One-Shot Circuit

[rkda]

This is an example of a 1-Shot circuit.

There are several ways to accomplish this. This is just 1 example.

When you apply power to the NODE on the left...the output of the AND gate on the right goes high for 1 clock cycle. Then you have to release power to the input, to "reset" the circuit before you apply power again, for the next step.

Using a circuit like this you can easily move your bot 1 step at a time.

[Denis]

I'm not clear on why this works actually. Isn't that a NOT-gate on the bottom? So you wire TRUE and NOT-TRUE to an AND gate and the result is something else than FALSE?

[rkda]

Yes, that is a NOT gate on the bottom. The reason it works is the gate propagation delay.
When the NODE goes hot, the input to both the NOT gate and the AND gate go hot at the same time.
The next clock cycle AND gate output goes hot, and the NOT gate output goes cold.
The next clock cycle after that, the output of the AND gate goes cold.

So, the AND gate output was hot for 1 clock cycle, and then cold.

You have to release the hot input to the NODE to reset the NOT gate. Then you can fire it again.

[Denis]

You mean that the NOT-gate has a power source? Its output is hot when not connected to a power source?

I keep thinking in boolean logic. I must switch mode!

[worfc]

2 (minor, IMO) inconsistencies in the gates logic:

1) NOT gates produce power even when not wired to anything. That's because NOT-nothing = "something". I suppose I could make it so that, if the input is not-connected to anything, it's cold, but that seems weird, to me. Also, NOT gates are already an established "free power source", so it'd be a nerf that i don't think improves gameplay, any.

Honestly, if there's a huge backlash about it once we ship (and I'm talking 80/20 outcry or better!), I'll change it. Otherwise: free power!

2) Similarly, LATCHes always output power out of one side or the other. There's no such thing as a fully-off latch. I'm not even sure what the UI would be for that, even if I wanted to make one. But, again, there's have to be a pretty compelling argument, IMO -- not only about how it's electronically realistic, but also how it improves the game -- to get me to alter that.

All the basic logic (AND, OR, XOR) needs inputs to make output.)

[Denis]

Ok fair enough. Was this obvious and I'm just slow? You can be frank

[worfc]

[Denis]

Hey, I didn't say I was a good mystic! I suck at that too.

And hello to your wife

[Denis]

More seriously: about sticking out and all that. I'm running into another low atm, getting a bit discouraged by length of the phase I'm in. I'm not rkda designing fully automated robots and this phase where I need to get my first gate seeds is a bit longish. I decided to bite the bullet and use some of the gates on making a circuit instead of using them to craft a gate-seed, but the result hasn't been spectacular yet. And the gate seeds I do have have not yet produced huge quantities, except for the node seeds. Again, perhaps I'm doing this wrong so any help is welcome.

[worfc]

You're a tad ahead of me, so i'll let RKDA offer whatever the good hints are for getting through phases.

I will reiterate that game-balance is likely to be an ongoing adjustment, even after we ship v1.0 although, by then, I'll be trying very hard to make only very-small changes (±10%) each week and watching the outcome over many players.

That said, I just today did (in my local build, you don't have it, yet. In fact, "I" don't have it, yet, on my "real" farm ) a tweak to saw-times (almost entirely "better") and harvest outputs (better wood-output, fewer seeds) in an effort to get things closer to the original design*.

"Soon!", there will be specialized tools for harvesting the various woods -- one with higher wood output for each type -- and an "electronic seed stripper"***, which doesn't give much wood, but totally blasts the seeds out of a tree.

-----
* My first idea was that trees mostly produce their materials, and you barely get enough seeds to expand your farm. The idea was that you were supposed to craft the seeds you needed, though you could plant/harvest after a while and get a slow expansion. But that was a very long time ago (before public beta), and I put in what you know as the current harvest-output** as placeholders, then sort of forgot to change it. This may or may-not constitute a "get 'em while they're hot!" bug; harvest accordingly, Tuesday's update will have the change.
** Roughly speaking, cutting down 100 trees currently produces 130 wood and 130 seeds, across the board. It's a random distribution, but it should be close to that. Again, that's a bit heavy on seed-expansion, given the design-goal of "you should be crafting seeds." Now, it may turn out, once I see this, that seed-crafting is way-too-nerfed and needs to be eased up but, since I've never seen what progression looks like with the intended-design, I can't very well balance seed-crafting-cost, yet.
*** Working name. Who knows what I'll call it in the end. Then again, I'm not very imaginative so, unless one of you starts calling it some cool name, I'll probably stick with the "ESS"