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Solving dissymmetry and related instabilities caused by floating point imprecisions

By [UTT] Narzu

This guide is addressing dissymmetry and related instabilities in besiege and solves them by
editing.bsg files using regular expressions in notepad++. If you already wonder why symetrical
things actually don't behave like you think they should, or why rotating things brings annoying
oscillations you should continue to read!

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CREATED BY

[UTT] Narzu

Last Online 16 hrs, 6 mins ago

Category: Crafting, Modding Or Configuration

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

11 Sep, 2016 @ 5:30pm

9 Dec, 2017 @ 7:24pm

303 Unique Visitors

8 Current Favorites

GUIDE INDEX

Overview

Dissymmetry & related instabilities : where do they come from ?

Imprecisions : how to spot them ?

RegEx : How to efficiently correct the imprecisions

Comments

Dissymmetry & related instabilities : where do they come from ?

That is a good question, I couldn't answer accurately but here is a start : it can come either from
the game engine and how it calculates things, or from the data of your machines and how it is
stored in the files.
We will only talk about the data because It's easier than looking into the game engine : the data
is in the .bsg files located in you besiege/savedmachines directory!

If you open those files with a text editor (eg: notepad++) you can find the data of the machine,
including the data of all the blocks you've placed, their positions, their rotations, their size, their
attributes, everything is organized in XML format.

If you look closer you will see something weird : some numbers are not rounded anymore. Like a
0.5 displayed in the game could actually be a 0.4999982 in the real data. Some people say that it
comes from floating point imprecisions, I don't know much about it so I won't explain that but
here are few things I observed about those imprecisions :

They tend to appear when you load or save a machine (if you load a perfectly cleaned file and
save it instantly, imprecisions would have already appeared. Since even perfectly cleaned files
are not 100% behaving like symmetrical / stable I guess imprecisions appear while the file is
loaded

They also tend to appear when you change something on a block, if you move it, rotate it or
change any attribute, the xml tag will be full rewriten and imprecisions will appear.

Personally I believe that it might also has to do with the fact that imprecisions are part of the
reality and that nothing it perfectly symmetrical or stable in reality, meaning either Devs decided
to make them intentionally happen in the game engine, or they just discovered it and thought
"okay fine, that's even closer from reality". I would have done the same.

But we'll probably never know that for sure.

Imprecisions : how to spot them ?

So now that you know about imprecisions, what does they look like ? here is a bunch of example
:

0.4999981

-1.000003
0.4499993

2.842171E-14

0.3484899

It's easy to target weird numbers and know what they should be when you're doing simple
design. If you make complex design it's more complicated but here some tracks :

If you use sliders you will generate weird numbers that are complex to analyse and correct (I
would recommend to never use sliders)

if you input directly from the keyboard, you can only use 2 figures after the dot of a decimal
number (meaning, if you want to use exact numbers, everything after the 2 figures that are after
the dot could be considered as imprecision)

Only 7 significant figures are stored in a number

When an number with exponent appears, it means that the original number is actually so small
that you can consider it was 0 (0.01 is the smallest you are supposed to use if you do not use
sliders and does not make a number with exponent appear)

Complex to analyse imprecisions mostly doesn't have a lot of occurrences, if so, it might be a
special number intentionally generated (rotations for example, see below).

I didn't talk about those quaternions : this is the way besiege store data about rotations. The
numbers generated are complex to analyse because they are not intuitively translatable into
angles. For exemple if you rotate something by 90° it will generate the value 0.7071068, when
you use specific rotations amounts, you will get numbers like this one and it's not easy sometime
to know if it's normal or imprecision.

You can't decide neither to round those rotation numbers because the 4 values of a quaternion
are strongly related to each other, meaning if you are not sure of what you are doing, any
operation on the number will probably change the angle in the game.

0.7071068 is a well know number and will appear very often in your .bsg files. since 7 significant
number is a lot, you can presume that it's nearly impossible that an imprecision from another
number turn it into 0.7071068 so you can consider that everything that is around are
imprecisions about this specific number.

So you will want to change 0.7071069, 0.7071071, or 0.7071058 to 0.7071068 because you are
99,99% sure about what is the imprecision and what is the original number.

RegEx : How to efficiently correct the imprecisions

You could just look at you numbers and correct one by one if you have only few blocks but this
will quickly get boring. So you will start using a replacement functionality. But still, a lot of
imprecisions are different but have the same pattern. What you truly need is to replace patterns,
and the only way to do that (in my mind) is to use regular expressions, and you have at the
bottom of the 'find' window in notepad++, just tick the radio button and you are set.

For example if you search: ([]-?[0-9]*[.][0-9]{2})([0-9]+)(["|</])

It means: I want all the pieces of text that begin with =" or >, followed by a - or not, then by as
much as figures you want, then by a dot,then by 2 figures, then by at least one but as many
figures you want, and finally by " or </

What is interesting here is that it will return you all the number that have more than 2 figures
after the dot : meaning ALL the POTENTIAL imprecisions. I said potentiel because this will also
bring number that are not necessarily imprecisions.

If you don't know about RegEx you can learn it on wikipedia or any website about RegEx (there
are a lot) and practice on a RegEx test site (where you can type text & expression to see how it
works)

Replacement functionality : with RegEx you can make groups using parenthesis. This allow you to
then re-use the data in the replacement field using $1 to input the data in the 1st group for
example. This is very powerful.
Few RegEx that I use all the time, and their replacements, you can fine tune them depending on
what you get in your file:

To search and anayse for potential imprecisions :

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]*[.][0-9]{2})([0-9]+)(["|</])

To get all the numbers that have 2 figures after the dot and followed by a double 0 and only
keeps 2 figures after the dot. (make a quick analyse at what you get in case it gather few bizarre
rotation numbers that might not be imprecisions. Then check with a simple 0, you should get
more imprecisions but also more rotation numbers that are not imprecisions :

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]+[.][0-9]{2})(00[0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1$3

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]+[.][0-9]{2})(0[0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1$3

To get rid of all the numbers with exponents and replace them with 0 :

RegEx: ([])(-?[0-9]+[.][0-9]+E-[0-9]+)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(0)$3

To get rid of all the imprecisions around 0.7071068 which is a frequent rotation number that
appear when you have 90° angles :

RegEx: (="-?0.70710)([0-9][0-9]?)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(68)$3

To search for the numbers that have 2 figures after the dot and finish by 9 (they have negative
imprecision by contrast with numbers followed by zeros, the correction is different)

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]+[.])([0-8]9)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</])

To get rid of the imprecisions found with the last RegEx, for each different figure before the 9
there is a different replacement, just correct those you have spotted :

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]+[.])(09)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(10)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]+[.])(19)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(20)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]+[.])(29)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(30)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]+[.])(39)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(40)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]+[.])(49)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(50)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]+[.])(59)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(60)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]+[.])(69)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(70)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]+[.])(79)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(80)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]+[.])(89)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(90)$4

Same thing but for the numbers where the 2 figures after the dot are 99:

To search for those numbers in général:

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]*)([0-8][.]99)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</])

To get rid of the imprecisions found with the last RegEx, for each different figure before the dot
there is a different replacement, just correct those you have spotted :

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]*)(0[.]99)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(1.00)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]*)(1[.]99)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(2.00)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]*)(2[.]99)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(3.00)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]*)(3[.]99)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(4.00)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]*)(4[.]99)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(5.00)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]*)(5[.]99)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(6.00)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]*)(6[.]99)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(7.00)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]*)(7[.]99)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(8.00)$4

RegEx: ([]-?[0-9]*)(8[.]99)([0-9][0-9]*)(["|</]) Replacement: $1(9.00)$4

Now I wish you good luck because this is not an easy guide and this is quite technical, but if you
get used to RegEx you will then be able to make your own queries. English is not my mother
tongue so I hope this is not too bad written and that it will help you to achieve better stability on
your machines.

Also leave a comment if you have ideas to improve the guide (better RegEx, script to automatize
the thing), anything I didn't thought about.. thank you.

8 Comments

Violet 16 Jan @ 10:34am

My eyes just fell out!

JCUDOS 17 Mar, 2017 @ 5:53am

Finally a solution to THE most annoying thing in Besiege (at least to me). I'll have to get a good
night of sleep before reading it though. Anyway, thank you!

[UTT] Narzu [author] 23 Sep, 2016 @ 6:58am

Haha, I know that's a very bizarre title

seize the means of production 22 Sep, 2016 @ 2:51pm

lol

Modem 19 Sep, 2016 @ 9:01pm

never thought i would see a steam guide named something as amazing as "Solving dissymmetry
and related instabilities caused by floating point imprecisions"

cmanDAGREAT 12 Sep, 2016 @ 2:42pm

UUUUUUGGGG learning

[UTT] Narzu [author] 12 Sep, 2016 @ 1:17am

Actually the operations are quite simple once you get how it works, it's just complicated to put
that into a written guide. I need to record a video, that would be so much easier to show things.

Shadé 11 Sep, 2016 @ 11:54pm

Looks complicated but sounds useful, will save it for future reference.

Thanks for writing this guide :)

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