Your Design Time (Tools and Thoughts)

[Ulfengaard]

The complexity of BTW is, in my opinion, unparallelled in MC modding. It is one of the things I love most about FC's work: when I'm not playing MC:BTW, I'm still playing MC:BTW. That's because designing my machinations is something I do in my head when I'm washing dishes, taking a break from grading papers, feeding the dogs, listening to music, etc. In fact, I probably spend almost as much time out-of-game working on my in-game plans.

The purpose of this thread is to discuss several items. First, how much time do you think you spend outside of the game planning your BTW machines? Second, what tools, if any, do you use in your process? And finally, share any tips you might have about design, mechanical or aesthetic (looking at you, Anarchitect ^.-).

For my part, I've already mentioned that I spend a substantial amount of time planning. I use good ol' Paint to get a cursory mapping of my thoughts, and then I copy those images into MS OneNote to start calculating timer intervals and listing materials. And, since I am the OP, I'll steal the easiest yet most important tip of all: plan. Always plan any project. Know what materials you need, and gather them beforehand. Have a clear picture of what you are building before you build it. Sure, plans don't always work out exactly how you envision them, but not having a plan can make things ten times as difficult (arbitrary assertion ftw).

[Rianaru]

I spend a lot of time outside of the game thinking up new/more efficient designs for what I currently have too. Although It's very difficult for me to fully design something without using the game itself, and I use my time not playing the game to check in my head if the concept/methodology is actually possible or not. So a bare minimum of planning there. As for tools and such, I'm a fan of building it until it works and then whittling it down from there :)

[JesterxMailMan89]

For the most part, I never think about BTW out of game. It just doesnt happen. And I usually use creative as my testing field, no outside programs.

Generally I only really start planning machines when I realize that I need them. For instance, my now deceased saw mill (BTB was integral for it to work) only started forming in my mind when i realized that I hated gathering wood. Then I spent hours upon hours in creative in order to test ideas and efficienies of different ways of building the saw mill. Once I came upon a design I was satisfied with I changed how the structure worked in order to make it modular and then change it again so I could "dress it up", basically moving things around so they were out of the way. Then I go to survival and grind all the material in order to build the contraption and fit it into my world.

Then I realize that there is some obstacle (Like the huge lake right above my saw mill and the countless other machines I had to build around) and I have to change my whole thing over again to make space. *sigh*

Really should make note of space constraints when testing builds.

[teh_tetra]

I just test everything in my Survival....though it means putting off some tests due to lack of supplies.

[Splee999]

I usually never intentionally spend time out of game designing my machines, but sometimes I find that my thoughts tend to wander to that one part of that one machine that I could never get just right. Anyone else know what I mean?

[teh_tetra]

completely know what you mean

[dawnraider]

I never test in creative, and rarely plan outside of the game. When I do it is like splee said, where ideas just start randomly flowing.

[FlowerChild]

I never test in creative

This is cool. I thought I was rather alone in not wanting to use creative to do test builds.

[Sarudak]

I never test in creative

This is cool. I thought I was rather alone in not wanting to use creative to do test builds.

Sorry guys... Maybe I'm a bit behind but what's creative?

[dawnraider]

Thanks man. I really think creative takes away from the enjoyment of getting some thing to work. In survival, you have to toil to gather resources until you get it automated, where you get a certain satsifaction that you can't get otherwise.

[FlowerChild]

Thanks man. I really think creative takes away from the enjoyment of getting some thing to work. In survival, you have to toil to gather resources until you get it automated, where you get a certain satsifaction that you can't get otherwise.

Yup, I agree 100%. I consider the design-phase to be part of the game. Using creative to bypass it just winds up feeling like cheating to me, and I find is way less satisfying in the long run, as I'd rather have my prototypes in my game world.

[FlowerChild]

Sorry guys... Maybe I'm a bit behind but what's creative?

Mojang's legitimized version of TMI ;)

[JesterxMailMan89]

Thanks man. I really think creative takes away from the enjoyment of getting some thing to work. In survival, you have to toil to gather resources until you get it automated, where you get a certain satsifaction that you can't get otherwise.

Yup, I agree 100%. I consider the design-phase to be part of the game. Using creative to bypass it just winds up feeling like cheating to me, and I find is way less satisfying in the long run, as I'd rather have my prototypes in my game world.

I just dont see it the same way. I still get the same amount of satisfaction from testing things in creative. Even if you have all the cheaty elements of TMI and ability to fly, I just want to tinker with my contraption to see how I can manipulate it. Plus, I like the ability to have a large open space to have a clear view of what I'm looking at, helps me think clearly and plan without distraction.

Creative isn't bypassing anything, the fact is if you can't figure out how to make something work (like my old saw mill) creative isn't magically going to do it for you. YOU yourself still need to make this thing work. The designing is still there.

Plus it sometimes provides an extra challenge in itself. Like I said in my previous post, usually transferring something from a nice open land in creative to a small cluttered base in survival just doesn't work, forcing me to either handle the contraption in a different way or redesigning it to be much smaller. This could be avoided if I had started in survival yes, but sometimes I have a hard time conceptualizing and/or starting the contraption in that small cluttered space to begin with.

It's just a personal preference but I have an easier time thinking and planning if I have a place like superfalt world to deal with, rather than my cluttered base with cows mooing and obstacles everywhere

[FlowerChild]

Man, I definitely know others use creative for this. I'm just happy to have found out there are others that feel the same way about it that I do :)

[JesterxMailMan89]

Oh ok, I guess I just felt a little odd being the only one who posted who enjoys creative as a testing tool...

[The Phoenixian]

I never test in creative

This is cool. I thought I was rather alone in not wanting to use creative to do test builds.

You definitely aren't alone there. I personally prefer to slap down a test construction down in any free, lit up space around the surface of my base and then put it in it's proper place once I've gotten all the kinks worked out.

I have to say there's a appeal in clambering over and around and doing battle with whatever monster I'm making. One which really isn't there with the unfettered floating freedom of creative.

[TheAnarchitect]

All right, since I've been called out...

My design sense is a product of my background as an architect. Honestly I'm incredibly pleased that my builds have been so well received around here. It means my design skills are still good enough that untrained people can recognize my work as good design. But a lot of my design time strategies come from a decade or so of work experience and aren't easy to sum up. But here's what I can share.

1) "Less is more." This is a big point of contention: most contemporary architects have thrown this one out. But frankly, I think anyone who dismisses this maxim either doesn't understand what it means, or knows they aren't a good enough designer to pull it off. It doesn't mean "make everything a minimalist white box." It means there should be no extraneous features in your design. Everything must contribute meaningfully to the whole of the design and the objective you want to achieve. I think the best way I've heard it put is "a design is not perfect when nothing more can be added, but when nothing more can be removed."

2) Build to match your environment. You spent hours searching for the perfect spot, right? Don't cut down the trees, level the ground and build a freestanding structure. Instead, alter the environment as little as possible, and try to make what you build fit into it's surroundings. In other words, alter your design to the site, don't alter the site to your design.

3) Avoid large flat surfaces. This is probably the most noticeable part of my design strategies in minecraft. The game's voxels lend themselves to large, featureless walls. But humans find textured surfaces more visually interesting. That's why my walls use stairs, sidings, moldings, panes, and hatches liberally to create gaps, notches, and crenellations. That's why my roofs change pitch midway through. That's why my ceilings have beams and balconies. And it's why I build different rooms at different levels, even when I could just make my floors continuous. Next time you build a cobble wall, try using cobble stairs and smoothstone panels to add a little texture and see if you don't like the difference it makes.

4) Design like it's the real world. Yes, Minecraft physics are different. For the first several months, I tried my darndest to come up with interesting ways to use those physics to create minecraft-specific architecture. And while there are interesting things you can do with floating blocks, the truth is that for the most part our brains are wired to find the real world attractive, and to be bothered by things that look impossible. I'm not saying don't build you're floating island castle. That's gonna be sweet. But build that castle like you actually need the walls to hold up the floors. Put columns in large spaces even though there's no way for it to collapse. Buttress your big stone walls, even though they don't really need it. Use rope blocks to tie your logs together.

As for tools, I find nothing so useful as a pencil and graph paper.

I do use creative to try stuff out, but that's because I'm a CAD-monkey. I draw everything in I build in a computer first. Before Creative, I would design stuff in Sketch-up before building it in minecraft. Also, in my castaway world there simply wasn't enough open space to make a real prototype testing ground. I'm considering going the more hard-core route in the future. But some days I just want to solve an automation problem that I'm nowhere near in my main world.

[simanick]

i fall somewhere in the middle, creative is only there when i go to the ridiculous(aka BD-x), i actively avoid creative but when i dont really care for the final product just the process i do it in creative.

[Pentagram]

I use Survival, because I find Creative introduces bugs to the build, which I will end up unnecessarily fixing (such as redstone torch burnout), and I use Mineconics to help plan out basic shapes of my larger scale builds

http://www.mineconics.net/

[Yleia]

I usually do everything in survival mode, with very few exception in creative when I'm don't remember how something works. But most of the time I build in survival first, without any plan or thinking out of the game.

So I spend a lot of time destroying and rebuilding, until the thing I'm making works the way I want. I really like to destroy totally something and build it again... My next automated soulforge steel factory will be the 4th I build.

The result is a messy world, like a perpetual draft, with lot of carved, empty caves under my base where the old machines used to be.

[Blazara]

Meh, my head is my canvas. I tend to think of things to test whilst trying to get to sleep, imagining possibilities and solutions. After realising I climbed into bed over four hours ago and have spent too long thinking / watching videos, I then fall asleep and forget everything I pondered on the previous night....

[Kazuya Mishima]

I find planning to be pointless in my situation other then realizing i want to build a unfired pottery system or a trap door with a detector block. I just recently found a mushroom island, for the first time ever, and in my fear of losing a the few mycelium blocks i created an autoharvester for myclelium dirt blocks. I've been thinking about a self regulating chicken system that allows chickens to wander now that trip wire is available. The problem i have is that as a redstone noob i tend to have to engage in tons of trail and error to even understand how redstone will behave so it's difficult for me to even predict how much space i will need when i begin a project and there are a lot of scrapped designs.

Up until recently i just discovered that if you run a powered repeater into a block it will power red stone dust beneath that block! That started a renaissance for me with my designs and now they are becoming even more compact.

Also i agree with most here that creative kinda diminishes the experience. I get tremendous enjoyment outta of building something that finally works and is integrated into my fortress. Still have a ton of partially designed systems laying around randomly in my fortress and i never seem to have enough lab space.

[RezDev]

-awesomeness-

This post is gold.

I really need to get better at the second point, myself.

I tend to do preliminary design with graph paper and pencil, then tweak in-game.

I very rarely use creative (flying is hard to control, insta-breaking pisses me off, the inventory is weird), and if I do, it's never for large builds, just checking some kind of basic functionality while designing in my head.

[Calcifire3691]

I test things in creative on a flatland map, using NEI instead of the actual creative inventory (for the ability to search, edit day/night, and switch to survival to test things/unbugger redstone (*pulls lever* *accidentally rips lever off*))

hey, now that vMC has all of that in the command line, I don't need this anymore :D
*dropkicks NEI out of window*

I just like to be able to move around my machines freely for tweaks to the wiring/mechanisms, also, so I can get a good view of how much material it will use, and how large the final thing will be.

plus, the way I design things results in lots of signs around things, reminding me what each bit does and where my train of thought has been

[SterlingRed]

How much time do I spend thinking about btw? I have no idea. I check the forums every few hours during work so probably quite a lot. Although when I'm with my gf, btw is far from my mind ;-). Unless she drags me shopping.
I don't design in creative, I used it initially to learn basic Redstone mechanics and figure out how some of the basic gates work. I haven't touched it since. When I switch worlds I don't even use previous builds as a reference. So if I forgot how I did something in a previous world, I wont look it up, I'll reinvent it. This keeps my designs and automation unique to the world, space, and environment I'm building in and forces me to try new ways to do things.

I do kinda plan out my builds, or more so the space for my builds and the environment I put it in. For example, rather than planning out an auto kiln, I decide if I want it under ground, above ground, in the forest, in the desert, in my main base building, in its own building, what systems need to tie into it and based on that what height should it be at, etc.
I mostly answer those questions in game and in NotePad or excel to help figure out where it falls in the structure of automated systems.

Then I plan out the basic shape and building style I want to put the system in. I want a program as basic as grid paper with layers and color options but I haven't been able to find one. So I use paint pixel by pixel to create the building outline and make a guess at how much interior room I need. Then I do aesthetics and details in game on the fly.
I seem to always build my rooms too small and either move a wall, or add height to the building and try to work more vertically than horizontally. Being a mechanical engineer, I avoidpure Redstone anything even though it might be more compact. I use turntables, pistons, block dispensers, detectors, etc wherever possible. The turntables and hopper stacks built into my machines make my drive trains a bit....messy. But I love it!