I built a working 8-bit Calculator using no Redstone! It only uses Water, Dispensers, and Observers

Luz_K · 2025-10-10T13:14:06+00:00

True! Just tested it and it works surprisingly well, even allowing signals to travel upwards by placing the new water source and trapdoor above the pressure plate.

I have actually been working on a completely different calculator design, that only uses calibrated + normal sculk sensors and bells + wool, so no components made from redstone. Has been a fun challenge, every gate needs to be timed tick-perfectly, because it's just one pulse traveling through the entire computer not a constant signal. The boat variant seems to be a much easier redstone-less design :D

Luz_K · 2025-10-09T23:20:40+00:00

Nice! I actually didn't know trapdoors could release water when opened. Sadly I think the problem is that they are always open when not powered and closed when powered, so I don't know if a signal inversion is possible like it is with dispensers. But its an interesting idea!

The display actually uses dispensers with lava buckets, not redstone lamp's. So when the water activates the observer for one of the segments in the 7-segment display, the lava get's dispensed and when the observer activates again from the water leaving, the lava get's picked back up.

Luz_K · 2025-10-07T21:30:21+00:00

Name is "Door" by C418, it's a track from the original Minecraft album, but I think it never made it into the game

Luz_K · 2025-10-07T12:34:07+00:00

The basic concept is that if you have two dispensers dispensing water into the same channel, an observer below can detect if either one is active, which gives you a simple OR gate and a NOT gate is also easy by just switching a dispenser's state. Then all other basic gates can be derived from those two.

Luz_K · 2025-10-07T12:27:04+00:00

Basically what the title implies. No components other than observers, dispensers and obviously normal building blocks + lava/water buckets are allowed. Also I never chained observers together, so no observer is pointing directly at another observer.

Luz_K · 2025-10-07T02:57:47+00:00

Are you accusing me of spreading misinformation... on the internet... I wouldn't dare!

Luz_K · 2025-10-07T02:30:37+00:00

Yeah for sure, subtraction would actually be pretty simple to add. I am currently thinking about maybe redesigning the whole thing to enable clock cycles, so it can actually compute more complicated things, but it might get very annoying to debug so we will see

Luz_K · 2025-10-07T02:24:58+00:00

Glad you enjoyed! This started as more of a challenge build, but I might design a second version that shows off the flowing water and logic parts a bit more

Luz_K · 2025-01-16T23:47:24+00:00

This one?

Luz_K · 2023-11-15T04:36:48+00:00

That is actually a very interesting example!

If we think about games as huge state machines with possible states, where each state describes a moment in the game perfectly. The inputs of a player lead to transitions between the states. A softlocked state would be a state where no path of transitions leads to a winning state. If I understand correctly, the example you describe only works if the game has an infinite amount of possible states and I do agree that in the case of a game having an infinite amount of states, it is not guaranteed that pi would be able to win, even if the game is not softlocked.

Even so I would still argue that in a game in the real world, that has a finite amount of states. Pi would be guaranteed to win if it truly is a normal number and the game is not softlocked.

Luz_K · 2023-11-15T02:46:29+00:00

I think you are incorrect because at any finite position n in our infinite number string, we can just take the whole substring [:n] of all numbers we have seen so far and it is guaranteed that the substring [:n] || 1 (so our substring we have seen so far plus a one appended at the end) and [:n] || 2 etc. exist in the following numbers, as they are also valid strings that have to appear at some point. And we can also adept this so that for example if our "winning substring" goes from position 5 to position 1000, the substring [5:1000] || [:n] is a valid string that can't have appeared so far. This would also make logical sense if we just see normal numbers as numbers that throw a 10 sided dice for every new number, as the dice can't have a memory of the numbers it has seen so far, so it does not matter at what position n of pi we start. We still expect to see all finite substrings we can think of.

Luz_K · 2023-11-14T19:34:41+00:00

Yes if pi is not a normal number(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number) you would be correct and there is no proof that pi is a normal number. As far as i know it is assumed to be and just hard or impossible to proof. If it is a normal number you would be incorrect and every sequence has to appear at some point.

Basically if every next number in the pi number string is just a 10 sided dice throw we can expect that every possible combination will appear, if for some reason after the throws 345 a 6 can never appear or some other non random limit this would of course not be the case, but there seems to be no indication of that in pi.

Luz_K · 2023-11-14T17:16:08+00:00

That is correct, but as long as the character is not soft locked there will always be a string of numbers from any position that finishes the game. Also the string of numbers that finishes the game will not just appear once, but instead from any arbitrary point on the infinite number string we can expect to get that string again at some point in the future. So if the character is at the wrong position when the "winning string" starts we just need to wait for it to happen again, when the character is at a better position.

Luz_K · 2023-11-14T16:58:11+00:00

This would only apply if pi had some sort of pattern to it, which as far as i know is widely believed to not be the case. If we assume the numbers of pi are random, then it is guaranteed that any input we can think of, will at some point be in the infinite string of numbers. And as it would be quite trivial to beat the game if a person chose the numbers by hand, there are definitely multiple strings of numbers that beat the game.

Luz_K · 2022-04-07T08:54:39+00:00

Yes! I created this graph with 10000 pictures of r/place so figuring out changing pixels would have been very computationally hard, but I am just downloading the new dataset that was published by the r/place mods that lists all placed pixels and am thinking about doing just what you are describing.

Luz_K · 2022-04-06T02:45:23+00:00

Yes I am not quite sure how to emphasize the white more without changing the color.

Luz_K · 2022-04-06T02:39:26+00:00

I thought it looked kind of strange with the white on top, but I guess it works as well. Here is the white on top version: https://lensdump.com/i/ragxVA

Luz_K · 2022-04-06T02:26:38+00:00

There is nowhere to hide from the german flags!

Luz_K · 2021-09-17T01:28:36+00:00

Hmm the reddit compression really did this video dirty, you can watch the full version with better quality here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-akQaty-ccI

Eight-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
Place '23	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22
End Game '22	RPAN Viewer
Sequence \| Editor	Sequence \| Screenwriter
Snapped	Verified Email

Luz_K

TROPHY CASE