Double Sand with Sprinkles

WELCOME BACK TO THE TODEPOND TIMES.

Here is the weekly behind-the-scenes news (for patrons)!

VULKAN AUTOMATA SAND

I made sand in Slackermanz's amazing engine! They have been working hard to get it to work on Windows, and I've been a bit of a test dummy for it. The UI now works and it's so fun to use!

To make sand, I manually edited the shader code. You can check out the source on my fork.

I plan to include this in the Tourism 2 video! (a sequel to this)

And I have a big list of other engines to make sand in. Please let me know if you know any that you'd like me to include :)

SPRINKLY SAND

Someone suggested the idea of changing around the order of rules for sand atoms! So... usually, sand attempts to fall straight downwards first. If it can't it attempts to slide. But what happens if we swap over the order of those rules?

I tried it and it looks really cool! It's very sprinkly looking!

After working on sand simulations for so long, it always amazes me how many unexplored variations there are! It's great to find new ones, especially ones as simple and fundamental as this one!

I joke that I should make a new video with 99 different ways of making sand. Maybe it wouldn't be so crazy!

DOUBLE SAND

Speaking of which... The sprinkly sand inspired me to try another sand variant.

So... normally, sand sometimes has a choice of sliding right or sliding left. Normally, I make it choose randomly. But what if there was another way? How about: Instead of sliding left/right, the sand atom SPLITS into two atoms, and goes BOTH ways. Those split-up parts rejoin to other parts as soon as possible.

This could certainly join the 'Top 99 ways to make Sand' video!

Please let me know if you have any other ideas for sand variants! I'm always on the hunt 🔎

PORTALS

I have been working hard on the time travel physics engine for my next video.

This week, I refactored a lot of stuff to prepare it for time travel, and I now have some VERY BUGGY portals working. As usual, all the code is here. And the latest buggy version is always up at www.timepond.cool. Often I break stuff while I'm in the middle of making something else though!

To get it to work, I made a 'child' system. Objects can have children, which mimic all of their parents properties. However, you can apply 'filters' to each property, so that the child is different in some way. These filters are just functions and they can do whatever you want. They could... position the child somewhere else in space. Or... make the child a different colour. Or... put the child somewhere else in TIME. WOAH!

That's the theory at least.

Next, I am going to iron out all the bugs with the base portal object. THEN, I will use the base portal object to start doing TIME TRAVEL.

Have I gone mad?

Yes.

See you next week! 🐸💫