Archive: 5 posts

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Hello forum! I've been trying to find a way to get a piston (or pair of pistons) to extend and contract once, smoothly and uniformly when I have more than one piston together. I know that setting the piston to flipper action and hooking it to a button/grab switch set to 1-shot will make it "pop" once, but I don't want it to pop, I want it to smoothly extend and retract once. My progress so far: I tried wiring the piston to a MKS set to ON/OFF, and having an emitter spawn the matching MK in front of the MKS for the same amount of time as it takes the piston to extend/contract once. That worked (mostly). The emitter would make a MK appear, the MKS would make the piston go through one motion, and then the MK would disappear. However, this was very difficult to sync. The piston DID go through one cycle, but starting from when I attached the MKS wire to the piston, so if it's halfway through it's motion already, that's where it'll stop after every "shot" from the MKS, it doesn't go back to fully contracted. Anyways, here's a visual: http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m315/Kaileo/Forum/PistonContraption.jpg On the left is the piston with blocks on either side to mark the fully contracted / fully extended positions, then the emitter and MKS, and on the right is a sponge attacked by grip switch to a piston that "punches" the button to set off the emitter. The button is set to 1-shot, so grabbing the sponge effectively causes the piston to extend and contract once, but again, the problem with syncing it properly. I know I could just try to attach the MKS to the piston as close as I can to when it's contracted, but as I mentioned, I want a series of these, so if I had a whole bunch of pistons that were "close enough", the slight differences would be obvious and annoy me. XD Sorry that took so long to explain, but if anyone knows what I'm babbling about, all help is appreciated!

2010-05-29 14:13:00 Author: Jyrroe Posts: 8

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I'm not sure exactly what you want, but... 1. Make a DM block with a magnetic key switch(set to directional) and an emitter on it 2. Connect the magnetic key switch to the piston(s) you want to be activated 3. Make the emitter emit a block of material(any material except DM) with a magnetic key on it(make sure it's emitted exactly on top of the DM block). Set max emitted to 1 and the lifetime to how long it takes for the piston(s) to fully extend 4. Make a sponge block and put a grab switch(set to 1-shot) on it. Connect the grab switch to the emitter That should work. I'll test it in create right now, just to confirm

2010-05-29 20:17:00 Author: Unknown User

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Of course! If it's set to directional, it'll rest fully contracted automatically. THANK YOU! The set up I have in the picture above is very similar, I just have to change the MKS to directional and cut the emitter's object life in half to account for the piston extension only and.... (testing now) ... EUREKA! It works perfectly! Thanks again.

2010-05-29 23:09:00 Author: Jyrroe Posts: 8

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If you just want the piston synced with other pistons in your level, all you need to do is use the sync timing in the piston's popit. The sync time figure shows how much earlier than normal the piston will start its cycle, but for this to work, you need to do these things. Pause the game, detach all wires and set up sync times accordingly. Unpause, and your pistons should be moving exactly how you synched them. Pause again, then connect all the pistons to an on/off mag switch so you can turn them on or off at a later date I remember discussing this in another thread yonks ago, and I can't remember if I just explained that completely wrong, as it's been a while since I had to sync objects - I'm sure a future poster will either correct me or explain far more simply than I've done EDIT: I've just realised that your problem was actually a lot simpler than the problem I was trying to explain. Sorry for rambling - it's 1:40 am here

2010-05-31 01:39:00 Author: Holguin86 Posts: 875

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Oh, no problem, that actually is helpful. You're right, in that I could hook them up all simultaneously with my original idea, such that even if they were off by a touch, they would all in fact be off by the same amount and thereby still look good. I might go with that still, just because setting the MKS to directional does work fine, but it now registers as 2 seperate movements (extension while MK is there, contraction when it vanishes), so I can't line that up perfectly. It either doesn't quite extend all the way, or pauses for a moment after extending. With my original idea (on/off) it may have been off by a touch depending on my timing, but it was all one movement, which was closer to the smooth moving piston effect I was going for. By the way, soon all this tinkering will pay off in my newest level.

2010-05-31 22:45:00 Author: Jyrroe Posts: 8

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