Count to a Million

[mtmerrick]

She answered "well that makes sense. Not HTC Sense, but sense nonetheless"

*ba dum tss*

63040

[MsRowdyRedhead]

63040


 

[mtmerrick]

Then of course, there was the one time dad was driven away from a cell phone by its name - it was called the Elf Touch Magic. No joke.

*ba dum- *smack*

63041

[MsRowdyRedhead]

63043

No!!!!If you TOUCH THEM THEY LOSE THEIR POWERS ...

[mtmerrick]

HTC has some horrible phone names, but any jokes i make about them would be inappropriate for this forum

63044

[Flipz]

63044

Map making is hard...

Well, no, that's not true, it's only hard because I'm trying to give visual indicators so players have some idea where to go, and it's a bit tough to make a repeating mechanism that the players themselves will never directly interact with.

On the other hand, I've devised an INCREDIBLY brilliant method of making a non-repeating automatic mechanism, it works like a charm and even turns on automatically when the player gets close enough to the trigger (because of the way cube dispensers activate when auto-dropping their first cube).  And, best of all, it's relatively quiet, meaning you can hide it in the walls and players won't hear it running until they trigger it to turn off.  (And, if you don't WANT the mechanism to turn off, you don't have to--that part of the setup is totally optional.  )

TL;DR, in the map editor, the only thing that can permanently turn something on is a button you have to physically touch in order to turn on, and once it's on it's either on a timer (not optimal) or can't be turned off.  I've made a mechanism to remotely toggle things on and off without the player directly activating it.

Example: I have a series of wall panels that flip to create arrows on the wall.  When the player enters the room, the panels automatically flip to show the arrows.  When they finish the part of the test to the left by activating a laser catcher in front of the panels, the panel arrows disappear--and they stay gone even after you cut off power to the laser!  It's really awesome. 

[mtmerrick]

Nice!

Something tells me you're good with redstone too?

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[Flipz]

63047

I can make basic machinery, but I'm nowhere near, say, VoxelBox-level talent.   Though that reminds me, I really do need to finish that mob grinder so I can explain the concept or even just upload a schematic somewhere to show you.

And actually, without my experience playing around with redstone in Minecraft, I'd be WAAAAAY lost in designing the Portal maps.

The map building system itself is REALLY easy to use, I'm just asking it to do unreasonable things like have automatic machinery based solely on physics objects.   In this particular map, I've decided not to keep the repeating aspect, but I plan to make a new (smaller and thus easier to load and playtest) map to experiment with the concept further.

[mtmerrick]

I still have yet to grasp redstone repeaters. Just haven't found a good explanation yet.

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[MsRowdyRedhead]

63049

Mak was mumbling about repeaters yesterday...

[Flipz]

63049

Repeaters are fairly simple.  A Redstone signal can only travel 16 blocks before it gets too weak to power anything (you'll see the color slowly fade away from a line of redstone connected to an active power source like a redstone torch or a lever).  A repeater "restarts" the signal, and also delays it by one to four "ticks", depending on the setting. (Default is 1 tick, each time you right-click increases the delay by one tick, if you right-click a repeater on maximum delay it will cycle back to 1 tick.)  The only real quirk about repeaters is, they can't power redstone down "stair steps" like redstone wire can.

That's the basic version, it gets more complex from there of course, but just with that knowledge you can do plenty of simple circuits.  Just remember, repeaters: a.) extend a redstone signal that's getting weak (indicated by fading color in the wires), and b.) add a small, customizable delay of 1-4 "ticks" to the circuit.

[MsRowdyRedhead]

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[mtmerrick]

Hey, that actually makes sense

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[MsRowdyRedhead]

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Yeah.. even I got it =P

[Ddude The Insane]

63053

Flipz hit the nail on the head, but to add on to that: IIRC each "tick" is 1/10 of a second. So good luck making an explosion delayed by more than a few seconds

I can so some basic stuff with redstone: retracting door, dispenser-based turret, vending machine, etc.

[Magical Girl Mimi]

62055

MTM: They're not that bad. And just to mention, the only real time they've been weaker is this gen(Wii, focus on motion controls, and the PS360 went waaaay overboard in the Graphics Jump), and possibly with the Wii U(If only because it has to stream to two screens, ala the DS), but right now, that's all just random rumours, since no-one knows a thing about the 8th gen. =P

Also, technically the 3DS and Vita aren't that far apart... When you consider the 3DS has to render 3 screens, compared to Vita's one screen. DS... Well... Since it was the N64's counterpart still, it's not all that surprising that it wasn't the greatest, graphically. =P

[mtmerrick]

3 screens?

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[Magical Girl Mimi]

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Yes. The two screens you see... And that top screen? It generates the 3D effect by having two screens effectively; even if it only looks like one. Even if I misinterpreted it somewhere, it is effectively generating two screens at once, since it has to display 2 separate(But obviously similar) images at once, to just the top screen; that's not even including the touch screen.

[mtmerrick]

63058

Two screens with three images ≠ 3 screens

[Magical Girl Mimi]

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I missed the word 'effectively' in the original post, but the point still stands. Given that it already needs to render two screens at the same time; and then render the same image twice for one of the screens, it very likely takes a lot of power that otherwise could put it at a higher level.

This is combined with the fact that we're barely seeing the surface of the tech on the 3DS touched. Given that most are on-par with the Wii, even better in some cases... And likely could look even better by the end of it's lifetime... The 3DS isn't something to just shrug at.