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Emberwork: logic and display
Eleven more parts for emberwork: parts that see (a watcher), count (a tally stone), weigh (an ember scale), call across your Home (far-bells), remember (a hold stone), show (an ember dial, hue lamps), keep time (an hourglass, a sun-and-moon stone) and roll the dice. With them you can build a door that shuts itself, a vault that opens for the fifth visitor, a scoreboard, a doorbell heard at the far end of your land, lights that come on at night, and pictures made of light.
Wick teaches them in his fourth lesson, and sells a logic kit to start with: see Wick the Tinker and trial vaults.
The parts
All of them are solid blocks: build them into walls. Those that point (watcher, tally stone, ember scale, hold stone, hourglass, dice stone) point away from you when you put them down, show an arrow or a nub at their front and a port at their back, and a Hammer turns them (a right click with it). Every part that thinks takes a quarter of a second, as the relay does.
| Part | What it does | Use it (a right click, F or a tap) | Made at a Workbench from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Watcher | Looks at the tile in front of it. When that tile changes, it gives a quarter-second pulse out of its back. | Stone, glass, stone over dust, a copper bar, dust | |
| Tally stone | Counts the warm pulses into its back. At its number it gives one pulse out of its front and starts again from nothing. Warmth into either side puts the count back to nothing, and holds it there. | Its next number: 2 to 20, then 24, 25, 30, 32, 36, 40, 48, 50, 60, 64 | Dust, a bone, dust over stone, a copper bar, stone |
| Ember scale | Weighs its back against its warmer side. Compare: its front is as warm as its back if the back is at least as warm as the side, else cold. Subtract: its front is the back less the side. A chest or a spout behind it is weighed instead, as a chest gauge reads it. | Compare or subtract | A copper bar, gap, a copper bar; dust, an iron bar, dust; 3 stone |
| Far-bell | Rung while it is warm: every far-bell ear of its tune on the same ground within 128 tiles is warm. | Its next tune (16) | Copper, a crystal, copper over copper, dust, copper |
| Far-bell ear | Warm (15) while a far-bell of its tune rings on its ground within 128 tiles. | Its next tune (16) | Copper, gap, copper; copper, a crystal, copper; dust |
| Hold stone | Warmth into its back sets it; warmth into a side resets it (reset wins). Its front is warm while it is set. It remembers, through a restart too. | Dust, an iron bar, dust over stone, dust, stone | |
| Ember dial | Shows the warmth it gets as a needle and a number (0 to 15). Against a tally stone it shows the tally's count instead. | 3 glass over a copper bar, dust, a copper bar | |
| Hourglass | A warm pulse into its back turns it over. When its sand has run it gives a pulse out of its front. A new pulse turns it over again. | Its next time: 5 s, 15 s, 30 s, 1, 2, 5, 10 min (it stops) | Glass, gap, glass; dust, sand, dust; glass, gap, glass |
| Sun-and-moon stone | Warm by day by Aldhearth's clock (15), low at dawn and dusk, cold at night. Turned to the moon, the other way round. | By day or by night | Stone, glass, stone; dust, a crystal, dust; stone, glass, stone |
| Dice stone | Each warm pulse into its back comes out of one of its other three sides, at random, for as long as the pulse lasts. | Bone, dust, bone; dust, stone, dust; bone, dust, bone | |
| Hue lamp | An ember lamp in eight colours: amber, ember red, sun gold, moss green, sky blue, dusk violet, rose and pale. As bright as the warmth reaching it, and its glow is its colour. | Its next colour; with a wing dye in hand, the dye's colour (the dye is not used up) | An ember lamp and a crystal (by hand) |
Watchers
- A watcher sees the tile its eye points at change: a block put down, dug out or pushed there by a ram, a door opening or shutting, water or lava arriving or draining away, a crop planted, harvested, or growing a stage (it notices when the crop comes up, even though no block changed).
- Each change gives a quarter-second pulse out of its back, then the watcher rests a tenth of a second. A change while it pulses or rests gives one pulse more after the rest, so it never misses that something changed again; it never pulses more than four times a second.
- It sees only tiles on its own ground: a watcher on your land does not see the open ground outside the rim, and one outside does not see in.
- A watcher whose land nobody is near sleeps, like all emberwork. It notices a crop that grew while it slept when it wakes.
- Hover a watcher to see what it is looking at.
Tally stones and dials
- A tally stone counts rising warmth at its back: a plate stepped on, a lever pulled on, a heartbeat. At its number it pulses its front (a quarter second later, for a quarter second) and starts again from nothing. Its notches light up as it counts.
- Warmth at either side puts it back to nothing and holds it there while it lasts: put a pull-cord or a lever at a side to reset it.
- Its count is kept through a restart.
- An ember dial against a tally stone shows the tally's count in white figures; anywhere else it shows the warmth it gets in orange ones. Two tallies in a row count tens: the first's front into the second's back.
The ember scale
- Its back is weighed against the warmer of its sides. Lay a long wire to one and a short one to the other and you can tell which is nearer the lever.
- With a chest or a spout behind it, the scale weighs how full that is instead: 1 with anything in it, 15 full (27 stacks of 64 in a chest, 64 in a spout). Weigh a chest against a lever's wire and you have a lamp that lights only while the chest is fuller than you set.
- Its hover says what it weighed: compare: 15 against 9: 15, subtract: 12 less 5 = 7.
Far-bells
- A far-bell and its ears are tuned to one of 16 tunes (the four dots at their foot show which; hover to read it). A warm far-bell rings every ear of its tune within 128 tiles, and you hear it.
- The same ground only. On a Home's land, a bell reaches the ears on that land, whoever put them there. On open ground, a bell reaches only the ears of its owner's account. Never across a rim: a bell on your land never rings an ear off it, and a stranger's bell never rings yours.
- An ear whose land nobody is near is still rung (it sleeps warm, and its wire warms when someone comes); nothing far away is woken or loaded by a bell.
- An ear right beside its own bell keeps it ringing (it warms the bell back): that is a memory, and a mistake if you did not mean it.
The hold stone
- Warm its back and it is set: its front is warm, and stays warm when the back cools. Warm a side and it is reset. If both are warm, reset wins.
- It is kept through a restart.
The hourglass
- A warm pulse into its back turns it over. Its sand runs (you can watch it, and its hover says how much is left), and when it has run, it pulses its front.
- A new pulse while it runs turns it over again: the time starts again.
- Its sand runs only while someone is near enough for its land to be awake, and not while the server is down: it carries on where it was.
- Two hourglasses in a row add up: the first's front into the second's back.
The sun-and-moon stone
- It keeps Aldhearth's clock, the clock of every event (Stockholm time). By day (7:00 to 17:00) it is warm (15); at dawn (5:00 to 7:00) and dusk (17:00 to 19:00) it is low and changing; at night it is cold.
- Turned to the moon (a right click) it is the other way round: warm at night, cold by day.
The dice stone
- Each warm pulse into its back falls to one of its other three sides (its front, or either side), drawn by the server, and comes out there for as long as the pulse lasts. The side it fell to glows.
- Three drop-floors on its three sides, one of them over a pit: a gamble.
Hue lamps
- Eight colours: amber (the ember lamp's own), ember red, sun gold, moss green, sky blue, dusk violet, rose and pale. A right click gives the next; a right click with a wing dye in hand gives the dye's colour (ash grey gives amber, nightshade dusk violet, starlight pale; the dye stays in your bag).
- A hue lamp is as bright as the warmth reaching it and lights the cave like an ember lamp, in its colour. A wall of them, each wired or not, is a sign or a picture: the dark ones are the lines.
Who may do what
As for all emberwork: anyone may pull your levers in plain sight; only those who may build where a part stands may change its setting or turn it. On open ground anyone may build, so anyone may change a setting there: build on your Home's land. Your parts count against the 400 of a Home's land and the 150 of your account on open ground, like any. None of these parts changes a block, so they never spend the world's tile budget.
A few machines to start with
- A door that shuts itself after 10 seconds. A pull-cord by the door, wired to the back of a hold stone and to the back of an hourglass set to 5 s; that hourglass's front into the back of a second one of 5 s; the second's front into a side of the hold stone. The hold stone's front wired to the door. Pull: the door opens; ten seconds later it shuts (never on anyone standing in it).
- A vault that opens for the fifth visitor. A Home plate at the vault's door wired to a tally stone set to 5; the tally's front into the back of a hold stone; the hold stone's front to the iron gate in front of your trial chest. Every fifth stranger who steps on the plate opens it. A lever inside, at the hold stone's side, shuts it again.
- A scoreboard. A pressure plate in each goal (or a ward thread across it), wired to a tally stone set to 10 with a dial against it; the tally's front into a second tally, set to 10, with a dial against it: ones and tens. A pull-cord at both tallies' sides starts them again from nothing. Two of them, one for each side of the arena. (A watcher counts too, but every change: a block knocked down and put back is two.)
- A doorbell heard all over your land. A pull-cord at the door wired to a far-bell; far-bell ears of the same tune in your rooms, each with a chime beside it.
- Lights at night. A sun-and-moon stone turned to the moon, wired to your lamps.
- A lamp at the top of the stairs. A pressure plate at the foot of a staircase, wire laid on the steps themselves (wire climbs a one-block step, up or down: see how warmth works) and a lamp beside the top step: step on the plate and the landing lights before you climb. Fifteen tiles of wire at most, as ever.
- A harvest bell. A watcher looking at a crop, its back on a chime: it rings each time the crop grows a stage.
- A flood alarm. A watcher looking at the tile where water would come in, wired to a far-bell; its ear by your bed.
- The wheel of fortune. A heartbeat stone into a dice stone's back, a lamp at each of its three sides: one lights at a time, at random.
- A sign. A wall of hue lamps on ember-veined stone (it carries warmth like wire), each set to its colour, a lever behind: pull it and the picture lights.