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SvennoJ on 08 July 2023
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Today I put the physics engine to the test, putting all mine carts I could find around Death mountain into one long train. 25 carts total!

It took over an hour to get it all together, mainly because stuff kept running away. The physics engine operates in two different modes depending on how close you are to things. Probably using higher 'resolution' for things closer to you. The result, run away carts would speed up as I try to catch up with them, somehow losing friction. They don't all keep the same pace and with one engine on one side it kept breaking up with parts running away ahead. Which only got worse when trying to move up the train as then you get out of range, the engine stops splitting everything up further. Once it's out of view, the carts disappear, reset to their starting position.

So I settled on having battery powered engines on both ends, cancelling each other out. Start pushing on one side, walk all the way to the front and turn on the counter fan to stop or slow down when stuff starts separating.

I tried gluing it all together to see what happens. That breaks the physics engine as soon as you get to a corner. 'Snap to track' gets into a pissing contest with the rigidity and the whole thing turns into a Mexican jumping bean, making a ton of noise bouncing around and eventually getting catapulted off the track entirely. The double carts already don't make it through the switches, can only go straight.

The hard part was clearing the track from enemies while keeping the train together. Yonobo doesn't really work on a train, only programmed for single cart use. So I had to bring the thing to a halt over and over to clear it out myself, then when it was all clear

MF Blood moon lol. At least it didn't reset the train.

On to the real challenge, bringing it all up to the top!

Lifting all carts over to the side track then equipping the double cart at the back with 10 fans and all batteries I had, well all but 2 since I ran into the build limit. Can't add anymore.

Ready to go, except taking this picture removed the fans from the back :/

Thus I had to rebuild the back 5 fans again and for some reason had to remove 2 more batteries as the build limit shrunk?

Anyway onwards and upwards

10 fans isn't enough to get 25 carts up that ridiculously steep track, stalled here.

I manage to add 3 fans on another cart powered by my own battery, just enough to make it to the midway point

The back end kept lifting up, too much power lol. Carts kept trying to jump off track as well but the snap to track force was strong enough to sort of keep it together. And those poor bats got sucked into the engines :)

Mission accomplished, bit of a pile up at the front

(That cold resistance is left over food from Tutorial island, I didn't want to risk dying on the way up as that resets everything)

I shot an arrow at the caboose to turn the engine off to make it all race back down. However it separated too much and half the train had reset (disappeared) by the time the end made it down. Experiment over. I was thinking about seeing how much stuff it could transport but enough time 'wasted'.

Impressive that it works. However the bubble in which stuff stays is pretty small and the bubble where you get 'high res' physics even smaller. Plus frame rate wasn't pretty driving 25 carts around lol. But it did work! And the coolest thing was that it needed a little nudge to get into motion, just like a real train. Everything compressed together, one fan couldn't get it moving. Move the engine just a few feet back to give it a little bump and it slowly got up to speed. Which cam in handy for stopping. Turn on the braking fan, then walk 25 carts back again to turn off the engine fan and the thing got to a halt without reversing. Then add something on the track to keep it from rolling away while taking care of enemies.