Ok, actually i intended to make a short sitrep regarding the IC²-Progress… but then i’ve browser the comments of the previous blogpost and got a more important matter to talk about
REVOLUTION!
Obviously, IC² is using MinecraftForge. It’s some sort of super-ModLoader-ExpansionPack, providing dozens of hooks into any sort of basefile. As well, it’s an OpenSource project, thus any modder could submit his hooks to merge them up into a single mod-tool, thus removing ALL incompatibilities. Ntm it provides unlimited sprites 😀
On the other hand, MinecraftForge WILL be incompatible with every mod using basefiles. And that’s actually nearly every bigger mod. Ntm stuff that relys on ShockAhPI or ToolUtils.
And that’s where you come into play: Start bugging creators of your favourtie mods to start using MinecraftForge instead of any basefile modifications.
This is important because it’s like a Revolution: MinecraftForge vs ALL other basefile-modificating mods.
The more users and modders join the cause, the faster MinecraftForge will spread and the more stuff will become omni-compatible. It’s like with ModLoader, which was a rarely used tool once and is mandatory for quite every mod now.
If you insist people with “real” mods (obviously, all basic mods only adding a few stuff will be trivially MCForge compatible) start using MinecraftForge, then somewhen have to. Victory!
Ok, back to what i actually wanted to say: Sitrep
-Implemented a new template to store 16 Blocks into a single ID. This exspecially works very well for all sorts of machines or generators. Theoretically it works for any block, but mass-blocks (example: Dirt) would use excessive amounts of storage, because the new compressed blocks need to be linked to a TE… imagine replacing all Dirt with running Furnaces and you got a clue.
-Re-coded basic machines and a few generators. New features, much cleaner code, slightly changes stats. Instead of being Furnace-copys, they are now machines intended to use Energy Wiring as a main source. And not as a semi-completed EnergyNetPrototype.
-Batterys&Crystals were reworked to act as “Mikro-MFEs” capable of particulary (de)charging freely. Still slightly flawes, but i’m sure out TestingCrew will track all bugs down fastly.
That’s it actually. But the main work (writing a lot of templates and base stuff) is done now, adding individual machines is a piece o cake.
PS: If anyone got a good idea how to simulate/calculate the EU generation of WindMills, comment your idea in here. I’m currently searching good, realistic and balanced ideas.
Without having to alter basefiles … damn. MC Forge is definitely going to change the Minecraft community, I’m going to jump over to MCF and start ribbing some of my favourite modders to change over.
Anyhow, glad to know that IC2 will take less time. Recoded and potentially more efficient machines, and more features… Can’t wait Al.
Unfortunately I prefer the solar panels to windmills for energy generation, so I have no idea with the Windmills.
As much as I approve of the idea of some mods using a combined API like Minecraft Forge (heck, I tried to implement something similar myself a while back), there are a few major problems with it.
1) It will never support every possible mod. There will always be a mod that, for one reason or another, simply cannot be made using MinecraftForge.
2) It is a resource-hog. While it may not affect much now since the project is in its infancy, once there are too many hooks the performance will begin to take a serious hit.
Fortunately for mod developers, it is generally quite easy to merge hooks into basefiles, thus preventing any conflicts that may occur. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily that good of an idea.
1) As it’s OpenSource, Modders can freely add or request any hooks. It’s kinda a big merge of all Basefiles by all Mods. Thus, it CAN support every possible Mod. If the creators of the mod bother merging their modification into MCForge, that is (and i do not claim that to be trivial).
2) This is a plainly incorrect statement. A well placed hook has a minimum of CPU-increase. F.e. a hook in a Tool’s Blocklist is a single call to the API, which (if there’s no mod using the API, thus “only the API”) is, compared to the 30+ iterations of the tool itself, nothing. You may claim mashing up a lot of big mods using the API is ressource-excessive, yes. But the API itself isn’t.
Just pointin these two things out ^^
I’m just starting to learn to code so most of that was gibberish to me.
Windmills, hmm. What about they generate a set amount of EU, then for every block above say 100, they generate additional EU to that. So for example.
Windmill generates .7Eu at/or below 100 blocks. Under clear conditions (nothing but the wiring underneath near the machine). For every 10 blocks above the 100 block mark the windmills efficiency increases by (X+Y)*.001. X being the number of Air “blocks” around the windmill (which is 25 in a single block space, not including wiring underneath nor the windmill itself). Y being the block height.
So at 110 blocks high that windmill will have an increased eu output of .135eu. Bringing the total output to .835
At 200 blocks high the same windmill will have a total eu output of .925
Increasing the block radius around the windmill (IE 5x5x5 instead of 3x3x3) would also increase the output ratio.
Also if you wanted to have exponential returns you could always improve upon the equation by ((X+Y)^2)*.0001
At 110 blocks high the output would be 13.425 eu. (Under original equation but squared)
At 200 blocks, it would be 41.325 eu. (Again under the original equation squared)
Therefore I added the .0001 so it would scale more reasonably with IC.
This is quite the system the IC-Windmill used 😛 It’s of course the basic alternative to any idea suggested.
Will definetly bug Flowerchild (Better than wolves) to implement MCForge 😀
Other than that, awesome work, keep it up!
He already plans to.
And Alblaka, you’re great!
you want us to bug other modders to use MC Forge, but when people bug you to use bukkit you get pissed off…
Yes, if these people don’t realise that Bukkit is a Server-only handling tool which is incapable of even providing a fraction of the stuff this mod needs and which ModLoader DOES provide.
IC was ported to Bukkit. Why is it not possible by your side? http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/382599-173-modloadermp-for-craftbukkit-and-canary/
You everytime say it is not possible but it is.
I say everytime Bukkit by itself does not support the features IC2 needs.
CRAFTbukkit does, but afaik runs unstable from time to time. I prefer ModLoader over Craftbukkit for that reason.
Viva La Revolucion!
I have a question though. can you clarify this?
“Batterys&Crystals were reworked to act as “Mikro-MFEs” capable of particulary (de)charging freely.”
Does that mean they lose power over time? or something else entirely?
It means you can drop a Crystal into a MFE and if the MFE only has 5000 EU, these 5000 EU will be transfered to the Crystal.
And then you can either charge the remaining 35000 EU somewhere else or put the Crystal somewhere to decharge it again.
It’s not like the previous “Either full or empty”-concept anymore.
Except for the fact you still can’t stack full batterys/Crystals 😛
Handy. Does the concept also work with machines? e.x. can you put a half charged battery into a macerator to charge the macerator?
Yes, but machines work differently now, too: Instead of acting like a furnace, they now have a small “storage” similar to MFEs.
As well, batterys wont discharge BOOM INSTANTLY, but “only” at a rate of 100EUs and only if the storage of the machine is lacking energy (storage has exactly the amount of energy ned for one operation).
This can be considered a disadvantage, as you can’t pop in a battery, which puts 10000 EU on the machine and then use it elsewhere, but it’s much more realistic.
Hey Alblaka, you can make your windmill generator very big and moving, like the “Better than Wolfes” windmill.
Probably not, as coding something like that is beyond my reach and i would actually like to spend my time doing something else for IC², then learning how to do THAT.
However, with the new ZZuperElectricAlBI it should be easy to create a BTW-Block which can translate mechanical power into Electric Energy.
That would be sweet. If you are going to do that how’s about the reverse to. A motor that converts electrical to mechanical.
I would love to see BTW/Industrial mixes. Motors, carbon fiber rope, metal platforms for elevators, etc.
MinecraftForge is going to be the greatest thing to happen since Minecraft itself.
Note: I said it’s possible, i did not say i’ll do it myself!
I found windmills to be somewhat useless compared to solar collectors. For maximum efficiency they needed alot of room, to be high up and only cost a bit less then solar. That’s all fine, except that unless it was really high up, it only produced as much EUs ans solar collectors. Just what i feel is a balancing issue.
Then you were doing it wrong, correctly set-up Windmills can produce up to ~2.5 EUs… all-day, even in the night.
… and end up losing most of it to wire distance.
You can reduce the loss from height with MFEs and/or high voltage, but doing that on each windmill to reduce the loss from how far apart you have to keep them gets silly very fast.
If you’re going to be redoing them anyhow, working in some way of allowing higher-density wind farms would make them a lot more useful. Maybe having a small allowance of wires not counting as obstructions, or non-terrain blocks only count if they’re within 2 spaces instead of 5, or something.
This is an interesting idea. I’ll consider Windmills ignoring a few special blocks.
While you certainly could build huge windfarms that were vastly more efficient than solarfarms:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/18/20110522040547.png/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/18/20110522040547.png/
it was really time consuming to build and I’m not sure I like to fact that you have to build them at highest possible altitude to reach peak efficiency.
Second picture was supposed to be this one: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/196/20110522040050.png/
With regards to MCforge I hopped over to their site to check it out.
I’m honestly confused it says that it’s only a classic server capable did I miss something obvious?
Yes, you got owned by Google.
Unluckyly “MCForge” is the name of a random server, whereas “MinecraftForge” (or “MCForge”) is a OpenSource Modding-Tool designed by SpaceToad, Eloraam and a few others.
Here’s a direct link: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/514000-api-minecraft-forge/
Thanks, that is probably the first time that google got the better of my.
So if MinecraftForge was developed by SpaceToad and Elloraam does that imply full compatibility with IC and their mods? Because BuildCraft/IndustrialCraft as I run it now is awesome. Being able to add in Eloraam’s redstone mods would be icing on the cake.
I don’t see any use for batteries now. Only as crafting material or to “fix” drill if i drained it out by mistake. For everything else, Bat-pack do same and better. as i understand, you will make batteries working as 1/6 bat-pack. Better than now, but still, don’t see any use for them anyway. Same goes for energy crystal. Reduced size bat-pack, that can be only slowly recharged in crystal chargers, for a price of diamond? Thanks, but I’ll pass.
If charged crystals could be stackable – that could be interesting.
Crystals won’t be stackable at all. However, the Crystal Charger will be removed and instead Crystals and Crystal-based tools can be charged in MFE’s.
Batpack will not be capable of decharging in MFE’s anymore, thus not being an actual battery, but solely useable for Tool-Powering.
Additionally, the Mobile Charger will be removed, instead you can charge Tools by rightclicking with a charged battery, while the tool is in your quickbar 😛
So, energy crystal is the new portable mfe (instead of bat-pack), then… Well, why not, though i’ll mourn 60k/slot ratio of bat-packs.
“rightclicking with a charged battery, while the tool is in your quickbar ” – sounds awkward. Why not just use craft recipe, like jetpack+superfuel (so, it will be drill+battery = fully charged drill)?
This isn’t even closely possible, unless i want to bother Minecraft with 1 recipe for every possible damage(/energy) combination, = 60000 * 10000 recipes
😛 Crafting sucks for this purpouse
Actually someone just suggested adding a hook to MCforge to help with damage value interactions with crafting recipes. aka crafting recipes that use up a piece of the damage instead of the whole item.
For windmill, you might want to consider BetterThanWolf’s windmill, which reserve a working space instead of bothering to check every second. Once ‘set’ , the output can be height dependent , for example.
Alternative to that, is more like a ‘daily’ checking, daily as once every 10 minute by random. From programming side, you list all of the windmill in the active portion of the game, and calculate it every 1 or 10 minute, but not all of them at the same time. Decrease in time-resolution is not necessarily a bad thing.
Windmills are intended to check once every 1000 frames =~ 50 seconds.
If you want “perfectly realistic”, I’m afraid it’ll get pretty crazy, hard and processor intensive, probably in that order. You’d have to calculate wind direction and strength, which is movement of air masses between points of different pressure, air composition or temperature. A simplified case that you could implement, then, is a “universal base wind direction” that just gets modified by large terrain features (lava lakes, oceans, mountains). Say, you assume that direction to be (towards) East; a mountain to the West of a windmill would lower power generated, probably. A sea or lava lake on either side of the windmill, so long as it isn’t surrounding it, increases output. Placing a windmill between a sea and a lava lake would be actually very efficient. Merge the above system with the original design BUT lower that part’s impact; and note how a tunnel with a certain pressure difference on its ends has a higher effective wind speed than an open space with the same pressure difference, making the “windmills need open space” point slightly different…
Or, you know, just ignore the above, use the original design, apply modifiers when the windmill is on sea/land, lava/land and sea/lava borders. Even that can be a bit complicated to balance and optimize. On the other hand, incentive for manual terraforming of whole sea coasts ;p
On that note, glad to hear of significant progress. Sixteen times more ridiculously complicated machinery is just the thing I needed in my Minecraft. And more lasers, of course. You can never have enough lasers. You… do plan on adding more lasers, right?
Hmmm… i actually didn’t intend to iterate through the whole landscape to determine the position of the Windmill in the world XD
It’s not exactly crazy, but yes, the other two things 😛
Lasers? Eventually…
i think windmills should have a simulated global wind as they seem to now and a check for blockage. another feature i would like to see is wind generators checking for the wind in the city effect where surrounding blocks, in some cases, can help wind collection, an example could be to search the 4 Orthogonal directions and check for a tube like structure, shouldn’t take too much power as you may be able to hook like the lighting system and only recalculate every time a block is placed in the chunk and the chunks immediately near
“Probably we will create a World Converter IC->IC² , but per se IC-Worlds just won’t run with IC².”
I sincerely hope that you hold to this and put one out with or soon after release of IC2.
Please do so as this is the first thing my many users were concerned about as out IC world is quite extensive. If it helps you with incentive, it a IC->IC2 map converter does come out, you can count on a significant Donation from myself and my players. Thank you, in advance, for any progress on this specific item. Cheers mate! 🙂
Im not really a coding guru,i don’t know a thing about code at all,if i can be honest,but i have a question related to MC Forge.Will IC2 still require Flan’s Modloader MP and Risugami’s Modloader,even with Forge?
Yes, since Minecraft Forge is an extension of ModLoader MP, which is an extension of ModLoader 😛
“-Re-coded basic machines and a few generators. New features, much cleaner code, slightly changes stats. Instead of being Furnace-copys, they are now machines intended to use Energy Wiring as a main source. And not as a semi-completed EnergyNetPrototype.”
I’m a bit confused about this. If there’s one thing that I did find a bit frustrating in an early world was constantly throwing myself between generators and powering machines via batteries as it would take a lot of time. Not to mention, all the favor was done in the name of getting five solar generators running and then to create several MFEs to keep all the energy stored. After that, however, it kinda falls into the “permanent” solution to the point where you won’t want to move things around, because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Not to mention cabling everything together can leave people smarting for days.
Does this mean we could possibly avoid some of these future obstructions and make things a bit more mobile?
The comment was referring to the code.
Imagine it like this:
You build a car which is meant to run on fuel. Then somebody gets you a battery and wants it to run of electricity. Thus you throw in some additional cables, wire it all together somehow, add a second (electro) motor and get something which was meant to run of fuel, but can run of electricity as well.
Now we’re building cars which are laid out for both, from the beginning, running (codewise) much more smoothly.
Probably you (as user) will barely notice this, though XD
As Al said, we really need to push modders towards the light of the Forge. I think if someone made a banner and we all flew said banner in our posts that it will help the cause greatly.
yeah, if everybody used it in there mcf sig the news would spread quickly. (if only Al would do it there would already be over 2000 places to see it)
Ps: is there a banner already?
I agree we someone should make a banner to support the forge so then It will gain popularity and modders will be more persuaded into using it in their mods,addons, etc.
Long live the modding revolution.
This tester group-How does one become involved? All I play is IC lol
If there is a banner just post the forum code for offical forums somewhere and ill attach it to my sig happily if it helps get IC² and Minecraft as a whole forward.
Does anyone have a banner yet
Hey, build craft just implemented oil. This will change anything in your plans?
It’s pretty well done! Hope it doesn’t cause any incompatabilities
What about making it roll a dice each day/night?
It forms a treemap.
For example, diceroll is 1-6
with: 1. 0-10% 2. 10-20% 3. 20-30% 4. 30-60% 5. 60-80% 6. 80-100%
With number six only enabled when weather condition is stormy.
The others then just basically define the regional amount of wind, and it differs between the 2 values given.
This way we have a more stable wind pattern, instead of randomizing it every X-amount of time.
It also offers something else, a barometer, which lets you know what the diceroll has been.
I like this Idea. The barometer sounds like fun as well, Might even open up possiblities for area calculations involving trees/mountains/proximity to the ocean.
In a later stadium yes, and I see that I forgot the calculations for surrounding blocks, but that shouldn’t be too special.
Alblaka, is it possible to store data from a block when it is placed?
this way, once a windturbine is placed it would search for obstructions, then save that data. Every X ticks it would check the area for alterations.
I would love to use this since i get a lot of id problems. but, will it be compatible with mods that still use modloader?
So far it sounds amazing, i do want to use this.
Probably the best way to calculate the windmills is a simplified version of what happens in RL. Since it becomes problematic to monitor, track or otherwise measure windspeed, you can instead see how thermals and the like affect wind speed. Wind always picks up at dusk and dawn during temperature changes, evens out at midnight or noon as temperature stabalizes(IE, the energy slows down in production), and since the wiring diagrams for these buggers is going to be that much more spaced out, distance consuming and annoying you might increase them to be 1.5x more efficient than solar. So, considering the high/low times in between, solar flowers and wind farms in conjunction will still be your best yield.
In mention of power generation, I have to say that even water generators are more efficient in the long run with more items than Nuclear or especially Geothermal. You just cannot get the geothermal generators to work efficiently unless you come upon some amazing lake of lava, and even then, it wont power for more than a good hour in RL equivalency because of how little lava is produced even by a miner. IE, these are terribly inefficient and time consuming to power by hand. Water generators unlike solar, or wind can be hidden, so they don’t make your landscape look like some weird kind of technotrash, as I have been criticized by a few friends about my own worlds 😛
Otherwise, I have always loved playing with IC, but I also always used buildcraft for the lovely pipes, and the use of the quarry for raw building materials too, even if the IC miner is 100% more efficient in the long run as long as you check for proper ore density. Well.. at least time wise.
Thank you for all the hard work AlBlaka!
First of all THNX for the update. Now I have two questions:
1. Is Flan (planes, vehicles ect) on board for the MCForge revolution? Because my server players really loves to use planes once again (If they get flyable any-ways)
2. Are you planning to use Buildcraft’s Oil or are we going to have two types of oils in the new world?
That was what i was asking. Isn’t fair make build craft mandatory, but lost that feature because then inst good too. I would prefer that they leave oil to industrial 😛
It would probably be unfair with Buildcraft’s modder, as he already included all of the oil related content in his mod.
Unless they can make it so the oil of both of them is the same, what would basically make them compatible and at the same time let people play just one of them or both at the same time =D
Oil of BC and IC will probably be merged somehow.. if we figure out a not-buggy way, that is ^^’
I totally agree with you, but isn’t it possible using Mineforge that two mods share the same resources? e.g. only installing Buildcraft/industrialcraft gives oil but install both and you still get only one type of oil usable by both….
It’s possible even without MCF, just by checking if the other mod is installed and grabbing the item from it directly, or creating a new one if not.
This is already done in some mods, the shared wheels from Flan’s Planes and Vehicles and SDK’s ATV comes to mind as one example.
Alblaka,
Once you have the foundation code set up to your satisfaction, would it be possible to publish a “trial version” (I have no better word for it) that has just the ores in it so that addicts like myself could start generating worlds that have the special ores in them, even though the crafted items aren’t available yet? I’m stuck not playing Minecraft since I’m unwilling to spend more time on my IC 1 world when IC 2 is going to kill it, and I can’t make new worlds since they won’t have your ores in the chunks anywhere near spawn.
If that’s not possible, that’s fine. But if it is, that would be greatly appreciated. Thankee.
IC2 is getting closer, but right now, not playable. We’re working hard on getting up a first “playable” Beta for the Tester Group to start hunting bugs, while developing more.
I don’t think i can fullfill your request, sorry ^^’
I’m wondering how the wiring will be, will it be the same as current, or have you any plans to buff/de-buff it? I must admit I was thinking about 4 different colours of cable (my personal choices being Red, Black, Yellow, and Blue(with a new blue flower maybe?)) that are unaffected by other colours to make it easier and more compact.
I had also thought up a really big stretch (think it isn’t exactly achievable) that maybe there could be blocks with all 4 cable colours, each with their own EU values, but i suspect greatly that this isn’t going to happen.
please criticize and comment.
DX.
The idea of adding multi-colored cables, only emitting power to Black/their own color was already brought up and is under discussion.
Thinking about how wind generators in real life work I would think it wouldn’t be something overly complicated, if you ignore the wind direction and such. I would think there would be 2 boxes that it checks, one that can’t have anything in it and is mainly in front of the actual windmill block, instead of around it. This would basically be simulating the room for a fan blade as well as the most immediate obstructions to the air flow.
The other box that it checks would be much larger and ignore cables, windmills and basically anything else that is involved in wiring and not building except for maybe some sort of gantry type block to get around and maintain things. It would mainly be for checking that there are no big mountains or buildings blocking airflow to the windmills.
Finally, with those two I’d get rid of the “more height=more energy” and have it just have those boxes with less energy the more obstructions. That way height is more a matter of having it above the mountains and trees and what not.
In the end this would basically mean wind farms that can be built on the top of hills instead of way in the sky and would end up looking like a cluster of windmill blocks sitting on top of a bunch of cables to get them high enough off the ground (perhaps with the silver fence look that I remember being mentioned being added for the Obscurator, or perhaps even better some sort of special aerodynamic cable meant specifically for windmill farms.
Windmill Algorithm: value = (ln(1 – x/b) + 1) * h * r
if x >= b then set value to zero
if value < zero then set it to zero
x: blocks in a 10x10x6 (or larger) cube (maybe dividing the cube into smaller ones and count the small cubes in which are blocks?)
b: depends on how many blocks to allow
h: 0.3 if height < 63 else (height – 63)/(127-63)/2 + 0.75 (or use an arctan?)
r: random between 0.7 and 1.3
the windmills could also influence each other
my goal was to make the value more independent of little variations of the height and the blocks around.
Appears to be somewhat similar to the old code, just with an even more CPU-intensive block iteration? XD
Uhm… no basefile-modification, please XD
A easy API for adding new EU-consuming blocks is intended. As well, Fean claimed he is going to create an Electric-Engine for BC already ^^
Im officially in IC withdrawal. I hate to do any work in my IC worlds when I know they wont be compatible with IC2 or Minecraft 1.8. Sigh I dont know what to do….
I was going to bug you about Minecraft forge (USE IT SO I CAN USE BUILDCRAFT!!!!!!FEHJKASDKHFDESPAM!AHFKAJID) then I saw this post…I fail XD….HAIYO!!!!