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pooltool

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Homepage of pooltool

  • pooltool is an open source sandbox billiards game that emphasizes realistic physics.
  • It is designed for both gamers and researchers
  • gamers can play different styles of pool (8-ball, 9-ball, etc.) in a 3D-rendered environment that emphasizes physical realism
  • researchers interested in pool physics, game theory, camera-projector systems, AI, robotics, and other billiards-related research topics can efficiently simulate shots using pooltool’s API, experiment with different physics models and shot evolution algorithms, and visualize programmatically-defined shots

Blog summaries

Blog #1 - 04/21/2020

  • I do a literature review on the physics of billiards
  • I outline and explain the models I plan to use for each physical process

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Blog #2 - 12/20/2020

  • I research different shot evolution algorithms
  • I discover the event-based shot evolution algorithm by Leckie and Greenspan
  • I describe in honestly excruciating detail the ins and outs of the algorithm

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Blog #3 - 03/25/2021

  • I start pooltool
  • I develop a prototypical pool simulator that can evolve shots according to a discrete time stepping algorithm, or the event-based algorithm
  • I create a 2D, non-interactive visualization of simulated shots using pygame

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Blog #4 - 08/11/2021

  • I graduate to panda3d
  • I render all essential objects and HUD (badly)
  • I implement all foreseeable user controls
  • I defined different game modes that the user can play (8-ball and 9-ball)

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Blog posts for "pooltool"