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Remember this?

Remember this thing? It’s a relic of around 2000 AD called soda constructor. It’s a little 2D creature simulator. The straight lines are bones or muscles, the dots are joints. When you’ve built a thing and you’re happy with it, run the simulation and it…does stuff.

Walks. Hops. Adjust the stiffness, friction and gravity. And K. I’ve forgotten what K is.

Here’s an interesting interview with the creator, Ed Burton.

The thing in the picture is the default creature. I played with it years ago and managed to shake it up so badly it broke. Lay on the ground quivering. I felt surprisingly awful about that (because I’m an anthropomorphizing moron).

I went to find it today and hit a lot of broken links, but finally managed to find a working version here. Oddly, in the instructions the author says it’s strictly for beta testing and please don’t share the link, so I dunno if I should’ve.

Seems fully working and true to the original. Try a few pre-built models. The default creature is daintywalker.xml. But don’t tell ’em I sent you.

Comments


Comment from durnedyankee
Time: September 1, 2021, 9:17 pm

Anthropomorphizing morons – didn’t realize I was one until the video by Boston Dynamics of spot the robot dog being repeatedly kicked to demonstrate it could recover it’s balance.

By kick #3 I was yelling (pointlessly) at the bastard on the video to knock it off.

oh, and how the heck can people beta test the thing without sharing the link?


Comment from oldowan
Time: September 1, 2021, 11:14 pm

Well. I broke it in about 30 seconds….


Comment from durnedyankee
Time: September 2, 2021, 3:38 pm

Try turning off gravity – had to because everything I built with gravity collapsed into a pile of rods and blocks.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 2, 2021, 5:44 pm

I know *exactly* the video you mean, durned. Because I did the same thing.


Comment from durnedyankee
Time: September 2, 2021, 7:22 pm

Gives a whole new level of respect for the designer of the giraffe don’t it?

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