I had a dream last night where I worked at a daycare with Ms. Frizzle from the Magic Schoolbus. However, the daycare was a trick to kidnap people's children and throw them into this diabolical furnace. The way Ms. Frizzle explained it to me was pretty simple "We take the children, and throw them into the baby-powered generator, that way we can stay off the grid... forever!" and like all things, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I then woke up and immediately thought of Bridge-it.
Now, as much as I'd like to gloat about being a genius at making bad bridges, there's actually a process fraught with failure and experimentation.
Take Easy #6 for example:
![](http://i.imgur.com/8QfAiJl.jpg)
Seems simple enough
![](http://i.imgur.com/92EUqAX.jpg)
But one thing this game teaches you quickly is that trains are heavy.
I go for my pyramid of dreams idea again:
![](http://i.imgur.com/V9yxk0o.jpg)
![](http://i.imgur.com/d4Vymgk.jpg)
and I find that even a hundred large iron beams can fit neatly at the bottom of a river.
So I go a bold, new direction:
![](http://i.imgur.com/P2lXyh5.jpg)
But while functional, is much too boring. Gotta scrap it and go for a new one.
![](http://i.imgur.com/y1b8yt0.jpg)
"Good job Josh You've made the same thing but much less efficiently"
But one thing you can take home from this game is that trial and error can eventually culminate in things you're genuinely proud of:
![](http://i.imgur.com/fRPWglm.jpg)
This is the first asymmetrical bridge to date, and it's made up completely of acute triangles, as opposed to the equilateral triangles that the pyramid of dreams is made of. That alone is enough to have me just repeating the simulation over and over just so I can watch those sexy triangles in action. Ticking off the pros here:
- Surprisingly robust
- performs it's job
- would make an actual engineer have a heart attack
Good job, A+. Moving on... to the MEDIUM LEVELS!
Medium #1
The goal: Build another train track, with only iron, over a bigass ravine.
![](http://i.imgur.com/pr6r6rG.jpg)
Here's another vital part of the
process that artistic bridge makers like myself go through. Sometimes when the answer just doesn't hit you, just close your eyes and start placing the iron beams whereever the hell they may fall. Sorry jimmy, gotta take that one back to the drawing board.
![](http://i.imgur.com/d7od7ml.jpg)
Medium levels actually require something approaching sanity, so I can't immediately assume I can make trains go through Sonic the Hedgehog looptyloops. And in my experimention to find the perfect bridge, I've discovered I can use the roads themselves as building materials! And besides vanity, they have practical applications too, because while they may be enormously heavy and have no tensile strength at all, they have truly staggering compressive strength, enough to put iron beams to shame at the very least.
But this is still too big, what can I do to miniaturize this pretty little bridge?
![](http://i.imgur.com/oRAB4Gi.jpg)
Exxxxceellllent. I will dub it... the DOUBLE DECKER.
Next time on Bridge-it+: Cables make their appearance!