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Author Topic: What to do with a clock?  (Read 23348 times)

NoneOfTheAbove

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #45 on: February 10, 2010, 07:34:34 pm »
Quote from: Dr. Hieronymous Alloy on February 07, 2010, 07:51:31 pm
Dwarf Anathem

Holy shit, I have to stop lurking just to say how badass this would be. Now I have motivation to play lots more
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They Got Leader

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #46 on: February 10, 2010, 08:19:56 pm »
When the new release comes out, or even in this one, I am going to build a mages tower fortress (based upon the looks of Heroes of Might and Magic 3, I am talking about the center tower, with the potential for the mages guild [spire dome on the middle right-hand side]). The top floor, or bottom floor, will be a large astrology clock, with different bridges that raise or drop depending on the seasons and "planetary" alignment with different stones depicting planets and the such. Of course, this is going to be one HUGE project, but hey, that's the fun, yeah?
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Quote from: Urist McDwarfFortress
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bmaczero

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #47 on: February 12, 2010, 10:07:02 am »
Magma clock tower WIP:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Urist Imiknorris

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #48 on: February 12, 2010, 02:38:15 pm »
I have decided what I shall do with such a device.

I WILL SUMMON CAPTAIN PLANET (and kill my fort in the process)

Earth: Drop my bedrooms into a bottomless pit.
Fire: Flood the countryside with magma (duh)
Wind: Seal off booze stockpile, release 300 (untamed) giant eagles.
Water: Flood dining room (alternatively, cause water to shoot up from my well)
Heart: Stop the clock (which will run the entire fort). Also, trap my mayor in the middle of the fort to starve to death.

I will then see if my fort can survive.
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Kidiri

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #49 on: February 16, 2010, 11:19:57 am »
Okay, long time no update. I started to get a bit frustrated because nothing worked out as it should have. The gears were always linked up wrong, and then I called it quits for a moment. Incidentally, I also found decided I needed to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Firefly and Serenity. All of them seriously awesome. But the calendar was put a bit off. And now I'm back. Discovering new errors. The most important one being the non-functioning of the display. Well, incorrectly working display. Some hatches are opened when they should be closed, and vice versa. But, I think I've found a solution. Instead of linking every plate up to every hatch needed to represent the number, I don't link them that also have a link to the previous pressure plate. However, this only works with the hours (which I conveniently don't count...), where the first pressure plate is still active when the second is activated, and deactivated when the third one is activated. So I'll have to find a way to delay the activation of the hatches/... after which it will be activated, until the original pressure plate is deactivated. It'll probably be something with pumps and pressure plates. Seriously, this seems to be a lot more difficult than I imagined. But since I'm better with tables than with words, here's one right now:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The X's represent what plate should be linked to what hatches/bridge/whatever and the -'s stand for delayed links.

I think the solution to the delay is to build a two-step repeater, with a resistor linked to it. How everything should work, I have no idea yet.
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Quote from: bluea on March 18, 2010, 11:07:03 pm
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Jyppa

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #50 on: February 16, 2010, 11:40:17 am »
A one-step repeater would do it. Another thing you could do is to link up another 7/7 plate to each segment, rig a pump to drain that plate's tile when active, and allow the water to drain back to the plate when inactive. Then link each such controller to a resistance through an OR sequence of gears (one for each argument, power needs to be connected unless all are active simultaneously. A few gears placed in a straight line will accomplish this, see wiki). Same thing can be done if you want to use bridges, in which case you put the plate in the tile the water is pumped into rather than the source tile. It takes some space, but is simple to build and impervious to the plate delay problem.
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Kigali

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #51 on: February 18, 2010, 06:08:32 pm »
So I've just noticed something that could prove fatal to this whole set-up: it appears that there is some lag in the clock while the water transfers through the two unattached pumps. It could just be that I don't fully understand the design, but it appears that there would be a significant amount of time loss.
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zecro

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #52 on: February 18, 2010, 10:58:20 pm »
  • Flood your farm first day of Spring
  • Make a food and booze storage set to open some years in the future
  • Make a timed booze bomb
  • Have a corridor with hatches that open in a timed pattern
  • Make otherwise elaborate traps such as the above, abandon the fort, and go back as an adventurer
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Jyppa

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #53 on: February 19, 2010, 01:31:54 am »
Quote from: Kigali on February 18, 2010, 06:08:32 pm
So I've just noticed something that could prove fatal to this whole set-up: it appears that there is some lag in the clock while the water transfers through the two unattached pumps. It could just be that I don't fully understand the design, but it appears that there would be a significant amount of time loss.

The beauty of it is that time is measured by plate reset time, which is 100 steps. The only thing that decides when the next pump in sequence goes active is when the water left the plate controlling it, meaning you can have the water do anything you want, as long as it lands on the next plate within 100 steps. The two-pump jump you're talking about only takes about 20 steps (varies a little) which is well within the sync threshold. Download the demonstration fort and watch it for a month or two, and you'll see that it doesn't drag a single tick (I think it's synced to match the calendar day change at 18 ticks after leaving the last position).

Also, Zecro, these kinds of machines sadly don't work in adventurer mode. The pressure plates seem to deconstruct, and there are no 100 step delays anyway. Still, since my fort happens to sit on a cave tile, anyone visiting it when abandoned will run into something like 5 named giants and 10 GCS, which is Fun.
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Kigali

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #54 on: February 19, 2010, 12:13:28 pm »
Ah ok, that's good. It's even better than atomic clocks! Gotta love dorf fiziks.

I get it now. This really is ingenious once you watch it for a while. Kudos, major kudos for this.

Another question: the click-counter that Kidiri pointed out seems that it would need a whole new structure for each counted unit. How would you string a bunch of them together so that it could count up to say 16-bit numbers?
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Jyppa

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #55 on: February 19, 2010, 12:31:44 pm »
The clock is basically just a few counters rigged together. If you want to use repeater/counters to store numbers, you just need to build N M-tick repeaters, where the maximum stored value is M^N, IE it will count N digits of base M. For example, if you want to count to 65536 (16 bit max), you'd obviously need 16 2-step repeaters (65536 = 2^16). If you instead wanted it to count 0-99999, you'd need 5 10-step repeaters linked in sequence, just like the clock. Just remember to allow the "extra" jump at the end of each cycle to trigger the count-up.

Oh, and if you want to save some space, or don't want to have to build separate power sources, you can rig the trigger plates to connect the power source rather than disconnect a resistance by manually disconnecting those gears with a lever first. The resistance does make some logic operations, like the 6-gear [(a OR b) AND (c OR d)] and similar more elegant, but that is a matter of taste really.

Edit: By the way, did you know that "nano" is Greek for "dwarf", thus making this legitimately nanotechnology? ;)
« Last Edit: February 19, 2010, 12:33:23 pm by Jyppa »
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Osmosis Jones

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #56 on: February 19, 2010, 01:08:20 pm »
Quote from: Jyppa on February 19, 2010, 12:31:44 pm
Edit: By the way, did you know that "nano" is Greek for "dwarf", thus making this legitimately nanotechnology? ;)

Osmosis Jones, BSc (Nanotechnology) (Honours) approves this post.
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Gazz

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #57 on: February 19, 2010, 03:48:55 pm »
There might be another way to count years.
(Or rather another way to add a certain mad scientist touch to the machinery)

If you route a water pipe outside and keep 1 tile of it open, that tile should freeze in winter, cutting the flow back down to the pressure plate.

In spring it thaws and triggers the pressure plate once... for this year.
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Jyppa

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #58 on: February 19, 2010, 03:59:41 pm »
That would certainly work for a yearly cycle, perfect if you want to make an unintrusive doomsday clock, although you need some kind of a counting device for that as well. Quite dwarfish, I like it.
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Kigali

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Re: What to do with a clock?
« Reply #59 on: February 19, 2010, 07:48:31 pm »
I see what you're saying. Thanks again for the help. Personally I'm trying to go for that City Of Ember challenge so I'm going to build a digital display in my "mayor's" office that will count up to 200, at which point my sealed fort will re-open to the outside world.
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