Pyramid Power - NO PEEKING players! You know who you are. :)

[ableman33]

For this project I am going to build a pyramid-shaped room.  This will be designed to be able to act as a stand alone piece of terrain, but it will also be able to serve as the capstone piece of my Pyramid Project.

The plan is for this room to have a mechanical puzzle that will work to reveal a hidden passage through the floor.

Ideally, the players will have to turn several statues in the proper order to get the passageway to open.

If I can manage it, I would like to incorporate lighting elements that will light up when each statue is turned properly.


Best of luck to everyone!

[OrientDM]

Yay! I got back in!  Good luck, Ableman!!  I'll just say, Great Minds think alike....

[MellyMonkey]

I'm pretty curious to see you plan for this. It sounds amazing.

[ableman33]

OK, I started roughing out ideas for this project.

The idea I eventually settled on is to have a central large statue that, when it rotates, moves the piece of floor it's on to reveal a hole to the level below. However, this statue cannot rotate until four smaller statues have been rotated first, each sliding a "pin" out from the underside of the moving platform.

As a bonus, I will try to have a set of electrical contacts that will cause things to light up whenever a statue is turned all the way to the proper release position. That will give feedback to the players to know they have done something correctly since they can't see the mechanism hidden in the floor.


Here are some of the sketches from my first thoughts about the mechanical action of the "locks" and sliding floor piece.

[ableman33]

OK, next I messed around with some foam core to start mocking up my floor puzzle more exactly.  It took several iterations, but I eventually came up with something I think will work and be robust enough for play.

The room will actually be on a 10x10 inch platform, but the outermost squares will be unplayable since the slanted ceiling will be leaning over them too sharply. (The room will be a square-based pyramid with steeply sloped walls.)



Here is my original idea for what the floor of the room would look like to the players. The circles sketch in where the rotating statues will go. I have two designs for the moving floor section, a simple square and a more intricate stepped shape. I am leaning toward the stepped shape.  I think it looks more interesting and I think it will surprise the players more when it moves.











Here is a view of the underside of the puzzle floor. This is a view of the cover plate that will hide and protect the workings.





With the cover plate removed, we can see the bottommost part of the sandwich of layers that form the moving floor piece. The notches cut out of each side are for the four small locking pins that will be controlled by rotating the four smaller statues in the corners. Here you can see how I will use LEGO Technic gear pieces to move the pins in and out. (I only put down one set of gears to show where they will go, but the final version will have gears for all four statues/locks.)

The idea is to have the four smaller statues facing away from the central large statue. Turning each smaller statue a half turn so that it faces the central statue will fully remove the associated pins from the notches, making it possible for the floor piece to slide.







Removing the bottom part of the sliding floor panel, we can see the gear attached to the large statue and the cutouts in the fixed floor.  The purple blocks are actually attached to underside of the sliding floor panel while the pink outlines help show the edges of the slots cut into the fixed floor. The toothed track pieces will be glued to the fixed floor. When the main large statue is turned, the gear attached to it will pull the sliding floor piece along the track, exposing the hole.







And here are the same views with the LEGO pieces removed to make it easier to see the foam.







And here are views of the individual layer pieces themselves from bottom to top.



Skipping over the simple bottom cover plate, here is the notched piece that receives the four locking pins.





Here is the fixed floor with the holes cut out. With and without LEGO gear track pieces.







And here is the underside of the sliding floor piece, with and without the LEGO gear.







And here you can better see the tab pieces that fit into the slots below.





All right. Next step is to start making this all up in real materials. The thickness of the LEGO Technic gears will be a bit of a challenge since they are thicker than the standard luan plywood I tend to use for floors.

It's also going to be a challenge getting the friction between all the elements just right.



Good luck everyone! I look forward to seeing all your projects come together.  

[Blocky]

I really feel that if you get this working, then the rest of us have no chance at all...

[pendrake]

Are the statues going to slide closer to the central whatsis as they turn?

[ableman33]

It's not about winning. It's about helping each other make great terrain in a compressed amount of time.
I'm liking the other entries and look forward to seeing them progress.


Regarding the statues, the current plan is for the 4 smaller statues to pivot in place. The shaft for the gears under the floor will pass up into the statues above. I will try to have statues that have outstretched arms or other obvious means of indicating which way they are facing so that it will be clear that they are turned either away or toward the central main statue.  I may also have some small magnets or something to help the statues click into the two away/toward positions.

The large central statue will also be fixed to the gear shaft below, but the platform it and they gear are attached to will slide to reveal the hole in the floor.

Teaching has been really busy the last few days, so I haven't been able to put any real work into this or my larger pyramid terrain piece.

Best of luck and happy building everyone.  

[pendrake]

Maybe shims of slick materials will help with lowering friction and raising the height of moving layers to accommodate the Lego® gears.

[ableman33]

Thanks pendrake, that's a thought.

I need to strike a balance between making things easier, and not telegraphing that any particular part of the floor is special (such as leaving any visible gaps).

Right now I'm leaning toward some sort of sandwich of materials to thicken up the main non-moving floor. Perhaps a single layer of my traditional luan plywood and a layer or two of thick card I have around.

Good luck and happy building everyone!