I have been looking at how to make logic gates in TPT, and found the Complete Electronics Tutorial on the wiki. However, the beginning of the section on basic logic gates states:
"While PTCT and NTCT can be used to make logic gates, they have mostly been replaced by much faster logic gates made using advanced ARAY techniques, which you will learn about later."
I have a few questions after reading this:
1. How are advanced logic gates constructed? The wiki page does not state anything about these mysterious gates other than they use ARAY. I have heard of filters being used for logic, but I am not sure how simple logic gates such as AND gates can be constructed with only one input.
2. Do advanced logic gates make PTCT/NTCT-based logic gates completely obsolete? Are there still situations where the older design is preferable?
3. Are advanced logic gates so complicated that they are only worth using when speed is required?
The lead you had with filters was pretty strong, the wiki article on FILT should explain everything you need.
1) You plop down a piece of FILT and configure its tmp.
2) Yes, they are completely obsoleted. I'm not aware of any situation in which they may be preferable over FILT.
3) Nope, see 1.
One thing to note here is that the wiki mentioned "advanced ARAY techniques", not "advanced logic gates". There's nothing advanced about the logic gates themselves, it's how you use ARAY that's advanced.
Turns out I was wrong. That wiki article is either so old that it has no notion of FILT being usable as logic gates at all, or whoever made it never got to explaining them. The "advanced ARAY usage" is actually explained in that same wiki, it's just probably not advertised as such. Well, that doesn't change the fact that almost everything in that article is deprecated by FILT today, so you may as well just go read the FILT wiki.
I don't think they are obsolete, i still use them in my saves. They are preferred where you need to save space (FILT one's are no doubt faster but they also take up a lot of space), it's a personal preference.
Also you fasten the cooling times by using multiple parts of PTCT/NTCT.
Lastly, if you wonder how faster PTCT/NTCT would have worked then it's worth checking out this page https://powdertoy.co.uk/Discussions/Thread/View.html?Thread=23279
I created faster versions of both which work in a similar fashion but are way faster than originals.
I still recommend what LBPHacker said, it's better to move on to FILT stuff.