Wire

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Wire is a mechanic introduced in Chip's Challenge 2. It's technically not a tile, but instead enables floor and steel walls to carry a signal between various game elements. Pink buttons, black buttons, and logic gates are capable of outputting a signal, and many more tiles can take signal as input. Wires will also be activated if Chip, Melinda, a ghost, or a rover step on it while equipped with the lightning bolt.

Blue teleports can be connected together with wire. If a movable object enters such a teleport network, it must exit a teleport in the same network. Teleports that are not in a network can still link to teleports inside a network. Signal has no effect on these networks.

The lightning bolt, when equipped by a moving object, will supply signal to a wire while stopped on one. The lightning bolt has no effect on wires that are already activated.

Tiles that accept signal input

A value of pulse in the toggle type column indicates that the tile only needs one frame of signal to toggle, while steady indicates that the tile will be toggled only when the signal is active.

Tile Toggle type
Force floors pulse
Swivel doors pulse
Toggle walls pulse
Red teleports steady
Flame jets pulse
Transmogrifiers steady
Clone machines pulse
Traps steady
Railroad tracks pulse
Switch doors steady

Buttons and Switches

Pink button


The pink button is a button introduced in Chip's Challenge 2. While held by Chip, Melinda, blocks, and monsters, it activates any wire it is connected to.

Pink buttons do not relay currents, unlike black buttons and blue teleports.


Black button


The black button is a button introduced in Chip's Challenge 2. It has the opposite behavior of a pink button: it activates any wire it is connected to except while held by Chip, Melinda, blocks, and monsters.

If a black button receives a current from any side, it will relay that current to the side opposite of that from which it is received.

Black buttons only switch from powered to unpowered, and vice versa, when they detect something moving onto or off of them. Destroying an entity holding down a black button using a bowling ball or dynamite will keep the button pressed, because the destroyed entity never actually moved off of the button. As soon as another entity steps onto the black button, its behavior goes back to normal. This does not occur with pink buttons. Something similar to this can happen with orange buttons, but the affected flame jet will reverse its on/off polarity as though activated by a wire.


Switch


The switch is a special tile in Chip's Challenge 2. When set to the on position, a current will be output through wire that is connected to the switch. When set to the off position, no current will be output. Switches can be toggled by Chip, Melinda, player mirrors, blocks, monsters, and bowling balls.


Logic Gates


Logic gates perform a logical operation on one or two wire inputs and produce a single output. They consist of the inverter, AND gate, OR gate, NAND gate, and XOR gate. There also exist NOR and XNOR logic gates, but these are not present in Chip's Challenge 2.

Inverter

The inverter, also called the NOT gate, accepts a single input and inverts the signal. If its input signal is ON, the output signal will be OFF. If its input signal is OFF, the output signal will be ON.

INPUT OUTPUT
A NOT A
0 1
1 0

AND gate

The AND gate accepts two inputs. If both inputs signals are ON, the output signal will be ON. Otherwise, the output signal will be OFF.

INPUT OUTPUT
A B A AND B
0 0 0
0 1 0
1 0 0
1 1 1

OR gate

The OR gate accepts two inputs. If at least one of the input signals are ON, the output signal will be ON. Otherwise, the output signal will be OFF.

INPUT OUTPUT
A B A OR B
0 0 0
0 1 1
1 0 1
1 1 1

NAND gate

The NAND gate accepts two inputs. It is equivalent to an AND gate immediately followed by an inverter. If both input signals are ON, the output signal will be OFF. Otherwise, the output signal will be on.

INPUT OUTPUT
A B A NAND B
0 0 1
0 1 1
1 0 1
1 1 0

XOR gate

The XOR gate gate accepts two inputs and performs an exclusive or operation. If one or the other of the two input signals is ON, the output signal will be ON. If neither input signals are ON or both input signals are ON, the output signal will be OFF.

INPUT OUTPUT
A B A XOR B
0 0 0
0 1 1
1 0 1
1 1 0

Other Tiles

Counter


The counter is a gate with two inputs and two outputs. A pulse that enters the counter from right side will increment it by one and from the bottom side will decrement it by one. If the counter is incremented while at 9, it will overflow, output a pulse to the left side, and wrap to 0. If the counter is decremented while at 0, it will underflow, output a steady signal to the top side, and wrap to 9.

Latch


The latch gate has two inputs and one output. The arrow points from the data input to the output, and the input on the opposite side is the latch input. As long as the latch input has a signal, the output will be the same as the data input. When the latch input has no signal, the output will stay the same as it was when the latch input last had a signal. Latch gates can be thought of as storage for one bit of memory.

The second latch pictured to the right is a mirror image of the first latch, used to keep the game elements symmetrical.