These are some elements that I think would be useful and fun, allowing for many possibilities in Powder Toy and making existing feats somewhat easier.

Element: MOTR

Full Name: Motor

Description: Motor is a concept for an electrical force-creating component that, when sparked, moves similarly to a PSTN away from the direction it is sparked. The Motor, when moving, will grab the 8 surrounding particles and take them with it. The Motor can also manipulate frames similarly to the piston. Motors can move many pixels per activation; the distance a motor moves would be determined by its temperature or tmp. There could be a maximum move distance imposed on the motor if it is deemed necessary. Default motor has a tmp2 value of 1. If this is changed to 2, the motor will be in toggle mode, where a single spark will activate the motor and it will move in the direction it was sparked at a fast rate (1 increment per frame) until sparked again, which turns it off.

Why Motors Can Be Useful: The motor has many good uses, not the least of which is making certain types of PSTN contraptions much smaller. PSTN movers, robots that can move in 2 dimensions with electric steering controls, require at least 10x10 pixels to create just the caterpillar engine segment, and extras must be extended beyond that. With MOTR, you could make more-compact moving parts for machines and games. In addition, applications where you would normally use PSTN but don't want the piston's arm trailing behind your movement would be useful to use MOTR with. Another thing that seems to be begged for a lot is moveable solids. Although MOTR wouldn't add physics to moving solid objects, it could allow for simple horizontal movement without complex, jerky PSTN movements due to its toggle state providing constant movement. Since the code used to allow MOTR to move objects would mostly be repurposed PSTN code, the MOTR wouldn't represent a massive time investment on the developers' part.

Element: INPT

Full Name: Input Circuit

Description: I know that the developers of Powder Toy have shown some apprehension over suggestions involving player characters, but this device isn't really another player character. The Input Circuit creates a spark 2 pixels away in the direction of the arrow being pressed on the keyboard. An INP2 Input Circuit that responds to wasd controls could be easily added as well, if desired.

Why Input Circuits Can Be Useful: Many Powder Toy saves could benefit a great deal from keyboard based electrical circuit input. There is an existing way that this can be simulated, using a stickman between two detector plates that is marginally effective at properly creating electric signals relative to just the left and right keys. This however does not allow up and down input controls and is also very fickle, with a tendency to provide delayed, interrupted, and overextended electrical pulses. The Input Circuit would remove these issues, allowing for a great deal of robotics-oriented levels to be controlled more efficiently.

Element: RIFT

Full Name: Rift

Description: I'm not going to lie, this element is heavily inspired by the ??? element that was present in the original falling sand java games, the thing for which I remember them the most. Powder Toy as we know it wouldn't exist without the influence of these first powder games, and it would be amazing to see a tribute to the original craziness that this element embodied. Rift would be a particle that, when created in any amount, would rapidly reproduce and expand in a rough radial formation, unable to penetrate any other particles directly but leaving intensely hot plasma-like energy wherever it goes. This energy would have no physics, instead simply sitting in place until decaying a random time up to a second or two later. If a particle falls into this while it still exists, said particle is given the full thermal energy and the energy particle is destroyed. The lack of physics would allow this particle to spread rapidly over any area given to it without creating immense lag. I suggested this particle on another forum post, and I'm sorry that I'm putting it up again, I just feel that there should be a fitting tribute to this wonderful piece of history, not to mention the fact that the element itself is quite fun to play with (if not terribly useful for making complex machines). It wouldn't be a ripoff of the original, which was glitchy and sometimes formed infinite recursions. Rift, on the other hand, would spread slightly slower, have safeguards against most infinte loops (though, like electric currents, could be carefully crafted into a neverending "troll circuit"), and would apply heat instead of simply "eating" particles it collided with.

Why Rift Can Be Useful: I mostly suggest rift because of my utmost respect for its inspiration, the ??? element of the old hell of sand falling games. However, modern rift would have more applications than simply erasing the entire screen in a more beautiful manner than the new page button! Rift would generate immense heat, allowing it to be used as a source of thermal energy for melting or burning other elements. Any particle of Rift can have it's tmp changed, and the higher the temp is, the longer it takes for the Rift to spread, allowing for controlled expansion. In addition, though Rift would by default have a very high temperature, any particle of Rift whose statistics are changed will transfer those statistics to any child particles it spawns! Therefore, Rifts could be used to freeze everything! A mild-temperature form of Rift could be used to flood the screen and suffocate fires without killing stickmen or freezing liquids! And, for classic applications, setting Rift's tmp2 value up to 2 instead of 1 would give it the ability to reproduce over top of other elements, overwriting and destroying them utterly! In this state, perhaps setting the ctype would specify a type of element safe from its wrath, like how pistons can be programmed not to push a certain type of element. All things considered, Rift has a number of applications that can't be performed to the same efficiency by existing elements.

Element: AMRY

Full Name: Aimed Ray

Description: The pinnacle of uncreative naming technology, the Aimed Ray is a variant of CRAY that, based on its temperature, can be aimed precisely in 360 degrees based on its temperature, tmp, or life (any one would surely work). The Aimed Ray would "fire" when sparked with PSCN. The minimum unit of rotation for the Aimed Ray would be 1/100 of a degree, allowing for incredibly precise adjustments, and its rotation would be modified by (I'm not sure how you could electrically or otherwise change the rotation without directly applying heat like WiFi, all suggestions are welcome! :D ). AMRY would also be able to project BRAY in the same manner that ARAY does, in addition to its CRAY style particle-ray creation. Firing a BRAY from an AMRY simply requires turning the tmp2 value up to 2 from the default 1.

Why Aimed Ray Could Be Useful: Having the ability to create rays in any direction, not just the basic 8 vector directions, would allow for some geometrically-impressive feats, as well as fun games with laser beam turrets, though the latter isn't much of a selling point. With constantly-rotating and rapid-firing AMRYs armed with BRAY beams, intricate curves could be drawn with intersecting BRAYs from multiple AMRYs, tracing interesting patterns representative of the geometry of curves. The CRAY abilities of AMRY would allow creation of rays of particles in any direction, which provides more precision in machines where you wouldn't have to accommodate the limited firing arcs of normal CRAYs.

Element: MOLD

Full Name: Mold

Description: The Mold element is a simple solid element that has the heat resistance of diamond, able to withstand any temperature and having very low heat conductivity. However, Mold is quite fragile to pressure, and any breaking Mold will also break all adjacent Mold particles, reducing the entire thing to a useless decorative dust particle that would disappear in a few seconds similarly to goo after being hit with pressure.

Why Could Mold Be Useful: When handling molten elements in Powder Toy, it is sometimes useful to have a way of molding liquid elements into shapes, cooling them down, and then removing them from the mold. Automating this process has been near-impossible so far, because no element properly allows you to mold any meltable element and then be broken away without the molded element itself being broken. With this element, you could mold glass, quartz, brick, and other breakable elements, then apply pressure to a far-away connected bit of the mold, causing the whole thing to break down without damaging the material inside. Also, since the mold doesn't break instantly, instead breaking away a few inches at a time like a burning fuse, it could be used as a sort of flameless fuse for timing mechanisms.

These are my current ideas for new elements in The Powder Toy! I know they probably aren't all what the developers would call "useful", but I try to keep creative while still coming up with things that can be used to make machines and tech-related builds. All comments are appreciated, but please no straight-up hate.

@NUCLEAR_FOX (View Post)

 I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. Are you growling me for having an element that's a "ripoff?" Because it's supposed to be a lot more refined and modifiable than the original ???, and besides, look at virus. It's clearly a tribute to Dan Ball's powder game, so I know the devs don't have a problem giving other powder games a salute.

@NUCLEAR_FOX (View Post)

 OOOOHHHH. Okay, I wasn't sure what you were getting at, when you had the thing about SORRY ABOUT COPYING RIFT I thought you were being sarcastic about it like I was trying to straight-up rip it off. However the ??? element I'm talking about is one from the very original java-based hell of sand falling games, not dan-ball's powder game. So it'd be a tribute to the thing that inspired the man that inspired Skylark :3