21. Anti-Collision

After finishing her business with Ricky, Flora started her own production of the skins. As the owner of the design, she didn't have to reimburse the design price of 0.8 VirDos, just the 0.2 for the sticker. The Riverstones had a printing fee of 20%. Therefore she had to pay 0.24 VirDos. The marketplace took another 10% for listing the product for four weeks and another 10% for a successful sale.

Furthermore, clan Riverstones had a tax of 30% on the marketplace, auction house, blueprint, and shop sales. The fees were on the income and not the earnings! At least, she now knew a way to support the Riverstones without appearing obtrusive.

So her earnings through Ricky's would be 0.42 VirDos and printing 0.50 VirDos. She decided to sell the skin for 1.5 VirDos in the marketplace, which would earn her 0.51 VirDos. The printing of 200 stickers and registering half of the products in the market and the other half in the auction house took her 20 minutes. She calculated if she sold out, she would have made an hourly wage of 20 Euros. She had worked for less, admittingly 50 years ago. Aidan assured her that when she owned a printer, she could set up automated workflows for getting the products in her shop or the market.

After attending the martial arts classes and taking a nap, Flora was ready to have another go at the Huffgrin projects.

Flora looked at the freshly finished skateboard skin and smiled. Tall weeds and wildflowers sprouted from the board, off the sides of the board, and underneath it.

The skater in the simulation stood on the board, and the meadow wasn't affected. Simultaneously, the floor would hide the flowers on the bottom of the deck.

Then Flora activated the standard collision detection of the Huffgrin development kit. This caused the grass to have a natural reaction to its surroundings. The weeds on the bottom bent and the plants on the top were trampled down by the skater. So far, so good.

Flora changed the animated model to MeadowV2 and bound a mowed lawn transformation when a crash occurred.

Now the feet of the skater stood on short grass, and the whole bottom was mowed, but where the grip tape would show in the real world, there was still the meadow in full bloom.

Superficially, the animation looked good, but when Flora inspected the details, she saw the tips of some of the taller stalks vanishing in the trousers of the skater.

The description said the feature worked up to 33.3 cm around the board. Flora found out it worked exceptionally well in those confines. The lawn wasn't exactly the size of the skater's foot because all stalks intersecting the model beneath 33.3 cm were short as well.

'I can't replicate this feature. But now, I comprehend the design philosophy. The designers preferred a small perfect collision detection to a larger shoddy one. But I don't understand why the larger would necessarily be shoddier. If I made not a skin but a real skateboard with a meadow on it, the system would have no problem displaying collisions.'

Flora searched a while for any detectors or other sensors monitoring the area but found nothing. If she hadn't read the description and confirmed it with tests, she wouldn't have believed the interface even had collision detection. No visual clue gave it away. Flora deduced the surveillance happened on a layer not accessible to her.

The kit included a second automated anti-collision system, and Flora activated it. It not only gave back the coordinates but also the zone of the crash. For this purpose, twenty-six zones surrounded the skateboard in the center. Now the whole grip tape reverted to lawn, and only the thin stripe of weeds growing out of the sides of the deck remained.

When Flora changed back to MeadowV.1, the model didn't react to collisions above 33.3 cm at all. She had to bind the transformation manually to it. Disbelieving, she shook her head. This handling was more primitive than 3D-software at the dawn of the century! Although it didn't take a whole night to render an ejecting toast.

"Ma? Do you have a moment?" Robby's voice disturbed her musings. She greeted him, and Robby wasted no time coming to the point.

"You need a lawyer!"

"No!"

"Ma! Don't be stubborn. You don't have to take them to the meeting; just let them check on the contract and give their opinion!"

"No, and even if I would say yes, where should I find a lawyer on a Sunday evening?"

"Great, you have asked. One of my clients is a lawyer. He agreed to look over the contract for just 5000 VirDos and counsel us in the meeting for a cut of the settlement."

"No."

"Why?"

"I'll explain it to you after the meeting." Flora suppressed all thoughts about the subject. 'Daisies and Leopard-patterns. Daisies and leopard-patterns.' When her head was clear, she added, "And no tricks, sweetie. Please don't give him any more info about the meeting or promise him anything. Uncle Teddy will be absent as well."

Flora deemed another round of refocusing thoughts necessary. 'Daisies and Leopard-pattern. Daisies and Leopard-pattern.'

When Robby traveled for the first time without her, they agreed on a code to say if he was in trouble but couldn't speak freely. That was the phrase "Uncle Teddy". Fortunately, they never needed it for dire circumstances, but they used it once or twice to signal each other when there were things which they couldn't express.

"I have to do some martial arts training. See you tomorrow!" Robby ended the conversation abruptly, and Flora could hear the frown in his voice.

Immediately, Flora focused on collision detection to avoid any straying thoughts.

The second integrated detection relied on binding an animation or picture to the 26 zones. If you just had a bird animation with spread wings, you could attach a model of the bird with closed wings to the zones left and right to the board. When a clash happened, the system would automatically transform the current into the new state.

Flora tested this feature with a Heinkel world war II bomber with retractable wings and discovered that the animation looked awkward at high speeds. The wings closed either too fast with the plane looking like it had a seizure or too slow, overlapping the obstacle. Anyhow, Flora was happy because she finally found an aspect she could fix.

For this purpose, she built a sphere of small particles around the deck, 33.3 cm away from the inner zone. Then she added four additional concentric spheres every 33.3 cm up to a radius of 2 meters. She wasted some time trying to make the particles invisible. Diamond dust had a fantastic effect, making the skateboard look like it had a glittering halo, but that wasn't what she wanted to accomplish. After intensive experimentation, she found a solution for making the flakes invisible.

Due to the system registering crashes with the particles, Flora had an early warning system. 'An awfully complicated early warning system.'

Twenty-six zones, five dust spheres, and the core made 131 areas. Flora got confused just by looking at it too long, even though she was the one who created it. After several rounds of tidying up and building user-interface elements for the development kit, Flora finally developed a non-headache inducing graphic template.

Her bomber model's tail and propellers were in the core zone, where the fancy standard collision detection worked. Only the wings reached to the second sphere. She selected the empty areas around the sides and defined when a crash occurred there, the wings should retract one field. Then she repeated the process for the current state. Now only little stubs protruded from the body of the plane in the core area.

Additionally, she made an animation for clipped wings if her early warning system failed and the actual model collided.

After a few rounds of testing and fine-tuning, Flora still wasn't satisfied. Her early warning system worked better than the second but stank compared to the first system's standard handling.

Jealously, she watched a nose slide smashing the propellers of the plane. She hadn't animated the crashed state. The system was perfectly capable of generating it on his own, provided the part of the model was in the core zone. Slowly an idea began forming in her head.

"Ali Hawks is requesting a video call, Milady."

Flora received the call and exchanged greetings with Ali. Suddenly Ali stopped the small talk and craned his neck. He had discovered the skating simulation running in the background. Grinning, Flora enlarged it to give Ali a better view.

"Groove-tastic, Flora! I called you to complain, but how can I complain when I'm looking at such a nice animation."

"This is shoddy. Please don't be polite. Complain away!"

"My dear colleague Ricky bragged in our tricky-business chat about the great skin he managed to acquire. Imagine my surprise when he told us the name of the creator."

"I understand. I should have thought about you as well. Ricky saw the skin when I did a course at his venue and seized the chance. The sale wasn't planned." Flora smiled. "But I have good news, too. I integrated the template for the Intensity-Meter already in your development kit. Therefore you don't have to do it yourself."

"Nice, I'll take it! What do you want for it?"

"How about some free promotion for my future skins in your shop and an apology accepted?"

He laughed. "Deal!"

Flora knew there was nothing wrong with doing business with Ricky. She had no contractual ties with Huffgrin. However sometimes, a bit of groveling can grease the wheels, and she was not above appeasing her customers.

"What about the royalties for the template? I'm willing to pay 1 000 000 for every percent you go down."

Flora roughly estimated this equaled 5000 to 10 000 sales using her fingers and Aidan to calculate. Because she knew nothing about the sales volume of Huffgrin and how popular the template would be with other designers and the customers, she agreed to go down by 2%. Only 2% because Flora loved passive income and had no immediate use for credits.

Next, Ali coveted the skin of the plane and the anti-collision template, but Flora brushed him off. She knew she could improve on it and promised to notify him on Monday Two on her progress.

After they hung up, Flora noticed how tired and hungry she was.

"What time is it, Aidan?"

"1 o'clock, Milady."

"These young people nowadays! 1 o'clock is no time to call honest people!"

Flora sent the development kit template for the Intensity-Meter to Ali, registered her leg and torso skin in the activewear section of his shop, ate some fruits, and tidied up her workspace. Finally, she fell into her bed.

"This VR thing is exhausting. Do people really do this in their free time for fun?! I need recreation time from this recreation time!"

"Milady, you have unread mail."

"I refuse to move! Can you read it for me?"

"No, Milady. You have to leave the virtual workshop and access the mailbox. I'm sorry."

"Then it has to wait till tomorrow. Wake me at 7 o'clock. If one of the mails is from the lawyers to prepone the appointment in some lame attempt of power-play, they chose the wrong granny. I'm only jumping through their hoops if they are pink and glittering or made out of toast! Maybe some nice braided circles of spring flowers as well! But that's it! Alright, if they somehow manage to make a hoop, which can toast jumping people, I might volunteer to be their tester! Just to get a closer look, of course!"

Flora rambled incoherently about toasters, young people, and hoops until she fell asleep.