![]() While by no means comprehensive, I’ve been spending the last few days digging through the lineup, playing demos, and adding them to my to-play list. That’s where round-ups like these come in. Or to stumble upon something you didn’t expect. With so many demos available, though, it can be a bit daunting to find exactly what you might like. It’s a great time for developers to show off what they’ve been working on, put more eyes on their Steam store pages, and accrue some coveted Wishlist additions. There are actually hundreds of free, playable game demos on the platform right now from October 3 through 10. All rights reserved.Valve is hosting the October Steam Next Fest right now, full of demos, livestreams, and more about games coming to the Steam platform. Here's an example of what it should look like:Īll content (c) 2001-2006 Gray/Guilderoy. To further reduce the cost of a truss bridge, the following technique can be very useful: Basically, if you have a bridge consisting of a row of triangles running over the deck (or under the deck), try 'pinching' the whole row - move the upper pairs of joints (or the lower ones) to the middle plane. Here's a hint on how you can improve this situation: build a short vertical light steel beam on that joint! Somehow, the stress gets spread to the additional links, and overall, the bridge gets stronger, so you get a nice working bridge without having to rearrange the whole structure. Sometimes, you're just a bit away from having a 100% stable bridge, but some of those tiny links a 'joint' cube consists of break every time. ![]() An advanced player will try to make his bridges as strong as possible, so that not a single link breaks under the load. Test your bridge - most of the time, it will work as well as before. Now just remove the crossbeams and return to the front plane (press 'F'). To do this, switch to complex mode and go to the center plane (if you don't know how to do this, just press 'R' in complex mode). Another way to make your bridge cheaper is to remove the crossbeams connecting the front and back planes of your bridge. ![]() Be warned though - shorter beams are weaker, so don't make them too short! Shortening a couple of heavy steel beams just a little bit can save quite a lot of money that you can use to improve some other parts of your bridge. To reduce the cost of your bridge, try shortening some of the beams - especially the ones that don't get under much stress during the test runs. As you've probably noticed, Pontifex calculates each beam's cost according to material type and length - so, unlike Bridge Builder, longer beams cost more. This way, however, the train has to go through the cable links, so it might be considered 'unrealistic'/'dirty', so I wouldn't generally recommend this to everyone. If you're desperate, try also using the following method (or any combination of the two): You can't attach a cable to the side of a single deck piece, but you can do it with two adjacent ones - like this: To optimize your bridge, try using a pair of cables running alongside of the deck to reinforce it against tension. A hint for building cable-stayed bridges: This type of bridges mostly has to sustain tension (blue stress display color). In fact, most good Pontifex bridges have some cables in them. You'll notice that a bridge doesn't necessarily have to be built completely of steel. Check whether your bridge has any beams that turn blue as the train passes, without any shades of red (red is compression). The stress display color for tension is blue by default. The only problem with cables is that they can only withstand tension (or 'pull'), not compression ('push'). ![]() Always use cable if you can - it's the cheapest material and its unlimited length make it incredibly versatile. Learn to use the advantages of the different steel types.Ģ. On the other hand, sometimes you can replace a huge heap of light steel with just one heavy steel beam - because of it's tremendous stability. Obviuosly, since heavy steel is extremely expensive, always try to replace it with light steel (even if you need up to 3x as much light steel for the replacement structure!), you'll save lots of money. The material strength doubles on each step: light steel -> deck -> cable -> heavy steel.ġ. For a 8 HD grid unit piece, they are as follows:ĭeck: $1250 (normally, symmetry doubles this to $2500) Having trouble building a certain bridge with the given budget? Let's take a look at the different material prices and strengths. Switch planes with the R and F keys, make use of the center plane! Use the complex editing mode! it gives you much more control over your bridge. Read the FAQ / Readme / Manual / Forum! Feel free to Submit any bridge building hints you may have.Īll the strategies from the Bridge Builder tips section apply to Pontifex as well! This section is for sharing knowledge and wisdom between fellow Pontifex players.
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