Showcase (showcase/request) Monolith Cycler

SnailsAttack

Dungeon Spirit
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The Monolith Cycler is a concept that I more or less came up with. It's pretty much my first wiring invention. Basically all it is is a 5-part timer cascade thats wired to 4 monoliths, which are cycled through.

This works because the first timer turns on each monolith.

Then the next 4 go through the cycle of turning each one off consecutively, before it loops and the first timer activates all 4 again.

HOWEVER

It does not work exactly as I had hoped, and I cannot figure out how to further improve it. After the nebula monolith deactivates, the sky resets to its normal state before going back to the vortex monolith.

So maybe somebody here could show me how to remove that 5th state so that it can cycled continuously through the 4 different monoliths with the flip of a switch?
 
You can quickly setup one of these cycling engines and change that switch into a One Second Timer to cycle the monoliths every second. However, the thing your post was asking for can be done by just setting this up. The switch will work right away, no problems!

ManaUser's setup is still great for just having a compact cycler, though I'm worried about that red wire. I can't get ingame to test anything I need verified so you're going to have to take this post without any concrete testing. My first statement was tested as it is, so that's not something to worry about.
 
ManaUser's setup is still great for just having a compact cycler, though I'm worried about that red wire.
You mean how the switch is directly tied in the the loop? It looks wrong, doesn't it? But I did test it, and it works. My initial thought was to have the switch turn on the first "monolith" and the two timers separately with a different color wire, but the trouble is this introduced unwanted connections between the timers and/or the first monolith. It was kind of a face-palm moment when I realized that I already had a wire touching those three things, so why not just use that?

You could also do it by connecting the switch to the timers individually with yellow and green wire, and the monolith with red or blue (being careful to keep it separate from the loop), but sometimes the simplest solution is the best.

I do have one warning about this design, as best I can tell this applies to SnailsAttack's original setup too, so I didn't mention it at first, but I suppose I should. It will only turn off properly if you do it while the first monolith is active. If you do it at any other stage the timer cascade will get all goofed up. But completely preventing this would require adding logic gates, and make it significantly more complicated.
 
Here you go:

auto-switcher.jpg auto-switcher-wire.jpg

The lever begins the cycle from the point that the last cycle stopped or will stop the current cycle.

Each monolith gets a pair of faulty logic gates. The lamps associated to one monolith (doesn't matter which one) are on, while all others are off. The left gates act as a start/stop mechanism by changing the state of the currently selected monolith. The right gates form a simple cyclic switcher and are activated by the timer. The lever activates the start/stop mechanism and the timer. Please let me know if you'd like any more explanation.
 
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@ManaUser has the basic idea. That's the same basic looping cascade I mentioned way back on the (now non-existent) old Terraria Online community forum. It's simple and effective (since it takes advantage of the quirks in Terraria's wiring system).

You have to remember that Terraria uses a pulsed signal system rather than persistent signals. Since the mechanisms themselves hold states (rather than a signal in a wire), you have a lot of short-cuts when dealing with the wires themselves. (i.e. How you connect mechanisms together.)
 
This won't work just because of the ways that monoliths work, but thanks.
I see you are correct... I admit I don't have much experience playing with monoliths. But I went and made some with an older my advanced character. But I don't quite understand the problem. It's strange... why do they act differently than other things that can be toggled on an off?
 
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I see you are correct... I admit I don't have much experience playing with monoliths. But I went and made some with an older my advanced character. But I don't quite understand the problem. It's strange... why do they act differently than other things that can be toggled on an off?
I have literally no clue. xD
I had figured it would be a much simpler thing to solve but I'm trying @Jagriff's thing now
 
I suspect there is some sort of bug here, but nonetheless, I found a simple workaround.
CycleMonolithNW.png
CycleMonolithWW.png

This time, as you can see, I tested it with actual monoliths, and it works.
(You might want to use slower timers though, it cycles too fast for the backgrounds to fully appear... although it does create an interesting effect.)
 
Here you go:

View attachment 131008 View attachment 131009

The lever begins the cycle from the point that the last cycle stopped or will stop the current cycle.

Each monolith gets a pair of faulty logic gates. The lamps associated to one monolith (doesn't matter which one) are on, while all others are off. The left gates act as a start/stop mechanism by changing the state of the currently selected monolith. The right gates form a simple cyclic switcher and are activated by the timer. The lever activates the start/stop mechanism and the timer. Please let me know if you'd like any more explanation.
I suspect there is some sort of bug here, but nonetheless, I found a simple workaround.
View attachment 131128 View attachment 131129
This time, as you can see, I tested it with actual monoliths, and it works.
(You might want to use slower timers though, it cycles too fast for the backgrounds to fully appear... although it does create an interesting effect.)
I like both of these designs. While @Jagriff's is far more complex, it also has the added bonus of having the ability to be turned off at any time. Thanks for the help guys!
http://prntscr com/bzqafp (without wire)
http://prntscr com/bzqaqe (with wire)
You can put an actuator after the 1st/4th pad to make it pause, honey slows the dart down, you can increase length between it if need be.
I couldn't really get this one to work, but thanks anyways.
 
I made something kind of like this for my duck hunt game, but it wasn't on a timer. I have it set to switch music after the player completes 10 waves. And it wouldn't switch all of them on. Only 1 would be on at a time and after wave 60 is when the Monoliths would be turned on.
Here is what the first version of it looked like. I have made some changes to it since then.

Capture 2016-06-16 02_03_00.png Capture 2016-06-16 02_03_19.png
 
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