This is a little side project that i'm hoping to include in some form in my 'Dwarfputing an A.I.' fortress, but there's potentially a lot more that can be done with it that I just don't have the time for so i'm making another topic for others to perhaps do something with it.
In working on the display in my other topic that supports characters, I as a fan of dwarf fortress naturally began thinking of ways to do something more ridiculous. So I came up with this:
A coloured display screen that with the right linking and pressure plate/pump/gear combination would be capable of visual animation. The image posted is a white screen. It doesn't look like it up close, but take several steps back from your monitor (or when ingame zoom out).
A pressure plate triggered by water will activate all the floor hatches of a single frame (or deactivate the refuse if they're all on by default). The initial activation for the pressure plates and the hatches is instantaneous, which is good, but there's a downside. Reseting the pressure plate to reactivate the hatches takes over 100 turns and activating a 2nd pressure plate linked to a hatch that was already switched by a previous pressure plate doesn't do anything. (pressure plate A is activated, hatch dissapears, pressure plate B is activated that is linked to the same hatch, it won't reappear).
So comes the complicated solution where the pressure plate for one frame of animation needs to be activated, then deactivated before the 2nd pressure plate linked frame can be shown. I really don't want to explain all the web of linkages, but if you're crazy enough to try and attempt it it shouldn't be too hard to figure out from this explaination:
Lever is pulled, power is sent to filling pump 'A' which activates plate 'A'. Plate 'A' displays the first frame on the display, cuts power to pump 'A', sends power to draining pump 'A' (removing the water from plate 'A', starting a delayed reactivation) and sends power to filling pump 'B'. Filling pump 'B' activates plate 'B' which cuts power to filling pump 'B' and draining pump 'A' and sends power to draining pump 'B' (removing the water from plate 'B', starting a 2nd delayed reactivation).
Now, there are 2 gears that both need to be on for power to be send to pump 'C' which will activate plate 'C' and display the 2nd frame of the animation. By default, one is on and one is off. Pressure plate 'A' when activated turns off gear '1', so now both are off. When pressure plate 'B' is activated, gear '2' is turned on. Now both plates 'A' and 'B' are both set on a delayed reactivation from the water being drained, but plate 'A' has a head start and will turn on gear '1', completing the circuit just long enough to activate plate 'C' and start the whole cycle again. There's more gears to it then that but this should be enough for you to figure it out.
TL/DR, one pressure plate when activated will show one frame of animation, and the act if deactivating the plate, which is needed for the next frame to be displayed, will activate the pressure plate for the next frame.
I've linked up a little testing version and though there are a few annoying bugs it works pretty good. At 100 FPS, which is what will be played back when you record a movie, each frame will be on screen for about 1.12 seconds with 1 step between frames where all the hatches are either on or off (depends on their starting state), but at 100 FPS the human eye wouldn't even register it. When I was thinking on how to do this I was hoping I could get some rapid hatch action going so it would really look like movie animation, but with the way pressure plates and hatches function I couldn't find a way to get it to work any faster then this.
The whole setup is fairly compact, needing only 6 gears, 4 pumps and 2 pressure plates per frame, not including the power source and the display screen. The animation can have as many frames as you can bear to link, which would probably your biggest trouble, and the reason I don't want to try it right now. To have a screen that can display an animation of some complexity will probably need hundreds of linkages per frame. The example display I posted is made up of nearly 900 hatches, and i'm wondering if you need one even larger to have recognizable visuals. Of course you can make a display only in black and white, which would be much much easier to design each frame. Here's some more images of how the 3 colour system would look for each colour:
Cyan: Adamantine
Magenta: Rose Gold
Yellow: Gold
(There are materials for blue and red, but they don't blend together as well as magenta and cyan)
So, i'd be stoked if anyone with the right balance of insane and patience gave it a go. I can only imagine how cool a decent length animation would look regardless of what it is. Happy !!SCIENCE!!ing.
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Topic: Cyberdorf Systems: Dwarven Animation (Read 1598 times)