Neat Packet & Mechcomp Accomplishments & Ideas

[MarkNstein]

Back in late August 2020, I made the Bastard Box 9000. A mobile cabinet that could continuously touchlessly unlock/open all lockers and doors in-range. I still have the schematics of it, and my original design could be improved with the MechComp updates since then. Gif of it here:

[CommaIndividual]

Back in late August 2020, I made the Bastard Box 9000. A mobile cabinet that could continuously touchlessly unlock/open all lockers and doors in-range. I still have the schematics of it, and my original design could be improved with the MechComp updates since then. Gif of it here:

Very Nice, must've taken forever to figure out.

[MarkNstein]

Very Nice, must've taken forever to figure out.

I was already well versed with MechComp. For things of this complexity it's best to plan it out ahead of time, I used a flowcharting website and OneNote. My first try failed in part due to lack of shift-time, and accidentally "wiring" it wrong inside the cabinet. Subsequent attempts were very quick, a solid chunk of time was just getting the headpass (now secpass).

Edit: Dug up the flowchart.

[Splints]

I've written a DWAINE script that automatically finds the telesci corrections without using any mechcomp. Just write the code on a piece of paper, scan it at a scanner, and run it from a terminal. It takes about two minutes to complete.

It's based on performing a binary search over the possible range of offset values. Two teleman scans for the multipliers and seven for the shifts.

[aft2001]

That's actually super genius. How difficult was it to make? I'd love to have it or one I make for myself, though I'll have to hand copy it in-game given the fact that I play AI a ton.

[Splints]

That's actually super genius. How difficult was it to make? I'd love to have it or one I make for myself, though I'll have to hand copy it in-game given the fact that I play AI a ton.

Thanks! The hard part was learning how to get if/else statements working and I owe a lot to the help I got from people on discord. I'm happy to share the script, but if you would rather discover things on your own I'll just put some of the key DWAINE tactics here. If you want the full script just let me know, here or discord.

1)If statements are formatted as follows.

if <condition> ^ True statement 1 ^ True statement 2 ^ etc ^ else ^ false statement 1 ^ false statement 2 ^ etc

Example for testing if two variables are equal:
if $a $b eq ^ echo equal ^ else ^ echo not equal

Since if statements include ^ in them, they cannot be used in a script. You can get around this by writing it on paper and scanning it in. However, since you only need to run it once and already need to hand copy it line by line as AI, this shouldn't be a problem.

2) The results of a teleman scan can be saved to a file with ^
For example, to save the result to a file called scanres you could write
teleman scan ^ scanres

3) Grep can be very useful for doing string/substring stuff. With the -o option it returns only the matching part so if you have file that you want to see if it contains the substring TEST (case sensitive), you can use
grep -o TEST filename
This will either return null or TEST

Combine this with 'if' to check if a file contains a substring

if ATEST A$(grep -o TEST filename) eq

If filename contains TEST, ATEST = ATEST and the result is true. If it does not ATEST does not equal A and the result if false. The A prevents an underflow error as grep returns nothing if false. Any character or string can be used instead of A.

4) If you can find the max corner of the map (300,300 on a GPS) you can find all of the offset terms. The add term is a whole number from 0 and 100 and the slope term can only be 1, 0.5, 0.25. Multiplication happens after the add.

5) While loops don't work. They are only partially implemented so 'while' does not return a syntax error, but it does not loop. You can instead just write out loops in sequence in your script. Mine is 84 lines long, but most of it is the 7 iterations of the binary search.

6) DWAINE is super finicky in a lot of ways. I've found unsetting a variable sometimes unsets them all. Scope is weird when it comes to scripts with variables sometimes passing in or out and sometimes not. I'm not sure what the underlying rule is, but I generally prefer to keep everything in one script to prevent issues. I tried using subroutines but it was just too much of a pain.

(Also, happy birthday!)

[aft2001]

Good god that is a lot of complication and I have to applaud you even more for figuring it out and executing it, holy hell. I already have my own strategy for quickly getting offsets as AI (figure it out yourselves, nerds, you don't need a GPS) so it's not necessary but damn if this wouldn't be helpful to crack sometime.

Thanks again!

[Matticus0]

I was inspired by Splints method and tried to improve upon the program, but dwaine is so finicky with passing variables that it only works in one big long file that you have to scan in, which poses its own logistical issues on most maps.

fun things I found - “eval $(teleman scan) to myvar” just so happens to pipe the necessary pass/fail data directly to a variable

if statements can be replaced entirely by evals and maths if all theyre doing is simple sums

so this actually works somehow:

eval $(teleman scan) to sc
eval (XYZ) sc eq (XZ) sc eq or (XY) sc eq or (X) sc eq or to xt

but at the end of the day, a spreadsheet can do the binary chop method in like 8 commands if you just feed it scan pass/fail outputs, and this semi manual process is arguably quicker than dwaines calculation speed

[Matticus0]

Dance Dance Revolution Machine. Accompanying player pianos as per wiki. Letters scroll down and score tallies up as you hit the pressure plates in time on last row. Auto resets and starts with one button.

[Matticus0]

I'm on a roll now. I call this the TOGGLEBOARD, many potential uses. 5x5 grid of letter screens, one toggle and hand scanner for each (just because they're buttons you can walk over). Input the on / off characters for the toggles, then link in the buttons however the game is to be played.

Working "Lights Out" game with turn counter:



Working minesweeper but it bolts the doors when you enter then triggers a bomb if you hit a mine (no video sadly):

[CommaIndividual]

I'm on a roll now. I call this the TOGGLEBOARD, many potential uses. 5x5 grid of letter screens, one toggle and hand scanner for each (just because they're buttons you can walk over). Input the on / off characters for the toggles, then link in the buttons however the game is to be played.

Working "Lights Out" game with turn counter:



Working minesweeper but it bolts the doors when you enter then triggers a bomb if you hit a mine (no video sadly):

Beautiful.  The clown is who must be the one to either save the station, or doom the station with this.

[jexom]

I've recently made a simple shuttle recaller that turns off when the crew collectively pays a certain amount of money to the payment component.
Unfortunately considering that I mostly play on rp the shuttle only really gets called at the end of the shift and I didn't have the balls to actually activate it but guess it could be a fun gimmick for a traitor mechanic, holding the shuttle for ransom.

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Another thing I've almost never seen done is a proper telepad network for some reason. It can be easily done using 4 components per teleport including the teleport itself.

The button panel has the destinations, with signals of the buttons being the destination teleporter id. The delay compotenent activates the telepad, and the relay component sets the teleport id back to what it was (e.g. "esc" for escape, "med" for medbay...). Here's an image on how it's all linked up (the delay can probably be replaced with relay, I never actually got to testing if the component delays are actually enough to not cause a race condition).


Basically this setup allows for 2-way travel to and from any other telepad on the station that is "registered" within the button panel.

[TheRealFlapJackson]

>Me, would like to do packets and advanced mechcomp. I'm afraid of both of them.

[zjdtmkhzt]

I've recently made a simple shuttle recaller that turns off when the crew collectively pays a certain amount of money to the payment component.
Unfortunately considering that I mostly play on rp the shuttle only really gets called at the end of the shift and I didn't have the balls to actually activate it but guess it could be a fun gimmick for a traitor mechanic, holding the shuttle for ransom.

I'm afraid auto-recallers are against the rules? Which is really a pity considering how funny this contraption is.^^

[jexom]

I've recently made a simple shuttle recaller that turns off when the crew collectively pays a certain amount of money to the payment component.
Unfortunately considering that I mostly play on rp the shuttle only really gets called at the end of the shift and I didn't have the balls to actually activate it but guess it could be a fun gimmick for a traitor mechanic, holding the shuttle for ransom.

I'm afraid auto-recallers are against the rules? Which is really a pity considering how funny this contraption is.^^

Well the other thing I thought of was cutting AI control from the shuttle escape airlocks and using a scanner component to scan "tickets" which could be purchased from the "ticket printers" (thermal printers with payment component). Never got to implementing such a thing because people would miss that and I guess it can be considered as grief.

And well yeah, auto-recaller is probably like an unspoken rule, but I feel that as long as it's creative and not the same shit everytime, it could have a pass.

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>Me, would like to do packets and advanced mechcomp. I'm afraid of both of them.

Well they're not that scary but a lot of times it just feels like stuff being a really fine line between being ok and punishable.