Based on something that came up in another thread that I can't easily find, I've been doing a bit of experimentation with Gem Windows (b-Y) to see how well suited they are to animations.
Gem Windows are made from 3 gems, and if you choose gems of different types, they will cycle between the different colors to display. I made some test windows and came to the following conclusions:
-All gem windows cycle in the same phase, regardless of build-time. (Unsurprising, but fortunate)
-The ORDER that you add the gems in
does seem to matter. (according to ZetaX's findings. More research needed)
-What ALSO seems to matter is the order gems appear on the list in the Gem Workshop. Backwards. (Cut Green Glass will always be the first gem to display its color since it's at the bottom of the list.)The gem-order is determined by the CREATION ORDER of the gems, with the MOST RECENTLY CUT gems are used first in the window.Another thread linked to on page3 of this thread had the following post which summarized things quite nicely:
The only thing that matters is what order the gems began their existence in.
In synch, first time, every time, until I ran out of yellow. (maybe I should have started with some decent miners 8-)
Now, you can (obviously, given the above) to some degree control the gem existence order- If you cut the gems in the order you want them, then they will have begun their new existence in the right order. But if you are buying cut gems, then the only thing you know is that the gems you cut after the traders arrive will be newer than the traders' gems, which will in turn be newer than gems that were cut before they arrived.
You can also build windows and check what order the gems in the windows are, to get a feel for which are newer (The list in [T] mode will be in creation order)
Note that the order that the dwarf fetches gems *does* correspond to the order in the window. But they will always fetch them in existence order, regardless of where they are and what order you pick them in.
You can use the con(T)ents query on a gem window to look at its components, and the order that they are listed in will be the order that they are cycling in. Keep your gems rough for as long as possible, and then cut them to-order when you need to construct a gem window. Identifying patches of your image that all have identical configurations will allow you do do this in larger batches.
This means that to create animations, you will need to use a wide variety of gems in order to get colors to display in the proper order. In order to get a window that flashes "Yellow, Red, Yellow" you will have to use 2 different types of yellow gem, and have a red gem that comes between them on the list. "Gold Opal, Cherry Opal, Citrine" will work, but "Gold Opal, Ruby, Citrine" will NOT, since Rubies appear on the list AFTER citrines do. However since it's hard to tell when a cycle begins or ends, these two patterns will simply appear to turn red at different times. The first example will go YRY, and the second will go RYY.What can I make with just 3 frames of animation, though? The only thing I can think of so far is just "travelling lights", and that will require 4 distinct gems to do. At least there's a gem-based megaproject now!
edit: Corrected color-order information, and modified the example. (Turns out Rubicelles are yellow, so I changed that to Rubies.)2nd edit: Gem use-order is determined by creation-order.3rd edit: Added that beautiful quote
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Topic: Gem-Window Animations: A use for Gems at last? (Read 13616 times)