curve maths (depreciating gain) and custom timer

[SolarB]

Hi,

I want to have a counter that increases/decreases it's speed based on the value of another counter. I'm using a custom timer to achieve this.

So far I have a working example but I would like a gentler curve for the increase. Right now (I think) it's exponential but I would like something like a quadratic or sin movement (without the downturn) so that it never hits a wall but the speed increases quite a bit (but not as much as I have it now) at the start then gradually increases less and less as the counter goes up.

I'm trying to make a game where the player stats are unlimited but the gain from them decreases as they add more (to infinity). Also the higher a certain stat the faster points can be accumulated.

Another issue is that the custom timer is a little jerky at lower speeds, any idea why? Would this be fixed by a better equation?

My maths is awful so I would greatly appreciate any help here.

Cheers!


Example:

countspeed.mfa

[Eliyahu]

Try Atan() for a curve that starts off steep and levels off.

I personally like hyperbolic tangent, but it's not worth putting into MMF2.

[SolarB]

Thanks Eliyahu but I have no idea how to implement this. Again, my maths is terrible and I spent over 2 hours trying to figure out the exponential one (if that's even what I have going).

If you could show me how to do this for stats/custom timer I would be most grateful.

[SolarB]

Atan(value(counter) only gives me values from 45-89. How do I use this? Can I set a range (like - operate on a scale btw 1-100 or 1000?)

Help!

[RhysD]

Thanks for the mfa btw! I was looking for a way to measure distance in my endless runner game mode

[SolarB]

No probs RhysD.

Can anyone help with the question?

[AyreGuitar]

SolarB - Atan stands for arctangent, a trigonometry function that returns an angle. It's the opposite of the Tangent function (Tan) which takes an angle and returns a value that is the ratio of 2 sides of a right angled triangle. you can find out more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigonometry

If you give it values from 1-infinity, it will return values from 45-90 degrees. This is because Tan(45)=1 and Tan(90)=infinity (Tan(0)=0 by the way, and anything from 0-44 will give you a value <1)

To convert this into another range, first find the difference in your original range using (90-45=45.0) - we'll divide by this value to get a range from 0-1
Now we multiply by the desired range, eg (100-1=99), and add the desired lower range, eg 1

So to get a range of 1-100 from a counter that goes from 1-infinity, use:
99*((Atan(value(counter)-45)/45.0)+1

If you want a range from 3-1000 use:
997*((Atan(value(counter)-45)/45.0)+3

I used 45.0 to make sure that MMF2 uses floating point maths, rather than integer maths, so I can have decimal values like 0.01, 0.234, etc. rather than just whole numbers like 1, 2, 3 etc.

(BTW I haven't checked these in MMF2, but they should work )

[SolarB]

Thanks Ayre, but it still gave me some weird values so I changed it to ATan(value( "Counter" )/45.0) and for some reason it worked (Increments big from 1 then slows down approaching 100).