ANN Nine ball pool

Jim Hurley jhurley at infostations.com
Thu Mar 24 16:17:30 EST 2005


Klaus, Chipp, and Scott,

Thank you  for the kind words. Much appreciated coming from those who 
I have learned so much from and come to regard so highly over time.

I particularly enjoyed Scott's graphics additions. The billiard cloth 
is so realistic now that I feel I must take care on the break that I 
not tear into it.

And the balls are glorious; they never lose their luster. Can't 
imagine how that is done. (I shall have to see if I can't put some 
numbers on these new gems. It will be necessary for those who chose 
to play serious nine-ball; each ball sunk in proper order.)

But there is a lesson here, and that is that good graphics is worth a 
thousand lines of script.

Jim

P.S. I would also like to take this occasion to express my gratitude 
to Scott Raney of MC, and all those at Run Rev who have made this 
such a wonderful tool for exploration. I was astonished to find that 
Run Rev was able to handle the rather demanding requirements of this 
pool game. (On each step all the balls advance a distance 
proportional to their velocities and then must look to see if they 
have collided with any other ball. That is 136 inspections in 16 ball 
pool on *each* iteration--equal to the number of distinct hand shakes 
among 16 people. And then it must perform a significant bit of work 
to get the new velocities after collision. That this all happens in a 
reasonable time for each cycle is a prodigious feat for an 
interpreted language.)

So, hats off to MC and Run Rev for this tool.


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