A Beginner’s Guide To Circuits In Rec Room | Getting Started With Circuits

Hey everybody, it’s UnderMyCap, and welcome back to another post! Today I’m going to be teaching you the intro to circuits in Rec Room. If you’re a beginner, this guide is perfect for you. If you’re wanting to start learning circuits or just getting back into them, this is also perfect for you. So, without further ado, let’s get straight into it! You can also watch the full video tutorial here: A Beginner’s Guide To Circuits In Rec Room

How Do You Get Circuits?

Circuits are located inside of your Maker Pen. If you’re in VR, you simply hold down your button on your controller, move down to the settings, and swipe up to get your Maker Pen. If you’re on PC, you just simply click the M key on your keyboard and it will spawn in your Maker Pen. Once you open up the menu, you have a whole bunch of options to explore.

When you go to your tools section, the three main tools that you need to use when working with circuits are the Create tool to spawn in circuits, the Select tool to select multiple circuits, and the Wire tool to connect circuits together. There is also the Configure tool which we won’t be going into today, but those are the four main things you need to use for circuits.

Finding Your Circuits

To find all the circuits available to use inside of a room, simply go down to the bottom of your menu and click on Pallet. Then click on Circuits, which is on the top right of the navigation bar in your menu. You will then be given a whole bunch of circuits to work with.

Understanding The IF Chip

The best chip to start out with when learning how circuits work is the IF chip. The IF chip basically checks if something is true and then outputs accordingly. In simple terms, if the condition says true, it outputs from one side, and if it says false, it outputs from the other side. Think of it as: if this, then that.

On the left side of the circuit you will always find your inputs, and on the right side you will find your outputs. On the IF chip specifically, you input an execution signal on the left side and output the execution signal based on the condition on the right side. The output direction changes depending on whether the condition is true or false.

Understanding Circuit Colors & Data Types

On a circuit, you’ll notice that there are different colors representing different things. Orange is for execution signals, which only send one message and that message is essentially “go.” When an event is received, the execution signal moves to the next chip. Red represents a bool, which is either on or off. If a bool is true it equals one, and if it is false it equals zero.

Inside of circuits, a whole bunch of information is being transferred from one place to another, and this is represented through the colored data sections of the circuits. Strings are alphabetical letters, numbers, dashes, and basically anything that isn’t a set number. Floats can have a decimal place in them, such as 1.5, 1.7, or 3.15. Integers only hold one full whole value, such as 1, 2, or 3.

It is important to know that some values can’t actually be directly connected to other circuits because of these color differences, and you may need to convert them. For example, if you try to connect a blue circuit to a green circuit, a chip called Round to Int will automatically pop up because they aren’t directly compatible, but you can round the number up to an integer to bridge the gap. It’s really important to understand which type of data streams you’ll be using in your circuits to avoid any unexpected issues. There are many more colors and data types beyond what we’ve covered here, but for this intro we are keeping things nice and simple.

Understanding Variables

A variable is a very important chip inside of circuits. It allows you to store information for your circuits to use. One of the really cool things about using a variable is that you can reference it in any other part of your circuit by simply cloning it somewhere else. So if you want to get the same data from one circuit in a completely different part of your room’s circuits, you can absolutely do that. For example, if a bool variable is set to false in one location and you clone it elsewhere, both instances will reflect the same value. As soon as you set the original bool variable to true, the cloned one will also update to true. We’ll get deeper into variables in another video!

Circuit Components

Circuits can also interact with objects and items called components. To find these, open up your Maker Pen, go to your Pallet, click on Objects, and then click on Circuit Components. Circuit components are objects which can interact with circuits and can perform a range of actions depending on which component you are using.

Building Your First Circuit

Now let’s put everything we’ve just learned together and build a basic circuit using the Emitter component and an IF chip. In this example, we are going to make a confetti cannon play when a specific integer variable equals 15.

First, spawn in an IF chip from your Pallet by searching “if” and placing it down. Next, open your Pallet again and search for “equals” to spawn in an equals chip, which will check two values to see if they are the same. Connect the bool output of the equals chip to the condition input of the IF chip. After that, spawn in an integer variable by typing “n” in the search and selecting the integer variable chip. Connect the output of the integer variable to one side of the equals chip. Change the value on the equals chip to 15, since we want to check if the integer variable equals 15.

Now connect the true output of the IF chip to the start input of the emitter component, and connect the false output to the stop input of the emitter component. This means if the integer variable is equal to 15, the confetti cannon will start playing. If it is not equal to 15, it will stop.

To test it, set the integer variable to zero and run the IF chip. You’ll see the else output activates, meaning the condition was not met, and the confetti cannon remains off. Now change the integer variable to 15, execute it, and run the IF chip again. Confetti! The circuit tested whether the variable equalled 15, and because it did, it triggered the start of the confetti cannon. How satisfying is that!

Wrapping Up

That was a very basic introduction into circuits in Rec Room, and I’m hoping to break things down a lot more in upcoming videos. Circuits are an incredibly powerful and fun tool once you get the hang of them, and this is just the beginning. If you enjoyed this guide, make sure to check out the full video tutorial linked above, and I can’t wait to see you in the next one. Have a good time creating!