csl512
csl512 t1_je37vun wrote
A chess set is designed to play chess. The game and the stuff are tightly tied to each other. Uno is a card game that uses a specific deck. A standard deck of cards can be used to play a lot of different games. New games can be made by making rules around that common deck of cards, like numbers go on the same number, or black goes on red.
The very first games were like chess games. To input controls and output the game state they had to write it from scratch because it didn't exist yet, both for text-based games and graphical games. Eventually instead of rewriting the entire game from scratch every time, developers made flexible systems that could take the parts that make their game unique and reuse common elements, like taking and interpreting input, managing the state of the game, etc.
Game engines are also used in text adventure games. You tell it what rooms there are, how they're connected, what objects are there, and what you can do with them.
As you get more complex and graphical, you start adding animations, images, sound, physics, and so forth.
csl512 t1_je35opv wrote
Reply to comment by Target880 in eli5: How did people build bridges over deep and/or dangerous water if they didn't have the equipment to go under water? by Internetscraperds9
Rope bridges can be started with a small line that carries across a slightly stronger line and so forth. https://www.englishclub.com/efl/podcasts/interesting-facts/kite-bridge/
csl512 t1_jdui3ma wrote
Reply to Eli5: If we had steam powered trains back in the day, why didn’t steam become a common “clean” energy source? Why did it die out? by melatonin1212
Steam isn't inherently clean. Your heat source largely determines how clean or not a method is. Heat engines are inherently inefficient, limited by Carnot's theorem which says the maximum efficiency depends on the temperature difference and the 'hot' side. 'Steam' locomotives were really coal locomotives. They also exhausted the steam, so they consumed both water and fuel.
Diesel engines use a liquid for fuel, so you don't need to shovel a solid coal into a firebox. The modern diesel-electric locomotive uses a diesel engine to turn a generator to make electricity to power motors. This takes advantage of the increased efficiency of a diesel internal combustion engine, and the fact that electric motors can be made more efficient and produce turning force (torque) at zero speed. (Internal combustion engines need to be rotating to produce the torque.) Electric locomotives receive electrical power, so they don't even need to carry their own fuel. If you don't need to accelerate the fuel around, that's even more efficient. Electricity can also be generated in ways that don't involve burning fuel, or with more efficient fuels. Plus for underground stuff you then don't have to worry about exhausting the combustion products or steam.
Really tangential to your original question, but combined cycle uses a gas turbine in tandem with a steam turbine for extra efficiency, so that's one way that electric trains are more efficient.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_Railroad says they use diesel oil in the firebox to make the steam.
You might want to search for things like 'timeline of train technology'. One of the top results was https://www.railway-technology.com/features/featuretracks-in-time-200-years-of-locomotive-technology-4517022/ which looks pretty good.
csl512 t1_jdeo7yj wrote
Reply to comment by Jon_Jraper in ELI5: How can songs be in a certain key? (And a few more questions about music) by Glum-Airport-4701
When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything
csl512 t1_jd43bj3 wrote
Reply to ELI5: Why do the majority of fonts in Microsoft Word have Indian/Middle Eastern names but show up as Roman characters in identical basic fonts? by black_rose_
You didn't specify OS or what languages you primarily type in, what language support you've installed, etc. But if your question is based on wanting to have only relevant fonts shown to you, there are ways in the OS to filter those or uninstall fonts you don't need.
csl512 t1_j6m5s3y wrote
Reply to comment by AutoModerator in [WP] Out of all the superpowers out there, you consider yours the most sadistic; you can save any number of innocent people from death in the face of danger, but to gain that ability, you must kill an innocent person. Named after the infamous moral thought experiment, you are... Trolley Man. by MarauderOnReddit
What the fork
csl512 t1_j212eht wrote
Reply to comment by JohannesWurst in ELI5: How is that Pantone colors don't have direct RGB counterparts? by ExternalUserError
Nope. Spectral colors are those made by pure wavelengths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_color
In the chart in that page, there's a horseshoe shaped curve with numbers between 300 and 700. Those correspond to wavelengths. Anything not on that line cannot be made with just a single wavelength.
Color science is super weird and unintuitive, and relies very heavily on the human perception of it, which involves cone receptors tuned to different ranges of light, approximately but not exactly red green and blue.
If you really want to get confused, https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/18rbn2/is_your_red_the_same_as_my_red/
csl512 t1_j208gpv wrote
Reply to [OC] Defence budgets around the world by giteam
Why is the table at the bottom of Highest by GDP formatted the way it is? Is the empty space between the country name and percentage proportional the percentage?
csl512 t1_j03clp6 wrote
Reply to comment by Arcrosis in [EU] The CIA are trying to kill Clark Kent and make it look like an accident. They don't know he's Superman, he's just a really good journalist and is getting too close to some things the government wants to keep secret. by Affectionate_Bit_722
The Good Place has overridden 'almond milk' as far as brain associations.
csl512 t1_jeb8fqm wrote
Reply to comment by fubo in Eli5: On a production line, how do they make a car, plane or anything else be identical from one another without differences? by SideburnG
Better way can also include stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poka-yoke to make it more resistant to human errors.
Like if you have part A1, A2, and A3 that all can go into square hole B, but you actually want them to go through corresponding holes B, C, and D, then you could make it so it is physically impossible to put them all through the square hole.
An everyday example would be electrical connectors with different sized blades, or that can only be connected in a certain orientation because they aren't symmetrical.