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Author Topic: The Puppy Clock  (Read 14535 times)

Xen0n

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Re: The Puppy Clock
« Reply #30 on: September 09, 2011, 06:02:38 pm »

I had some more thoughts on the original concept.

The problem with the timing scheme in the OP is that the puppies die on impact before they can trigger the pressure plate.  There are a few ways around this.

The first option is to have the puppy fall through a column of water or magma instead of air.  As far as I know, creatures fall through liquid at the same speed as through air, but are cushioned from falling damage.  The puppy will fall, hit the pressure plate, trigger it, and then drown or be incinerated.

The problem with this is the bug which causes creatures falling into magma to sometimes be immune to heat damage after landing.  The puppy might also be able to swim to the surface instead of drowning.

The other option would be to isolate some hostile and dangerous creature, preferably one with trap-immune, on the pressure plate.  A captive titan or forgotten beast would work.  The puppy will land on it.  Both the puppy and the target creature will be stunned but otherwise unhurt, and the pressure plate will trigger.  Then the target creature will kill the puppy, and the pressure plate will un-trigger.

In either case, the time the puppy takes to die after hitting the pressure plate is unpredictable, so the event you need to use for timing is from when the puppy is dropped to when it hits and triggers the pressure plate.

Nice!  That could really simplify things.  I for one would be glad to reincorporate the "tossing puppies down long shafts" mechanism.  I didn't follow super closely, but was there an issue with the water-cushioning over drops of more than 3 z-levels, found in the Dwarf Drop Pod thread?

At any rate the dropping onto another creature should definitely work.  We could even combine some of the ideas, and have the puppy drop onto a tame kitten (who is deposited onto the puppy-detecting pressure plate beforehand via a duplicate, parallel animal delivering system), and then have magma/water pour onto both to reset it.  The kittens would be the primers and the puppies are the triggers for the device.

(It may seem like an unnecessary stretch to use kittens + drowning instead of a hostile creature but for some reason I feel cheated out of the credit if some non-dwarf animal gets to do the actual puppy killing.)
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Boost One

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Re: The Puppy Clock
« Reply #31 on: September 09, 2011, 06:13:33 pm »

At any rate the dropping onto another creature should definitely work.  We could even combine some of the ideas, and have the puppy drop onto a tame kitten (who is deposited onto the puppy-detecting pressure plate beforehand via a duplicate, parallel animal delivering system), and then have magma/water pour onto both to reset it.  The kittens would be the primers and the puppies are the triggers for the device.

I don't understand - is the kitten to cushion the puppy's fall or to activate the pressure plate, leaving the plate to be deactivated when the puppy falls on top of the kitten and kills it?

For that matter, why not have a pasture on top of a pressure plate, where the puppy activates the plate, then a stonefall trap far above kills the puppy, releasing the plate? Wiki says plates disengage after 100 ticks.

Dropping rocks on puppies must be almost as good as dropping puppies on rocks.

EDIT: Or the stone would block the pressure plate. >.>
« Last Edit: September 09, 2011, 06:17:14 pm by Boost One »
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Nil Eyeglazed

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Re: The Puppy Clock
« Reply #32 on: September 09, 2011, 06:23:36 pm »

I had some more thoughts on the original concept.

The problem with the timing scheme in the OP is that the puppies die on impact before they can trigger the pressure plate.  There are a few ways around this.

The first option is to have the puppy fall through a column of water or magma instead of air.  As far as I know, creatures fall through liquid at the same speed as through air, but are cushioned from falling damage.  The puppy will fall, hit the pressure plate, trigger it, and then drown or be incinerated.

The problem with this is the bug which causes creatures falling into magma to sometimes be immune to heat damage after landing.  The puppy might also be able to swim to the surface instead of drowning.

The other option would be to isolate some hostile and dangerous creature, preferably one with trap-immune, on the pressure plate.  A captive titan or forgotten beast would work.  The puppy will land on it.  Both the puppy and the target creature will be stunned but otherwise unhurt, and the pressure plate will trigger.  Then the target creature will kill the puppy, and the pressure plate will un-trigger.

In either case, the time the puppy takes to die after hitting the pressure plate is unpredictable, so the event you need to use for timing is from when the puppy is dropped to when it hits and triggers the pressure plate.

Those are both really good ideas.

How much water would it take to cushion from a, say, 200 z-level drop?  (With 200 z-levels, you could use the pressure plate to open the drop-hatch and have a day-timer.)  You could link a drowning hatch at z-level=collision+1 (perhaps with delay for a 200 z-level drop, unnecessary with <18 z-levels) to the same mechanism as the drop-hatch, such that it would close after dropping the puppy, guaranteeing drowning.  With more watery z-levels, the drowning hatch could be placed higher and higher.  If a hatch wouldn't work, I'm pretty sure a retracting bridge would, although the timing issues would be different-- it would have to be >16 levels beneath the drop, and <8 levels above the collision.  I think.

It would be nice to have a use for captured trap_avoids, but it seems like it would be tough to isolate them on the same square as the pressure plate-- never tried pitting an FB, not sure if it would work or not, and you can't build a cage on a pressure plate, or on a hatch or bridge.  I suppose you could bait them in with a building though....

Code: [Select]
 
####
b^bd
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b is raising bridge, d is any piece of destructible furniture, trapavoid BD enters from the left


What might be interesting is to drop fish onto a kobold in a semi-submerged space-- the kobold has trapavoid, but won't attack fish or path through watery open space, whereas the fish should be able to set off plates, and can path through water, perhaps eventually to its starting position.  Not sure how wildlife path, but this could lead to a resettable, single-creature drop-clock.  It would also require some interesting design to give path to the fish without drowning the kobold.  And most importantly, of course, it would be a clock based on dropping fish on kobolds.

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For that matter, why not have a pasture on top of a pressure plate, where the puppy activates the plate, then a stonefall trap far above kills the puppy, releasing the plate? Wiki says plates disengage after 100 ticks.

2 reasons: 1) unpredictable delay between firings, as firing of pressure plate is dependent on puppy wandering into pasture, although this would otherwise gives us a nice delay mechanism between on and off; 2) dropped rocks don't hurt anybody
« Last Edit: September 09, 2011, 06:29:57 pm by Nil Eyeglazed »
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He he he.  Yeah, it almost looks done...  alas...  those who are in your teens, hold on until your twenties...  those in your twenties, your thirties...  others, cling to life as you are able...<P>It should be pretty fun though.

Sphalerite

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Re: The Puppy Clock
« Reply #33 on: September 09, 2011, 06:59:09 pm »

I don't understand - is the kitten to cushion the puppy's fall or to activate the pressure plate, leaving the plate to be deactivated when the puppy falls on top of the kitten and kills it?

It would be to cushion the fall.  Falling creatures don't do any damage to the creature they land on.  When a creature falls on another creature, both are stunned but otherwise unharmed, no matter the size or height of the fall.

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For that matter, why not have a pasture on top of a pressure plate, where the puppy activates the plate, then a stonefall trap far above kills the puppy, releasing the plate? Wiki says plates disengage after 100 ticks.

Stonefall traps are triggered when a hostile non-trapavoid creature steps on them, and then only do damage to that one creature.  They can't be triggered by a pressure plate or lever, and don't do any damage to anything but the creature that triggered them.

If you mean pile some rocks on a floor hatch and drop them on the puppy, that won't do anything.

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Dropping rocks on puppies must be almost as good as dropping puppies on rocks.

You'd think so, but falling objects do no damage whatsoever in DF.  Stonefall traps don't actually drop stones on creatures, they're special-case devices that consume a stone and inflict damage.

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EDIT: Or the stone would block the pressure plate. >.>

Nope, objects on pressure plates don't have any effect on the plate's operation.
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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius --- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Xen0n

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Re: The Puppy Clock
« Reply #34 on: September 09, 2011, 07:09:06 pm »

What might be interesting is to drop fish onto a kobold in a semi-submerged space

Sigged.  Because Context is the enemy.
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Boost One

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Re: The Puppy Clock
« Reply #35 on: September 09, 2011, 07:09:40 pm »

It's my first day  :D
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Mego

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Re: The Puppy Clock
« Reply #36 on: September 09, 2011, 07:17:58 pm »

If DF is anything like real life, then everything falls at a constant rate.

I'm sorry, but I have to nitpick here. The rate at which something falls is not constant until it hits terminal velocity, and even then, it can change somewhat if the shape of the object changes.

Dear Armok, what monster have I brought forth?

This is excellent, actually.

This is what Toady thought when he made Dwarf Fortress and Bay12.

Xen0n

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Re: The Puppy Clock
« Reply #37 on: September 09, 2011, 07:25:26 pm »

Dear Armok, what monster have I brought forth?

This is excellent, actually.

This is what Toady thought when he made Dwarf Fortress and Bay12 Opened the Bay12 Forums.

Fix'd that for you :)
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Mego

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Re: The Puppy Clock
« Reply #38 on: September 09, 2011, 07:42:09 pm »

Thank you for that :P

FearfulJesuit

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Re: The Puppy Clock
« Reply #39 on: September 10, 2011, 09:43:53 pm »

If DF is anything like real life, then everything falls at a constant rate.

I'm sorry, but I have to nitpick here. The rate at which something falls is not constant until it hits terminal velocity, and even then, it can change somewhat if the shape of the object changes.

OK, well, yes, but all things (air resistance) being equal, the time an object takes to fall is not dependent on its mass. And I'd be very surprised if DF modeled air resistance.
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@Footjob, you can microwave most grains I've tried pretty easily through the microwave, even if they aren't packaged for it.

FearfulJesuit

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Re: The Puppy Clock
« Reply #40 on: September 23, 2011, 12:44:10 pm »

If we did use the puppy dropping into a 1x1 pond of 7/7 water, we could have each puppy fall through an open grate right above the water. Then, when they trigger the plate, it will also close the grate, and they can't swim to any sort of safety.
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@Footjob, you can microwave most grains I've tried pretty easily through the microwave, even if they aren't packaged for it.
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