to the existing species, debug and of course upload to the site.

Each of the new size categories will use a formula of...

grams = ((width x width_mod) * (width x width_mod)) x PI x (length x length_mod)

width and length mod change depending on size category. Also note that length and height are interchangeable.

The end result is that the average human will end up being a little lighter than is currently listed and slightly narrowed.

Each category marks the average height (or length), width and weight for a creature of that size. Going up or down from there will not cost any additional points. It will increase the encumbrance values but it will also bring weight more into play when having to cross an old bridge for example.

The new weight formula will cover things as small as an ant at .003 grams to 94,872,921.4 metric tons ( the average weight for a creature that will be in the Gargantuan size category) and bigger if need be.

Also I decided to formalize the space as 1 meter on a side, or 1m squared. I will be dropping the space reference on creatures. To determine how much space a creature will occupy on a grid map just round up to the nearest meter for the creatures size and reach. A crowded status will be applied when a creature are forced into a smaller area.

Anyways, more work ahead.

All the Best,
Chris J

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