Acrobots are little 3-legged acrobatic bots that hop and jump around and react to each other. Use the controls on the right to influence their number or the force of gravity upon them. Together they form an unsual webtoy that includes impressive physics as well as some very fluid animation. Very nicely done by the same Patrick Smith (Vector Park) that brought us Levers, and the recently reviewed, Feed the Head. Simply amazing.
Cheers to Manax, Sean, and Jesse for the discovery.
I commend everyone who found this! Especially that first guy!
I can watch it for hours, It doesn't seem it's possible I get bored. Wonderful !!!
If you put that slider bar all the way to the top, the acrobots make formations, the lower settings will cause the bots to change position more. If you were confuse on what that did.
fun to watch and play around with. Try to build a tower, low gravity recommended
Great game, those little acrobat guys crack me up! they work together and will jump off of their towers to save one of their kind. they are a picture of what the world should b....3 legged acrobats????
Its really fun when you make a big chain!
Fun game, good to just pile them up and let them sort each other out. I hope this isn't the future of your reviews, though.
Awesome, I love whoever makes these things. I've currently got 12 of them in a big chain across the bottom and up both sides to the roof. Unfortunately, they can't walk on the ceiling well enough to facilitate going any further.
It's a very simple toy, though.
Yeah, this is so much fun. It would be amazing as a screensaver where every now and then the gravity and number of Acrobots are changed. Or perhaps if we could save certain configurations that do certain things. (I have visions of a group of acrobots that manages to crawl around the bounds of the screen in a perpetual circle via their physics.)
On a related note, they updated Feed the Head and put even more really fun stuff in a bit after JIG linked to it, so if you haven't seen the latest stuff
like the flame-spouting, and the projector in the head [Edit: those elements were already in the piece when we reviewed Feed the Head last week. -Jay]
check it out!
This really is a great little time waster. I kinda wish that they had 4, or at least a controllably number of legs, so that stack or pyramid making would be more feasible.
This is lots of fun! But I still don't understand the function of the blue knob on the right side of the game. Could someone tell me what it does? I think it has smething to do with their suction feet...
Chron - I'm certain it controls gravity. The higher the knob, the stronger the gravitational force.
I don't know if the knob controls gravity so much as it controls the amount of attraction the acrobots have for the walls, floor, and each other.
This game makes me feel queazy in all the wrong ways.
Is it my imagination or does this thing remember how you left it if you close the window and come back later?
Even if I'm wrong, it's great fun. Hard to describe it exactly, but the slider seems to control the "self-control" of their movements. Set high, they're easy to control, set low and they're all over the place. Very fun.
Nevermind, it doesn't remember. Somehow the last time I played I ended up exactly how I started. [blush]
This is tons of fun! I made a single ring of them all the way around the playing area :)
This is more fun than it should be! Also, clicking on the light bulb changes the colors of the acrobots, and watching them bounce around is more fun when they are colorful, instead of them all being blue.
It's gravity, and the higher the pointer the less gravity there is. You can easily test this by dragging one of the acrobots to the top of the screen in low gravity and watch it almost float down. In high gravity, they fall considerably faster.
The action of the slider confusing because the acrobots will foribly shove themselves off another object if they land against it too hard - resulting in a lot of crazy jumping on high gravity settings.
Emergent complexity ftw.
Yeah, the slider doesn't seem to control gravity but rather the adhesion of the acrobots' feet. The higher the adhesion, the longer they stick together and the more their energy is dissipated. The lower the adhesion, the more that their legs' springiness over powers their attraction, and therefore, the more their kinetic energy feeds back.
They way they move is quite hypnotizing! Would love to see something like this expanded to be able to be used for an active background for windows. I'd love to have them bouncing around in the background while I work!!
My goal has been to built a free-standing structure with as many guys as possible, using all of their legs. So far, 21 is the best I've been able to get before it starts collapsing in a heap at the bottom.
wow! its even more fun on a wii! :o
dare you to make a:
dog,
tower thing with 3 sticks coming out,
dog head,
tower thing (will tilt and top touch the ground (eventually)),
army of 3,
arm of 1 short person and one tall one,
and
air battle
try to do them
I wish I could have one of these as a pet. That would be great...
(Especially if you could get a bunch and crowd them together like you can in the game. I enjoy that.)
just a hint
turn the light on and have one of each colour make them strong then make them weak and enjoy (make them strong and make them weak by the thing under the lightbulb the lightbulb is to turn on light)
hope you use it
Did they update this, or was the 90 degree turn always there?
This was great! I'll just post some things you can try, since everyone apears to be doing just that.:
1.Place one acrobot in the screen. Turn the gravity on high. Let the one bounce around for a second, then add another 2 in a row. 3 or 4 is the best. Have fun watching them push the one back and forth, then do some acrobatic tricks.
2.Build a tower and put it on low gravity. When you're satisfied, blast the gravity on high and watch your acrobots tumble. Or, press the button that turns the screen around twice, and watch them drop from the ceiling( or maybe if you want, the side of the screen)
3.Turn the gravity on low. Change the color scheme to a bluish (it looks better). Then press the plus sign button a bunch of times, and watch the acrobots construct themselves into a tower.
try to fill screen (low or high gravity reccomended)
holy crap,
I made an alien looking thing.
It has one antenna,
2 arms,
2 legs,
and is FAT!
This Game is Pure Genius.
jay
"the lower the knob, the stronger the gravity"
pass 2 chron
where is the button that rotates it??
Good game. I wonder if setting the gravity to the lowest setting induces perpetual motion. I'm waiting now.
It's fun to make one of each color, put the gravity on the lowest setting and pretend that they are little dudes with 2 legs and 1 arm, it looks like their matrix fighting.
Update