HoikDini
Terrarian
Here's a little magic trick I devised: 
A 10x10 square of blocks (plus couple of platforms) that is traversible by means of HOIKS - that INTERSECT ONE ANOTHER.
"The man's been through solid matter for crying out loud. Who knows what's happened to his brain."
- General Catburd, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension
There are no wires, no actuators, no visual trickery here. This is applied Hoik Mechanics at a fundamental level.
Hope some of you enjoy playing around with this. (For me, it's like a Terraria fidget-spinner)
A 10x10 square of blocks (plus couple of platforms) that is traversible by means of HOIKS - that INTERSECT ONE ANOTHER.
"The man's been through solid matter for crying out loud. Who knows what's happened to his brain."
- General Catburd, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension
There are no wires, no actuators, no visual trickery here. This is applied Hoik Mechanics at a fundamental level.
Some time ago, I became intrigued by the tutorial by ZeroGravitas on Hoik! {sic.} interactions, in particular, with the observations he made in Diagrams 1 through 4 (here). It occurred to me after analyzing the displacement properties of the hoiking mechanics that there might be a means of intersecting vertical and horizontal hoiks without involving any switching mechanisms. The application of such mechanics wasn't of interest to me; I simply wanted to know if it was even possible to achieve. So I set about with my own experiments, and discovered, to my delight, that this was in fact possible.
With this discovery, I set about looking for an elegant means to showcase what I call HOIK NODES. The "Magic Box" was the very first application I devised.
Hoik Nodes
With this discovery, I set about looking for an elegant means to showcase what I call HOIK NODES. The "Magic Box" was the very first application I devised.
Hoik Nodes
- HOIK NODES are possible in 4 directional flavors: DOWN-RIGHT, UP-RIGHT, DOWN-LEFT, and UP-LEFT. And, since they don't require any wiring or mechanisms, they can be used very early on in game.
- Using the DOWN-RIGHT hoik node as example: I'm referring to roughly the 6x6 lower-left corner of the 'Magic Box'. DOWN path is marked with RED hoiks, RIGHT is colored GREEN.
- DOWN is using a 3-2 hoik block-step spacing [ref. ZeroGravitas' Diagram 2, #12]; RIGHT is using a 2-1-1 block-step spacing, [ref. ZG 3] matching types B-F-F-E-A-A-E.
- Note the AMBER hoik. The AMBER hoik acts as a RED hoik when the PC sprite is hoiked DOWN. This is because the sprite intercepts the hoik at FOOT height [ref. ZG 4, letter 'o'] and will displace downwards if there's no block immediately below.
- The RED down hoik below the AMBER hoik is interpreted as a floor when a PC sprite is hoiked RIGHT. This is due to the AMBER hoik being at MID height and having a solid RED block below [ref. ZG 4, letter 'i'] forces displacement rightwards, 1-block-step.
- Spacing in the up/down direction is critical so that the 2-block gap aligns with the horizontal travel path. There needs to be a 3-block-step hoik spacing both before and after, otherwise the hoik will break [ref. ZG 2, #12 & #7].
- Additional blocks/angled blocks are placed to help keep the PC sprite within the 'track' of the hoik, so as not to 'fall off'.
- For the UP-RIGHT and UP-LEFT hoik nodes, the addition of a platform where shown seems to prevent an issue where the horizontal travel unexpectedly switches to vertical travel when the PC sprite enters the node. (I don't know why this happens, or why placing the platform makes a difference...)
- Using the DOWN-RIGHT hoik node as example: I'm referring to roughly the 6x6 lower-left corner of the 'Magic Box'. DOWN path is marked with RED hoiks, RIGHT is colored GREEN.
Down and Right (flip for Left):
Up and Left (flip for Right):
- The 'sidedness' of the vertical hoik position is generally reversible (the down vertical is 'west-walled' in the picture, the up vertical is 'east-walled').
- In older versions of Terraria (pre-1.3.1 or so), platforms were not needed in the "UP-" NODES designs, but I discovered that they fix a direction-change problem that started happening in recent updates [1.4.0.5 tested] - as some change in the underlying game mechanics prioritizes hoiking up instead of left/right for some 'Top' flavored hoiks. I don't know why the inclusion of the platforms in those 2 spots fixes the problem. [So this may well 'break' again with future game updates.]
- There doesn't seem to be any practical way to build a Node with a 'zipper' hoik (left and right tracks are stacked bi-directionally) with up or down hoiks, due to the precise spacing needed.
- Strongly Advised to have a Magic Mirror handy if you decide to replicate or adapt this design, or else expect that you may have to pickaxe your way out...
Hope some of you enjoy playing around with this. (For me, it's like a Terraria fidget-spinner)
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