Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Redstone signals can and often are influenced by the passage of time.
This is also actu-
ally similar to real electricity, but again there is a major difference. This time the difference
is that the time delays on real electricity are often so fast that we do not even recognize
them, while in Redstone this is essentially slowed way down so that players can manipu-
late and use these delays. Time in Redstone is measured in “ticks,” where each a tick hap-
pens 10 times a second, or once every 0.1 seconds in real time. Redstone components and
mechanisms update their status every tick, checking to see if their inputs have changed in
any way, and when the input does change, they respond by activating, deactivating or per-
forming a special action. Note: time in the rest of Minecraft also operates on “ticks,” but
a regular Minecraft ticks happen 20 times a second, making them twice as fast. This often
confuses players who are aware of regular Minecraft ticks, so it's a good idea to note the
difference here. Additionally, when we refer to “ticks” from here on out in this topic, we
are referring exclusively to Redstone ticks.
When you know how to use these and the many other rules of Redstone together, you will
be able to build incredible contraptions and systems, and the range of things you can do in
everyone's favorite builder game expands in a huge way. In fact, Redstone is considered
by many players to be the pinnacle of Minecraft knowledge, and many of the things that
people build in the game that will cause less-experienced players to scratch their head and
wonder how it even happened are made with Redstone.
