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Linkable gates / Smaller gates?


GreyCore

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I think it would be really nice if gates outputs and inputs could be visually and logically connected via wires instead of symbols.

And what if gates were 1x1 large? theyre a bit too large, especially when building complex logic and trying to remain compact

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There are quite some wishes for making advanced logic easier. We haven't found a good and satisfactory solution yet, but we definitely have the hardcore logic lovers in our field of view and at least try to find a good solution :) 

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Wires might look very messy and could make it really hard to make a drone look nice, but I totally feel you on wanting something visual.  I know the current system can be really hard to tell what goes where, but that also means you don't know what a drone does by looking at it - which means a new player has to experiment and learn how to use the logic system, instead of copying some picture of how wires should be connected, and a player can't copy someone else's design just by taking a screenshot of it in sumo. 

The current system also adds complexity, effectively adding to the amount of time it takes to do anything, adding to the amount of gameplay a user can get from the game.  This kind of artifical complexity is really important in these games, because without it the logic can quickly become trivial and a 100 hour game becomes a 20 hour game

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What I'd like is for a selected logic part to have lines to every part its inputs or outputs are used by.  Color those lines if they lead to something on the other side of a factory or decoupler, to indicate that they may not ALWAYS be connected. 

In addition, a fainter line indicating the inputs and outputs THOSE parts are connected to.  So you see bright direct connections, and a hint of the larger web of interactions.

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I've been mulling this thought over in my head as well and the best idea I've come up with is to allow separation of keyboard keys and logic "channels".

My main trouble is remembering what key I've bound to the output of which sensor, which leads to crosswiring and chaos.

If I could assign an output to a named variable like "proximity front left" and select that from a dropdown im my logic gate, that would free up a lot of mental RAM. This would not actually change functionality except allowing more channels than keys on a keyboard.

I'm not quite sure how the interaction of classic "keyboard keys" logic and my named "logic channels" should be implemented. Either allow parts to use keys and channels simultaneously, wich would be a "free" OR-gate or allow switching the inputs and outputs from "keyboard mode" to "channel mode".

Accessibility should be an an important as well. Ideally for a non-hardcore-logicker nothing would change, everything can be directly bound to keyboard keys, and simple keyboard logic should still work.

Edit: Apparently the devs already had that idea and i didn't discover it yet.

Like Lurkily described, I'd like to see some kind of logic visualisation, too but probably only in the editor. Maybe a toggleable function that shows inputs and outputs of a hovered part as coloured lines with each colour corresponding to an in- or output.

Edited by Alphafalcon
Redundant idea
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8 minutes ago, Alphafalcon said:

I've been mulling this thought over in my head as well and the best idea I've come up with is to allow separation of keyboard keys and logic "channels".

My main trouble is remembering what key I've bound to the output of which sensor, which leads to crosswiring and chaos.

If I could assign an output to a named variable like "proximity front left" and select that from a dropdown im my logic gate, that would free up a lot of mental RAM. This would not actually change functionality except allowing more channels than keys on a keyboard.

I'm not quite sure how the interaction of classic "keyboard keys" logic and my named "logic channels" should be implemented. Either allow parts to use keys and channels simultaneously, wich would be a "free" OR-gate or allow switching the inputs and outputs from "keyboard mode" to "channel mode".

Accessibility should be an an important as well. Ideally for a non-hardcore-logicker nothing would change, everything can be directly bound to keyboard keys, and simple keyboard logic should still work.

Like Lurkily described, I'd like to see some kind of logic visualisation, too but probably only in the editor. Maybe a toggleable function that shows inputs and outputs of a hovered part as coloured lines with each colour corresponding to an in- or output.

Have you tried to use Tags for those "logic channels" like "proximity front left". It sounds like you are looking for that functionality.

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On 10/10/2018 at 7:17 AM, D.Mentia said:

The current system also adds complexity, effectively adding to the amount of time it takes to do anything,

Poor UX isn't a good source of extending game play. These systems are sufficiently complex. In fact they are Turing Complete, making them as complicated as the computers there running on. If so inclined one could make a drone which itself was an implementation of Nimbatus (it would be really hard and the result would be at best incredibly slow if it didn't just out right break, but theoretically possible).

My point is making it easier to work with the editor won't reduce the number of hours you could spend making interesting things, it will just make you able to make more interesting things per hour.

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Are we Turing complete? I have not enough experience or knowledge to answer that :)

I agree with Eldrad that our intend to make things complicated is not to make you spend more time on things :) We want to provide you with exhaustive possibilities, but ultimately we want you to be able to do what you want as fast as possible. We use the logic-parts system (physically) because it makes it easier for total beginners to visualize and use these parts, because the restriction is fun and gives a certain charm and is unique to Nimbatus.

Maybe we add a expert/free construction mode someday, where you are can use logic without added bulk, or maybe even use LUA or other forms of scripting. There's nothing planned for that yet, just thoughts :) We have a lot of things to fix and balance until we're able to tackle that :) But keep the discussion going. Helps us in the long run :) 

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An and-gate and the toggle switches are a pretty straight forward transistor which will get you modern computers which are turning complete as long as you're willing to fudge on the issue of your read/write tape not actually being infinite (but limited by how much RAM/disk the system has or in this case how many logic blocks you dedicated to storage).

If you use factories you could have a horizontal line of blocks (1) or empty space (0) a read head of a distance sensor and a write head which either destroyed the block or printed a new one. Then you'd get a literal Turing Machine inside the game (though it's still be running on physical hardware with finite limits). And actually making the heads move with repeatable precision and would be hard.

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57 minutes ago, Markus said:

Are we Turing complete? I have not enough experience or knowledge to answer that :)

 

Merely having NAND gates (or NOR, that works too) makes it Turing-complete already, because all other logic gates can be constructed from it. And when you can do that, you can build components like RAM, binary adders, etc.  Using those you build an ALU, and using that you can create a processor that can execute instructions.

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Why don't you just add a toggleable overlay for these "wires" so if you want to quickly get familiar with a drones logic you can do it visually instead of clicking each and every part and figuring out what it does?

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