Tutorial/Golems 101

From Golems Universal Constructor

This tutorial should take just a few minutes, and at the end of it you will have a working, if very simple, vehicle. Click on the images to enlarge them.

Contents 1 Making a Box 2 Moving and Stretching the Box 3 Adding Motors, and How to Rotate Things 4 Copying Objects and Rotating view 5 Adding Wheels 6 Powering Motors and Deleting Objects 7 Making it Go

Making a Box

Move your mouse over to the left hand side of the screen, and a toolbar should pop out. This is where you will find all the objects that you can create. For now, look at the blue ones - these are the simple shapes. Click on the box button in the toolbar to create a box. A small grey box will appear in the middle of the screen just above the floor. Zoom in to get a closer look. If your mouse has a scroll wheel, you can use that, otherwise, hold down the 'Q' key on your keyboard and drag your mouse down, slowly! If you zoom in too far and get lost, press the 'F' key to go back to your starting view.

New workspace.

The Golems tool menu.

Create a new box

Click on the box with your mouse, and don't let go. It should turn green, and you'll see a little white disc with spots appear around it. The white disc is the plane that you can move the box on - forwards and backwards, and side to side. (We'll discuss moving upwards later). At the bottom right corner of the screen click 'snap'. This will lock object movement to the grid. Snap mode will help keep everything aligned properly for now. Move the box left 5-10 spaces.

Moving and Stretching the Box

Find the stretch button near the top of the toolbar (if you don't see the toolbar, move your mouse to the left of the screen and it should appear). Press it once. Now, whenever you select an object, it will be surrounded with white spheres that you can drag around to change things. Select the box, and then select the right most control point, and drag it to the right until the box is about 4 times as wide as used to be. Once you are done, press the stretch button again to turn off the control points.

For future reference, instead of toggling control points on from the tool box, you can just hold down the 'Alt' key ('Option' on Macs).

The current plane of movement.

Move box 5-10 spaces left.

Select stretch tool or hold Alt while selected.

Select right-side control point.

Box stretched.

Adding Motors, and How to Rotate Things

In the tool bar, look at the red icons. The red icons are joints. Click on the axle button to create an axle. Were going to attach 4 of these to the box. However, we have to rotate them first. Go over to the toolbox and press the rotate button once to toggle on rotation. Now click and hold the mouse on the motor. A white disc with (different) dots should appear around the motor. By dragging the mouse around the motor you can rotate it in the plane of that disc. Because snap mode is on, the motor will snap cleanly to 15 degree increments. Rotate the motor around until the small axle is facing towards you, perpendicular to the box. Make sure the angle is exact, so that the car will go forwards nicely. Note that you can go into rotation mode by holding down the shift key, if that feels more natural to you.

Go back to the toolbar and turn off rotation mode, and then drag the motor over to the front of the box so that the big half of it intersects the box. When objects intersect, they will be attached together in physics mode. Make sure that the small axle of the joint does not touch the box - this way, it will be able to rotate freely.

Create a new axle.

Select rotate tool or hold shift to rotate.

Drag to rotate.

Move axle to position.

Copying Objects and Rotating view

Copying objects is easy, but also a little different than you might be used to. Whenever you have a part(s) of your machine selected, you can copy it by pressing the 'C' key. As soon as you do that, a copy will be produced at exactly the same position as the original object. Note that you dont have to press a paste key.

Select the motor and press 'C'. Drag it over to the left side of your box. Now you have two motors facing the same way along one side of the box.

If you hold down the right mouse key and drag the mouse around, your camera will rotate around. Try it (slowly!) so that you can see the other side of your car easily. If you left click and drag (without selecting any objects) the camera will pan directionally.

Copy one of the two motors and drag it to the other side of your car. Select the motor and rotate it around backwards, so that it is a mirror image of the first motor. Copy this new rotated motor and move it over sideways so that your car has four, evenly spaced motors.

Select the axle, press C to copy it.

Move the copy to the opposite end of the box.

Hold right mouse button to rotate the camera. Copy and rotate axle.

Repeat the process again.

Adding Wheels

Now were going to make some wheels to attach to the motors. This will be mostly the same as adding the motors. Move over to the toolbar and press the cylinder button. Just like with the motor, you're going to rotate it around 90 degrees. Go into control point mode and select the cylinder. Drag the top control point upwards one grid position to make the wheel wider. Now move the wheel into position so that the little axle of the motor goes right through the center of the wheel. You want to make sure that the small axle of the motor is intersecting the wheel, but you also want to make sure that the wheel doesn't touch the body of the car, or the large half of the motor. This way, the wheel will be free to rotate around the motor.

Use the cylinder tool to make a wheel.

Rotate the wheel 90 degrees.

Stretch the wheel by 1 grid space up.

Copy the wheel and position it at each axle.

If your wheels are touching the ground, you will need to adjust the machine slightly by moving it up. To do this, hold Ctrl and drag a selection box around your vehicle. Press and hold the Z key, now click on the body of the vehicle. Move your mouse up one grid spacing. Your car should now be 1 grid space off the ground.

Hold Ctrl and drag a box around the car.

The vehicle is selected.

While holding Z click on the body and move up 1 space.

Your wheels will not stick to the ground.

Powering Motors and Deleting Objects

So far we've created a nice car (ok, maybe an ugly car) with four wheels, four joints, and a box. But its not very interesting yet, because all the motors are unpowered! Unpowered joints will let objects rotate around them freely, but they won't do any work on their own. Powered joints become motors.

Go over to the toolbar and press the battery button. You should see most things suddenly become a transparent blue (kind of like a blueprint), this is also called wire mode. You should see a simple grey 'battery' in the middle. In Golems, there are two kinds of objects - physical objects, like joints and boxes, that are 'solid' in the sense that they can bounce into each other when physics is turned on. But there are also 'functional' objects, things like batteries, which aren't really there at all when physics runs. They are also usually invisible when you are designing your machine. Functional objects control how the physical objects act; they turn on or off motors, but they don't interact with physics themselves. They are kind of like ghosts, or rather like your machine's brain.

Use the Show Wires button to switch to wire mode.

This is what wire mode looks like.

Use the battery tool.

Click the yellow terminal (output) and drag the mouse.

Connect the wire to the motor.

Functional objects connect to each other with wires. When seen in functional 'blue print' view, each motor has two ports that these wires can attach to - a green input port, and a yellow output port. Wires attached to the input port control how fast the motor goes, and wires attached to the output port will transmit information about the motor, such as how fast it is going.

To create a wire, click on the yellow output port on top of the battery (it's a small flat disc), and drag the mouse away a bit. You should see a yellow wire with a white sphere at the end where your mouse is. If you let go, the wire will disappear, unless the white sphere at the end is over an input port (the bright green parts). Drag a wire from the top of the battery to the middle of the front right motor. If you've done this correctly, then when you let go of the wire, it should remain, attaching the battery to the motor. Now this motor is powered!

If you need to delete a wire, select it (it will become bright green) and press the 'delete' key. In fact, if you need to delete anything, select it and press 'delete'.

Holding Alt while dragging wires will reverse the wire signal.

Connect the red wire to the other wheel.

Click the Show Wires button to go back to Edit mode

You now have a finished vehicle.

You should create another wire from the battery to the front motor on the left, so that it will be powered, but there's a problem: If you power both motors the same way, they will both turn counter-clockwise, and the car will spin in circles. So were going to make the second wire a negative wire. It will take the signal from the battery, and invert it so that it sends the opposite message to the motor. Click on the top of the battery like before, and drag the wire off, but don't connect it to the motor yet. Without letting go of the wire, press and hold the 'Alt' key ('Option' on Macs). As long as you are holding down the 'Alt' key, the wire should be bright red. Now drag the wire over to the green input inside the motor on the left, and (still holding down 'Alt' so that it is red) attach the wire to the motor.

You could power the other two motors at the back of the car if you like, but for now let's exit functional view. On the toolbar, click the selection button, and the view will go back to design mode. If you want to return to functional view, press the wire view button.

Making it Go

Ok! Let's make the car go. In the top right hand corner of the screen is a small white sphere (). When you bring the mouse over it, it will turn green like .

Press it!

If you've done everything right, you should see the car accelerate forward (or backward if you crossed the wires). You can stop the simulation by pressing the red sphere ().

Now you should have a very simple, but functional car. Why don't you test it out a bit? Give it some obstacles to driver over, or switch the wheels out for spheres. Maybe give it a nosecone and a rocket booster...

There is much, much more that Golems can do. Explore! Build anything!