Detailed description of weapon mechanics – I might make a separate post for each weapon if this post gets too large and unweildy

DEFAULT WEAPON

If the player has no ammunition for any of their weapons, they will default to a basic weapon that is weaker than all the other weapons. This default weapon will share the same coding techniques as the auto cannon and plasma cannon, but will have a slightly reduced range and power. The bullets will utilise simple sphere collision algorithms that will pose no trouble to write. However, due to their fast-moving nature it may be necessary to create line-vs-circle intersection algorithms to help determine collisions as it may be possible for the bullets to skip directly over enemies between frames. The line-vs-circle intersection will be calculated first, followed by the circle-vs-circle intersection. The bullet itself will disappear once contact is made or if the bullet travels too far.

LASER BEAM

I wanted the laser beam to be one continuous beam, like it would be in real life. The beam will be switched on for as long as the fire button is held down. The beam’s physics give rise to a lot of interesting coding techniques and challenges that can be used for a variety of gameplay functions and therefore this is the first weapon that I want to create. The beam itself is calculated by projecting a point forward from the player ship’s nose to represent the farthest reach of the beam. The code then has to first work out if the line has intersected a wall, placing the beam’s point of contact where the two lines intersect – so far, so good – but then the code will have to run a check against all enemies within the weapon’s radius to see if the beam has intersected their collision circle, and report which intersecting circle is closest to the source of the beam. Once the intersection point of the beam is known then effects can be spawned at that location to signify the beam hitting its target.

The beam will use the internal game timer in XNA to count the time between frames and utilise this when calculating the damage caused to enemy structures. The same timer will be utilised when calculating the ammunition depletion for as long as the beam is switched on.

The beam itself will be drawn with a long thin texture that will hopefully use the “billboarding” technique that will ensure that the texture is always face-on to the camera when drawn. However, I am unsure if this technique will be practical when taking the camera angle into consideration. I will have to investigate further as the beam is being coded. If the billboarding technique is not workable then I will create a series of overlapping polygons to shape the beam so that it looks good regardless of the angle it is viewed at.

If I have the luxury of time, the beam should also have a power up and power down effect, where the beam grows and shrinks in brightness when it is turned on and off.

AUTO CANNON

The auto cannon is one of the more practical weapons. It will fire rapidly like a machine-gun and, like the laser beam and flamer, will not require the player to keep hitting the fire button repeatedly. The bullets will utilise simple sphere collision algorithms that will pose no trouble to write. However, due to their fast-moving nature it may be necessary to create line-vs-circle intersection algorithms to help determine collisions as it may be possible for the bullets to skip directly over enemies between frames. The line-vs-circle intersection will be calculated first, followed by the circle-vs-circle intersection. The bullet itself will disappear once contact is made or if the bullet travels too far.

PLASMA CANNON

The plasma cannon physics will be an almost direct copy of the auto cannon physics, except for modifications to speed and the events occuring at the point of collision. The destructive power of the bullet will charge up while the player holds down the fire button, and will be released when the player releases the button. The plasma bullet is meant to punch through multiple enemies at once, getting weaker from each impact along its flight path until the bullet has no more destructive potential and then dies. This weapon has the same range as the auto cannon and the bullets will automatically die when their maximum range is reached. The bullets will utilise simple sphere collision algorithms that will pose no trouble to write. However, due to their fast-moving nature it may be necessary to create line-vs-circle intersection algorithms to help determine collisions as it may be possible for the bullets to skip directly over enemies between frames. The line-vs-circle intersection will be calculated first, followed by the circle-vs-circle intersection. The bullet itself will disappear once contact is made or if the bullet travels too far.

ROCKETS

The rockets will behave in two different ways, depending on the conditions under which they are fired. With no target, the rocket will fire forward until it comes within a certain range of an enemy and then explode, catching the enemy in the blast radius. This means that it is useful for harming multiple enemies at once. The rocket will explode in either case if it reaches a certain distance and does not encounter an enemy. However, if the player has an enemy ship directly in their line of sight when firing this weapon, it will lock on to that enemy, and turn during its flight to hunt that enemy down. When the projectile gets close, it will try to touch the enemy before exploding, doing much more damage than if it were fired normally, and still damaging any surrounding enemies. When a lock is achieved, a red circle will appear over the enemy in question using the billboarding technique. The missile should use a smaller collision radius when checking collisions against walls and possibly stationary targets too. I had originally decided that this weapon should have a slow rate of fire due to its explosive nature, but considering that I want this game to be as fast-paced as possible, I decided that this would be unwise. Instead, I decided to let the player fire the rockets as fast as they can hit their fire button, but reduce the size and destructive force of the explosions to compensate. I will have to test this weapon extensively to discover the optimal settings for it.

FLAMER

The flamer is probably the most unique weapon in the player arsenal. The flamer works by ejecting a quick succession of points in 3D space that have random variations in their trajectory to form a cloud in front of the player before they disperse. The flames are drawn from each of these points and will have a large collision radius. Any enemy ship caught in this radius will suffer a minor amount of damage depending on each particle’s lifespan, radius and distance. However, there are many of these particles and therefore the damage can be highly accumulative. The particles will also stay until their lifespan is over, meaning that the damage done will need to be calculated on every frame using the internal time between frames until each particle finally dies. The flame particles will have to slow down after being ejected to create a convincing cloud of particles. Their size will also need to be carefully managed to ensure that they spread out in a convincing fashion. The problem with this weapon, therefore, would be that if the enemies are very close to the player, the flame particles will fly through and past the enemies very quickly, reducing the damage suffered. Therefore, I decided that any enemy that is touched by each particle’s collision boundary will cause that particle’s velocity to decay, effectively solving this problem (it’s not the first time I’ve coded a flamethrower!)

AMMUNITION

Each weapon has an ammunition bar in the top left of the screen that signifies how much ammunition is remaining. Originally I wanted to make each ammunition type unique – the flamer uses fuel, the rocket launcher uses rockets, the laser beam uses electricity, and so forth – but I also wanted to keep the mechanics of the game simple in nature to reflect the style of the old arcade shooter games that I am trying to capture. Therefore, each weapon has been given a simple bar that shows the amount of ammunition remaining. This allows me to calibrate the expense of firing each weapon to floating point accuracy, rather than saying “the player can carry 20 rockets” or “the player’s laser can burn for 15 seconds”. This allows me to balance the weapons more effectively and does not give the player any more data to consume than would be necessary for such a fast-paced game. They merely need to glance in the corner of the screen to immediately understand from the bars how much ammunition each weapon still has.

The map that the game will be using will be a major component of the game’s code. There is a lot of work to be done here. The map will be 3D in nature but the gameplay will be 2D. Drawing the map is the easy part.

MAP GENERATION

The map’s walls will be generated by a series of vectors that will signify the start and end points of each flat wall section. These points will need to join up at each end to close the map off from “the void” outside of the gameplay area. The points that are plotted will be input via code, which is the slowest and most tedious way of implementing them. If I have the time to write a map editor program of some kind, then I will.

COLLISION HANDLING

The map walls can be positioned at any angle – the concept is similar to drawing polygons with straight lines using a simple array of points. The collision detection between the game’s objects and these walls will be calculated by taking the start and end points of the walls to determine which side of the wall the objects should reside. So, if I have a point at the south edge of the map and a point at the north edge of the map, I can work out the angle from the first point to the second to let the code know that any object that touches the line should be clipped to the correct side. As long as I always make the assumption that the objects should always clip to the “right” of the angle made by the line, I should be able to create the outer edge of the map by creating a series of these lines arranged clockwise to draw a complete polygonal shape around the play area and I can make obstacles within the play area by making a series of lines that are arranged counter-clockwise.

The only problem is the corners – I can create code that will clip the player ship so that they do not encroach upon sharp corners of the walls but I will have to wait and see how objects will react code-wise when touching two walls at once as well as when touching these corners. As a rule, there should be no passageways that are so small that the player touches both sides of the passage walls at once – this will save me from having to write more complex code to handle collisions between wall segments from two different arrays of points at the same time.

Bullets are the easiest to handle collision for, because all they need to do is vanish when hitting any of the wall segments. The player and enemy ships will be much harder to account for. They will have movement physics that need to be taken into account when colliding with unmovable objects.

I have done this kind of work before, however, and although I found it very difficult, I believe that this solution will work very well if implemented correctly.

MAP GRAPHICS CONSIDERATIONS

I had originally wanted to make a simple floor that would be drawn as a huge square covering the entire play area, and have the walls drawn on top of that. This would create certain problems – the floor area that is in the “solid” areas of the map will still be visible to the player and should therefore be hidden from view, but creating code that will dynamically shape the polygon that makes up the floor area will be difficult. Therefore, I decided that the wall code should be split into two specific groups for graphics purposes. One wall will be a special outer wall that forms the boundary of the gameplay area and will clip all objects inside its boundaries while drawing a black area in the “solid” area of the map between the boundary and the wall’s edges. The other kind of wall will be much the same, only the solid area will be drawn inside the polygon shape made by the wall instead. These types of wall sections will be used to populate the majority of the game area.

These black sections will essentially be drawn very slightly higher than the game area’s floor, with the polygons that make up the visible wall sections themselves only being rendered on one side so that the solid areas themselves do not prevent the player from seeing dangers through the walls that make up the play area. After all, the idea is that the gameplay is 2D in nature, and in such 2D games the player can always see the enemies that are lurking behind walls in a map.

INSERT ILLUSTRATIONS – THIS ALL SOUNDS LIKE IM RAMBLING LOL

I’ve reinstalled Windows. My PC was having too many problems to be worth using. Now it’s back to being fast and efficient again. Which is great, except for the fact that I’ve lost every program I had. So now I am weeks behind schedule with little accomplished and I am staring at an empty desktop. It will be a few days before I have everything reinstalled and running properly but I don’t have much time. Other modules need their work done by the due dates too. I’m frustrated that this is getting marked so soon. I have work to do for other modules and I am fast running out of time for those too. I will be concentrating more on the digital effects module in the coming weeks to ensure that I don’t fall behind schedule. So although I am behind schedule for this module, I will barely have the time to catch up in the following weeks until the other modules I’m doing are over. The situation really sucks.

EDIT: I will be setting up this blog (http://coke2010.wordpress.com) to hold each of the modules I am doing in the “categories” section of the webpage so that I have everything in one place. It should make it easier for me to add to the blogs and I won’t have 3 different email addresses, usernames and passwords to remember, and can start using the blog properly instead of storing everything at home and in the log books. I’m going to replicate everything here and delete the other blog entries as I go and eventually delete the accounts too.

I feel silly for not knowing how to properly use a blog. Everyone has one these days apparently. Or so I keep getting told.

I’m currently very far behind on my work schedule. Having taken an extra module this semester to ensure that I have extra time next semester to concentrate on this module, I have not been able to spend as much time as I should have working on the game. I have been working in Sound Forge to create the sound effects that I would like to use for the game, but I have had trouble with the XNA software and its installation on my machine. It seems that Microsoft are no longer distributing XNA 2.0 on their websites, in favour of XNA 3.0 – which means that all of my existing projects and code from year 2 of this course is not compiling into version 3, despite all of the required updates. It just keeps throwing up error messages. I will have to find an old version of XNA somehow – I want to recover my lost work and also recycle some of the code for the CGP game. I can probably live without it, but it was good code

I also have a problem with my PC. It seems that every 10 minutes or so, it will freeze up and run incredibly slowly for about 10 minutes before returning to normal. This is happening constantly and I can’t seem to stop it. I suspect that it is a recent Microsoft download, because I have two friends that are currently suffering from this exact same problem. I have uninstalled the update but the problem persists. It’s hindering my work for university, especially the video compositing module but I can’t reinstall windows because I have everything on this machine from the laste 3 years on the hard drive. I am starting to feel very desperate now, however, and if I can’t change the situation then I think I will have to just bite the bullet and reformat.

I’ve also had trouble with the blog site. It’s the first time I’ve ever tried using a blog and there’s no damn instructions. All the posts come out in reverse order and I can’t change that so I’ve been using the “Pages” feature to put information there. I’ve basically made a total mess of the blogs for each of my 3 modules. I’m going to recompile them properly over the weekend into one blog, now that one of the tutors kindly showed me how to properly use all of the blog features available to me.

Also, Blender is installed and I am going through the beginner tutorials but there is definitely something wrong. I am following tutorials that ask me to use keyboard shortcuts, menu options and features that simply don’t appear on my screen. I don’t get it. I have reinstalled it twice now on two different machines and I’ve gotten the same results. This is the most recent version. I will reinstall an older version and see if what I get will correspond to the tutorial illustrations. I can’t even do the beginner tutorials without running into problems at the moment. Considering all of the issues I have been having with my PC lately, I will probably get desperate and reformat the PC very shortly.

This is all very ridiculous and frustrating

The enemy weapons systems will mirror your own, so that you can target specific enemies to get specific ammunition. The enemy ships will come in 5 different designs also, to give variation to the gameplay. The five weapons the enemies will use are as follows.

AUTO CANNON – The enemy will fire their bullets in short bursts, either in a tight line or as a spray.

LASER BEAM – The laser beam will be one long continuous beam like the player’s. The laser beam will sweep left and right to track the player as they try to dodge, meaning that the player can not change direction while the beam is switched on – therefore the beam will only stay on for short bursts.

PLASMA – The player’s version of the plasma bullet can kill multiple enemies until it hits a wall or runs out of destructive force, but this will cause problems when hitting the player ship. If the bullet survives the impact, it will continue to register as a hit on every loop of the game code for as long as it encroaches the player’s collision boundary – therefore I must kill the bullet as soon as it impacts the player. The damage will be severe to reflect this weapon’s main strength.

FLAMER – Usually a bullet will die upon hitting the player shield but the flames from this weapon do not. They continue to harm the player until the lifespan of each fire “object” is over, before they disappear. This makes it a dangerous weapon so the enemy’s flame weapon has reduced range, power and lifespan.

ROCKETS – The rockets will home in on the player ship by turning as they move, making them a deadly menace. However, the player’s bullets can destroy the rockets before they hit. The rockets will also explode if the player’s ship is at an angle greater than 45 degrees from the enemy’s line of sight. This enables the player to destroy the rockets harmlessly if they maneuver their ship in the correct way.

ENEMY TYPES AND BEHAVIOUR

The enemy will use different tactics based upon both enemy type and weapon type. Enemies using the flamers will attempt to get close to the player. The enemies with the auto cannon and plasma will attempt to engage the player at mid range, and the  enemies using the laser beam and rockets will engage from any range within their weapon limit.

Enemy types will vary in speed and armour. The lower the armour, the faster the enemy can move. The fastest enemy can move five times faster than the slowest, and the heaviest armoured can sustain five times as much damage than the weakest. Some enemies will be able to move faster than the player, meaning that in some cases it will not be possible for the player to retreat from combat.

The enemy ships are distinct in design from each other so that the player will be able to tell the characteristics of the enemies being fought. The fast, light armoured ships will have a flimsy looking frame and when destroyed they will shatter,  spreading their wreckage over a large area. The slow, heavily armoured ships will stay whole and drop to the ground as they disintegrate.

The heaviest armoured enemies will stay closer to the generators than the scouts, partly due to their slow speed but partly due to the strategic advantage of surrounding the generator with heavily armoured units. The lighter ships will always come forward to attack first due to their speed, but will also be willing to venture further than the heavy ships.

Generators will often be found grouped together programatically so that when certain groups of generators are destroyed, parts of the map will open up to allow you to venture further across the level. When all generators on the map are destroyed, the final area of the map is opened up and you will be able to fight the boss. Once the boss is destroyed, you can venture to the next level.

BOSS ENEMIES

These are the end-of-level guardians and come in five basic types. They are essentially large enemy ships that can release the smaller enemy fighters. They carry weapons systems that are unique for each boss. The design for these ships can wait for now, however – once all of the normal enemies are programmed, I will have a good code base with which to design a challenging attack pattern and behaviour system.

THE GENERATORS

The enemy generators are stationary targets that must all be destroyed before the level can be completed. Each one will award the player with a time bonus if destroyed quickly enough. This means that different generators can be assigned different time values, and will allow the player to generate a higher score if they are destroyed in the correct order. Each generator will output one enemy every few seconds when the player comes close, and will stop generating them when the player leaves the vicinity. The generators have a shield that will recharge, meaning that the player must concentrate their fire heavily on the generator for a certain period to be efficient at destroying them. The generators will each spawn a unique combination of enemy ships so that levels can be designed more interestingly.

DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

The collision routines in this game will be very simple, using a circle to test for collisions against bullets and other objects. Therefore it makes sense to design the enemies in such a way that they fill out a rough circular area, so that it is easy to judge collision distances and whether or not collisions will occur. The same will be true for the bullets.

The laser beam must be able to detect where it crosses a circle. Luckily I have code that will show this. The same code will be used to detect if the player’s line of sight rests directly on an enemy, and if so, any rockets fired will lock onto their target and home in, just like when an enemy fires a rocket at the player.

The enemy ships must be able to navigate through a maze towards the player. This will hopefully not be as daunting a task as it sounds. Enemies will stay within a certain distance of the generators that spawned them. The maps will be simple in design and the enemies will only need to navigate around simple obstacles and single corners. They will not be required to perform complex and time consuming maze solving algorithms. However, a simple waypoint system could be implemented to ensure that enemies can navigate more complex environments, given that I have the time to write and test it. The problem with a waypoint system is getting the code to intelligently switch between the waypoint navigation code and player dogfighting code where appropriate. I will have to wait and see if I have the time to implement this feature – the artificial intelligence routines for this game are already a daunting and time consuming prospect.

MENU SYSTEM

Start – start a new game

Quit – will close the program

Controls – edit your gameplay controls

Hiscores -  view the scoreboards

Credits/About – view the credits and game information

Main menu screen. The game will hopefully play a demo of some kind in the background, but here, I have used a mock-up of the game view as an example.

Name entry screen. Hitting enter will accept the default "nobody" name and will not use the scoring system.

Difficulty menu. The easy mode is meant to be very hard

Control configuration screen. As you can see, there are few controls because the game is meant to be simple to use. Notice that the fire button is always the left mouse button, and does not require binding to any key.

GAME MECHANICS

When a new game is started, the player will have the chance to input a name if desired, and will also be asked which difficulty level they want to play at. There will be 3 different difficulty levels, with 3 corresponding hiscore tables for each difficulty level.

When the game starts, the player will have 3 lives and will be required to complete each level with only one life without dying. A new life is awarded at the end of each level. If the player dies, they will lose one life and also be required to start the level again, and will lose any score accumulated for that level. The player ship will have a shield that recharges slowly over time, but cannot withstand major damage.

The player is capable of using up to five weapons against the enemy besides their basic default weapon. These are:
-Auto cannon (machine gun, much stronger than laser beam but slower projectiles)
-Laser beam (one long single continuous beam of energy)
-Plasma (slow rate of fire but the plasma projectile is fast and destroys multiple ships)
-Flamer (spews a jet of flames for a limited distance – very powerful)
-Rockets (fly forwards for a short distance and then explode with large radius)

The ammunition for these weapons will be found by destroying enemies that use such weapons against the player and picking up the weapons they leave behind. Different weapons will work more effectively against different enemies. Some weapons will use line-of-sight or raytracing techniques to determine what they hit, while others will use normal collision boundary detection of moving objects.

The player ship will be controlled in a similar manner to a first-person shooter, with movement handled by the keyboard and the mouse used for aiming the ship’s weapon. The camera view will be placed above and behind the ship, so that the game area will taper off into the distance. The player’s view will be limited by darkness, in a circle around the player, which is used for effect rather than to deliberately shroud enemies from view.

Enemy ships will be spawned from various generators throughout the level. Each generator is capable of generating a near infinite number of ships that will attempt to navigate the game environment and seek out the player. The generators will only spawn enemy ships if the player is within a certain range of it, and if the player is far enough away from these ships, they will stop looking for the player and remain stationary. This is to ensure that the player is not overwhelmed with an impossible number of enemy ships, but will ensure that they still have to work hard to fight their way to the generators to shut them down.

Enemies will need to follow some kind of attack pattern as they engage the enemy, and this will probably depend on weapon type as well as enemy type. I am hoping that they will also use some form of group tactics, although my previous experience at programming such a thing made it clear that this is a difficult task to implement. I will have to see how feasible this is as the project progresses.

Player and enemy units will require some form of physics to react to impacts with map boundaries and each other. I am hoping to implement circle-vs-line detection algorithms for collision with the ships against the boundaries of the map, as well as for the laser beam and for various line-of-sight techniques for navigation and weapons algorithms.

There will be at least 5 variations of enemy fighters that will spawn from generators dotted around each level. The enemies will have different attack patterns and characteristics based upon their type, and I am hoping to ensure that their weapons will not be dependent on their type so that gameplay will have more variation.

The powerups that the enemy ships leave behind will power up each of the player’s different weapons, essentially giving them ammunition to use. The player will always have  basic default weapon in the absence of ammunition for all the other weapons in their arsenal. There is a generous upper limit for the amount of ammunition the player can carry for each weapon, enabling them to save up ammunition for their favourite weapons for times when they are needed.

There will be at least 5 large boss enemies that will guard the exits of some levels and will be capable of spawning normal enemy ships to attack the player. The bosses will be required to be destroyed using the powerups left behind by the normal ships that it is spawning. The boss ships will each have different movement patterns as well as different attack patterns.

Once the player has lost all their lives, they are shown their position on the high-score table, if they were successful in achieving a high enough score.

SCORING

The problem with the scoring system for this game is that the enemies will keep on spawning continuously for as long as the generators exist, meaning that the player can simply hang around waiting for new enemies and then shoot them to increase their score. Therefore, I had to think hard about how the scoring system will work. Eventually I decided that the points system should be time-based to enable players to compete for the highest scores. The generators will each have a timer associated with them that would count down to zero. If the player managed to destroy the generator before the timer reaches zero, the remaining time would be converted into points and added to their score at the end of the level. The level itself will also have a timer, as well as the boss ship. Points would also be deducted for firing weapons, requiring the player to be more efficient and accurate to maintain a good score. Finally, I decided that the player should also get a points bonus for each life they had at the end of the level. As a new life is always given for completing a level, this would allow the player to accumulate a good score for not dying as well as for completing the level quickly and efficiently.

A mock-up of the proposed game area and HUD. I want the screen clear for the action so I put all of the information at the top of the screen, so that it is in the darkened area at the edge of the player's view instead of cluttering up the screen. The weapons are always visible on the screen but you can only switch to a weapon that has ammunition. If no weapons have ammunition, then your weapon defaults to a basic blaster that is weaker than the other weapons.

Churches and ministries are making a significant contribution to developing countries.  Ministry Today explains,

A new study indicates that religious organizations make up almost a quarter of all U.S. giving to developing countries. In fact, churches, ministries and similar entities sowed a whopping $8.6 billion into foreign soil in 2007.

According to the study by Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Prosperity (CGP), church donations to international relief organizations based in the U.S. jumped 17 percent from 2006 to 2007, with 74 percent of American congregations giving toward global aid agencies. The average church gave $11,960, and more than a quarter of those gave directly to programs in other countries for a combined $3.3 billion. Other means of church giving included short-term mission or service trips (34 percent of all congregations did this), as well as long-term development projects (30 percent) that contributed more than $1.4 billion to aid countries.

Contrary to what many claim, Christianity is doing a world of good.

Escrito por Rafael Quintana Contreras.

El motivo de escribir este artículo, es el de solucionar todas las dudas que nos puedan surgir, debido a las revisiones que están haciendo las compañías suministradoras en nuestras instalaciones de servicios comunes de finca, o bien si el estado de nuestra instalación es muy malo, debido a la antigüedad de la misma y queremos recabar información para solucionar este problema, que lo es, ya que si no lo hacemos corremos grave peligro, puesto que un porcentaje elevadísimo de incendios es debido al mal estado de la instalación eléctrica de nuestra comunidad. Aparte de que muchas comunidades carecen de servicios mínimos, como son protecciones magentotérmicas y diferenciales, falta de tomas de tierra, cables muy antiguos y en mal estado. Además, a esto hay que sumar aquéllos vecinos que han aumentado la potencia de sus instalaciones y han tenido que cambiar sus acometidas, con el riesgo que esto supone, ya que la instalación general de finca sufre debido principalmente a dos motivos.

El primero, que al pasar los cables de la derivación individual por la canalización antigua de la finca, estos son más gruesos que los antiguos y al rozarse con los viejos los pueden deteriorar. Y segundo, las instalaciones antiguas no están preparadas para las necesidades de potencia actuales de una vivienda.

De todas formas, ya sabe si ha recibido una carta de su compañía distribuidora, bien sea Iberdrola, Unión FENOSA, Endesa o Gas Natural, o si tiene alguna duda no lo dude, y llame al electricista del barrio, y de forma inmediata le enviaremos un técnico para que revise la instalación eléctrica de su comunidad y a la mayor brevedad posible le enviaremos un presupuesto sin compromiso. Aparte, y para garantizar que se pone en buenas manos, no tenemos ningún problema en facilitarles los datos de las últimas reformas de finca que hemos realizado para que comprueben que somos verdaderos profesionales. Además de ser instaladores autorizados, tenemos un seguro de responsabilidad civil y el local en el que estamos es de nuestra propiedad y llevamos en el barrio más de 10 años, aparte de los más de 25 años de experiencia que tenemos en el sector. Todo esto son signos de que el electricista del barrio es su Instalador electrico Autorizado y su empresa de confianza.

Lo que vamos a hacer es explicar en qué consiste la instalación eléctrica de su comunidad, o mejor dicho de las partes en que se divide:

Centralización de Contadores.

Es el cuarto de contadores, que es el sitio donde están ubicados los contadores de todos los vecinos de la finca. Dentro de los cuartos de contadores podemos hacer tres divisiones: centralizados en planta baja, centralizados por plantas o centralizados en planta alta. También existe una cuarta disposición posible de los contadores que es individualmente en las viviendas, pero como esto no es una centralización, por eso no lo había contado como tal.

La normativa moderna nos dice que los contadores deben de estar centralizados en la planta baja de nuestra comunidad, en un cuarto dedicado específicamente para ello, con unas medidas determinadas y con una puerta con resistencia al fuego y una cerradura homologada por la compañía que nos suministra la corriente. Todo esto siempre y cuando haya posibilidad en la finca de habilitarlo.

También nos dice, que todas las viviendas y locales de la finca deben disponer de un contador individual ubicado en este cuarto de contandores y que los módulos de contador serán monofásicos para las viviendas,  y módulos trifásicos para los locales y la finca y para las viviendas con suministro trifásico.

Otra cosa muy importante al respecto de los suministros, es que la compañía suministradora sólo nos va a permitir el número de suministros que estén dados de alta, es decir, que si queremos colocar algún suministro más a la hora de hacer la reforma de finca, como por ejemplo, partir una vivienda en dos, este nuevo suministro necesitará un certificado de instalación electrica ( boletin) nuevo.

Toma de tierra:

Todos los edificios han de contar con una toma de tierra situada en el cuarto de contadores, si éste está en la planta más baja del edificio, contando los sótanos, o si no es así, debe de estar situada en ella.

La toma de tierra estará compuesta normalmente, salvo excepciones, en donde la conductividad del terreno sea muy mala, por una pica de hierro cobrizado de 2 metros de longitud, una línea de cobre desnudo de 35 mm. desde la pica hasta el módulo de contadores, una arqueta de tierra y una caja de prueba, en la que haremos la prueba de resistencia a tierra, la cual nos debe de dar una resistencia de entre 3 y 50 ohmios.

Derivaciones Individuales.

Son las líneas de alimentación que van desde el cuarto de contadores hasta nuestra caja general de proteccion, situada en la entrada de nuestra vivienda.

Enlazan nuestro contador con las protecciones generales de nuestra vivienda, partiendo de la regleta de conexión situada en la parte alta del módulo de contadores y terminando en nuestro automático general que es el que la protege. 

C.G.P. Caja General de Protección

Es como su nombre indica la protección general de toda la instalación eléctrica de nuestra finca.

Enlaza la  línea de alimentación de compañia con el interruptor general de corte situado en la centralización de contadores.

Es una caja de material aislante, normalmente PVC , en la que van alojados cartuchos fusibles que protejen la LGA, línea general de alimentación.

puede ir colocada en fachada o alojada en un michinal situado a la entrada de nuestra finca.

Línea General de Alimentación.

Es la que une la C.G.P con la centralización de contadores, debe tener sección suficiente para soportar la potencia de todos los suministros de nuestra finca y se realizará con cable libre de alogenos de 0,6/1kv.

Se instalara directemente grapeada a la pared o bajo tubo.

Cuadro general de protección de los servicios comunes de finca.

Es el que proteje los servicios comunes de finca y estará formado por:

Un automático general de protección normalmente de 2×25 A., un diferencial de 2×40-30 mA.  si la finca tuviera ascensor estas protecciones serían trifásicas y de más amperaje y también tendríamos que instalar un automático y un diferencial para el ascensor.

Para proteger los distintos circuitos de la escalera. Normalmente se pone un automatico de 2×10 A. para proteger el alumbrado de escalera y el alumbrado de emergencia, un automático de 2×16 para la linea del portero automático y un automático de 2×16 para la antena.

Todo esto compone nuestra instalación de servicios comunes de finca,  esperos haberos servido de ayuda. De todas formas ya lo sabeis, si teneis alguna duda no lo dudeis y llamarme inmediatamente, que en la medida de mis posibilidades os lo solucionare.

Muchas gracias por leerme y un saludo muy fuerte para todos.

Para mas información:                                                

Telefono: 912554556 Pulsa aqui para llamar gratis

Web: www.electricistadelbarrio.com

The Eames/Bradley Report which proposed giving £12,000 to families of all those killed in Norther Ireland’s Troubles is proving as divisive as any religion or sectarianism.

How can it be right, morally or ethically, that the family of a terrorist gets “rewarded” the same as the family of an innocent?

And, I know, many of you will be screaming at your computer screens saying that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter……..Nelson Mandela…..blah, blah, blah. But I am sorry, you are wrong! Plain wrong. 

A freedom fighter does not bomb innocents on a crowded shopping area in Omagh. A freedom fighter does not shoot dead a policeman directing traffic or a prison officer on his way home. A freedom fighter does not lob grenades into the crowds of mourners at a funeral.

The people who did such things, on both sides of the sectarian divide, are terrorists and criminals pure and simple. I am sure that they were loved by their friends and family but to reward the circumstances of their death, in the course of perpetrating a reign of terror against the non-combatants on the islands of Ireland and Great Britain, is simply wrong.

Remember the innocent victims first and foremost. Truth and reconciliation is something I hope we all strive for in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Wrong has been done on both sides. But, black is not the same as white; good is not the same as evil; and a hooded coward killed setting a bomb in a pub is not the same as an innocent shopping on a Saturday afternoon.

Related Posts:

The Troubles

It is impossible to observe today’s launch of the Consultative Group on the Past’s Report without feeling a sense of sympathy for the authors. The report from the very outset was a political piñata and the task of addressing such a raw subject was not one to envy.

Saying that you would have hoped a a couple of things could have been done better.

If the early announcement of the £12,000 compensation plan was designed to take the flak and spare the main body of the report, it failed miserably.

The £12,000 compensation for all those who lost a family member during the Troubles was bound to cause upset and there are a couple of understandable reasons for this. The figure seems arbitrary, perhaps designed to suit budgetary requirements more then anything else (bit of maths puts it at roughly £45 million). It has a touch of tokenism to it and Raymond McCord is one of many who have already called it ‘bloodmoney’.

Those included as recipients for the compensation, has also brought about protest. With columnists pointing out that the family of Lenny Murphy will get equal to that of his victims families, people are understandably outraged. Many are asking why a group Chaired by two decent men have suggested such a thing, but what alternative did they have?

Shelly’s Frankenstein points out the dangers of creating something you cannot control. Once the group had decided on compensation of any form, With so many unknowns in Northern Ireland’s past, compensating on a case by case basis would drag out the pain and recriminations for the foreseeable future. We’ve already seen in this short year how issues can become spectator sports for the old divisions (Palestine/Israel) and the last thing Northern Ireland needs is more political football.

In accepting a hierarchy of victims there is an implicit suggestion that there are families whose loss is inferior. If an attempt was made to value one life above and over another (or more accurately one family’s grief over another) it too would have been met with disgust.

With all of that said, the compensation isn’t the story here. It shouldn’t be anyway. Doing the best we can for the families who’ve lost loved ones is the issue at hand. That’s what the debate should be about. One thing amongst many the report recommends is that those families affected, who want to move from an investigative approach to information retrieval, can do so. Those who want to stick with investigations can. Allowing the families this choice in which way to seek closure/justice is important.

After the indignation has died down and the media moves on the victims families will still be there. £12,000 or not, we owe them nothing but the best support in helping them reach their closure.

What makes us buy the things we do? Some people only buy SONY and others swear by samsung. What created these loyal ambassadors? I think alot about this lately..especially with a slowing economy, people make different choices when it cpmes to their shopping lists. Does the $1.99 discount on the competitors cheese real that enticing?

My opinion is that consumers will stay true to your brand if they are emotionaly connected to you. If they buy into your messages and believe the promise made is delivered…then lower prices or better packaging will not matter at all.

The digital space is a perfect way to create these options. Utilize blogs and interactive experience to reinforce you commitments. Make it easy for them share their excitement and spread the word.

I’d challenge all of you to evaluate your consumer’s digital experience. (or call us and we can help *smile*)