User:Larix

I've developed a logic discipline which could actually deserve the label "Minecart Logic", if it wasn't already taken. So i've tentatively dubbed it "Minecart Pathing Logic", since, other than the known circuits, it is based on directing moving minecarts and manipulating their paths instead of placing resting carts on top of pressure plates.

Here you can find what i've written up about this logic discipline:

User:Larix/MPL

• Doing my very best to push the envelope of dwarfputing, i built a dwarven computer to execute programs written in a high-level programming language. Since so far, dwarven computers have effectively worked with machine code, this is a huge leap forward!!

The language in question is hq9+.

The hq9+ interpreter thread on the Dwarf Fortress forum:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=130986.0

I am especially proud of the unary memory device.

• Dwarfs are always so sloshed that when they try to be random, they still just end up drunk. Their drunk stumbling around the meeting hall can be used to derive irresponsibly unpredictable signals, which in turn can be converted into apparently random numbers. Be careful when constructing such contraptions on your own computers, intoxicated computers can be quite difficult to handle.

The double-roller "bit splitter" should be pretty close to the optimum in turning non-periodically timed events (like citizen-triggered pressure plates in a well-travelled area) into pseudo-randomness.

The Drunk Number Generator: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=129226.msg4452422#msg4452422

• Do you lack the patience to wait a hundred steps for a pressure plate to re-set and close a door? Are you annoyed by dwarfs dragging their feet when ordered to pull the "close that door!" lever? No problem, you can get a door to close as reaction to an "on" signal, potentially in less than ten steps. It just takes ~400 power and 25 rollers and pressure plates and link jobs.

Security Blast Door: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=128095.msg4449221#msg4449221

• Just working out that diagonally-moving minecarts are notoriously unwilling to follow track directions only served as an incentive for me to step up my game and tame the wild diagonal minecart. I succeeded in getting such carts to stay in holding loops, cycle through repeaters and even hold a bit of information by their rotation direction in a read-writeable 'memory cell'.

There's no need to use an extra minecart for every bit of memory you wish to store, a single minecart can hold a full byte of information.

Oh, and i got a rudimentary base-seven memory device or adder to work, based on regulating water depth and measuring it with pressure plates.

Controlling diagonal minecarts; one-cart one-byte memory; seven-state fluid memory/potential base-seven adder? http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=131325.msg4621257#msg4621257