nordic-skating / commit
docs: the autopilot's plan; and two things to improve about cracks
PLAN.md | 22 +++++++++++++++++++++- README.md | 17 ++++++++++++----- 2 files changed, 33 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/PLAN.md b/PLAN.md index 8288e17..39ff39a 100644 --- a/PLAN.md +++ b/PLAN.md @@ -34,6 +34,14 @@ speed never changed, and steering slid the skater sideways at a fixed rate. 4. **A head that stays level.** The side-to-side sway and tilt are gone. What is left is a 3 cm rise on each push and a lean into real turns of at most 3.5°. +**Changed on Pavel's report** (2026-10-10): the autopilot fought the skater. It had a +line fixed in advance, and after any steering it went back to it: steer left out of a +right-hand curve, let go, and it turned right again. Now the line is a plan that +steering rewrites. Let go, and the line is centred where the skater has got to and its +next swing begins the way they are going. Nothing eases back to the middle any more, +and where the skater is, not the fork's preference, decides a fork for a skater who +does not steer at it. + **Decided by Pavel.** - The whole lake is safe: falling is suspended, and thickness decides only the sound. - Impossible ice is allowed: thinner than could hold anyone, down to 8 mm, never cracks. @@ -116,8 +124,20 @@ silent; should it be? itself, only the tracks. - **A long island in the middle of the lake**: see "Channels that part and join again". +**To improve, from Pavel's look at them** (2026-10-10). +- **The cracks the skater makes are too thick and look pixelated as they appear.** They + are drawn a pixel and a half wide on a picture with ten pixels to the metre, so a + crack is 15 cm across and its steps show. A crack wants to be a hairline: either a + finer picture over a smaller square, or cracks drawn as thin lines of their own + instead of into a picture, and coming in over a moment instead of all at once. +- **The cracks the ice already has are not very realistic.** They are a picture 32 m + square, repeated: thirty jagged lines scattered at random. Real black ice cracks in + long straight runs that meet at angles and stop at one another, in networks, with + the wet-looking white of a healed crack and a different look for a fresh one. To be + taken care of eventually, and with the item above: the two should look like one thing. + **Still to judge.** Are the tracks too faint against the ice's own cracks, which are the -same colour? Should they fade with time? Do the cracks read as cracks? +same colour? Should they fade with time? **Named and not yet built.** - **Snow drifts**: snow lying on the ice in streaks blown by the wind, building up in diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 9f90030..9d1f224 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -171,11 +171,17 @@ Steering turns the skater: the harder the steer, the tighter the curve, up to a 16 m in radius, with a moment to lean into it. Held over, the skater turns right round and can skate back up the lake, or round and round; that needs open water, about 24 m of it on the side being turned towards. A shore cannot be reached; near one the skater -is turned to run along it. Let go and the skater straightens up where they are, -keeps that line for a second and a half, and then eases back to the autopilot's own. +is turned to run along it. The autopilot does not skate a straight line. It carves long, slow S-curves down the -lake, up to 6 m either side of the middle where there is the room. +lake, 6 m either side of wherever its line is centred. + +**Steering changes the autopilot's plan; it does not interrupt it.** Let go, and the +skater carries on the way you sent them, from where they had got to: the autopilot's +line is re-centred there and its next curve begins in your direction, wide at first if +you sent it off at an angle, and settling back to its usual 6 m over about twenty +seconds. It does not return to where it was, or to the middle of the lake. Steer left +out of a right-hand curve and you have a left-hand curve. The speed breathes with the stride: each push adds about 1 m/s over half a second, and the glide after it gives that back, around 7 m/s (25 km/h). Strides last 1.4 to 3.2 s @@ -184,8 +190,9 @@ and no two are the same, so neither are the speeds. The screen is kept awake while the page is open, where the browser allows it. At a fork the lake parts round an island. A touch of steering one way, from 200 m -before the fork, is taken as asking for that side, and the autopilot does the rest; with -no touch it takes the side the fork prefers. Until the island begins, a little over +before the fork, is taken as asking for that side, and the autopilot does the rest. With +no touch it takes the side it is already over towards, and down the middle, the side +the fork prefers. Until the island begins, a little over 200 m after the fork, you can still change, by steering the other way. After that there is land between, though a skater who turns back can go round its tip.