Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[antymattar]

So pistons are cool. DF might be cool-er-ish if it had pistons. But simply pushing a soil/stone block would be unreal and would cause a lot of stupid oddities and problems. Also, the lever system right now is just plain weird. you might have a room made of iron walls, placed inside a magma filled container, placed inside a water filled container, then a lever placed outside would still activate a floodgate inside. So I think levers should be connected to things via ropes and pulleys and chains. boxes could be implemented so that you have stuff to push with pistons. You could also push cages etc. Wieghts should be in as a set up way to activate traps.

Heres an example:

when an enemy steps on a pressure plate, the plate is connected to a trigger at the bottom. the trigger is connected to another trigger far a way via a long rope. the same happens again but this time upwards. The rope is connected to a piston that is set up to a weight. in front of the piston there is a huge spiked ball. The ball is a variation of the crate and will roll and gain momentum when it falls down slopes. Thus, when the pressure plate is activated, the wight falls, activating the piston which starts rolling the spiked ball. The spiked ball rols down the corridoor completely destroying everything in its path.

What do you think?

[Zoomulator]

I'd love to connect things properly with gears and ropes and all sorts of mechanics.

I'm pretty sure it's planned already though, more or less anyway, and that the current mechanic system is only a placeholder.

[antymattar]

Well yes its planned but it doesnt really state WHAT exactly is planned

[Footkerchief]

Winches/pulleys come up a lot:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=33348.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=4890.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=34596.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=25712.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=26170.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=68462.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84338.0

Spoiler: tags (click to show/hide)

winch winches crane cranes pulley pulleys rope ropes chain chains elevator elevators dumbwaiter dumbwaiters weight weights counterweight counterweights

The piston aspect is a new suggestion AFAIK.  Pushing forces are generally harder to transmit and especially to redirect around corners.  Is there historical precedent for using pistons in the way you're describing?  In the spiked ball example, where does the pushing force of the piston come from?

[antymattar]

The piston aspect is a new suggestion AFAIK.  Pushing forces are generally harder to transmit and especially to redirect around corners.  Is there historical precedent for using pistons in the way you're describing?  In the spiked ball example, where does the pushing force of the piston come from?

Thats why I said there would be wights. Wieghts would be heavy things that are hanging and need to be reset by dwarves. The weight can be activated and if it is linked to the piston, the piston extends with the power of the wight falling.

I assume the wights might be hanging from the ceiling somwhere via some kind of holding/release mechanism that can also connect to multiple pulleys by rope/chain. so the holding mechanism needs to be activated to drop the weight and make the piston extend with a large force. (You can actually make a mechanism like this)

Also, it would be possible to make spring powered pistons(spring boxes?) which would have less force but would not need a weight to work.

[Zoomulator]

Well, moving parts with power sources are mentioned in the development list on the site, albeit briefly.

Improved Mechanics

• Better traps
• Stone traps should require the stone be placed above the tile that is targeted
• Stones should be able to roll (perhaps if they are started from or land on a ramp tile)
• Weapon traps should be multi-tile and require a spring or other potential energy source -- automatic resetting should require some explicit establishment of a feasible mechanism
• Large pipe sections -- walk on them or crawl inside them, allow passage for fluids
• Moving fortress sections (lifts, crushing traps, etc.)
• Waterproof axles through some mechanism
• Rock grinders? Fans? We'll do some other machines around this time -- whichever feasible ones are the most entertaining for dwarves and treasure hunters
  

[Jake]

Hmmm. I can think of a number of easier ways of achieving the specific example you mention; all it would take is the ball already resting on a slope with a couple of chocks holding it in place. Pistons do strike me as a good mechanism for spike traps or short-distance elevators, however.

And I wonder if the player couldn't also use a series of pistons to solve the problem of transmitting kinetic energy around corners through a rather crude form of hydraulics; there might be scenarios where chains and counterweights were impractical, and in any case, since when does a typical DF player do anything the least complicated way?

[Neowulf]

I want launcher traps and trapdoors. Launcher traps being weapon traps that are built as walls and when triggered fire volleys of bolts in a direction specified during construction. Trapdoors a combination pressure plate and floor hatch in 1 tile with no delay in activation, anything above a certain weight drops if they can't dodge away.

I would regen over and over until my fort randomly came up as Templedoom.

[knutor]

Free swinging weights?  Pendulum.  Like on a Grandfather clock?  Is that the motion your describing, to drive up and down the piston?  A large sandbag swinging back and forth, with a side arm, pulling and pushing up and pulling down, a bobbing piston? Displacing the motion of a free swinging sandbag.  Is that what ya meant?  In water this motion causes ripples.  Those ripples could and should provide an area of effect nova-like wave on the liquid, creating a circular wave.  A great way to trigger more than one pressure plate at a the exact time or in precise intervals.

I could get really cheerful about this suggestion.  Especially if it were a Foucault's pendulum using the earth's power to record or move minuscule sequential block, or keep ticking recordings.  Something like this would be a unending motion.  It sure would be nicer to just make permanent motion a feature of the fantasy world in this fashion, as opposed to some space-whoring, mechanical nightmare of windmill-pump design. 

A good suggestion.  *thumbs up*

As for Rigs, Pulleys and Weights.  I would add Chain Wench.  And that's not to be confused with a female slave on a noose.  And call it all Tackle, except for the weight.  Game already has a very nice weights system, blocks, it just needs code in place to make coffers, mobile.

Sincerely,
Knutor

[antymattar]

I have to agree with every statement here... This means the topic will die soon... 

[antymattar]

Ooh! Just a thought but elevators should be powered by weights that have to be reset via water mill powered or labor powered.

[Zoomulator]

Ooh! Just a thought but elevators should be powered by weights that have to be reset via water mill powered or labor powered.

Pffft... steam power is the way to go

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'd like to be able to make weapon traps without designating a dozen buildings. A few keystrokes, plus one per weapon, like the current system is? Great. A dozen per weapon? No thank you. But, let's see: Choose the weapon (movement keys, choosing the weapon), trigger (at least two or three for part, and the OP describes at least five separate buildings)...ugh. Unless we're talking special traps (swinging logs that damage a line of enemies, for instance), I don't want all of that hassle.

[antymattar]

But that is exactly what I AM talking about! the traps would be spectacular!

[peskyninja]

The only problem I can imagine is proportion, 1 block can be the size of a elephant or a rat so a trigger placed bellow a pressure plate would be giant? Small? In another Z-level? The same is applied to ropes, How long a rope is in DF?