Game Mechanics Long Cycle Timers.

OmniusMortus

Terrarian
1, 3, and 5 second timers are good for traps, liquid dups, and statue spawning. What I feel Terraria lacks right now are timers that can be set for much longer periods.
Specifically a dawn/dusk timer or an event timer.
I have always wired my NPC towns with switches to close/open all the doors and turn off/on the lights as an aesthetic touch to the town at night and a defense against invasions.
Having a timer, say a grandfather clock, that will cycle those circuits for me at either appointed hours or at least general times of day would really help to make the town feel more alive.
With this you could set up automated night lighting and color change fountains for a central square or wall up the village when an eclipse or goblin invasion starts.

Let me know what you think.
-OM-

*Updated 02/26/2015*

I've been thinking about this a lot more since I first posted.
I think it could be implemented without making 30 odd some timer blocks and actually put the grandfather clocks to use.
Wiring nodes would need to be implemented on the clocks. They would be simple white circles that are part of the wiring layer. [they only are seen when you could see wire] Mousing over the node pops up a tool tip that explains what the node is triggered by.

There would be three tiers of grandfather clocks: simple, intermediate, and advanced. (copper, silver, gold?)
Simple clocks have two nodes: one for dawn one for dusk.
Intermediate clocks have four nodes: dawn, dusk, invasion start, invasion end.
Advanced clocks have six nodes: dawn, dusk, invasion start, invasion end, blood moon, and eclipse.

To have things triggered by the clock, simply wire them to the clock node you want, just like the timers used now. Like switches, nodes would toggle the devices connected to them.

Since clocks are 2 x 5, nodes will be located top, center, and bottom of the clocks and next to ones of the same general trigger time. So the dawn trigger is top left, dusk top right. Invasions are center left and right. Blood moon is bottom left, eclipse is bottom right. Doing it this way would allow you to wire things that you want cycled at dawn and dusk once and just wire both nodes with the same color.
[If someone with pixel art skills wants to make a mock-up of this, you'd have my deep gratitude.]

If there are things you only want to toggle every morning (not at night) you would have to wire those with a separate color though. Not sure you can avoid that.

This would mean that the programming for the timers should be relatively easy. Simply add a command at changes in time of day / events to check for wired clock nodes and trigger all connected mechanisms.

Your thoughts?
-OM-
 
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It sounds good. I remember there also being a light sensor suggestion that would have done something similar, but this would be much more versatile. Support from me!
 
*Cough* Whoops. "Accidentally" left my seal here. Nice suggestion, support.
seal-of-approval-meme.jpg
 
I've been thinking about this a lot more since I first posted.
I think it could be implemented without making 30 odd some timer blocks and actually put the grandfather clocks to use.
Wiring nodes would need to be implemented on the clocks. They would be simple white circles that are part of the wiring layer. [they only are seen when you could see wire] Mousing over the node pops up a tool tip that explains what the node is triggered by.

There would be three tiers of grandfather clocks: simple, intermediate, and advanced. (copper, silver, gold?)
Simple clocks have two nodes: one for dawn one for dusk.
Intermediate clocks have four nodes: dawn, dusk, invasion start, invasion end.
Advanced clocks have six nodes: dawn, dusk, invasion start, invasion end, blood moon, and eclipse.

To have things triggered by the clock, simply wire them to the clock node you want, just like the timers used now. Like switches, nodes would toggle the devices connected to them.

Since clocks are 2 x 5, nodes will be located top, center, and bottom of the clocks and next to ones of the same general trigger time. So the dawn trigger is top left, dusk top right. Invasions are center left and right. Blood moon is bottom left, eclipse is bottom right. Doing it this way would allow you to wire things that you want cycled at dawn and dusk once and just wire both nodes with the same color.
[If someone with pixel art skills wants to make a mock-up of this, you'd have my deep gratitude.]

If there are things you only want to toggle every morning (not at night) you would have to wire those with a separate color though. Not sure you can avoid that.

This would mean that the programming for the timers should be relatively easy. Simply add a command at changes in time of day / events to check for wired clock nodes and trigger all connected mechanisms.

Your thoughts?
 
This looks great! I would totally use this to theme the lights in my pumpkin/frost moon arena according to the event.

The other thing we need is timers that can be triggered by a signal. Like, red wire triggers timer, it runs for 5 seconds, then it triggers blue wire.
 
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