Water - Team-Hamsa/calebhamsa.fun GitHub Wiki

Water and steam are real amounts: a cell can be full, half full, or nearly empty, and water never appears or disappears by itself. Build a rock into a tank and the water is pushed out of the way, so the level goes up, like dropping a stone in a full glass. (Pipes, valves, wheels, pumps and rope just keep the water that was there.) Only DIG and drains take water away (and building a block into a full tank with a lid on it: there is nowhere for that water to go).

Water looks as tall as it is. Pour 10 cells of water into a shaft and it stands 10 cells tall. Falling water is drawn as a stream, as wide as there is water: a faucet's trickle is a thin thread, a waterfall a thick one. One tap of DIG takes one scoop. You can't pour into a full cell, so pour just above the water. Water can't be squashed: ten cells of water are ten cells, at the top of a tank or the bottom.

Deep water presses harder. The taller the water standing over a place, the harder it pushes there: that is pressure. It pushes water up a pipe until both sides are level, and squirts it out of a hole, harder the deeper the hole. A hole at the foot of a tall tank floods the floor outside in a rush. A hole in the very top row of the water only spills over its lip; one row deeper the water is pressed, and it runs more than twice as fast. A long thin pipe rubs some of the push away, so with only a little water over it a long pipe runs slower than a short one. And the same tank with the same hole or pipe always runs just as fast: it doesn't matter whether you laid the pipe before or after you poured the water. Steam is different: it is a gas, and a gas CAN be squeezed.

Water has to fall to give its push. Water up high holds energy, like a ball at the top of a slide. It gives that push away on the way down (to a water wheel, if one is there). Water lying level has no push left. Lifting water uses up a pump's push. The higher a pump has to lift, the slower the water goes, and at some height the water is too heavy and it stops. More batteries lift higher and faster: one battery lifts about 5 blocks, two about 10. Two pumps in a row, one pushing straight into the next, work as one taller pump: they lift twice as high as one (but no faster on the level). A pump doesn't suck: it takes the water right behind it, so let the water run to it. And a pump with no power is a shut door: no water gets past it, not even downhill, so a switched-off pump in the wall of a tank holds the whole tank back. (Steam can't get through a pump at all.)

Steam has to rise to give its push. Steam is water upside down: steam low down (or squeezed) holds the energy, and it gives that push away on the way up (to a turbine, if one is there). Steam that has spread out under a ceiling, or turned a corner into a pipe, has no push left. So stand a turbine upright in the chimney: lying on its side at the end of a pipe it gets hardly any push. A taller chimney under a turbine makes it faster and stronger, and more steam makes it stronger, not faster. For more steam, give each extra burner its own pot with open air above the water. (Steam can't push sideways through water. A second burner in the corner of one pot just fills its corner with steam and stops boiling.) A turbine uses up the push of the steam that goes through it: the next turbine up gets only what the steam gives rising on from there. Turbines one after the other in one chimney share the steam's push, and never get more than it had. Steam with nowhere to go (a sealed box with no chiller) stops rising, and the turbine slows down and stops. A chiller can sit right on top of a turbine, like the condenser of a real power plant: steam chilled inside the turbine has still gone through it. Beside the turbine only works if the turbine is the very top of the chimney. Steam goes to the highest place it can reach, so that is where the chiller has to be: with open space above the turbine, the steam rushes past a chiller at its side and gathers up there instead. Only a burner makes steam: turn it off and it all winds down.

	Block	What it does	✋ USE
	Water	Not really a block: BUILD pours a cell full of water. It falls, spreads out and levels off. Deep water presses harder, so it pushes up through pipes and U-tubes.	—
	Steam	Pours a cell full of steam. Steam is water's opposite: it rises and spreads out under ceilings.	—
	Pipe	Carries water and steam. Pipes join up with the pipes next to them. The sides are sealed, and the end of a pipe is open, so water pours out of it.	—
	Valve	A pipe with a tap in it. Green = open, red = shut.	open ↔ shut
	Faucet	Drips water out of its bottom, forever.	—
	Drain	Water that flows into it disappears.	—
	Burner	Boils the water just above it into steam. Off, it looks like this:	on ↔ off
	Chiller	Very cold: steam touching it turns back into water (it "rains").	—
	Turbine	A fan inside a pipe. Steam rising through it spins it. It makes turning, not electricity: put a generator (⚙️ tab) right beside it, and wire the generator to a lamp. Wires on the turbine itself do nothing. It turns ↻ by itself, or the way its gears already go. More steam = stronger. A taller chimney under it = faster and stronger. Stand it upright in the chimney: steam that turns a corner first has lost most of its push. If the steam has nowhere to go, it stops. One blade tip is yellow, so you can see it turn.	—
	Pump	Uses electricity to push water the way its arrow points, even uphill. Wire it into a loop with a battery (wires on the sides the pipe isn't on). The arrow glows when it has power. Uphill is hard work: the higher, the slower. If the water stops part way up, add a battery, or a second pump right after the first. With no power it is a shut door.	turns: → ↓ ← ↑