Clocks!

John The Baptist · 2013-11-18 16:16:27

These clocks sure do give a lot of oppertunity's...
I just wonder how to utilise them...
I was thinking of somehow making a chain of electric floors with a room with a cat in it in the middle.
Once you pass the top of the room, the cat sees you and moves down onto a switch.
Once the switch is pressed, the clock gets inverted so you need to move back at just the right time to survive.
Then you can simply just walk to the vault without fear (The vault path starts inverted so you have to pass twice).
To bad i'm a electric mage in training, i barely understand the kind of witch craft you guys a pulling here...

iceman · 2013-11-18 20:40:57

I have no idea what happens with clocks either, but that doesn't mean you can't use them =P The secret to clocks is that each of those "bits" (groups of wiriing around the lights) has a different length that it alternates. The first one turns on then off every turn, the second turns on for 2 turns then off for 2 turns, the third stays for 4 turns, the fourth for 8, etc.

Most of the houses I've seen just use the 2nd bit, so everything alternates every 2 steps, but some (like Huckabee's line of doors) can use more, mixing up how they show up to confuse people. The really nice thing is that using a tool moves the clock foward 1 time - it's a great way to discourage tool use, since using a tool will completely mess up the house, making it impossible to pass.

Of course, the problem with clocks is that they repeat - with huckabees house, I put the patterns for the doors and trapdoors in Excel and used that to find a safe path, all without putting myself in danger of being trapped (at least with finding the powered door path - I had to suicide scout a couple of times to find out the pits (it really should've been once, but I was an idiot and trapped myself. Unfortunately, someone robbed him before my tactics could could to fruition =P

Actually, I have no idea how it's possible to pass that without traps... if I got the patterns right, at a certain point you'd have to step into a dead pit either way... hmmmm... WAIT A SECOND- Did he- no, he couldn't hav- would he? Hmmmm...

EDIT: And, he's taken care of that problem of solving it without much risk with doors, apparantly =P Touche, my friend, touche

Last edited by iceman (2013-11-18 20:46:06)

iceman · 2014-01-29 17:27:55

Since there's going to be a lot of new players now, and clocks are so fun and interesting, I figured I'd bump this thread to let them know about them

jere · 2014-01-29 17:34:43

Yup. I have clock based lights in my house. Just for kicks. It's by the front.

iceman · 2014-01-29 18:22:43

I really hope that, someday, I'm going to be able to design the ultimate clock house. No walls or doors - just a giant, open room filled with wires, all types of buttons, trapdoors, pit bulls, and electric floors, all powered by a few different clocks. Every step would either be a leap of faith onto a trap that may or may not be powered that turn, or change the rhythm of half of the room. The solution would not be a magic dance, but a Magical Dance - a beautifully choreographed masterpiece...

*Stares wistfully into the distance*

Blip · 2014-01-29 20:59:26

I hope to be able to use a clock plus a bit storage device to allow the robber to enter a sequence of powered states which would then be looped through, forever, in that order. It would require a massive amount of electronics, though... I might have to use a cat and some sticky switches to encode the input instead of actual bits, just to make it all fit. Would that be cheating? I really just want to try to get such a crazy record-player idea like that into a house.

SmokestormX · 2014-01-30 12:10:02

I'd like to play around with clocks. But my house has no room. I'd like a tinkering room.

RockyBst · 2014-02-01 07:57:06

Ahhh, clocks. Giving confused newbies something other than a long corridor full of 20 doors to look at since November '13.

Amazingly, people have managed to die in this house.

joshwithguitar · 2014-02-01 21:31:28

Blip wrote:

I hope to be able to use a clock plus a bit storage device to allow the robber to enter a sequence of powered states which would then be looped through, forever, in that order. It would require a massive amount of electronics, though... I might have to use a cat and some sticky switches to encode the input instead of actual bits, just to make it all fit. Would that be cheating? I really just want to try to get such a crazy record-player idea like that into a house.

My brothers chain-counter design might help to create this: http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/vie … 5029#p5029

For each clock pulse each bit takes on the value of the previous bit. In this way you can have it repeat any encoded 'on' 'off' pattern that is equal in length to the number of bits.

DethBringa · 2014-02-02 12:35:55

I was building that but it seems to have a hissy fit. What I did was instead of having 1 light for each circuit I connect the top into a corridor and put the lights in the corridor. The single step flash had 1 light, space, 1 light (worked great) the 2nd clock had 2 lights (worked great) but the 3rd clock didn't work. If I removed the lights from the 2nd clock then the 3rd one worked. it was odd. The idea was you walked down a corridor and saw #_#_##_### (#=light/electric floor, _=empty space),
#_# 1st clock circuit. (step, on, step off)
## 2nd clock circuit. (step, step, on, step, step, off)
### 3rd clock circuit. (step, step, step, on, step, step, step, off)

Last edited by DethBringa (2014-02-02 12:37:51)

iceman · 2014-02-02 13:00:46

When you removed the lights from the counters, did you replace it with a wire? If that spot isn't conducting, the counters won't work.

Also, the sequence of counters goes 1,2,4,8,16, etc., so iin your case the third set of wires would change every four steps.

DethBringa · 2014-02-02 13:06:23

ahhhh, well lazy me.. never counted properly XD just went back forth a heap of times an they didn't come on.
What I changed was where the top of the circuit is +-+ and the light is under the - I changed to +++ and replaced the light with a + then connected the new lights to the top +++. Originally I used a wire bridge where the - was but made a mistake in my wall wiring that connected the +-+ plus's to the wire bridge and it still worked so I removed the wire bridge for the +.

iceman · 2014-02-02 13:10:13

Yeah, the original clock counters actually have the top as +++, with a conducting light beneath the middle one.

EDIT: Never mind, I see the "improved" counters are +-+... I wish I remembered about those before I built my house =P

Last edited by iceman (2014-02-02 13:12:48)

DethBringa · 2014-02-02 13:14:04

http://castledraft.com/editor/FmPJ0M Here is what I did.

Archonn · 2014-02-02 13:28:25

You can quite easily (as in, I managed to do it) modify these clocks to only pulse when a button is pushed. That way you can turn the clock on and off.

You can also modify them so that once something is turned on, it never turns off.

But i dont know how either is helpful lol

arakira · 2014-02-02 19:25:43

I finally decided to have a try at building a clock (I remember being stuned the first time I entered Huckabee's house. Loved it!). I had fun today building a "waltz" clock, a clock with period 3 (I had never seen one before). I'm not sure if this one is really interesting for building a trap, because if you are facing a trap that turns on/off based on an odd number period and if you can move a bit around, then you can move back and forth until you are facing the trap the way you want (if you want to do this in front of an even period trap, you may have to use a tool to catch up the tempo). Maybe with the help of pets it could become interesting.
However, this is my try, and it is the most compact I can build so far:

The 3 first rows are the pulse generator, nothing new here.
The idea of this clock is that there are 2 storage areas, the indicator light zones. On the first step, the lights on the left turn on. On the second step, the energy passes to the lights on the right. On the third step, they are all reset (there is a test on wether the two zones are on at the same time).
I'm pretty sure this can be improved, so I'd like to tempt electronics specialists around here if they can build some more simple or smaller waltz clock!

Last edited by arakira (2014-02-02 19:29:22)

GoogleFrog · 2014-02-02 19:25:48

I like to use things which, once turned on, cannot be turned off. For example:
http://castledraft.com/editor/cxQkO8

The robber may come into this thinking that the floor can be toggled but once turned on it cannot be turned off. You can improve this by adding a delay to the floor re-activation.

DethBringa · 2014-02-02 19:58:25

Yea I use a lot of perma power circuits in my houses.

cbenny · 2014-02-02 20:33:05

Just saw this thread on clocks today and used it to build a trap.

http://castledraft.com/editor/6EJxtk

This trap is working so well that I feel kinda bad about it, so I figured I'd post it here. I've got several pages worth of people who all died on the 7th step.

joshwithguitar · 2014-02-03 06:55:49

iceman wrote:

Yeah, the original clock counters actually have the top as +++, with a conducting light beneath the middle one.
EDIT: Never mind, I see the "improved" counters are +-+... I wish I remembered about those before I built my house =P

By the "improved" counter are you referring to my brothers chain counter design? http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/vie … 5029#p5029

These are not so much as improved but different, the counters in my example are binary counters that are much more effective at counting high numbers. With Hippasus' chain-counter each bit takes on the value of the bit before it with each pulse, which can have lots of uses but is not so good for counting higher numbers as you only get one count per bit as opposed to 2^n.

arakira:
I had my own go at a trinary counter and ended up coming up with something a fairly similar size to yours:
http://castledraft.com/editor/uXqANt

arakira · 2014-02-03 08:13:04

joshwithguitar wrote:

I had my own go at a trinary counter and ended up coming up with something a fairly similar size to yours:
http://castledraft.com/editor/uXqANt

I find your solution much more elegant than mine. You use blocking mechanisms to avoid electricity flowing again in each zone, while I use these ugly "delay" gates (power source+voltage trigger switch). It is smaller, too (and cheaper).

Last edited by arakira (2014-02-03 08:13:47)

iceman · 2014-02-03 10:37:07

Every time I think I'm starting to get good with circuits....

joshwithguitar wrote:

These are not so much as improved but different, the counters in my example are binary counters that are much more effective at counting high numbers. With Hippasus' chain-counter each bit takes on the value of the bit before it with each pulse, which can have lots of uses but is not so good for counting higher numbers as you only get one count per bit as opposed to 2^n.

Ok, thanks for explaining that!

Idylla · 2014-02-06 11:16:03

Is it me, or is it totally not working at the moment? I thought the clock in page 1, would just turn an output off and on every turn - but it just stays off permanently... screenshot incoming when the robbers get out of my house

 ++-+			    $: power
++V$v+			    v: voltage-triggered switch
+V---V---pulse out----      V: inverted voltage-triggered switch

Last edited by Idylla (2014-02-06 11:28:38)

iceman · 2014-02-06 11:56:08

That's just the clock generator - you'll need at least one counter circuit to have it change every turn.

Idylla · 2014-02-06 15:00:02

Thanks Iceman My FU is now flashing away nicely!

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#26 2013-11-18 16:16:27

Re: Clocks!

#27 2013-11-18 20:40:57

Re: Clocks!

#28 2014-01-29 17:27:55

Re: Clocks!

#29 2014-01-29 17:34:43

Re: Clocks!

#30 2014-01-29 18:22:43

Re: Clocks!

#31 2014-01-29 20:59:26

Re: Clocks!

#32 2014-01-30 12:10:02

Re: Clocks!

#33 2014-02-01 07:57:06

Re: Clocks!

#34 2014-02-01 21:31:28

Re: Clocks!

#35 2014-02-02 12:35:55

Re: Clocks!

#36 2014-02-02 13:00:46

Re: Clocks!

#37 2014-02-02 13:06:23

Re: Clocks!

#38 2014-02-02 13:10:13

Re: Clocks!

#39 2014-02-02 13:14:04

Re: Clocks!

#40 2014-02-02 13:28:25

Re: Clocks!

#41 2014-02-02 19:25:43

Re: Clocks!

#42 2014-02-02 19:25:48

Re: Clocks!

#43 2014-02-02 19:58:25

Re: Clocks!

#44 2014-02-02 20:33:05

Re: Clocks!

#45 2014-02-03 06:55:49

Re: Clocks!

#46 2014-02-03 08:13:04

Re: Clocks!

#47 2014-02-03 10:37:07

Re: Clocks!

#48 2014-02-06 11:16:03

Re: Clocks!

#49 2014-02-06 11:56:08

Re: Clocks!

#50 2014-02-06 15:00:02

Re: Clocks!

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