Chaco
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File: Press Plates At The Same Time.hold (1.1 KB)
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So, there was a bit of discussion in chat today about "simple ways to force the player to get multiple pressure plates pressed on the exact same turn". Note that using on-off plates for this purpose can be a little tricky since plates are *released* at the end of the turn, but pressed at the start of the turn, which can foil some mechanisms.

Here's a relatively easy one-use mechanism, with the caveat that none of the plates can be pressed before the simultaneous press is ready; other mechanisms could allow some individual plates to be pressed before the all-press occurs.

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uncopy2002
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There are multiple typical mechanisms that architects use to enforce simultaneous multi-plate presses. They can be classified by three criteria:
One-time/Multi-use: Just like plates have one-time and multi-use variants, some setups force you to not press any plates before doing the final simultaneous press while some does not. It depends on the room's purpose, and in some cases, how evil/lenient the architect is.
Duration: How long are the plates required to be pressed simultaneously? Usually the answer is one turn only, but in some cases you might want more than one, usually when the entity pressing the plate is a monster instead of player and player doubles.
Susceptibility to plate-release syndrome: Plate press happens immediately, but plate release happens somewhere during post-turn, after all monsters have moved. There's a big sequence of stuff that happens at post-turn, and, unfortunately, plate release happens to be in the middle of them. This causes lots of possible breaks you probably aren't aware of until it happens in front of your eye. Remember kids, consult this great compilation by skell when in doubt!

Here are a list of very common setups. Of course, depending on the required constraints, theme and aesthetics there exists lots of highly complicated and convoluted setups, but these ones are very common and widely used:

Roach + trap that needs to be defused: One-time (multi-use setups might exist), any duration, usually suscept to plate-release syndrome but the opposite is possible if the trap involves plates that each roach steps off from
Decoy + eye, doors lined up in the middle: Multi-use, one turn only, suscept to plate-release syndrome
Fuse + aumtlich, doors lined up in the middle: Multi-use, usually one turn only (multi-turn durations might be possible by doing stuff on the fuse), not suscept to plate-release syndrome (aumtlich gazes are processed after plate release during post-turn)
Pathfinding corridor, doors lined up in the middle: Multi-use, any duration, suscept to plate-release syndrome
Briar growth: Mixtures of multi-use + one-time possible, any duration, varying degrees of susceptibility to plate-release syndrome (more so if there are gaps between the doors)
Firetrap + bomb: One-time, one turn only, not suscept to plate-release syndrome, most space-compact

Of course, sometimes there are alternatives: As an example, if you require using mimics to do an one-turn multi-plate presses only, which is a pretty common scenario, it might be possible to replace the plates with orbs instead (orbs activate exactly when they're struck).

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[Last edited by uncopy2002 at 12-12-2016 12:51 AM]