Two Faith Islands inside of each other cause an infinite loop

[josiahseaman]

Okay I've been giving this issue a lot of thought. It really boils down to how we want Faith Islands to interact with the chaining rules. This decision will affect what kind of structures people can make. The two viable options are:

• Option 1: The exterior radius of Faith islands collide with each other, so there's no way to have a Sphere inside a sphere.
  • Consequences: Composite structures people build would have smaller Faith Islands tacked to the outside of the sphere with interconnecting spokes. Here's Why: *In order to chain Island, you'll need a Runecraft body inside one radius, with a conductive pillar extending to the center of another Faith block. This will give you a one way connection.
  • If you want a two way connection, you need to build two Runecraft 3x3 touching each other right at the edge where the Island bubbles touch each other. Then you need conductive column going to the center of both islands. This would look like a beam connecting the two centers with a Runecraft "adapter" in the middle.
• Option 2: Islands can overlap but the one block step where both island are inside each other's radii is considered a collision. So a small island can move around inside a large island, but it can't approach the center block. Two islands of equal radius simply cannot Chain without a Runecraft.
  • Consequences: This creates Faith structures in a strict top-down hierarchy and allow people to make bulbous structures with overlapping spheres. Runecraft would be much less necessary, since you could use FTP for your "Shuttlecraft" and overlapping radii would give you Chaining.
  • The architectural cost would be that you have to double pay Runic Energy for blocks that are overlapping between the two spheres. If you have a Tier 18 Island with a Tier 16 Island "inside" of it, then your Tier 18 Island is only effectively moving half as many blocks.
  • The nice thing about overlapping spheres is that it's optional. You get all the architecture of Option 1 if you want to be more energy efficient, or you can have a bulbous sphere hierarchy.
• Option 3 only gets a dishonorable mention. We can kill the infinite loop and just allow Faith island to interlock permanently. I think this will confuse and frustrate people and lead to lots of whining since it can't be undone.

[talwyn]

If I'm speaking out of turn here, please let me know. However:

• Option 2 seems (to me) to be the hands-down optimal solution. Allows the most freedom of design, while minimizing ops/sec (since the rune only has to search for the center, which is stored with the Faith information itself, instead of checking to see if any part of the sphere itself overlaps. 2 points vs 4πr^2 points.) However, it also still allows for users to break things through bad design (on the users part), but in a recoverable way. That chance of breaking things (and that moment when everything finally worked) made Faith Vessels so rewarding to work with.
• I'm still reviewing the code, but if the costs function was modified to ignore any blocks inside the radius of a captured vessel, it would clear up the the doubled Runic costs. This should only happen if the core of the vessel (the 3x3 of a Runecraft or the center of a Faith Island) falls inside the existing conductance rules. For Example:
  • Given 2 faith islands, a Tier 18 (A) and a Tier 16 (B). Where B's core is inside the influence of vessel A.
    1. Vessel A initiates a movement.
    2. Vessel B will calculate it's costs as normal.
    3. Vessel A will calculate it's cost, but ignore any blocks that fall inside the radius of Vessel B.
    4. Add the total energy costs of A and B together and you have the total cost of the move.
  • Given 2 faith islands, a Tier 18 (A) and a Tier 16(B). Where B's core is outside the influence of vessel A.
    1. Vessel A initiates a movement
    2. Vessel A finds no other vessel cores inside it's influence
    3. Vessel A calculates costs as normal.

Just my two cents. Now: back to reviewing the code before jumping in the deep end...

[josiahseaman]

It makes me ridiculously happy that someone not currently on the project commented on one of my issues. All that typing finally paid off.

I think you're right. Since Option 1 is a subset of the features that Option 2 supports, there's no downside to using Option 2. Even if there was an additional Energy Cost, that's optional and could be sidestepped by different building. Also, the cost accounting isn't that hard. RuneHandler mediates structure Chaining by calling addYourStructure() so in the end you get one giant glob of blocks with no duplicates. You can just say getMoveCost( structure.size() ) and you're done.

Talwyn, if you want to be included in our nightly coding parties I'd be more than happy to add you. I just need a skype username.

[josiahseaman]

Option 4: Each move command has a radius attached to it which acts as a measure of authority. Peers (equal radius) will not chain or move each other's center block, even though they overlap. However, larger islands can command smaller islands to move. Radius 6 can command Radius 5 to move and it will move all blocks. If a Radius 4 is sitting on top of a Radius 7 anchor (center block) it can move normal blocks around it, but the Radius 7 gold block (center) will not itself move. Finally, Large Faith islands can transfer their authority to subordinates, so: Radius 7 -> Radius 4 -> Radius 6 is a valid Chaining sequence even if 6 is not directly inside 7. This allows a truly huge variety of options.

Note: In order to minimize accidental vandalism, this option requires that Air block inside a Faith island radius count as colliding against solid blocks in the terrain or other Faith islands. This is to keep people from accidentally picking up blocks in the invisible radius.

[josiahseaman]

Current status: Faith appears to work correctly but FTP crashes.