13 Flying Machine Basics
After two full lessons, we're finally building a machine that actually moves!
This lesson covers only basic flying machines. We won't go too deep into the motion mechanics, so it'll be much easier than the previous two lessons.
1 Principle
Step on your right foot with your left foot and spiral up to the sky!
High school physics and momentum ruined our martial arts dreams. Fortunately, Minecraft blocks don't have momentum. So we can pull off the following trick.
As shown, we've achieved the "stepping on the right foot with the left foot" process. During this, the regular Piston acting as the "right foot" doesn't change position.
As shown, this is the process of pulling back the "right foot". During this, the sticky piston's position doesn't change.
Through these two steps, the entire structure moves forward by one block. Let's connect them together.
By inserting a sequentially activating circuit into the flying machine body, we get a simple flying machine.
2 Simple Flying Machines
2.1 a) 9gt Unidirectional Flying Machine
As shown, this is a very straightforward 9gt unidirectional flying machine.
The right-facing one is a regular Piston, the left-facing one is a sticky piston. With right as forward, break the topmost Block of Redstone to start it.
Let's use /tick freeze and /tick step to observe how this flying machine operates.
As shown, this is the flying machine in operation. The sticky piston first pulls back the rear section. Then the rear regular Piston, powered by the Block of Redstone, pushes out the front section. Once the front section is in place, the Observer fires, and the sticky piston pulls back the rear section again, completing the cycle.
This flying machine has a period of 9gt
2.2 b) 10gt Observer Bidirectional Flying Machine
In the above flying machine, the regular Piston is activated by a Block of Redstone, while the sticky piston is activated by an Observer. Let's switch both to Observer activation, as shown.
The operation is no different from the above flying machine, except the period changes from 9gt to 10gt.
Since the Observer signal is relatively short, it can make the sticky piston only push out without pulling back. So we can replace the rear regular Piston with a sticky piston without affecting its motion.
This flying machine is centrally symmetric, so if it can move right, it can also move left. This is the simplest bidirectional flying machine.
Almost all simple flying machines in Slime Tech are 10gt flying machines, variants of this flying machine.
The figure shows the bomber section of Mango's World Eater. You can see that this bomber simply rearranged the pistons, Observers, and Slime Blocks - the abstract structure is the same
2.3 c) 12gt Piston BUD Flying Machine
In the figure, the three pistons from left to right are: regular Piston, sticky piston, regular Piston
Before version 1.11 when Observers didn't exist, this type of flying machine was popular, but it's basically no longer used. If you have spare time, try researching on your own how to start it and how it operates.
3 Mounting and Extension
Since the Slime Tech community has never had unified standards, only some conventional terms, I'll categorize things using my own naming conventions.
3.1 a) Mounting
For the above 10gt bidirectional flying machine, we can change the structure's shape and then attach some other blocks as mounting. For example, the "bomber section of Mango's World Eater" above was created by attaching blocks to a 10gt flying machine as mounting.
Similarly, mounting can also attach additional Observers and pistons, giving your flying machine the ability to interact with blocks. We can implement some interesting functions this way.
The figure shows a flying machine called "Grave Marker" that can convert 6-high pillars into a specific shape
The principle is to mount several pistons in specific directions on a 10gt simple flying machine. This doesn't really involve flying machine knowledge, so please try it yourself.
Homework: Please design a machine yourself that converts 4-high pillars into the following statue
3.2 b) Extension
Since we can mount Observers and pistons for additional functions, the 12-block push limit of a single piston still imposes limitations. Therefore, we can extend the structure through pistons.
Based on a simple flying machine, we can push forward structures using forward-facing regular Pistons, or pull back rear structures using backward-facing sticky pistons, as shown:
In the figure, from left to right, from top to bottom, they are: sticky piston, sticky piston, regular Piston, sticky piston, regular Piston
This flying machine, based on a simple flying machine, extends forward with a 12-block dual TNT duplicator, and extends backward off the screen.
From now on, simple flying machines will be called "engines", and the concept of "mounting" also includes "extension". With this understanding, you've already stepped through the door of flying machines. The knowledge that follows, broadly speaking, covers various kinds of engines, various kinds of mounting and extension, and how to elegantly integrate multiple flying machines together. Keep it up!
The figure shows my unidirectional bulldozer