Starfish movement -- an alternative view

[Coelacanth]

Well, I've been reading a lot of posts about the movement of the starfish: it's too slow, it doesn't travel far enough, it always starts out in the same place every time, etc.

My take on all this is that I think that right now, understandably, everyone is focused on the starfish. We're all sitting here watching the thing, wanting to see what it will do next. When it doesn't do it fast enough, we want it to travel faster. When it doesn't go far enough, we want it to make it all the way across the tank, without taking forever to do so. All of the attention is on the starfish.

Of course, in real life, watching most starfish move (with the exception of serpent and bristle stars) is only slightly more interesting than watching grass grow. These guys move s-l-o-w. They'll sit, stuck to one location on a rock, for hours on end with only slight movement. The starfish in the Sachs aquarium is hauling by comparison.

But since everyone's main focus is on the new little guy right now, we grow impatient with its pokiness and limited range.

I think that once Jim puts in a 3D background and more invertebrates (cleaner shrimp, hermits, nudibranchs, etc.), we will put the starfish in its proper perspective as just another of the tank's inhabitants, and it will actually seem silly to want the starfish to be zipping around the aquarium in anything more than a starfish-like pace (which actually is about half of what its current pace is).

As for me, I would like to see the starfish remember its location in the aquarium so it starts there the next time the aquarium starts up -- or at least have many random "spawn points" for the starfish. But I'm perfectly content to have the starfish move at a realistically starfish-like pace. In fact, the way the starfish is now, I think it actually looks a little weird for those tiny feet to be rippling like they do on this guy. On a real starfish, the movement of the feet is almost imperceptible from the distance that the starfish is being viewed in the Sachs aquarium. And the feet are moving a LOT slower.

Perhaps the starfish has to move faster than a real one in order to satisfy the majority of people that like to see it actually move around without having to wait a long time. I come from the opposite camp. Make it move like a real starfish, and when there are also hermits that move like real hermits, and peppermint or banded coral shrimp that move like real shrimp, the tank will look the better for it, rather than having all of these animals in with an abnormally fast starfish.

I'm hoping that when Jim puts a seahorse in the tank, everyone will be satisfied with its movements. Seahorses are slow! And they tend to just hang in one spot for a long time, wrapped around a branch or post. I wouldn't want to see it any other way, though.

[ajlaban]

Coelacanth,

I agree with the vast majority of your comments, and particularly with your "diagnosis" that much of the extant impatience with the starfish is simply because he is the newest kid on the block (and a different sort at that) and is drawing an inordinate amount of attention. Once other new "kids" show up he'll assume his role as part of the mix.

However, I would not be in favor of Jim reducing his speed. We do like to see him doing something and the bounds of realism are properly stretched to that extent in my opinion.

[Coelacanth]

Dang, that was a long rambling post wasn't it? Heh...I didn't realize how long it was until I hit the button to post it.

Yeah, the starfish speed is OK and probably most people don't even know (or don't care) how slow one of that type of starfish actually is in real life.

Also, what effect does CPU speed and video card speed have on how fast these guys move? I know it affects FPS, of course, but whether I'm running at 25FPS on my old TNT2 card or 80FPS on my GeForce, the length of travel within a certain time frame, for both fish and starfish, seem to remain the same. The only difference is that at 25FPS, there are not as many frames rendered within the same amount of time so the animation of the animal's trip across the screen is not as smooth. But the trip across the screen appears to be the same in terms of reaching a particular destination within a particular timeframe.

Is this correct?

Also I thought about the possibility that when the background goes 3D and more invertebrates are also added, then the starfish may end up moving more slowly anyway, just by reason of having to compete for CPU cycles with all the other new stuff, not to mention the fish. (This is assuming that the videocard has not been upgraded, of course.)

[Jav400]

Coelacanth,

As to the first part, it sounds good to me, 25 mph is still 25mph, it doesn't matter if you have a 50 hp motor achieving that speed or a 500 hp motor achieving that speed.

As to the second part, the starfish should move at the same rate, unless you have a slowdown because of your video card, and in that case everything would be affected, not just the starfish, so maybe it would even out that way. But if people have a particular destination in mind that they would like to see him/her in, that could take longer because the area allowed to travel in will be much greater at that time. Of course, since everything is random, maybe he/she would go there first.

[Jim Sachs]

The starfish, like the other critters, is tied to the clock. It moves a certain distance per second, not a certain distance per frame, so the speed does not change with FPS (just the smoothness).

[Lostboy]

I agree with Coelacanth, the starfish is a bit fast, etc, and I think it would look better if it were more realistic. But that's just my opinion.

the starfish is fine, very nice,

its speed is very good, im no expert, (having only seen a living starfish munching a fish head in a crab trap my dad had set off the end of the concrete boat at pismo beach 30 years ago....

(dad's idea of eating cheap on vacation....)


the one thing is, it seems to me that the low forground lights bit, seems to be a sneak hack jim did to save having to write a pretty nasty bit of code to get the starfish on the glass,

if the lights were on, you see the starfish on the gravel, and then by magic, "Pop" he be on the glass....

having been a priogrammer in my youth, (anybody remember the Altair 8800?) these kind of qick and dirty hacks are the niftyest kinds.......

[asprague]

moosehunter,

Thanks for enlightening us. Thanks for taking away some of the magic.

Arnold

[Coelacanth]

You most likely would have figured it out quick enough anyway, asprague. Plus, there have been numerous posts that mention that this is the way the starfish works. Jim even started out by saying that it "needed privacy" to get up on the glass. Big hint.

Yeah, maybe knowing the secret takes some of the magic away, but I think we're all aware that the whole thing is 3D models and algorithms anyway. Still, when I watch the tank, I don't have much trouble forgetting that and thinking of it as "living," because Jim has done such a good job of making the thing so darn realistic.

[feldon34]

How the Starfish gets up onto the glass has been discussed quite widely in the Starfish topic. Not sure why there is a separate topic here about the same exact issues.

Jim spent (he might say wasted) 2 weeks trying to get the Starfish to gracefully climb up onto the glass. It didn't happen. Maybe in a future version.

If you don't want the magic ruined, don't use Wireframe mode.

[Coelacanth]

"Not sure why there is a separate topic here about the same exact issues."

Uh...That was not the topic of this thread. It was brought up by asprague within this thread, but it was definitely not the topic of it.

I'm not trying to offend, but I really think that sometimes you're a bit too "anal" about redundancy around here. Face it, this is a forum about one little program, and that program happens to be an aquarium screensaver, not 3D Studio Max or even anything as deep as Microsoft Access. Therefore, it's a pretty narrow topic. Some things are going to be repeated. It's inevitable. As long as there aren't two or three threads about the "same exact" topic (and incidentally, that phrase itself is a redundancy), then I don't see the big deal.

Also by the way, you missed the point. No one said anything about wireframe mode. I believe asprague was saying that the magic was spoiled simply due to the description of how the starfish gets up on the glass (e.g., IF foreground light level=0 THEN draw starfish on glass). Yes, wireframe mode further strips the aura of reality away, but your comment, "If you don't want the magic ruined, don't use wireframe mode" does not fit. No one was using wireframe mode anyway, as far as the posts indicate. Moosehunter's description of the criterion of zero foreground light was enough for asprague to feel that the magic had been stripped away.

[Jav400]

Coelacanth,

You are correct in that there is bound to be some overlap of topics and discussions. But there has to be some structure imposed, or new people to the forum would have an extremely difficult time trying to gain information.

Most of the "old timers" here have learned the system and know where to look to find current or new information, but with the search engine working, or "not working" the way it is right now, new users would be totally lost without being able to follow the topic headings to garner information.

[feldon34]

We've got a flat coral background, 20 fish, and a starfish. Out of that, we've generated about 800 topics in this Forum.

EZBoard starts deleting topics at around the 1200 mark. So I'd like to think I'm more worried than anal. Already, Michael and I stay fairly busy moving the really old posts to the "Aquarium Recycle Bin" rather than letting them go to the shredder.

I think if EZBoard allowed me to merge and move messages to more appropriate topics, we wouldn't be in this situation.

I thought about it after I wrote my message, about whether it was necessary to point out that there was another topic with some 30 posts on the Wireframe "workaround" involving the Starfish.

Sorry if I ruffled feathers by pointing out the duplication of topics so often here.