Mesecons Machine Competition [ended - winner: cornernote]

[Jeija]

Hey everyone!


You want to see that machine working? Actually it's fake, but machines like this one are possible with mesecons!
To get some in minetest, it is time for a competition!

Rules
Starts: Now!
Ends: September 5th, winner will be published on September 8th

Who can take part?
Single persons, teams or even servers

What to build?
You can build several small machines or one big one.
Machines can be everything you can make up with mesecons (computing, celeron55's temple, moving machine)

How do I send my creations in?
You can either send in a map (with coordinates of your machine, or a player that spawns there by default) or a worldedit file. You can only use WorldEdit files if you don't use Microcontrollers, so sending in the map is recommended.

What parts/blocks can I use?
You can use all parts in the mesecons mod and even code your own blocks, but:
- They have to have something to do with the mesecons mod (are receptor/effector/conductor)
- They have to be usable also for others, not only for your machine
- They mustn't be replaceable by other blocks
(e.g. a blue lightstone is allowed, a NOT-Block or some design block not)

Am I allowed to use other mods?
You can use at maximum 2 other mods, but you have to post the link to them.

How do I send in my map/WE-File?
You just post it in this thread when you're finished, together with a roughly 5 sentence long description that tells me what the machine is, and what things you have to do to make it work.

How do I enter the contest?
Tell me that you want to enter it in this thread.


Criteria:
Work invested 50%
Ingenuity: 40%
Design: 10%

Jury:
VanessaE
PilzAdam
Jeija
sfan5

Creators:
Temperest
NekoGloop
Cornernote

If you want to post screenshots, post them in [Fun]Post your screenshots! or in the mesecons thread (if they contain some technical description)

For technical questions ask in the mesecons thread

I'm curious to see your creations,
Jeija

[TheLoLMan]

GOOD

[sfan5]

GOOD

Don't use Capslock so often and write more than 1 Word

[sfan5]

Is anyone entering? I'll submit something if I'm finished it.

(...)
Creators:
Temperest
NekoGloop
Jordach
(...)

[cornernote]

I am finished my machine. I would like to enter it. I don't think it will win, but it will be cool to have more machines =)

[PilzAdam]

I am finished my machine. I would like to enter it. I don't think it will win, but it will be cool to have more machines =)

Just post your worldfile here.

[Temperest]

Much smaller than my old one with plugs/sockets! Nice!

[PilzAdam]

4 days to go.

[Temperest]

Quick screenshot of the almost completed machine!



It just needs a win checker, and then it'll be done.

[VanessaE]

Temperest: If you want to, you can put walls between the buttons and the mese wires behind. A 'receiver' object will appear in place of the wire, and will act as it if's insulated (it's still looks bare though - I still need to fix that).

[button][wall][bare wire][wire, ...]

becomes...

[button][wall][insulated receiver][wire, ...]

[Temperest]

Thanks, VanessaE, I thought they weren't insulated. Also, it gets a bit annoying sometimes when they appear when there is Mesecons between them.

[VanessaE]

I've just pushed an update to fix their bare appearance. The wire parts of the receiver now look like they're insulated. They still behave as they did before, this is just a graphical change.

[Temperest]

Awesome! How about making them only appear when the block between them is not conductive? It looks like I will have to move a micro controller one block back because it is not supposed to be insulated. Perhaps make it happen only with insulated Mesecons?

Oh, and world edit recently gained the ability to work with nodes that have metadata, you can now copy, stack, move, and more with micro controllers! Just throwing that out there.

[Temperest]

Here's my entry!

Description:

A Tic-Tac-Toe machine! Two players play on one 9 button pad, and win conditions are automatically detected.

Screenshots:







Timelapse:

If you want to watch me build the machine step-by-step, here's a video! Frames are spaced at 3 second intervals.

Info:

Log in as singleplayer. You'll be standing in front of the control panel. As the signs say, the left lone button resets everything, the center panel with 9 buttons is the entry pad, and the lights to the right flash the color of the winning player. Of course, the top screen shows the game progress. In the indicators, Green represents X, and Red represents O.

Make sure you wait a bit after pressing a button before pressing another one. Those buttons won't be rushed, and get cranky if you try to hurry them.

Here's a sample session:

1. Press Reset to reset the game if it is not already reset.
2. The green light on top of the entry pad is glowing. That means it's Green's (X) turn.
3. The Green player presses the desired button.
4. The green light turns off and the red light illuminates. That means it's Red's (O) turn.
5. The Red player presses the desired button.
6. The red light turns off and the green light illuminates.
7. This cycle repeats until a player wins or the board is filled.
8. If a player wins, the player's color will flash on the right indicator panel.
9. For the convenience of other users, reset the machine so they don't have to.

Great for servers! Two players can play at once, but you can have multiple instances around to let more people enjoy it! I'm releasing this under the 3-clause BSD license, so you can do essentially anything you want with it, as long as you give credit where credit is due. A sign on the front is fine by me. If your server is prone to griefers, make sure you use some sort of block protection!

Download:

Ompldr

[Jeija]

Good job is all I can say for now, Temperest, to not influence the others :). And I have no idea how that machine works.

I think something is wrong with the left column in your download, the display doesn't seem to function (although win condition detection works), I think the malfunction is caused by wires that have been cut by worldedit.
Could you please fix that?

@Jordach @NekoGloop: Looking forward to see your submissions!

@cornernote
A binary decoder may not be as hard as a tic tac toe game, but not something that "everyone knows". I encourage you to send it in, your chances to win are not too bad as the work invested is the most important criteria!

[Jordach]

Good job is all I can say for now, Temperest, to not influence the others :). And I have no idea how that machine works.

I think something is wrong with the left column in your download, the display doesn't seem to function (although win condition detection works), I think the malfunction is caused by wires that have been cut by worldedit.
Could you please fix that?

@Jordach @NekoGloop: Looking forward to see your submissions!

@cornernote
A binary decoder may not be as hard as a tic tac toe game, but not something that "everyone knows". I encourage you to send it in, your chances to win are not too bad as the work invested is the most important criteria!

I had this awesome boss battle that needed throwing, but the machine failed due to the arrow not pushing the pressure plates as expected.

[GloopMaster]

I just found this thread... well anyway my thing is going to be a world chock-full of machines... i hope this is good enough :)

P.S. I'm hoping for 2nd, because temperest wins merely with a wave of his hand :P

[Temperest]

Good job is all I can say for now, Temperest, to not influence the others :). And I have no idea how that machine works.

I think something is wrong with the left column in your download, the display doesn't seem to function (although win condition detection works), I think the malfunction is caused by wires that have been cut by worldedit.
Could you please fix that?

I was running an older version of the map, turns out that there was an issue caused by a WorldEdit accident. Thanks for catching that, I've updated the download link in my post to point to the fixed version.

[cornernote]

Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

download | info and more screens

[cornernote]

4-bit Decoder to 7 Segment Display

download | more info and screens | forum page

[Jeija]

---Competition closed---

Winners will be announced as soon as possible, propably saturday!
Thanks a lot for your awesome submissions!

[Temperest]

This was pretty fun, hope we can do another one sometime!

[Jeija]

I was planning to have a second one around christmas, would be nice if there were some more competitors.
Machines don't always have to be as awesome as this, a good amount of machines as tutorial for others is also helpful.

[Jeija]

----------------------------
And the winner is....
Cornernote!

Here are the results:
Temperest's invested work: 71%
Cornernote's invested work: 75%

Machines:
Tic-Tac-Toe:
Work invested: 35.5/50
- Definitely a lot of work to make this game.
Ingenuity: 35/40
- The game works well, but win detection lacks a
lock-out to keep players from continuing after a
win (a reset should be required first). Excellent
use of stacked mesecons wires to go vertical.
Design: 4.25/10
- Good general design, but the placement of the
controls relative to the display makes the game
a little cumbersome to play - the display should
be brought further forward so that the whole thing
can more easily be seen by the player standing at
the keypad. Internal wiring is hard to follow.


7-segment-display
Work invested:
- Pretty big construction, that many µC's must have
taken forever to program.
Ingenuity: 35/40
- Fabulous method for making an LCD-like display. Nice
touch by exploiting a bug in the game's light mapping,
using torches and allowing the light to leak through
the edges of the LCD segments when the pistons pull
in to turn a segment on.
Design: 7.5/10 (a 3-rating by one jury member pulled it down, others are 8, 9, 10)
- Very clean design for the most part, the distance
from the control inputs to the LCD itself makes the
display easy to see. The misc. wiring between the
lower and upper levels is hard to follow.


Rock-Paper-Scissors-Spock-Lizard
Work invested:
- There's not much to a game of this nature - kinda
hard to put more work into something that doesn't
need it.
Ingenuity: 34.5/40
- Good choice for a game to implement with mesecons.
It runs well and quite fast too (most of
the time, a result is delivered in under 1 second).
Coding the microcontrollers was propably not too hard as there were not many of them.
Design: 9.75/10
- Very well layed out - wiring is easy to follow and
the surrounding structure has a nice appearance.
Auto-detecting player 2 is a nice touch.
----------------------------

Picture of the contest:

no comment...

Both competitors did a really, really good job and it was hard to decide who should win.
Imho Temperest's TicTacToe game is the best machine, but two machines together beat him.
Sad that there only were two competitors, next time some more would be nice.

Well done everyone!

[2cool4me4]

I'll probably be joining the next one... the machine I was working on wasn't near as good as these were.

[Temperest]

Neat! Next time I'm going for either a Turing machine or a PIC-like microprocessor. So dibs on that :P

Congrats, cornernote! That minigame of yours was very intuitive and pretty fun to play.

Hope the next one is announced here, I don't really check the forums too often and don't want to miss out on it!

[2cool4me4]

dibs on the computer!

[cornernote]

Wow. I didn't expect to win because the tic-tac-toe machine was awesome, and far more advanced microcontroller logic than my 2 put together. Thanks for having a look at my machines and for all the great feedback. I hope they provide others with examples of what can be done.

I am really looking forward to another competition, and I hope there are more entries cos I love playing with mesecons machines. I put dibs on a conway's game of life machine.