Vanilla Minecraft News Discussion

[Gormador]

Could someone explain to me why a device with an output facing down is able to transfer its items into an inventory next to it ?

This one makes me scratch my head thinking at how Mojang came up with a logic for that.

[FlowerChild]

Could someone explain to me why a device with an output facing down is able to transfer its items into an inventory next to it ?

This one makes me scratch my head thinking at how Mojang came up with a logic for that.

Easy: Mo'Powah!

It's not all that bad for chests and such, assuming you can't get the stuff back out automatically. From hopper to hopper, it's just silly, and basically turns them into pipes...that can loop infinitely.

[The great randomo]

Could someone explain to me why a device with an output facing down is able to transfer its items into an inventory next to it ?

This one makes me scratch my head thinking at how Mojang came up with a logic for that.

Placing the VMC hopper on the side of a block causes the output to face that way.

[DaveYanakov]

Noir posted this link to IRC, and just wanted to share as the consequence of various design choices made for the redstone update in a face-palming kinda way...

*snip*

Welcome to the new Minecraft everyone.

That would be a nice feature if it had been intended and planned out properly so as not to affect balance. Sort of an hourglass that you can fine tune.

Bottom line, if you want to make an allocator device, make an allocator and let go of this hopper fixation.

[Yhetti]

Hoppers are too cheap. Making them would be no fun. probably the biggest reason I haven't even touched the snapshots.

[FlowerChild]

You know, we ranted a bit about this on IRC last night, but I've continued to investigate more 1.5 features today, and man...seriously, I do believe this is by far the worst MC update ever design wise.

The number of very narrow use blocks (the activator rail is a perfect example), overpowered features (eg. Hoppers and Droppers acting as pipe networks), behavior with zero in game justification (eg. comparators measuring inventory), and just general total bullshit is rather staggering.

I do believe if I hadn't already decided to leave Minecraft behind, this would have definitely done it. It was bad before, but for a guy like me that's so focused on design, it's absolutely soul-crushing now to see what MC is devolving into. This just really isn't a game I want to continue pouring effort into while the developers work so hard to counteract any good that I might do.

Anyways, I'm as usual trying to stay focused on moving towards RTH, but it is rather difficult not to slip into periodic despair with this. Just felt like briefly venting when such a moment came on.

[Sarudak]

Don't despair man! Things will get better soon!

[CrafterOfMines57]

Don't despair man! Things will get better soon!

Yeah, don't get sad, get angry! Rip everything out!

[FlowerChild]

Don't despair man! Things will get better soon!

I usually don't. In retrospect, I think it just got to me today based on the nature of the work I was doing.

As I mentioned on IRC last night, I've been working on Hardcore Hunger the past few days. As part of that, I spent a lot of my day today tweaking the values of all the food items in the game, trying to get the balance just right to ensure all of them have a particular use, they all compliment each other just so, and that a sufficient level of challenge is provided for the player without it being excessively frustrating. This was fairly painstaking work, making fractional adjustments here and there and keeping track of a shit-load of variables mentally in the process. I do enjoy this kind of work on occasion, as you can feel the game getting incrementally better with each value you tweak, and that's very satisfying.

But then, while taking a short break from that, I decided to check the 1.5 change log, and it felt like someone had thrown a hand grenade straight into the game design. It was kinda like what I imagine the sensation would be if an amateur marching band was playing in the next room while you're trying to perform surgery :)

Anyways, it hit me pretty hard as a result, likely due to the sensation of futility in being so conscientious about the work I'm doing when the whole game seems to get thrown increasingly out of balance with each of Mojang's bone-headed additions.

I'm feeling much better now though :)

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, don't get sad, get angry! Rip everything out!

Oh, trust me: I will.

I think what I'm going to do this time is rip out absolutely everything Mojang has added, with only a few small exceptions (redstone blocks for example), because I know that they're absolutely harmless (even if poorly conceived).

THEN, after the update to 1.5 is done, I'll go over each individual feature and make a decision about what I'll actually do with it in the long term, whether that be just to add it back in as is, add it back in with revisions, or leave it out entirely.

It's just way too much this time around for me to make a shit-load of those kinds of decisions while simultaneously trying to update the mod itself. For my own sanity, I'm just going to chop it all, and sort it out later.

[CycloneSP]

wow... just... wow...

I haven't been keeping very current with vmc, but from what I've seen on the last few pages of this thread is really somethin else. Daggum!

Aye, listen to your support group! We're all backin you up, so despair not!




Also, I don't think I've ever been fortunate to sit in on one of ya'lls friday night chat sessions. :( Maybe I'll start visiting the irc more often now that I'm getting back into BTW.

EDIT: boo, forum/internet was acting up and didn't let me post this for several minutes.

[BlackCat]

hfog made a great video summarizing a bunch of the 1.5 redstone changes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZBfPfYgKUA

I definitely recommend watching this one, he does a great job with all his videos.

[DNoved1]

I think what I'm going to do this time is rip out absolutely everything Mojang has added, with only a few small exceptions

Out of curiosity, does this mean you'll be editing world gen so as to prevent quartz spawning in the Nether? Personally I would be totally fine with that considering the way it devalues white stone.

[Gormador]

Out of curiosity, does this mean you'll be editing world gen so as to prevent quartz spawning in the Nether? Personally I would be totally fine with that considering the way it devalues white stone.

This is unlikely. FC doesn't mess with world gen, or at least I don't recall him doing so.

[Thalarctia]

Besides, with all the poor redstone components removed, quartz is reduced to a poor mans White Stone :)

[julkwiec]

Or he will simply remove the recipe for quartz block.

[STrRedWolf]

So let me hit this up from an analytical point of view:

• Block of Redstone: FC says their harmless, and I have to agree. The only thing is that I'm using that piston flip-flop, so it'll compact it down some more.
• Weighted pressure plates: I can't see a design these need. Maybe if you need to sine wave, you use a gold plate, have it drop 64 items before auto-stopping, let it decay until it's completely dead? I don't know.
• Trapped chests: Signals open/closed. This is adventure mode only. *yank*
• Daylight sensors: That's a bit of a gimmick, and probably only useful in nighttime lamps.
• Dropper: Because of the dispenser changes, the dropper was made that was just... drop stuff. Oh, and put stuff into containers... like Droppers. Ugh, possible abuse, although the MC Wiki says it's slower and requires powering compared to a water/ice channel. I think a nerf is need so they only go into non-Dispenser/Dropper containers. At least they made it so both droppers/dispensers fire on the leading edge.
• Hopper: Um... no. I can't think of where this will be appropriate in BTW.... actually, there was a cistern/vMC Hopper combo pointed on reddit that I'd actually think would work if the hopper would output on top of lava or fire. But that's it!
• Comparitor: Actually, I see some uses for this, especially for compacting designs further down. The Wiki has a t-flipflop that's rather flat (flatter if you use the Redstone block) as well as noting Jukebox identification. Keys, anyone?
• Nether Quartz: You had to add that?!? Ugh. Okay, can we just do some research and just bake a block of flint to produce regular Quartz and some Aluminum? Really? (Oh great, there goes my mod idea)
• Activator rail: Um... really? Very limited use if at all.

Now to see what FC does!

[FlowerChild]

[*]Dropper: Because of the dispenser changes, the dropper was made that was just... drop stuff. Oh, and put stuff into containers... like Droppers. Ugh, possible abuse, although the MC Wiki says it's slower and requires powering compared to a water/ice channel. I think a nerf is need so they only go into non-Dispenser/Dropper containers. At least they made it so both droppers/dispensers fire on the leading edge.

Main problem with this one is that you can orient it upwards (regular dispenser too), and thus create a "pipe" out of them.

So yes, the intended aspect is extremely special case and nigh useless, with the secondary aspect (depositing into other containers, including other droppers) being overpowered.

There's a lot of little "gotchas" like that with these designs.

[*]Trapped chests: Signals open/closed. This is adventure mode only. *yank*

Also PvP, although as I mentioned earlier, they basically made the trapped chests obsolete as soon as they implemented them by having comparators measure inventory contents. The difference between having a trap go off when you open a chest, versus when you remove an item from it, is negligible, making the trapped chest, which was special case to begin with, almost entirely extraneous.

[*]Daylight sensors: That's a bit of a gimmick, and probably only useful in nighttime lamps.

Again, big time special case. I obviously don't object to the functionality itself as I already built that into the Lens. Of course, I built it into a block that has a wide range of other applications (because I always considered light sensing alone to not justify its own block), and the funny part is, I personally consider the Lens to not have enough practical uses.

One of the weaker design trends going on right now is that it seems that whenever there's a small dangling bit of functionality that they want in the game, they design a special-case block for it, and then slap on additional functionality to try and justify that block further, resulting in it having poorly conceived and often overpowered aspects.

I believe the comparator measuring inventories is a perfect example of that. There's really just no justification for building that functionality into that block.

And yeah, I'll likely leave quartz alone for the reasons others mentioned above. On its own, its largely harmless (even if poorly conceived... my understanding is that it's so abundant as to be a non-resource), its applications are what I need to axe for now.

[Sarudak]

Also PvP, although as I mentioned earlier, they basically made the trapped chests obsolete as soon as they implemented them by having comparators measure inventory contents. The difference between having a trap go off when you open a chest, versus when you remove an item from it, is negligible, making the trapped chest, which was special case to begin with, almost entirely extraneous.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. The reason being with trapped chests you can have dummy chests with nothing of value in them and when a player opens it spring a trap. If you're using a comparator then the person opening the chest will see there is nothing of value, take nothing out and thus not trigger the trap. Furthermore using a comparator means you can only trap a chest with something valuable in it because the person has to pull something out which severely limits the available traps unless you want to blow up your precious diamonds/dung blocks/whatever.

Edit: Not saying trapped chests are a grand idea. Simply that they have significant uses beyond comparators in an anarchy environment.

[FlowerChild]

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. The reason being with trapped chests you can have dummy chests with nothing of value in them and when a player opens it spring a trap. If you're using a comparator then the person opening the chest will see there is nothing of value, take nothing out and thus not trigger the trap. Furthermore using a comparator means you can only trap a chest with something valuable in it because the person has to pull something out which severely limits the available traps unless you want to blow up your precious diamonds/dung blocks/whatever.

Right, which creates an aspect of "baiting" a trap, which I personally like.

Look, I don't object to being able to trap chests in such a way that they explode on opening, as that's functionality I've already built into BTW. However, I think creating a specific block to trap chests (and only trap chests), and then wrapping very similar functionality into another block right after represents rather poor planning and lack of foresight.

[ion]

Also PvP, although as I mentioned earlier, they basically made the trapped chests obsolete as soon as they implemented them by having comparators measure inventory contents. The difference between having a trap go off when you open a chest, versus when you remove an item from it, is negligible, making the trapped chest, which was special case to begin with, almost entirely extraneous.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. The reason being with trapped chests you can have dummy chests with nothing of value in them and when a player opens it spring a trap. If you're using a comparator then the person opening the chest will see there is nothing of value, take nothing out and thus not trigger the trap. Furthermore using a comparator means you can only trap a chest with something valuable in it because the person has to pull something out which severely limits the available traps unless you want to blow up your precious diamonds/dung blocks/whatever.

Edit: Not saying trapped chests are a grand idea. Simply that they have significant uses beyond comparators in an anarchy environment.

you can differentiate a trapped chest from a vanilla one all build into the minecraft by our stupid coders at Mojang. you can't make any trap when there is a clear indication this is a trapped chest

[Wookieguy]

Also PvP, although as I mentioned earlier, they basically made the trapped chests obsolete as soon as they implemented them by having comparators measure inventory contents. The difference between having a trap go off when you open a chest, versus when you remove an item from it, is negligible, making the trapped chest, which was special case to begin with, almost entirely extraneous.

I believe that there is an additional difference between a trapped chest and a comparator attached chest. Since a chest is slightly smaller than one block, you can see that there is a space for the comparator behind it. This means that both a comparator attached chest, and a trapped chest have some clue to their identity.

[Whisp]

I believe that there is an additional difference between a trapped chest and a comparator attached chest. Since a chest is slightly smaller than one block, you can see that there is a space for the comparator behind it. This means that both a comparator attached chest, and a trapped chest have some clue to their identity.

Comparators even work, if there is a block between the comparator and the chest.

[Ribky]

The only thing that I personally can see being useful about the addition of the trapped chests (because as stated earlier, they were easy enough to trap with BTW) is the fact that you can place them directly next to a normal double chest, which does help maximize storage space.

[FlowerChild]

The only thing that I personally can see being useful about the addition of the trapped chests (because as stated earlier, they were easy enough to trap with BTW) is the fact that you can place them directly next to a normal double chest, which does help maximize storage space.

We already went on at length about the rather nonsensical aspects of that earlier in the thread ;)