Here are a few puzzle- or action-segment building blocks/"mechanisms" (that's what I think of them as) that I've used and seen others use (as well as a couple I've used multiple times but don't recall seeing in any of the other sets I've played).
Laser -- A stream of monsters being cloned from a machine every other tick. The monsters can either clone themselves or be cloned by some other monster. This is actually quite common, being found in CC1, CCLP2, and CCLP3 as well as my set and other custom sets. A laser is typically used to block off an item or area, since a 1-tile gap between monsters is too small to sneak through. In some cases, though, the player needs to redirect the lasers over buttons or into bombs to proceed (
Laser Refraction).
Lasers can either be in existence from a level's start or form as a result of some actions by the player. The player can get by lasers by either blocking them off or redirecting them (
The Last Laugh, Monster Lab, Fire and Water), stopping the outside agent that's cloning them (
Lesson 5, also part of
Fire and Water depending on how you go about it), waiting for them to stop and then rushing through (
Periodic Lasers, Checkmate?), or just plain outrunning them as they form (
Be Quick About It, Man!!, also required in
Checkmate?) as well as miscellaneous other methods (taking advantage of invincibility in water in MS as seen in
Two Sets of Rules). Note: If monsters are being cloned continually, but far enough apart for Chip to move along or across their path without interfering with it, that's not a laser. (Thus the fireballs in
Producing and, despite the name,
Laser Sweep do not actually form lasers.)
Monster Ring -- Similar to a Laser, but it's a closed path of circulating monsters (not being cloned) with a 1-tile gap between consecutive monsters. There's no shutting this off, so in order to get the goodies it encircles, you need to send in a monster or block to disrupt it. Examples:
Wars,
Mud and Water.
Controlled Cloning (could also be called Double Cloning or Bossy Cloning, or maybe a different name would be better) -- Everyone knows how to use a monster on a trap when they need a boss to clone a bug, paramecium, or
and they don't want the CB Glitch to screw it up. Well that works fine at first, because Ball-On-Trap will direct T/B/P (Teeth, Bug, or Paramecium) #1 out of its clone machine, but if you try to make T/B/P #2 while #1 is still out there, then T/B/P #2 might be led astray by #1 and smash into a wall (thus never existing at all). The solution is Controlled Cloning.
Instead of hooking up the Chip-controlled red button straight to the T/B/P cloner, hook it up to a ball or fireball cloner facing the direction the T/B/P should clone. That cloned ball/fireball will immediately press another red button cloning the T/B/P (in the desired direction because the ball/fireball is the newest monster and is facing that direction). And no previous T/B/P clone will interfere with this direction! After the ball/fireball does its job, it can drown. However, this fix doesn't work if multiple monsters might be cloned in the same tick, and it has the small side-effect of the player hearing 2 clicks for every 1 time they press the red button.
Examples of this element can be seen in
Froggy! and
Bridges for Bugs to clone teeth and bugs, respectively. I haven't seen this element used very often, at least not that I know of. (I haven't patented it or anything, people! You can use it!
)
Warning Click -- Use when a level element is periodic and potentially dangerous, and the player might have a hard time predicting when the element will "activate". Have a monster press a non-functional button to make a clicking sound a second or two before triggering the level element. Examples can be seen in
Assembly Line and
Laser Sweep. This works pretty well, except if the player keeps the sound turned off or there are other buttons being pressed throughout the level.
One-Use Button (could use a snappier name, anyone got any ideas?) -- Instead of letting the player press a red, blue, or green button directly, the designer only gives the player access to a different red button that clones a block onto the other button. The block can never be moved off the button (often, the block is out of the player's sight or made totally unreachable). The result is that said button can be used only once.
Famous examples include
Oracle II, Avalanche, and
Sardine Production, which all have one-use green buttons to require the player to prepare before making an irreversible change to the level state. (Maybe this variation deserves its own name?) My levels
Checkmate? and
x times 2 to the n use one-use red and green buttons, respectively, simply to ensure a specific event does not get triggered more than once (fireball cloning and the sealing off of the exit).
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Quote:Using a block to guard Chip from pink balls.
There are a couple variations on that that I've seen. There's using blocks to cross a gigantic field of many parallel-moving balls (
Zelgon's Lair) or stopping 1 of them from entering a long passage that has no dodging room (
Dangers in the Alley). Either way, the first two terms that popped into my head for this are "shielding" and "umbrella".
