underwater dungeon puzzle help please

[azurephantom100]

i want to make a water dungeon with puzzles centered around draining water and pumping it to other rooms to progress like most of the hated water dungeons lol i want to use pumps and liquid sensors and you need to pump water to certain heights to open rooms and a full dungeon puzzle that uses rooms that need to be empty and some that need to be full and to give hints a central room that shows what water is in so in short i want to try and use about 8 rooms 4 on the right and 4 on the left that effect one another as you try and figure out the puzzle. using wire bulb that needs it's four sides lit up. 2 wire bulbs on the left and right that when lit fully opens up the final room with the dungeon's final item. the problem here is the other rooms effecting the other rooms and resetting it back to before the player even tried it @.@

so i need a way to wire all that up and a reset switch both for starting over if they do something wrong and for replaying it without needing to replace the map with a fresh copy like some maps need you to. the rooms are going to be big enough and have enough water that even with flippers there is a chance of drowning so water control with out it duplicating that is what is making it hard for me to think of how to do the basic wire work and frame work of the build. so if some one can show me a bare frame version that can do that even of it is with minimum size is fine as long as i can look at it and see what needs to be what then i can stretch it out to fit the dungeon (hopefully) if there is already something that is like this can you give me a link to the thread or picture of the build and its wiring thank you

 

[Stahn Aileron]

No offense, but could you please use punctuation or some semblance of formal writing style as I (and perhaps others) am having a hard time trying to parse the run-on sentence(s)that that is your idea(?)/request(?).

Also, if you have a picture of your attempt(s0, please post it. It's easier to see and diagnose a image/schematic of the system with its description (and intended purpose/functionality) than it is with just one or the other.

NOTE: I do apologize if my opening remark may seem a bit aggressive. I grew up learning, reading, and writing in formal styles, including work-related correspondences. So it irks the bloody hell out of me when someone writes a decent volume of text without proper punctuation and syntax. I find it quite hard to read and comprehend. That, and the irritation it causes and I feel interferes with my thoughts.

 

[azurephantom100]

No offense, but could you please use punctuation or some semblance of formal writing style as I (and perhaps others) am having a hard time trying to parse the run-on sentence(s)that that is your idea(?)/request(?).

Also, if you have a picture of your attempt(s0, please post it. It's easier to see and diagnose a image/schematic of the system with its description (and intended purpose/functionality) than it is with just one or the other.

NOTE: I do apologize if my opening remark may seem a bit aggressive. I grew up learning, reading, and writing in formal styles, including work-related correspondences. So it irks the bloody hell out of me when someone writes a decent volume of text without proper punctuation and syntax. I find it quite hard to read and comprehend. That, and the irritation it causes and I feel interferes with my thoughts.

sorry about that I always had problems with writing mainly due to my learning disability. I haven't found any time to make a test model right now but might be able to in a few days. What I need help on is a system that fills and empties large rooms of water and can be reset when the dungeon is done and/or when the player needs to.

 

[DRKV]

i want to make a water dungeon with puzzles centered around draining water and pumping it to other rooms to progress like most of the hated water dungeons lol

I am also having a bit of difficulty understanding what you mean.
So is this going to be like the Ocarina Of Time water temple (with the water level changing in the whole dungeon at once), or is it more along the lines of Twilight Princess (where you fill/empty individual rooms)?

For pumping large amounts of water, you can just hook up a set of pumps to a dummy ghost engine and then switch them on/off through a transistor. You can easily deal with water overflow with the old cursed-candle-in-lava trick.

 

[SovereignVis]

I have been thinking about ideas for an adventure map and had this same idea. My plan was to have a player sensor under the spawn points that would trigger the reset of all the rooms when the player dies and reappears back at the spawn.
For the pump engines I planned on using a spear trap engine and for water drain I planned on using chests with shallow lava/honey on the floor with the chest are.

 

[azurephantom100]

I am also having a bit of difficulty understanding what you mean.
So is this going to be like the Ocarina Of Time water temple (with the water level changing in the whole dungeon at once), or is it more along the lines of Twilight Princess (where you fill/empty individual rooms)?

again sorry about that. I think that mix of it would be best where some rooms will effect more then one while some are just one. if i cant do that i will just stick with one room effecting the ones next to it. I thought that a octopus shape would do for the over all shape of the build.

For pumping large amounts of water, you can just hook up a set of pumps to a dummy ghost engine and then switch them on/off through a transistor. You can easily deal with water overflow with the old cursed-candle-in-lava trick.

i know about the dummy ghost trick but not the cursed candle in lava one though, what does that one entail?

 

[Stahn Aileron]

i know about the dummy ghost trick but not the cursed candle in lava one though, what does that one entail?

Terraria works with several "layers" for object/entity handling and interaction. Liquids are their own layer as are things like furniture and blocks. However, some layers do interact with others. (Obvious example is the player him-/herself.)

Knowing the above, taking a lava-proof item and sticking it in lava prevents the production of obsidian when water contacts the lava. Liquids have a priority system of sorts in place, managing which liquid gets eliminated when this type of interaction happens. Lava has the highest priority, IIRC (because it's a hazard; explains why it's such a pain to get rid of it). So any water that falls on top of it when there is a background object in the lava, the water "evaporates" away. (In reverse, water with a lava-proof object in it caused the lava to float on the water. They made sure lava was hard to eliminate without working for it.)

TL;DR: You have a sinkhole for getting rid of water. Chests or Obsidian furniture are lava-proof, plus any of the statues. Most of those are 2-block-wide items though. The candle is 1-block, allowing designs to be a bit more compact. (Some Obsidian furniture is also 1-block.)

You'll need this to get rid of excess water since pretty much any movement of liquids will cause it to duplicate by some, if tiny, amount. Without this, a cycling water system will eventually stall because the system is too full of water.

 

[azurephantom100]

Terraria works with several "layers" for object/entity handling and interaction. Liquids are their own layer as are things like furniture and blocks. However, some layers do interact with others. (Obvious example is the player him-/herself.)

Knowing the above, taking a lava-proof item and sticking it in lava prevents the production of obsidian when water contacts the lava. Liquids have a priority system of sorts in place, managing which liquid gets eliminated when this type of interaction happens. Lava has the highest priority, IIRC (because it's a hazard; explains why it's such a pain to get rid of it). So any water that falls on top of it when there is a background object in the lava, the water "evaporates" away. (In reverse, water with a lava-proof object in it caused the lava to float on the water. They made sure lava was hard to eliminate without working for it.)

TL;DR: You have a sinkhole for getting rid of water. Chests or Obsidian furniture are lava-proof, plus any of the statues. Most of those are 2-block-wide items though. The candle is 1-block, allowing designs to be a bit more compact. (Some Obsidian furniture is also 1-block.)

You'll need this to get rid of excess water since pretty much any movement of liquids will cause it to duplicate by some, if tiny, amount. Without this, a cycling water system will eventually stall because the system is too full of water.

ok i kind of get it, but lets say im using a tank system where the non-accessible area holds the water(lets make it square for simplicity's sake) and gets pumped to the dungeon room, how would i set up the lava and candle to keep it from duplicating? it would also be nice to see a picture or video as i learn better by seeing.

 

[SovereignVis]

You could just build a tank with a drain on the side so the extra water runs off.
Like this.

This way you can control how much water is in your tanks.

 

[Stahn Aileron]

ok i kind of get it, but lets say im using a tank system where the non-accessible area holds the water(lets make it square for simplicity's sake) and gets pumped to the dungeon room, how would i set up the lava and candle to keep it from duplicating? it would also be nice to see a picture or video as i learn better by seeing.

Basically what @SovereignVis posted: Whatever chamber you have set up to store the liquid, have an overflow channel at the level you want to reserve that leads to the lava-dump. Any excess water that is created on pumping back to the chamber will overflow and get removed automatically.

Only one tank in a system really needs the overflow, namely the main storage tank/chamber/reservoir. Of course, this is dependent on design and intended functions. If you have more than one main reservoir, each one could need an overflow if you intend to pump water back and forth.

 

[SovereignVis]

Yes, what Stahn Aileron said is what I was getting at. What I would recommend doing is counting out how many blocks of water a room needs to fill up to the level you want it at, then make the tank with the run off drain on the side like in my picture somewhere else and make it the same number of water blocks.
This way when the player flips the switch to fill up the room that tank has just the amount of water needed. And when the player flips the switch to drain the room back into the tank any extra water that would get created would get remove by the run off drain.

Also make sure to put something in the chest so they can't be destroyed. Just a dirt block would work. Chests that have items in them can't be destroyed by anything, even explosives.

 

[azurephantom100]

yeah thanks to your picture it helped me figure it out. As for the chest i did it with an empty one (jungle) and it didn't break without an item in it when lava was poured in but i will put an item in the ones i will use in the build to be safe. Once i get the dungeon made i will make the tanks for the water and all thanks for the help. Now all i have to do is try to find/build a half second engine to do a cascading helix shaped lights that alternates which light is has the slight lead over the other. @,@

 

[SovereignVis]

If you showed a screen shot of the light thingy you are trying to make I might be able to help.

 

[Stahn Aileron]

[...] As for the chest i did it with an empty one (jungle) and it didn't break without an item in it when lava was poured in but i will put an item in the ones i will use in the build to be safe. [...]

Right, almost forgot. All chests are lava-proof by default. Placing items in them is a safeguard. Terraria has several fail-safes in place with regards to chests because few things would piss the player-base off more than losing or wrecking whole supply depots to explosives or a meteor strike.

A half-second might be a bit tough without getting into manual activation of timers. I could be wrong, of course. I haven't kept with timer/clock builds at all. I just know it's practically impossible to build a pure digital frequency-doubler (there are specific exceptions). You need some form of analog triggers as well (the player activating another switch, a mob walking onto a plate, arrow trap hitting a trigger pad, etc.)

I wanted to build a sub-second timer, but wasn't able to get it to be wholly reliable, exact, or compact. (Mainly the compact part.) Dart and spear traps have fixed travel speeds, so you can base timing on distance. I got a spear timer going, but I have no clue what its exact timing was. I only recall that its cycle was just long enough for the first trap to trigger shortly after its cool-down expired.

A cascading dart/spear trap engine would easily get sub-second timing. You'd just have to experiment with spacing to get the timing you want/need. (Though I think someone has posted the speeds of the various traps, so you might be able to just look up the numbers, do some math, and build accordingly.)

 

[azurephantom100]

If you showed a screen shot of the light thingy you are trying to make I might be able to help.

Spoiler

these are basically what im going to use. i will use the big ones for bigger rooms and the small ones for thinner rooms they are sectioned as i do want to use 2 different colors. if i cant get the timers down i will just settle for one color

 

[SovereignVis]

The wire view of things would also help, but are you saying you need them to flip on and off like a railroad crossing light?

And as for the timer. I was playing around with a device to count the number of rounds per minute for weapons. It could also be used as a device to count how many ticks an engine makes in a min.

Normal View

Wire View

If you were to just wire an engine to the green wire where the teal pressure plates are then this device would tell you how many ticks a min the engine outputted. If you get a score of 120 then you have a half sec engine. If your engine outputs too many ticks you can always cut the number in half by adding in a flip-flop gate to have it only output every other tick.

 

[azurephantom100]

thanks how did you get the wires to show like that mine always mix colors. do you think you could show each color wire set to bright while the others are dimmed? it would be easier to see where some start and stop. when they over lap its hard to see that i know that is 4 extra pictures but i would help as i suck at wiring lol. one of the reasons why i need so much help with it. i didnt show the wired view as i might change it to fit what i need. right now is just to solid line in each section of gemspark, but that might change due to how fast i can make the engine. all the ideas in the world but cant making them real.
As for what i want the like to work it want it like this guy's lights a repeating cascading flow in one direction. my dungeon is going to be a octopus with a helix like lights running up is eight arms coming up to it's head forming a tribal like tattoo on its face. when i get the engine and wiring done if possible have it all on one system that will only light up the room the player is in via an air lock triggering the transition but that might be asking to much . anyways i will try making that timer(?) and trying out some engines

 

[SovereignVis]

Okay, here is a map with the Tick Counter. Just wire your engine to the faulty lamp with the green gem spark wall behind it.
But you should have a good look at things. It will help you to learn how the wiring and logic gate stuff work.

 

[azurephantom100]

@SovereignVis I found the magic number 450 used a 1 presser plate ghost dummy engine with 2 logic flipflops to cut its 1800 down to 450 thanks for the help on finding the engine for the cascade timing. question: is there a limit on how far an engine can be from a player before it just doesn't work?

 

[SovereignVis]

Well a Crab Engine won't work if the player gets too far away because the crab despawns. But I know from testing a dart trap/spear will work if the player is on the other side of the map. Not sure what a dummy ghost counts as or if it will despawn if too far from the player. But for a spear trap engines there shouldn't be a limited range.