The n00bs guide to SodaPlay (and SodaRace)

UT

2010-07-04T12:17:00.001-07:00

He can't read. Lol.

Roflupdate

2009-03-20T15:03:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm still banned from Sodaplay. Can't say I'm surprised. Wish I could go back, but I doubt they'd let me.

Ah well.

-D3

Ps. Probably going to delete this... might want to archive this readers.

Getting SC1

2008-06-26T06:22:00.001-07:00

Hey All,

Lots of users have been looking to use the old Soda application, so I´ll post a quick guide on how to get it here.

(found on http://sodaplay.dailyforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=509 )

Thanks to Edlinfan.

These .JNLP files will launch the old, SCI-era Constructor and Racer.
Official Versions (by soda)

Online
http://archive.sodaplay.com/constructor/beta/applet.htm

Downloadable

See this post.Sodaplay's old site is also accessible, here.

Downloadable Versions (by me)

http://boxstr.com/files/2160605_nsn9d/racer_mirror.jnlp http://boxstr.com/files/2160606_yddmr/c ... r_elf.jnlp

Racer.jar was graciously supplied by Jacob.

Embedded Version

Javascript_Freek has embedded the Sodaconstructor in a web page! You can't save models, but it's still ridiculously cool!

Now you can get your serving of Old Sodaconstructor without downloading anything.Link.Here are some more that should work.

More Downloadable Versions

Constructor (not really a file, but instructions on how to modify your own constructor.jnlp)

Constructor (Steeler's version) -- copy&paste this into notepad and save as constructor-steeler.jnlp
Constructor, mirrored by Javascript
Now that the files for the racer are found, I suggest that you guys mirror them as much as possible. My host is less than reliable.

Jargon

2007-12-30T05:51:00.001-08:00

Amoeba: A model that rolls due to timed deformation.
Constructor: One who uses the Soda Constructor applet.
Flex loop: A zip "polygon" stretched out with normal springs.
Mass: A dot found at each end of a spring.
Model: A device made using Soda Constructor.
Motor: Self-contained muscle structure that can power an entire model.
Linear Motor: A motor that has all the masses in one straight line.
Muscle: A spring that will expand and contract at certain timing.
SC: Soda Constructor applet.
SCII: Soda Constructor Two applet. Coming out in a few months.
Soda Constructor Beta: A updated version of SodaConstructor 1 (now offline) Sodaplaycentral : A site that Lectvay created. No longer updated, but has some useful tutorials.
Sodazoo: A large collection of models made by people.
Spring: A line connecting two masses together.
Tension Spring: A three-mass zip chain with a normal spring connecting the first and last masses.
Walker: A model in the sodaplay applet that appears to be walking.
Zip Spring: A spring that is 0 pixels long
Zip Chain: A chain of zip springs
Warptera: One of the greatest constructors on the entire sodaplay server. He has been largely inactive on the Sodaplay Forums recently.
Kevino: One of the greatest constructors around. Unfortunately he is not on the Sodaplay Forums anymore.
Rollercoasters: A new type of "art" that's made with fixed-bar springs.
Fixed Bar Springs: Unmoving springs that masses collide with.
K: The constant from Hookes Law governing the stiffness setting for springs.
G: Gravity in the sodaplay applet.
F: Friction within the sodaplay applet.
Golden Age: A time when the sodaconstructor was thriving and many great constructors were around.
Wave: The wave within the sodaplay applet that controls muscles. Direction, speed, and amplitude can be changed.
Free Mass Bar Springs: A feature to come out in the SCII applet, moving springs that masses collide with.
Fixed Mass: A type of mass with a fixed position.
Beta: The "beta" version of the Soda Constructor Two applet.

NGTSRASP is now global stickied!

2007-12-20T02:14:00.000-08:00

Check it out!

http://sodaplay.dailyforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=284

With luck, this will mean that a lot less spam and bad models reach Soda in the future!

-D3

Forum FAQ

2007-12-19T15:18:00.001-08:00

Forum FAQ
By Doom3r

GENERAL
Q. Where can I read the rules?
A. http://sodaplay.dailyforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15

Q. What is spam?
A. I define spam as pointless messages, clones of other threads, pointless threads (ie. "Hi everybody lawl I'm a noob"-esque threads), advertising and so on.

Q. What should I do if I see spam on the forums.
A. PM a mod. If you want, you can then spam up the user's inbox and flame them like hell. It's against the rules, but it's fun.

Q. I just saw an advert for free neopets/runescape/world of warcraft/hello kitty island adventure gold! Should I email my pass/username/extensive porno collection to the user?
A. What do you think? (if you thought that the answer was "yes", then you should be on a Naruto forum or something like that)

Q. Some guy just flamed me for nawt spellin korrectly.
A. That's most likely me (D00M3R). If you do not spell correctly, use punctuation correctly or have bad grammar, I will flame you until you correct your grammar or your eyes detach from the mass amounts of gramatically correct English.
Q. Isn't that a bit harsh?
A. No.

USERS

Q. Who's Ed?
A. Ed created SodaConstructor and most of the other applications on the Soda site. He is your new God.

Q. Who's Jodie?
A. Jodie is the main mod of the forums. She will ban you if you break the rules too much. She helps to keep the forums constructive and is a model user.
Q. Who's Alex?
A. Alex is the creative director at Soda. He makes sure that you are happy with Soda. He deals with many of the problems that you have with the applications.

Q. Who's Tim?
A. Tim is the technical director at Soda. He makes sure that Constructor and the other applications don't recreate the events in War Games.

Q. Who's edlinfan?
A. The first community moderator. Edlinfan is one of the best (:P) constructors on the forums. He will correct your grammar if it is horrific and will ban you if your name has the words "Jewishgal" within it.

Q. Who's D00M3R?
A. The guy who created this guide (AKA: me). D3 (as he likes to be known) will flame you for the slightest spelling error or forgotten comma. Only join the forums if you can handle the fear of me crawling out of the computer and ripping out your internal organs... and a few external ones too.

TECHNICAL (not necessarily related to the forums)

Q. Why can't I launch the constructor?
A. It's most likely due to the fact that you need to update your version of java.

Q. Is there an account with the motors in it?
A. Yes. Here are two of the biggest.
http://sodaplay.com/creators/motors
http://sodaplay.com/creators/other_motors

Q. How do I post my models on the forum?
A. http://sodaplay.com/creators/USERNAME/items/MODELNAME (just substitute your username and modelname where needed).

Q. How do you use an .java applet in html?
A. With the Java compiler.

Hope that this helps all of you newbies on Soda!

-D3

Constructor Guide (By Edlinfan)

2007-12-19T15:03:00.000-08:00

Constructor Guide

(found at http://sodaplay.dailyforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=278)

By Edlinfan

During this guide I will talk about "Free masses" and "Fixed masses". Free masses are the moving, round dots, which are used to build your model. Fixed masses are stationary, square dots, which can only be moved by clicking and dragging. They are useful for scenery. Sodaplay now has three modes, which are accessible through three buttons at the upper-right corner of the window.

Select/Move: This mode is selected by default when Sodaplay starts. It allows you to pick up and drag models around, and also to select springs and masses to copy and paste. If you click on empty space and drag, you will draw a box and select everything inside. If a line is selected, you can change its length using a textbox on the right side of the screen.

Construct: Used for construction. Click to place a mass, click again to place another mass connected to the first by a line. If you keep clicking, you will create more and more connected masses. Right-click to deselect and create a disconnected mass. Not much has changed here. You can't move anything in construct mode: you must switch back to Select/Move mode first.

Delete: This is only used for deletion. Click on a line to delete it; click on a mass to delete it and any lines that are connected to it.On the upper-left portion of the screen are two buttons marked "Run" and "Stop". "Stop" freezes the action like the old Construct mode, which is useful for examining your model in detail.

The upper-right corner contains a box that holds various settings, depending on what mode you are in. (Select/Move, Construct, or Delete). Most of these settings are self-explanatory, except for those in Construct Mode. In this mode, there are several checkboxes in there.

---Fix new masses to screen: These will create fixed masses, which are square and don't move unless you drag them about by hand.

---Make new springs solid: This box is only available if you are creating fixed masses. It lets you make solid lines, so that free masses will bounce away from them instead of passing through.

---Connect springs with masses: This box is not very useful. Make sure it is checked, or the masses you build won't be connected by lines. Right-click on the model area if you don't want to connect the mass you just built with any more masses.

You can adjust physics and muscles with the tabbed box in the bottom-right corner. It's a little tougher than the old constructor, but mostly self-explanatory. The gravity bar will give reverse gravity if you drag to the left, and normal gravity to the right.The wave bar, which used to be on the left side of the screen, is now on the bottom, and is laid out horizontally instead of vertically. It is nearly the same as in the old constructor. If the muscles' dots are close to the center of the wave, their corresponding muscles will expand and contract less widely. If they are at the edges, the muscles will move further. I honestly don't know if there is any different between the top and bottom edge of the wave; I don't think there is.

Menus are at the top of the screen.
File menu lets you log in or out and load or save models.
Tools contains an entry which lets you view the model's code, which is useful for some advanced tricks.
Edit contains the long-awaited Cut/Copy/Paste, which function as in any program, allowing you to duplicate parts of your model.

Best wishes and I hope you find this post useful.

^E

Amoebae Guide from sodaplaycentral

2007-12-19T14:49:00.000-08:00

Tutorial on Amoebas
by lonelyswedish (found on http://web.archive.org/web/20050207085157/www.sodaplaycentral.com/articles/amoebas.php)

I've noticed during my time on the sodarace forums that one of the most frequently asked questions by new constructors lies along the lines of how to make a wheel or an amoeba. Numerous explanations have been offered up in the past, some good, some poor. In most cases, however, I've noticed that the explanation seems to leave some questions unanswered, as the constructor asking seems to still have problems with the finished creation.
For convenience and for future reference, I've decided to make a tutorial, with examples, explaining step-by-step how to make amoebas.
The first step to creating an amoeba is to create a ring of masses. The easiest numbers of masses to use are those divisible by 4, since the divisions on the wave bar are already set 1/4 phase apart (the necessity of muscle divisions here will be explained later). You can make the ring with either zip-springs or normal length springs (see Advanced Structure Tips for an explanation of zip-springs). For this tutorial, I will be using an 8-mass ring of zip-springs (open the model in construct mode to see the shape before it collapses):

From here, there are several different directions you can take.
Type 1
The first option (for the purposes of this tutorial, I will call this a 'Type 1' amoeba) is to make an amoeba with a flex-chain around the outside. This is preferable if you want your creation to be able to stand up to high amounts of gravity. In order to do this, you will need to first make a guideline (explanation here). Then, using the guideline, connect each mass in the ring to its second neighbor:

In this example, you may notice that the internal springs are shorter than the guideline. This is because the outer springs are the zipsprings from the first example. They try to contract in on the inner springs, contracting them to a smaller length. This causes a tense structure which, although somewhat flexible, retains its shape very well.
The next step for a type 1 amoeba is to connect each mass with the mass directly across from it. The length of line used doesn't really matter that much, as long as they are all the same. If you use a long line, your amoeba will be larger. Smaller lines mean smaller amoebas. Zip springs, in this case, will not work.

(if you want to make an amoeba with an odd number of masses you will need to make a type of star shape, the number of points being dependent upon the number of masses. This is somewhat more complicated, and will not be explained here)
After this comes muscle placement. The springs crossing the center that you made in the previous step will be your muscles. Muscles should be placed with even spacing across the wave bar. For my example, which has 4 muscles, each muscle goes on one of the quarter divisions, making each 1/4 out of phase with the next. If you had a 10-mass amoeba, for example, you would need to determine the spacing so that the distance between muscles was 1/5 phase.
In order to get all the muscles in the right order, simply choose one to start with, and place it on the muscle wave above the bottom at whatever interval you will be using. Then proceed around the wheel, placing each muscle the same distance above the previous one. When you're finished, you should have an even distribution across the wave:

The last step is simply to delete your guideline and tune the settings of your model so that it operates how you want. This is a pretty subjective process, so I won't say much about it here, except that most type 1 amoebas operate the best with high k, fairly low f, moderate to high g, fairly high wave amplitude, and moderate wave speed. This is all pretty variable though, so you can do pretty much whatever you want with it.

Type 2
The first step for a type 2 amoeba is the same as for type 1 amoeba.

For the second step, simply connect each mass to the mass opposite it in the chain with a length designated by a guideline:

Step 3 for this type is muscle placement. Follow the same pattern as described in the type 1 amoeba explanation.

And, same as before, the final step is just tuning the model to your standards. Keep in mind that, because this model has no 'external' supports, as type 1 amoebas do, it cannot resist as much gravitational force and probably won't be able to travel as quickly.

Type 3
This is the type of amoeba you will need to create if you want to use it as a wheel in a larger model, such as a car. It's useful for this purpose because it has a center point which can be used to attach the wheel to the larger model, or to another wheel, or whatever you want to stick it to.
Again, the first step is the same as in the previous types:

The second step here is also the same as the second step for a type 1 amoeba:

The third step is where it begins to differ. For this, you will need to decrease the length of the guideline used to a bit less than half the diameter of the circle created in step 2. Then, create a new mass and connect each mass in the ring to it using the guideline. When you're finished, you should have a mass in the center with spokes radiating outward towards the masses in the ring:

The fourth step here is muscle placement. A simple way to look at this is to treat each opposing pair of spokes as 1 muscle, then proceed as in the previous examples. Pick a spring to start with, and place it appropriately spaced from the bottom of the muscle bar, then put the one directly across from it in the same place. Again, continue around placing each successive spring the same distance apart, and putting the one opposite it in the same place.

The last step here, as before, is tuning. This type, like type 1, is pretty strong and can easily withstand high g and high speed.