Blog Posts

Bostonography Final Project

by | Apr 5, 2023 | | 0 Comments

For this project, I followed the computational approach. Gathering data on the development of public transportation in Boston as the city grew and reclaimed land. Using historic maps scraped from atlascope and other sources as the base image to project onto the scene, then overlaying the public transportation networks onto the image.

Using Unity Engine to generate the visualization, using data to show animations with the rough frequency of the transportation. There are two sliders: time speed and year. Moving the year slider will change the map displayed and update the transportation visualization to show the correct transportation networks for that year.

How has Boston’s reclaimed land affected the development of public transport?

In this project, we are investigating how all of the newly reclaimed land that makes up some of Boston’s most famous neighborhoods, like Seaport, have affected the development of Boston MBTA over the last 130 years.

1882

At this time there were no lines currently built in Boston but the start of what would become the Green Line was starting to be built.

1890

The Green Line (what would become the C Line) was opened for public use. The original track was opened in 1888 from Coolidge Corner to Massachusetts Ave and an extension was opened from Cleveland Circle to Coolidge Corner in 1889.

1900

Massive progress was made in a decade with Green Line now looking similar to the Line we know today. 1891, 1896, 1896, and 1898 saw the opening of the Green Line E, Green Line A, Green Line B, and the main downtown line respectively. All of these lines lie on existing land that has not been reclaimed. The main downtown line was the first tunnel line built for the MBTA. There were also extensions to both the A and B branch in 1898 and 1900. These lines were built to bring commuters in established communities like Brookline into the growing Downtown district.

1912

During the gap between 1900 and 1912, we saw the first new lines opened with the creation of the Orange and Blue lines. The Orange Line was opened in 1901 Sullivan Sq to Dudley Sq with several extensions throughout the coming years with extensions in 1901 and 1909. Noticeable is the downtown Orange Line Loop that we no longer see today. Blue Line was dug under the harbor, opening in 1904, linking together downtown Boston and the large docks of East Boston. As well as an extension of the Green Line’s E branch that was extended to Forest Hills.

2021 – 2022

Jumping to the modern day we see the MBTA that we are used to now as Bostonians. Noticeable changes are the creation of the Red Line (1912), linking together the thriving Cambridge neighborhoods and areas south of the Charles River such as South Boston and Dorchester. The Blue Line continued to expand deep into east Boston, extending out to Revere. The Orange Line Loop was closed and the main line was expanded out to Malden, linking more growing neighborhoods to Downtown Boston. This also solves the mystery of the missing A branch on the Green Line on modern MBTA maps, the line closed in 1969 and was replaced by 57 buses.

How does this answer our question?

Noticeable about these new lines and the expansions is that none use an extensive amount of reclaimed land. Despite some of these areas being some of the fastest growing by population. The cost and risk of digging in these areas seem to outweigh the benefits. Seaport is a good case study in this, over the last 20 years it has seen dramatic growth from the creation of new land, and has attempted to build tunnels with the Courthouse stop. This is an underground bus station, opened in 2004, to serve the Seaport area. There is currently work being done on the station for the last year to try to counteract the flooding that the station regularly experiences.

Sources

Networking

by | Oct 11, 2017 | | 0 Comments

 

For the networking for Realm of Mankind we have decided to go for a throwback to how it used to be in the late 90s, early 2000s with the likes of Doom and Age of Empires II. The method is simultaneous deterministic lockstep simulation. The basic principle is that the game engine and AI should be deterministic, meaning that if give the same exact input it should produce the exact same results. This means that all the networking has to do is give the clients the same inputs and they should all produce the same results meaning that there is no need to sync anything else.

To do this we need a way to make sure that they all process the inputs at the same time, as some computers will be slower or on a slower network, this is where lockstep comes into play. Lockstep is a structure which all aspects of the simulation work with, it splits the game into turns which is where the game wait till it has received the new commands before it can continue. This means that all users receive the inputs at the same time in the game.

Another benefit of this system is the ability to recreate a replay system very quickly. If all the commands are saved in a database then all the game has to do in order to replay it is to run the game and renter the inputs for the database at the correct time. With the AI, also being deterministic it would simply play the game as if it was a real game rather than a replay and it should produce the exact same results!

The beauty of this system is that very little information has to be sent to each client meaning that it does not require an expensive server system, which as a small company we simply would not be able to afford, in order for users to get a smooth multiplayer experience for our users.

Pathfinding Demo

by | Jan 11, 2017 | | 0 Comments

 

Please try out our Pathfinding Example project

H: Generates a hexagon graph
D: Destroys current graph
B: Starts a Breadth First Search
J: Runs Dijkstra’s algorithm
T: Traces path after BFS is complete
A: Runs A* algorithm
Clicking on a Hexagon changes its movment cost as follows:
– White = 1
– Pink = 4
– Yellow = 10
– Black = impassable