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[MrsStick]

Okay, I'm trying to clear something up about DF2012's bridges.

If I build a bridge somewhere out on my world, how do I link it to a lever that's preferably in my fortress? Do I just build a lever and link it to a bridge? Is it possible to link a single lever to EVERY bridge?

This is mostly to help me before I start my next world...my current one is failing rapidly. Four citizens left, one of whom is a useless melancholy vampire, one of whom has the ability to grasp lost, and one of whom is a child.

...LOSING IS FUN!

[wierd]

1) Build the bridge
2) Build the lever
3) [Q] over lever, Link to bridge. (Requires 2 mechanisms)

After that, when the lever is pulled, after a few game ticks, the bridge state will toggle.
The distance between the bridge and the lever does not matter.

Multiple levers can be assigned to a single bridge.
Multiple bridges can be assigned to a single lever.

Requirements:

When linking the bridge and the lever, the dwarf doing the linking has to be able to path to both the lever and the bridge.

[4maskwolf]

One other thing to note is that all bridges linked to a single lever will only toggle the same way.  You can't have a lever that makes one bridge go up and the other go down, unfortunately.

[MrsStick]

When you say that it has to be able to path to both the bridge and lever, are we talking that it just has to be physically possible to make it over to there somehow? As in, walk up a few Z levels, out the door, around the walled-in pastures, back up a ways, to get to the river that has the bridge over it? Or it needs to be in line of sight?

[DreamCarver]

Just so long as your mechanics can reach both lever and bridge, everything should be able to be connected. Distance or path-windy-ness have no effect on efficiency.

[MrsStick]

Okay, that makes sense. I'm really hoping this fortress crumbles soon, I want to use my new knowledges for more !!FUN!!.

I'm seriously addicted to this game...it's fun, and it lets me be a little cruel. Hubby can't stand it because he gets emotionally attached to his dwarves, but I enjoy the sometimes sadistic things they do.

[wierd]

They have to be able to walk to it. (First one.)

Line of sight is not necessary.  The lever could be 100z above the ground, and the bridge in the HFS, as long as the dwarf doing the linking can get from one, to the other. (This is important, if you use burrows or have walled part of the fortess off.)

As for what Maskwolf said-- Not quite.

You can link 1 lever to 2 bridges, then link another lever to only a single one.
This will let the first lever toggle both bridges, while the second toggles only one.

Eg, let's say both bridges start down.
You throw the first lever, they both go up.
You throw the second lever, the first bridge comes down, the second stays up.
Now when you throw the first lever, both toggle state, but the one that is up goes down, and the one that is down goes up.  Some rather complex switch logic can be accomplished this way.

[4maskwolf]

@Wierd: That I know of, it doesn't work that way.  The wiki and personal experience say otherwise.

That said, I could be wrong.  Have you pulled that off?

[MrsStick]

Clear as mud! I'm down to 3 citizens - ability to grasp gal has died.

So close...but I'm not quitting.

I haven't gotten into a lot of mechanisms beyond setting up massive amounts of traps at the entrances to my fortresses yet, and haven't even started working on minecarts. Haven't hit magma either. Unlike most, I like cats. Unless it's like two fortresses ago, where all of my cats belonged to two dwarves, each with more than 15 of them.

[wierd]

I distinctly recall this occurring in a fortress I made many many moons ago.

Instead of bridges, it was floodgates however.

2 levers were linking to 8 floodgates. (4 at the river, 4 in the growing chamber. There was a mezzanine between.)
Lever A was linked to all 8 gates.
Lever B was linked to only 2 of the gates inside the growing room.

Lever B was to allow dwarves to get inside and pick things, and yet still be able to seal the room again if needed.
Lever A was to allow flooding.

I got confused, and threw lever B, which opened some of the gates, leaving the others closed. When I threw lever A to flood the chamber, the previously open gates (from B) closed, while the closed ones opened.

I nearly had a water slide based !!fun!! Moment as a consequence.

Perhaps I will do a science experiment on it, to be sure. Can't do that now though. Corporate spyware at work now.

[itg]

This is how bridges, floodgates, and pretty much everything but gear assemblies work:

If you flip a lever to the ON state, it sends an ON signal to all linked buildings. If the building (e.g. a bridge) is in the OFF state, it turns ON. If it is in the ON position, nothing happens. It doesn't what state any other levers happen to be in. Basically, lever signals are "pulsed," not constant.

Gear assemblies are different in that they toggle their states every time they receive ANY kind of signal. For example, say you have two levers linked to an active gear assembly. Pull one lever, and it will disengage the assembly. Next, pull either lever, and it will become active again.

[wierd]

I'll defer to your more extensive track record ITG.

I still distinctly recall having floodgates do a bitwise flip though. (And no, no gear assy.) That *was* 2 releases ago though. That might explain it. If not, then I dunno. I distinctly remember flipping out when gates that were closed opened unexpectedy, as river (not stream) 7/7 water gushed into the fortress.

[xpi0t0s]

Just ran a test.  Bridge A and floodgate A linked to lever A.  Ditto B.  Lever AB connected to all four.
Initial state: both bridges down, both floodgates closed, all three levers off.
LA->on.  BA and FA opened as expected.
LAB->on.  BB and FB opened.  BA and FA did *not* close.
LB->on.  Nothing happened.
LAB->off.  All four closed.
LA->off. Nothing happened.
LB->off.  Nothing happened.
LB->on.  BB and FB opened.
Throwing LAB at this point is probably crucial to this discussion.  If bridges and floodgates toggle, then A should open and B should close.  BA and FA opened.  BB and FB did *not* close.

Given that there are 8 "before" states, 8 "after" states and 14 things you can link levers to, that's 784 explicit tests you could perform if you've got a bit of spare time.  But the above is probably enough to support the hypothesis that an "on" signal opens floodgates and bridges, and an "off" signal closes them.

As I've also got a lever controlled gear assembly in this fort I quickly checked the behaviour with a second lever.  Throwing either lever from the on or off state toggles the gear state.

[Larix]

Yeah, levers and pressure plates send distinct 'on' and 'off' signals, switching connected buildings into the corresponding state, gear assemblies are the only exception and toggle on every signal. All mentioned on the wiki, of course: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Lever
I can only speak of .34.11, because i haven't seriously played any older version.

With logic machinery, you can build a lever that toggles a pair of doors or bridges or whatever in opposite directions, but the lever in that case isn't linked to the buildings but rather to some gear assemblies generating the signals. I built a device that flipped two hatch covers between open and closed, with a latency of a bit over 100 steps and a desync between hatches of less than ten steps. Downside was it took four signal generators to make it work.
To toggle passages, it's easier to work with buildings with opposite trigger logic: floodgate in one passage, raising bridge in another. Or door in one passage, hatch over a pit in the other.

[Ravendarksky]

There are relatively easy machines you can build to achieve a lever which turns one set of things on and another set of things off.

I'll post a nice simple one when I get home tonight*

*if my son goes off to sleep and I get 5 minutes peace