and so the serious discussion and the brain-trust behind it, stride on, down the winding road, towards a better tomorrow and the salvation of the cosmos.
it is indeed a true homage to man. the epic odyssey of man continuous.

proceed.

Ed wrote:

Flying Steel wrote:That might not be true. There's alot of places in the world, including those that still use symbols to represent words, instead of an alphabet.

Wikipedia wrote:Countries where the metric system is official

Told you! You can plainly see by your own map that the US stands not alone, but with Burma (I think at least- geography is our greatest weakness, besides the greater influence of gravity upon us), Alaska and Antarctica. As well as the Moon (unpictured), since we were the first (and only) ones to land there and plant a flag, which according to Europe, makes a place automatically yours (unless another nation can capture the flag you planted there and bring it back to where they keep their own flag).

Also I couldn't help but notice you had no arguement against my highlighting of the metric system's ridiculous revolution around 10, while feet/inches are based around the more simply and cleanly divisible number 12. If this is an admittance of defeat on your part, then I humbly accept.

The metric system is clearly better BESIDES that issue. To properly show the flaws of the imperial system:

12 inches = 1 foot
3 feet = 1 yard
220 yards = 1 furlong
8 furlongs = 1 mile
3 miles = 1 league

Look at all the weird conversion factors... 12, 3 are fine, but 220? It's not even divisible by 3. A third of a mile is 2 furlongs, 146 yards, 2 feet (as you see, here the complex stuff comes in). The metric system on the other hand elimiates the need for calculation for ANY conversion, as all you have to do is shift the comma or add zeros.

We could combine the advantage of both by using a 12-based number system. For this we need two more symbols, let's call them A (of value 10) and B (of value 11). We then get, for example:

5 * 5 = 21
170 / 3 = 64
190 / 3 = 70
350 / 6 = 6A

In this system, you can divide anything that ends with a zero by 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12. If you have two trailing zeros, you can divide by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 16, 18, 24, 36, 48, 72 and 144. So you would get the advantages of the metric system - no conversions - AND the advantage of the imperial system - dividing by 3. Of course, you lose the ability to divide by five, just like you can't divide a yard by five. So what about an even higher base, like 60?

Fun fact: the ancient Sumerians and later the Babylonians used exactly a base 60 system... and we still use it for time.

BTW, in the decimal system, you have an easy representation for infinitely long decimal fractions, but this forum is too American to support it. Instead of 0.333333333333..., you'd write 0.3 and make a bar above the 3. However, it gets messy when dealing with 7ths, 13ths, 17ths, 19ths, etc.

divVerent wrote:The metric system is clearly better BESIDES that issue. To properly show the flaws of the imperial system:

12 inches = 1 foot
3 feet = 1 yard
220 yards = 1 furlong
8 furlongs = 1 mile
3 miles = 1 league

Look at all the weird conversion factors... 12, 3 are fine, but 220? It's not even divisible by 3. A third of a mile is 2 furlongs, 146 yards, 2 feet (as you see, here the complex stuff comes in).

It doesn't matter though because people only use feet and inches anyway, everything else is just too long to guestimate with your arms and eyes, and only uber geeks go around with pocket measuring tape.

But, if you really want to be nitpicky about how big, big things are, then you can measure in "dozenfeet". Hmm, maybe we can make that a new naming convention by putting the word for "dozen" in another language in front of the suffix "feet", as the new name for inches. I pick french, so "douzainefeet".

And then for even larger and smaller numbers, we can use "dozen^2feet" for 144 feet and "douzaine^2feet" for 144ths of a foot, and so on.

And now that I think about it, maybe feet are too small, so lets base this system off of yards. Because like a man is 2 yards tall and such.

This improved system will be called the New Imperial System (except in the UK where it will be refered to as the American system, about which we will complain on the grounds that it is not what we call it). And then we will appear on internet forums and demand that metric system countries dump their arithmetically dumbass system and adopt ours, regardless of the massive restucturing and crazy conversion ratios when dealing with legacy machinery parts, entire road systems and real estate divisions.

The metric system on the other hand elimiates the need for calculation for ANY conversion, as all you have to do is shift the comma or add zeros.

We could combine the advantage of both by using a 12-based number system. For this we need two more symbols, let's call them A (of value 10) and B (of value 11). We then get, for example:

5 * 5 = 21
170 / 3 = 64
190 / 3 = 70
350 / 6 = 6A

In this system, you can divide anything that ends with a zero by 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12. If you have two trailing zeros, you can divide by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 16, 18, 24, 36, 48, 72 and 144. So you would get the advantages of the metric system - no conversions - AND the advantage of the imperial system - dividing by 3.

That's pretty good, but I think it is just too much of a jump relative to the system I proposed above.

Of course, you lose the ability to divide by five, just like you can't divide a yard by five.

Three and four are both smaller than five, thus more basic and important.

BTW, in the decimal system, you have an easy representation for infinitely long decimal fractions, but this forum is too American to support it. Instead of 0.333333333333..., you'd write 0.3 and make a bar above the 3. However, it gets messy when dealing with 7ths, 13ths, 17ths, 19ths, etc.

And, if you added Strike-Out as well, then combined with Underline and the "|" and "/" we'd have good Ogham support. Unfortunately almost everyone here is German, so they'd probably demand better Runic support as a consequence.

"And, if you added Strike-Out as well, then combined with Underline and the "|" and "/" we'd have good Ogham support. Unfortunately almost everyone here is German, so they'd probably demand better Runic support as a consequence."

There is no better example of typical American ignorance.

1. It's not ME who made up this overline convention, it is a standard mathematical notation. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_decimal

2. The only German thing this forum "needs" to support is the letters ÄÖÜäöüß and the € sign, and that - as you see - already works. Nobody here uses the Runic alphabet.

divVerent wrote:"And, if you added Strike-Out as well, then combined with Underline and the "|" and "/" we'd have good Ogham support. Unfortunately almost everyone here is German, so they'd probably demand better Runic support as a consequence."

There is no better example of typical American ignorance.

1. It's not ME who made up this overline convention, it is a standard mathematical notation. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_decimal

Hmm, it is almost as if this overline convention was created to replace our fractions system, a "phase two" if you will, to follow on the heels of the metric system's planned domination. Still, its lack of irrational number support makes it of questionable usefulness, especially when we already have underlining and estimation.

Nobody here uses the Runic alphabet.

Neither do we use the Ogham alphabet and yet that doesn't make it anyless important.

Can german be written in the runic alphabet? I thought that was a nordic thing of the norse, svvedish, svedka vodka, and such of that naturem.

tundramagi wrote:Can german be written in the runic alphabet? I thought that was a nordic thing of the norse, svvedish, svedka vodka, and such of that naturem.

Bah, you might be right. English originally used Runic before it switched to the Latin alphabet, but English is closer to the languages you mention than it is to German. However I thought the lead theory of Runic's origin was that it was derived from the Greek alphabet, so if it had traveled over land, it would have had to pass over the region to get to Scandinavia and thereabouts.


Anyway, putting the jokes aside for a moment, here's a serious question- How much work would it be to move Nexuiz over to Meters instead of these crazy "Quake Units"? So if I imported a character model that was 2 units tall, in Nexuiz it would be 2 Meters tall?

I for one try to do the majority of my modeling to scale in Meters, so I was thinking it might be more functional if there was no conversion ratio.

Flying Steel wrote:How much work would it be to move Nexuiz over to Meters instead of these crazy "Quake Units"? So if I imported a character model that was 2 units tall, in Nexuiz it would be 2 Meters tall?

Because you can't figure out a conversion we should change the way the engine handles units. LOL


Don't quake units = inches? This might very from engine to engine, I'm not sure.

Game units in quake are the same as those in DOOM - eight quake units = one foot. One quake unit = one and a half inches.

[-z-] wrote:Because you can't figure out a conversion we should change the way the engine handles units. LOL

I know the conversion ratio and I didn't say we should change anything. I just asked a question based on the topic of this thread of using SI for measurements.

Don't quake units = inches? This might very from engine to engine, I'm not sure.

Definitely possible, that would make the player hitboxes 5'9", which is a pretty average male height in today's world.

With this in mind then, I think we would have to convert the entire game over to SI or we can just leave it alone with these inches and pounds. It would only be confusing to go half way.

Taiyo.uk wrote:Game units in quake are the same as those in DOOM - eight quake units = one foot. One quake unit = one and a half inches.

That would make the player hitboxes over eight and a half feet tall. That seems too much.

Flying Steel wrote:Burma

A nation so secretive that it neither confirms or denies allegiance to any particular system of measurement but all of it's official measurements from people who've been there are in metric.

Flying Steel wrote:Alaska

Like you said, geography is not your strong point. Alaska is part of the US.

Flying Steel wrote:Antarctica.

Not a country and divided up into territories for many countries although approximately 90 degrees of it is unclaimed if you (or better still, Mike) want it. There are approximately 800 scientists posted there, almost all from metric countries and as scientists they will work in metric.

So that leaves you on your own.

Could we have the forum in Deutscheschrift perhaps?

As for quake units, they were set at 1" by id however they are entirely arbitary and Nexuiz uses a different scale with maps having to be scaled up ~50% to work well in Nexuiz. I always consider quake units to be 40mm in Nexuiz as that means that a 1024 is roughly 40 metres so works well for a big room and 2048 is 80 metres which is a good size for map dimensions.

Flying Steel wrote:Anyway, putting the jokes aside for a moment, here's a serious question- How much work would it be to move Nexuiz over to Meters instead of these crazy "Quake Units"? So if I imported a character model that was 2 units tall, in Nexuiz it would be 2 Meters tall?

I for one try to do the majority of my modeling to scale in Meters, so I was thinking it might be more functional if there was no conversion ratio.

Doing this will break ALL existing content, and all current cvar settings. Forget it.

Just stick with qu, and you may use 40 qu = 1 meter as conversion identity (just like many export scripts already do).

Ed wrote:

Flying Steel wrote:t;]Alaska

Like you said, geography is not your strong point. Alaska is part of the US.

Oh come on man, snap out of it. Can you seriously not recognize a joke when you see one?

So that leaves you on your own.

I am game for switching to SI anytime, would prefer it in fact. I was essentially raised on the stuff thanks to various American scifi games set in the future, as well as American elementary school experience.

I'm thinking the reason we haven't switched is because the whole of the country and its machinery is layed out in english imperial units. I promise we'll make the jump though once our economy totally goes to shit.

Any suggestions about what we should do about burma though?

As for quake units, they were set at 1" by id however they are entirely arbitary.

No they're not, player model use quake units, I'm sure the same is true for weapon models and physics settings as well.

But what is truely arbitrary are the "lbs" weight ratings given in the "stats" for the different player model characters, that have absolutely no effect in the game whatsoever.

divVerent wrote:

Flying Steel wrote:Anyway, putting the jokes aside for a moment, here's a serious question- How much work would it be to move Nexuiz over to Meters instead of these crazy "Quake Units"? So if I imported a character model that was 2 units tall, in Nexuiz it would be 2 Meters tall?

I for one try to do the majority of my modeling to scale in Meters, so I was thinking it might be more functional if there was no conversion ratio.

Doing this will break ALL existing content, and all current cvar settings. Forget it.

Exactly as I thought; so that's why we should just stick with this english imperial system for Nexuiz- because it is saturated in the stuff. I mean, maybe it'd be better if the game was in C++ too, but it isn't worth the eons of labor to make that happen.

Just stick with qu, and you may use 40 qu = 1 meter as conversion identity (just like many export scripts already do).

And players can use 2 lbs ~ 1 kg. Only off by 10%, that's plenty good enough for a totally arbitrary value.

Let's say that DP often uses nudges by stuff like 1/32 qu for tracing. Changing that will break Quake.

Only thing that would be POSSIBLE is using a 100qu = 1m identity, as that's just a 2.5x factor.

As for the lbs - yes, change these to kg, but also think whether these values actually match the player models...

Armored Carni - 107kg
Carni (non armored) - 107kg (so the armor weighs nothing)
Fricka - 57kg, but seriously looks heavier than that
Grunt - 170kg
Headhunter - 115kg
Heroine - 50kg (she's too ugly for 50kg, though)
Insurrectionist - 87kg
Lurk - 84kg
Lycanthrope - 106kg
Marine - 92kg (heavier than Insurrectionist?!?)
Mulder, Nexus, Xolar - 282kg
Pyria - 56kg
Quark - 138kg
Reptile - 80kg
Shock - 65kg
Skadi - 52kg
Specop - 61kg

In the end, however, the qu scale does not need to be exposed to the modelling app. Many blender exporters apply a 40x scale so you can work in meters. Just use such an exporter, and stop complaining.

Flying Steel wrote:... player model use quake units ...

Model scale is completely irrelevant to qu, only the bounding box is defined in qu, the model is scaled visually.

Quake units were defined in terms of a ft. as a base unit, because 12 qu = 1" is not a power of two. It could possibly have either been rounded to 8 or 16, I'll assume 8 was chosen for its compactness in an 8-bit environment.

However, due to its origin, Nexuiz uses Halflife units, which are about 1 inch.

This is actually a Good Thing, as SMD exporters - and all player models must become a SMD at one point in their life so they can be converted to DPM or ZYM in a later step - tend to assume Halflife's scale, and in case of the Blender SMD exporters, they tend to multiply all coordinates by 40 for that reason.

Anyway, here are the conversion factors:
1 lbs = 0.45359237 kg
1 ft = 0.30480 m
1 mi (statute) = 1.609344 km

And the each model's weight (in kilograms, rounded):
Marine - 93
Mulder - 282
Nexus - 282
Pyria - 57
Quark - 138
Reptile - 80
Shock Trouper - 66
Skadi - 52
Precop - 61
Xolar - 282
Carni - 107
Armored Carni - 107
Fricka - 57
Grunt - 170
Headhunter - 115
Heroine - 50
Insurrectionist - 87
Lurk - 84
Lycanthrope - 106

Mr. Bougo wrote:http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/06/25/nasa-it-would-cost-370-million-dollars-to-conver-to-metric

Also, I find this a bit ridiculous to call Americans "fucktards" because of the metric system they were taught to use. What the hell, people? Are Europeans moronic dumbasses because they don't even try measuring temperatures on the Kelvin scale, which is SI thus optimal for any kind of use?

Sure, the system itself seems dumb, but why would it be dumb to use it? What's the advantage for most americans to switch to SI units?

I don't think it is very convenient when:
12 inches = 1 foot
3 feet = 1 yard
220 yards = 1 furlong
8 furlongs = 1 mile
3 miles = 1 league

Perhaps this one is more convenient:
10 mm = 1 cm
100 cm = 1 m
1000 m = 1 km

BTW not in topic but 2 facts: 1 AU = 149.6 * 10^6 km and c = 299 792 458 m/s

divVerent wrote:Let's say that DP often uses nudges by stuff like 1/32 qu for tracing. Changing that will break Quake.

I don't think you've understood me, I'm for keeping everything the same (english imperial) unless any of the folks in this thread who feel so strongly about using SI, do the work of making the total conversion themselves. I'm fine with SI, in fact I prefer it, but wasting precious development resources on such a pointless conversion don't seem to make sense to me at this time.

Especially since the game's very name is more confusing than english imperial units. The spelling doesn't match the pronunciation in any language, unless I am very mistaken.

Only thing that would be POSSIBLE is using a 100qu = 1m identity, as that's just a 2.5x factor.

But would it really be worth the effort it would take?

This statement:

TVR wrote:Model scale is completely irrelevant to qu,

Conflicts with this statement:

only the bounding box is defined in qu, the model is scaled visually.

Why do you think so few pros use Nexus, Xolar and Mulder?

When the models do not fit the standard hitbox dimensions, they are imbalanced. The visual models must fit the hitbox in a consistent way, otherwise seeing and hitting them and hiding around corners becomes different from one model to the next.

Flying Steel wrote:

divVerent wrote:Let's say that DP often uses nudges by stuff like 1/32 qu for tracing. Changing that will break Quake.

I don't think you've understood me, I'm for keeping everything the same (english imperial) unless any of the folks in this thread who feel so strongly about using SI, do the work of making the total conversion themselves. I'm fine with SI, in fact I prefer it, but wasting precious development resources on such a pointless conversion don't seem to make sense to me at this time.

Especially since the game's very name is more confusing than english imperial units. The spelling doesn't match the pronunciation in any language, unless I am very mistaken.

Only thing that would be POSSIBLE is using a 100qu = 1m identity, as that's just a 2.5x factor.

But would it really be worth the effort it would take?

+10000000

Flying Steel wrote:... Why do you think so few pros use Nexus, Xolar and Mulder? ...

Obviously because the fullbright model is already Nexus.zym.

Flying Steel wrote:... becomes different from one model to the next ...

Entity cull operations are performed on the bounding box, not the player model.

Besides, its irrelevant as all current match servers always force the default fullbright Nexus model.

TVR [Public Terminal] wrote:

Flying Steel wrote:... Why do you think so few pros use Nexus, Xolar and Mulder? ...

Obviously because the fullbright model is already Nexus.zym.

Fullbright is the exception not the norm. And whenever the server offers the choice (which is almost all of the time), players often go for smaller player models so that they are less obvious.

Entity cull operations are performed on the bounding box, not the player model.

The visual models must fit the hitbox in a fairly consistent way, otherwise seeing and visually targeting them and hiding around corners becomes different from one model to the next.

Besides, its irrelevant as all current match servers always force the default fullbright Nexus model.

So what?

Flying Steel wrote:... players often go for smaller player models so that they are less obvious ...

This is an incredibly marginalized on a pub DM of an arena shooter.

Flying Steel wrote:... otherwise seeing and visually targeting them and hiding around corners becomes different from one model to the next. ...

Entity cull causes all models to appear at the same time from around corners, because the LOS trace is performed on the bb, not playermodel.

Flying Steel wrote:... So what? ...

All aspects of playermodels that could possibly influence a competitive match are abstracted out.

Pubs will always supply a variety of playermodels, as the insignificant differences in all of the player models do not outweigh the aspect of visual variety.

IMO it is not necessary to convert the whole DarkPlaces engine to SI. It will be just a waste of time. Just the externals (the front-ends) have to be converted to SI.

SkyBon wrote:Just the externals (the front-ends) have to be converted to SI.

Which part of the front-end, exactly?

Flying Steel wrote:

SkyBon wrote:Just the externals (the front-ends) have to be converted to SI.

Which part of the front-end, exactly?

For example the mass of each model at the player settings screen.

P. S. 1 meter ≈ 26.25 qu