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Quarks

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 10:50 am
by 19683
Will you be adding quarks soon?

I :Have some ideas about t :Hem.

Re: Quarks

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 11:02 am
by 19683
Somt :Hing about gluons and color c :Harge would be cool.

Quarks wit :H different color c :Harges attract, but as t :Hey attract, t :Hey c :Hange t :Heir color c :Harge. In t :He game, two quarks could switc :H color charges via gluon every time t :Hey come one tile closer. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_charge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_interaction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chromodynamics

Re: Quarks

Posted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 2:03 pm
by testtubegames
Yup, the quarks section has been nearly-ready for a while now. I worked on it a bunch last fall, and I think the method of dealing with the color charge is pretty sharp. The main idea is the strong force is incredibly strong (a blue quark and red quark, for instance, would attract each other suddenly and sharply at any distance). It makes for a very different gameplay style -- your visual reasoning has to change around.

There are still some kinks to work out, so it isn't quite ready yet. But since I've been hearing from more and more players who've made it through Chapter 4, I'm inclined to start working on it soon -- perhaps when Shocktopus is mainly ready.

Re: Quarks

Posted: Sat Jul 06, 2013 6:59 pm
by 19683
About w :Hen will quarks be released?

Also, will t :Here be somet :Hing about gluons having color c :Harge?

Re: Quarks

Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2013 2:20 am
by testtubegames
Not for another month, for sure. I'm afraid that's about as specific as I can be at the moment. (I'm basing that on a fair amount of travel this summer... Plus the time to get Shocktopus ready).

The plan with the gluons was to make them like the photons. They don't exist as tiles...but rather as a force. So quarks will get pulled together by gluons (depending on their colors), and the gluons will also let quarks switch colors.

I don't see agent Higgs necessarily getting in to group theory stuff (such as why there are 8 gluons (erm, not quarks, as I originally mistyped)*, which is awesome). Those symmetry groups would make for a fun game though. Did you have any gluon-specifics in mind?

Edit: whoops, I meant gluons! There are 8 kinds of those.

Re: Quarks

Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2013 9:02 am
by robly18
testtubegames wrote:I don't see agent Higgs necessarily getting in to group theory stuff (such as why there are 8 quarks, which is awesome). Those symmetry groups would make for a fun game though. Did you have any gluon-specifics in mind?
I thought there were only six? Up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange?

Anyway, I personally think a game based around quarks would best fit outside of higgs. The goal of getting to a certain spot isn't nearly as interesting when you have on your hands the possibility for complicated things such as making nuclei!

I do see a problem though. Would this bypass things such as color confinement? Because it WOULD make a kind of good mechanic to make more quarks spontaneously. Maybe levels could start with quark-antiquark pairs and the goal would be to make particles such as neutrons. You could pull quarks away from eachother and if they got more than 1 block away a new pair would be created between them! I don't know though. This seems like it would be incredibly hard to make in a system where there are only two directions.

Re: Quarks

Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2013 10:33 am
by A Random Player
robly18 wrote:
testtubegames wrote:I don't see agent Higgs necessarily getting in to group theory stuff (such as why there are 8 quarks, which is awesome). Those symmetry groups would make for a fun game though. Did you have any gluon-specifics in mind?
I thought there were only six? Up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange?
I think Andy meant that there are 8 gluons.

Re: Quarks

Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2013 12:25 pm
by 19683
testtubegames wrote:Not for another month, for sure. I'm afraid that's about as specific as I can be at the moment. (I'm basing that on a fair amount of travel this summer... Plus the time to get Shocktopus ready).

The plan with the gluons was to make them like the photons. They don't exist as tiles...but rather as a force. So quarks will get pulled together by gluons (depending on their colors), and the gluons will also let quarks switch colors.

I don't see agent Higgs necessarily getting in to group theory stuff (such as why there are 8 quarks, which is awesome). Those symmetry groups would make for a fun game though. Did you have any gluon-specifics in mind?
All I was thinking about was gluons letting quarks switch color charges.

Another thought: Maybe when 3 quarks with different color charges are touching each other, they neutralize, only interacting with each other.

Re: Quarks

Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 12:32 am
by testtubegames
robly18 wrote: Anyway, I personally think a game based around quarks would best fit outside of higgs. The goal of getting to a certain spot isn't nearly as interesting when you have on your hands the possibility for complicated things such as making nuclei!

I do see a problem though. Would this bypass things such as color confinement
Yeah, I'm constantly amazed how *many* different styles of games are possible and appropriate for even such specific topics. Any game choice has a focus on one subtopic, and glosses over another. So Higgs basically ignores 1/r^2 force laws for the electric force. Which is really more appropriate for a game like Shocktopus (part of why I'm making it, in fact). I've also gotten suggestions for collision-type particle games, for a depiction of what truly happens in particle collisions/showers. And a game that really focuses entirely on quarks could be nest, too!

In Agent Higgs, I'm planning on enforcing color confinement by making it so that once quarks of different colors touch, they're stuck forever. You don't have enough energy to pull them apart (and make new quarks).
19683 wrote: All I was thinking about was gluons letting quarks switch color charges.

Another thought: Maybe when 3 quarks with different color charges are touching each other, they neutralize, only interacting with each other.
Yeah, I'm working on getting quarks to neutralize once you have all three colors -- or a color anticolor pair -- (at which point they only tug on close quarks, not far ones). The math for finding the proper groups ends up being a bit tricky, but I should be able to work that out. (Imagine a board filled entirely with quarks. Red, blue, green... The whole lot. Now group them into 'white' combinations - one of each color adjacent to each other. Do it in a way so that you make the most groups possible without using any particles twice. Quite a puzzle. The algorithm I set up tends to take a long time if you have a bunch of quarks.)

Re: Quarks

Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 9:32 am
by 19683
testtubegames wrote:
robly18 wrote: Anyway, I personally think a game based around quarks would best fit outside of higgs. The goal of getting to a certain spot isn't nearly as interesting when you have on your hands the possibility for complicated things such as making nuclei!

I do see a problem though. Would this bypass things such as color confinement
Yeah, I'm constantly amazed how *many* different styles of games are possible and appropriate for even such specific topics. Any game choice has a focus on one subtopic, and glosses over another. So Higgs basically ignores 1/r^2 force laws for the electric force. Which is really more appropriate for a game like Shocktopus (part of why I'm making it, in fact). I've also gotten suggestions for collision-type particle games, for a depiction of what truly happens in particle collisions/showers. And a game that really focuses entirely on quarks could be nest, too!

In Agent Higgs, I'm planning on enforcing color confinement by making it so that once quarks of different colors touch, they're stuck forever. You don't have enough energy to pull them apart (and make new quarks).
19683 wrote: All I was thinking about was gluons letting quarks switch color charges.

Another thought: Maybe when 3 quarks with different color charges are touching each other, they neutralize, only interacting with each other.
Yeah, I'm working on getting quarks to neutralize once you have all three colors -- or a color anticolor pair -- (at which point they only tug on close quarks, not far ones). The math for finding the proper groups ends up being a bit tricky, but I should be able to work that out. (Imagine a board filled entirely with quarks. Red, blue, green... The whole lot. Now group them into 'white' combinations - one of each color adjacent to each other. Do it in a way so that you make the most groups possible without using any particles twice. Quite a puzzle. The algorithm I set up tends to take a long time if you have a bunch of quarks.)
Maybe when three quarks are touching each other, they " :Hadronize", spontaneously turning into a giant 2x2 :Hadron like a proton or a neutron. :Hadrons can then interact with each other via the residual strong force.

Also, free down quarks can decay in decay boxes into up quarks, and neutrons can decay into protons