Tech Smartly

Ok, so this isn’t really about Portal. But don’t leave yet! I’m here to talk about another not so well known game, a physics sandbox, in the same genre as phun. It’s called OE-CAKE. OE stands for octave engine, and CAKE stands for…I don’t know, I don’t speak whatever language the site is in. I would assume it stands for casual something or another, but the language is so foreign to me, it appears as squares on my computer. But anyway, it is a nice engine which allows many simulated objects. Think of it as the sand game, or the now popular powder game, except without the wind. My favorite part of OE-CAKE, is that it can simulated water effectively. There are many “elements” to choose from, including water, snow, rice, mochi, and fire. It has the standard elements, as well as some new elements that I’ve never seen before.

As far as the physics go, it’s better than most I’ve seen so far in this sort of style. The water behaves like you would expect it to, none of that slow spread out sort of thing common in all other games of this type. Everything is different in some way, not just in terms of color. There is pressure in the game, meaning you could create a cup filled with water, create a small hole, and watch the water spurt out. It eventually turns into a trickle until there is no more water which can go out. There is, however, no simulation of tempurature. You can’t heat or cool down anything, apart from touch this and turn into that. Also, cooling down water does not turn it into snow, which is what you would expect it to do (ok, technically ice). However, it seems to be a very solid engine, in which you can do many different things.

A cool thing you can do is to take a picture, and drag it onto the game to create a replica of that picture in whatever element was chosen. Most elements will create a blurry replica, but a few will create on that is pretty good quality. It will most likely lag your computer since most picture are big enough to create enough of whatever element was chosen to do so.

On a forum I also read about many keyboard shortcuts that I didn’t know about, mostly because the website from which the game came from was in…Chinese? Korean? Japanese? One of those three. Either way, The user xen on the forums posted a bunch of keyboard shortcuts, as well as a couple of interesting things that are not apparent from the start. Here is his post verbatim:

———–

This thing has quite a few keyboard shortcuts!

Here’s what I’ve got so far: (some of the symbol keys may be different for you, I’m on a UK keyboard layout)

q = Water
w = Wall
e = Elastic
r = Rigid
t = Tensile
y = Snow
u = Not sure, it unselects the current tool button but doesn’t change the tool (might be a bug)
i = Inflow
o = Outflow
p = Powder
a = Same as u
s = Spring
d = Dense
f = Fuel
g = Gas
h = Heater
j = Jet
k = Rice
l = Light
z = Delete
x = Rigid Axis
c = Cooler
v = Viscous
b = Brittle
n = Same as u
m = Mochi
@ = Fire
. = Pouring
, = Drain
; = Gravity
# = Hairline
- = Splash
= = Bubble
Space = Pause
Del = Clear (Crashes if the pour emitter is on and not water)
1 = Points
2 = Crosses
3 = Circles
4 = Blurred Circles
5 = Blob
6 = Blob and Texture
7 = Shader

Now the fun stuff…

Shift + any of the above keys makes the pour emitter use that material instead of water (for fire pouring on a UK keyboard layout just hit ` (left of 1)).
/ changes the pour emitter to a ‘rain’ emitter
[ and ] change gravity strength

Still haven’t worked out how they did the dragon’s fire breath though.

———–

Quite a bit of stuff to do! Lastly, I’ll explain what I’ve found so far about all the different elements.

Delete: Do I really need to explain?

Water: It’s water. It acts like you would think water would act. It sloshes around, with some things floating on it, and sometimes water floating on things. When it touches fire, it turns into gas.

Wall: Creates an immovable barrier that can be deleted.

Rigid: Creates a solid but movable and green object

Spring: behaves like a rope would, except it springs back to the original length when stretched out. Melts when in contact with fire.

Elastic: Similar to spring, except it also tries to preserve the original shape. Melts when in contact with fire.

Brittle: Like elastic, but breaks when it is bent out of shape.

Rigid axis: like rigid, except it stays at the same spot and can turn around in circles.

Mochi: I don’t really know what it is. My best guess would be that it is some sort of cheese, or something. Can’t think of any real world alternatives, but it’s similar to half melted cheese, I guess.

Rice: it behaves like rice, however that would be.

Powder: Behaves like powder. I think everyone has played with sand at least once, I don’t really have to explain something as fundamental as that.

Gas: It’s actually steam, from water. It acts like water in a 0 degree environment.

Viscous: Sort of like really slow moving water, sometimes it doesn’t even move at all.

Tensile: I would assume this would be oil, and it has very high surface tension. it tries to stay together.

Dense: Like water, but most things float on top of it.

Light: Like water, but often stays on top of anything.

Fuel: Like rigid, but it burns away slowly when it touches fire.

Fire: It behaves like water, but it burns stuff.

Heater: Like a wall, but with all the properties of fire.

Cooler: Exact opposite properties of Heater.

Inflow: Water is created from it. I don’t know if it can create anything else.

Outflow: Anything that touches it disappears.

Jet: It took me a while to find out what it was. When it comes in contact with snow or mochi, it will go in the direction that it came in contact with until it slides off. It also seems to work somehow with other things, but I still have to experiment with that.

Snow: This is more like the snow that is all slushy and almost waterlike. If it so much as touches water, it itself becomes water.

Of course, we all want to know what it looks like before we want to download it, so here is a video showcasing the things it can do, but not everything!

Very nice game, I really do enjoy it. Get it over at the Prometech Software website. It is for both windows and mac. Linux users…Maybe wine? I don’t know, someone can try it and tell me.

This is a very fun game, with a steep learning curve. Essentially, it is 2 characters, facing each other, moving in a free form way trying to score the most points by doing damage. The selling point of this game is the fact that every major joint (e.g. not toes or fingers) can contract or extend. For example, you can raise your right arm, contract your right pec on the same turn, and lower your right arm to attack. The game is split into a certain amount of frames with the default being 10. What would have happened was in the first 10 frames, the right arm would have be raised while moving in front, and then, brought downwards like a karate chop. Not the most exciting thing, but this sort of free form movement allows you to create your own moves. Another example would be to contract the right and left knees, fall down, then extend both knees to kick off the floor, do a flip and… just kidding, when you start the game, you’ll most likely fall down and appear to have a seizure as you move around on the ground, wondering why it’s so hard to control yourself. Playing this game at first will mostly likely require that you look up how to do certain moves. Eventually, it will become easier to know how changing certain things will react in a certain way, although this will come with time, and until then, it’s an uphill battle in terms of controls. There is also online play, allowing you to test your skills on real people, rather than against a non-moving opponent. There isn’t much that can be done in terms of AI, since it is completely freeform, although there is a lua script that can sort of simulate AI, but all it does is do some preset movement, I imagine.

I started playing this game a year and a half ago. Eventually, it became shareware, a decision which I did not like at all, since I did not feel that this game was good enough to merit the $20 it was worth when I checked. It almost completely fell off my radar. Now, version 3 came out, which I thought was still shareware. Once I actually looked into it not so long ago, I realized that version 3 is completely free, and it has more than 300 mods you can choose, as well as servers that have those mods. It also got a facelift since last time I played it, since it now has shaders, giving everything a new look.

Online play has gotten way better since last time, especially with the inclusion of mods. There is a ranking system, where you can go up to black belt, and then further more, by obtaining a higher Dan grade. Several different main mods are being used in online play, with different rules. You have the classic style of gameplay, which is the default in the game. Then there is judo, where the players are slightly farther apart, with the length of the frames being 70, which means it’s more based on balancing yourself and disqualifying the other player, which can happen when anything other than the feet or hands touch the ground. There is also gripping, which means that if the hand touches anything that isn’t the ground, it will be permanently stuck to it, unless released. Of course, the hand could just be ripped off, leaving the player with a bloody stump. Some mods disable gripping, meaning different tactics have to be used, such as in the wushu servers.

Once you get really good at this game, you can do some really cool moves, as well as make awesome replays. That is another features in this game, you can have a fight and save the replay, which you can share with your friends and others online. Not only that, the replays can be edited, so you can stop at a specific point, and start controlling it from there. Editing replays is not done within 10 frames either. You can change what you’re doing 1 frame at a time, meaning you can make some spectacular videos. One of the most amazing videos I’ve watched so far is the video above, showcasing the new shaders, and also showing all the different moves that no beginner would ever be able to do, even through sheer luck. It is quite amazing, I just hope it doesn’t raise all of your hopes too high when you realize you can’t do this sort of stuff even after playing the game for a while.

Very fun game, I really do enjoy the mods as it gives so much more replay value.

Being interested in physics in games, I often visit the Fun Motion website, seeing if there is any new posts and visiting the forums. Through that website, I found a fun little game called Phun. It’s a physics sandbox in which you can create squares, circles, chains, springs, or just draw free form. Unfortunately, I find it difficult to actually come up with anything when given no limits, however, there are people who can make cool simulations using this program.

One of the things that I find coolest however, is that you can liquefy anything. Draw a shape, right click, then Liquefy! You can make a container with water, let it fall down onto a watermill, make the turning force move a block back and forth, release a ball every time it moves back, and let it splash into water. The creator made a couple of scenes which you can load up, such as a tower which you can fire at with catapult. For creative people, there is a lot you can do in this. A pretty good interface, as well as clean looking visuals, and all the details that are put into the game is what helps it really shine out, and is one of the most Phun physics game I have ever played.