How to build your own rail gun/cannon/gnome launcher

[Ventisly]

I recently released pictures of my personal guild hall (TT island home on Everfrost) and it includes a tinkered rail gun that can launch people from the big island up to the small.  I've gotten quite a few requests (by mail, tells and in the thread above) for how it works so here's the details on how to make one for your own housing projects.

The magic number is 71 degrees which is right between the angle that you can run up a steep incline and a wall that you can't grab the sides of.  At 71 degrees it doesn't really seem like an abnormal wall until you approach it while jumping with either Fae Glide or Spring-Loaded Gnomish Stilts on, then you magically accelerate upwards at a pretty fast rate. You will also fall safely down as well no matter how high you go unless you have on a floating cloak and hold the space bar down all the way to the ground.

In my house I use 4 tiles in a row lined up for the rail gun and it's enough distance to get someone with 45% runspeed easily up to the smaller island where the cube is located.  I also built the rail gun underground with the exit right at ground level but that is not necessary for this to work.

I was able to get it to work pretty well at up to 7 tiles in length but a lot depended on the initial runspeed of the person.  Basically, if you get going too fast up the incline then you start to "bump" across the surface and it interrupts the effect.  4 tiles long (48m) seemed to be a good compromise between distance and reliability for my needs.

The exact angle I used was 71.010 which seemed to work a bit better to prevent "bumping" but 71 should be fine too.  The X/Y, Z numbers that make this work for an angle of 71.010 for a tile at scale 6 (12m width) are 3.915 offset per tile on the horizontal axis and 11.347 offset per tile on the vertical axis.  This includes a little fudge factor on the horizontal distance to help keep the seam of the tiles from causing a "bump" as well.

I did try to set this up at a 45 degree angle on the horizontal but the effect didn't seem to work at all.  The vertical walls on the sides of my rail gun help keep people from running off the sides of the ramp as they are going up but are not necessary.  One project I might try in the future will be to see if I can make several launch ramps spaced apart at regular intervals for a sort of vertical obstacle course in the sky.

If you would like to see this work or see the rest of my house, feel free to come by and visit my house on the Everfrost server (Makya's Personal Guild Hall) or just watch the video below for a demo of it (it's a lot more fun to do it in person though ).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzoMRABM5b8

[Earrindo]

youre my hero, like, seriously, i <3 you so much for posting this info ^_^

[Barq Bandit]

Inspirational!  Thanks very much for the details, Makya.  You've invented something entirely new, a rare and very special thing here in our beloved Homeshow.  I'm already dreaming up ways to put this to use...

/scheme

[Seagoat]

Your cannon has got to be the single most entertaining and genuinely original thing I've ever seen anyone do with their decorating. I can't tell you how many times I used it. Believe it or not, I bought an extra character slot so I could go tour your place, and it might just be the best $10 I ever spent. XD (The best $20 I ever spent was to buy a hot dog toaster -- but that's neither here nor there!)

I think I'm going to try building one on my own TT island...it's just so innovative and fun, I feel like people who haven't given it a whirl are missing out bigtime.

[Karrane1]

That was fun!  but I couldnt reach the upper isle at all.. kept falling short of it.

[darwich]

Karrane1 wrote:

That was fun!  but I couldnt reach the upper isle at all.. kept falling short of it.

do you have a featherfall cloak equipped? or glide as a fae?

[Afista]

darwich wrote:

Karrane1 wrote:

That was fun!  but I couldnt reach the upper isle at all.. kept falling short of it.

do you have a featherfall cloak equipped? or glide as a fae?

I think it's the base run speed for the distance capabilities? I made a fae alt and ran it (glide on). First time I fell short, but then I used the fae run speed buff and made it not prob at all to island.

The whole thing is just really, really awesome!! I'm in awe that you even thought about trying something like this. Thanks for sharing the magic angle

[Ventisly]

Ya, if you are visiting a rail gun/cannon from another server by using a temporary toon the quickest way is to just create a Fae, make sure Glide is cast and then either use Sprint or Wind Walker for a temporary boost of speed and you should have no problem reaching the upper isle.

[Karrane1]

Nods... I made a Fae, put on the glide thingie, but didnt use sprint =).. I will try again..

[Corvo]

It is very pleasant!! I would also like to make immediately.

[Mystfit]

This is like totally fun! And I'm amazed you discovered it and impressed you shared it, kudos all around.

One question though.

I set the pitch to 71.010. It works, I leave the zone...come back and it's changed itself to 71.00999451 and this won't work...I don't get the height. I tried to make it 71.01000000 thinknig that would stop it form rounding oddly, but it didn't help. Any thoughts?

 ***EDIT***

 I may have resolved this. Out of habit, I roll all my tiles -180. I took out that roll and left them at 0 and even though it still rounds to the 71.00999451 , it seems to work.

I look foreward ot seeing what people do with this!

[Ventisly]

Sometimes when I would reload my house it would seem to not place quite right and the effect wouldn't work.  What I would do is then just put just those items back into the moving crate, reload the layout for the house and it usually worked well after that.  Unless you are running into a "flipping" issue that is common with things at 90 or 180 degrees exactly, if it works after it's placed, it should keep working.

[Ventisly]

Thanks again for all the great comments.  I'm really looking forward to seeing what you all do with this

BTW, an authentic replica Charasis platform (10p from EA instance in JW) seems to work nicely as well and can get quite long. A single one in a new project I'm working on can get me to the upper island easily at 50% run speed.  As with the tiles, there's a max speed that seems to be possible on long runs so trying to put multiple of those together usually results in bumping that disrupts the effect.

[Shaolin Sam]

Gnomelauncher is win!