Buildcraft 2.1.1

Hi people, sorry for the delay... In my defense, I'd like to say something: do NOT place extraction pipes with Buildcraft 2.1.1, it will crash the game... and you won't be able to keep that map. So yes, I lost the map I was working with XD.

I'll be using a new block from RedPower (version 1.7.1 is out, by the way): the repeater. Yes, there is already a repeater in the game... but this (that does not replace the old one) has a maximun delay much bigger, and can be placed like any other logic gate (on a wall, under the roof...). Here is how it looks like:

Here you can see four repeaters at several delay adjustements. They seem to be a lilttle buggy, at least visually, but they work well. I'll be using them so several stacks of engines will start at slightly different times, producing three "ticks" really quickly instead of pulsing at the same time, wasting two of those ticks.

Anyway, I made a video of a strip mine operation (a quarry at its maximun coverage) and its feeds. You can see it here:

There is a reason for the separation between the oil tanks, and I'll explain it with another, much shorter video at the end of the post. Meanwhile, let's talk about the oil, the pipes, etc...

First, in case you didn't knew, oil is a new finite resource that is treated like water in regard to everything but Buildcraft 2.x.x (dolphins can spawn in oil pools, for example, if you have installed Mo'Creatures). Being a finite resource, you cannot create infinite sources like we usually do with water. Also, the only way to put oil inside pipes is by using the new oil pump (made by putting an oil tank over a mining well in the crafting grid), and there is no way to take the oil out, the only possible destination to the oil is an oil tank or a combustion engine where it will be consumed (you cannot extract oil from the combustion engines).
By the way, you can place anything connected to an oil pump, like a lever to power the attached engine.
Sadly, oil is not affected by the special effects of insertion pipes or golden pipes, but iron, stone, cobblestone and wooden pipes work as usual.
Placing a wooden pipe between two oil tanks will mean that you might have to take a wrench and rearrange manually the direction to where they point, so do as I did in the video and put a stone or cobblestone pipe between the wooden pipe and the target oil deposit.
Now about behaviour, it seems like each block of oil is "divided" into three or so chunks, so wherever you have a point where the oil can go two or more directions it will go all of them at all, stopping moving until it has enough "mass" to move (so, until more oil gets divided and makes for a full oil block in each pipe). So you will be seeing lots of "leftover" oil everywhere.

As for advice when using all this, I'm using Eloraam's light blocks to know, at a quick glance, which wooden engines are working and which ones are not. Also, remember that now the engines will cool down on their own, and they won't explode as long as they have something to do, regardless of their color (heat level).

I'll start looking into Eloraam's other new three blocks for the weekend or so (I'm quite useless with circuitry, I think I said that before ^^), since there is nothing more to do with buildcraft right now. And without further delay, here is the video about how not to place the oil tanks:

Buildcraft & Redpower new versions

Well, first, Minecraft Forge has been actualized to 1.0.5, which is good because is the needed version for both  BC and RP.

Redpower 1.7.0: we get dome bugs solved and a new bunch of blocks consisting in a cable passing over another (both of redstone without insulation or colour), with different configurations (inversion of power or same power, for example).

Builcraft 2.1.0: Still a beta, SpaceToad added tow new blocks: the oil tank (made by arranging 8 blocks of crystal the same way we would do it with wooden panels to craft a chest) that can contain up to 16 units of oil (and stacks vertically), and the pump (right now working only for oil, but there are plans to make it work with other liquids like water and magma), which collects all the oil in a deposit and sends it through pipes without the need for buckets. The pump is made by putting a tank over a mining well, simply as that.

I'll be checking these two new options in the following days and I'll make some videos and demonstrations about good arrangements for everything.

Finally, remember that 1.8 seems to be going to be released soon, BUT the mods will need a few weeks to catch up (specially since they will wait for Notch to polish some of the bugs, so I would not expect any actualization until about version 1.8.2 or so).

Have fun and keep exploring!

Mod Review: The Laser Mod

Hi once again, people, and today let me show you a small review of a mod I found to be quite interesting: The Laser Mod (forum link here). The mod is quite simple, yet interesting in some of its ideas.

So let's begin: the mod provides five new blocks (and with TooManyItems we can see it provides, in fact, about seven). One is a sensor, other is a tube and the other three are laser generator blocks (and the rest are just "behind the scenes" stuff).

First, the emitters: they are crafted from stone, iron and diamond. As usual, the more advanced the materials, the more powerful the tool. As we can see in the video at the end of the post, the stone laser is just a red beam that damages any mob (or player) that touches it; the iron laser, besides doing more damage, can ignite wool and wood, and destroy water and glass. Finally, the diamond laser causes 15 hearts of damage to anything that touches the beam and vaporizes any block but stone and iron blocks. Incidentally, ores count as stone blocks, but for the clay, that seems to count as dirt.

Effects:

• The lasers will vaporize any block that are not placed, regardless of their type. This means that they can be used to clear an horizontal lane quickly, but not to destroy any block up or down.
• The lasers are redstone-sensible (they turn on when receiving redstone current).
• The sensor gives redstone current when receiving a laser.
• The lasers vaporize all the blocks they can  in an instant.
• A laser ray gives light.
• Lasers can be placed looking only the horizontal plane (so they cannot point up or down).
• Sandstone can resist the diamond laser (it's most likely an unintended bug), neither it can destroy soul dust or netherrack (I tested it for the stone and iron laser too).
• If, by some miracle, you break one of the laser lanes (instantmine, for example), the lane will be replaced instantly.
• Range: too much. I think it's infinite... anyway, it crashes the game when you turn on or off one laser that reaches farther than the chunk of world you are in, so be careful.

Installation:

Unzip the mod file, and find the other one inside. That is the one you have to copy to .minecraft\mods, and it's done (unless you have some ID conflict somewhere).

Applications:
The first use that comes into my mind are traps. However, I took this mod into my array because, aside from some limitations, it goes quite well with the Portal mod (lasers, laser sensor and laser tubes were introduced in Portal 2, so...). It's also great because the Portal mod now is SMP fully compatible, thanks to some pork chop you add to your portal gun, making the portals exclusive for the player.

Oh, and the version 1.7 of Eloraam's Redpower is out! However, wait for the Minecraft Forge to get v1.05 published before updating, because, as far as I understood, somewhere in the Redpower thread's latest posts there's the link to that version... that hasn't been updated in the minecraft forge thread, at least while I'm writing this.

Anyway, have fun!

Semi-automated wood farm

First of all, the extra buildcraft pipes link has been actualized to a new one that has working versions for both BC 1.7.3 and 2.0.1.

So, as promised, I refined my idea of using buildcraft to make a self-sustaining, almost fully automated tree farm. Why semi-automated? Well, you need to use two levers (one for planting, and one for harvesting once the trees have all grown), and I didn't made any self-fueling circuit for the machines (since those take a lot of space). The only problem with this contraption is that using steam engines (the coal-powered ones made with stone) means you need to harvest and replace the engines of the fillers after each harvesting, because they overheat very quickly when powering a filler in clearing configuration.

As you can see in the screenshots, we need a Template drawing table and two blank templates, two building machines that will use the same template (the lower one will be placing dirt, and the upper one will be planting the saplings), some pipes (an obsidian pipe at the water level, two diamond pipes, and I used two gold pipes that are not really needed), and two fillers with the clearing program (9 glass in the 3x3 grid), plus some engines (that can be the ones powered by coal or by oil). I also made a small circuit using RedPower in order to need only one lever for both fillers (plus some repeaters at 0.3 or 0.4 seconds delay, so the engines won't tick at the same time).

So how does this work? First, I made the farm, in this case a 17x17 hole (plus the borders made with wood, taking an additional 2x2), and filled it with water currents (two rows going in the direction of the pipe system, then a current going from each side to the center where the obsidian pipe is), then I made the "placing template" you can see to the left of the screenshots, then the pipe system and finally I placed the machines, engines and cables.
The operation of the contraption is quite simple: activate the builders to place the dirt and plant the trees over it (in the screenshots we can see this already done), wait for the trees to grow, then activate the fillers (you can use one filler only if you prefer, but it will take much more time), and when all is cleared, repeat the process.
Of course, nothing prevents you from making a much bigger version of the contraption, up to the 64x64 or so that the land marks reach (or if you use several builders...), however that might cause a lot of lag from the huge amount of water currents. Adding a clock and a toggle latch to the circuits can, after calculating the timing, turn off the fillers and start the planting process, and limiting the amount of fuel in each engine to the minimun to perform their duty (in the case of the engines powering the fillers, at least) is a good idea.

Without more delay, here is the video of the contraption at work:

Oh, I didn't used a quarry, but with a RedPower's circuit with a clock, it can be made without much fear of over-digging (sadly, my quarry tends to keep powered after the engines have been turned off...), or once you made enough holes till the bottom of the map, you can make the farms down there.

Have fun!

Lava bridge

Hi people, and sorry for the the week without updates. I've been busy with stuff not related to Minecraft, so I had little time to devote to playing or testing some ideas I had, and I also have been waiting for the new versions of RedPower and Buildcraft (and trying to make a small and tidy wood farm as automated as possible). Anyway, I decided to make a small video about making a secret bridge to protect your base. Yeah, someone with blocks can laugh at this security measures, but that's what we have xD.

Without more delay, here is the video:

So as you can see, it's a quite wide lava pit (consider the dirt as temporal blocks so I don't have to build an entire castle, pit, etc... XD), and the opening sequence depends on powering two blocks to activate an AND gate that powers a toggle block, and the toggle block activates a variation of the circuit I've been using in the blast doors/secret doors contraptions: a 0.4 seconds delay, an AND gate and an OR gate: the AND gate goes to the upper row (or in the doors, to the central group) of pistons, and the OR gate goes to the bottom row (the side pistons in the doors). It would be possible to add more rows of pistons, but it would complicate the contraption without much real gain.

As for the activation of the bridge (from the outisde of the "castle", that is) I'm using a trick I wathced on a youtube video a while ago that required redstone dust, the Redpower version requires other disposition of the block you want to power (but aside from needing the torch behind the block, you could place it anywhere you want). Also, I used two blocks to be powered, but it would be possible to use from one to whatever number you want (by chaining AND gates), or add self-resetting qualities to the bridge (by putting a clock near the toggle latch that starts ticking when the bridge extends, stopping after reactivating the toggle).

Have fun!

I was asked to make a full building tutorial about the blast doors, so here it is:

Cobblestone Generator with Buildcraft 2.X

I was looking into old stuff when I found a pretty worrying situation: the infinite cobblestone generator, the way they were before, no longer worked.

The old version:

The problem that appeared is simple: in the last 15 or so seconds of the video you see how the pipes left by the mining wells dissapear when pushed. This no longer happens, so they block the way for more cobblestone to be made. At first, I tried to add a filler in the front to delete the pipes, but that proved too slow and wasteful. So I went and made a single-lane cobblestone generator replacing the mining wells with the filler (with the 3x3 glass disposition) dropping the blocks into obsidian pipes. However, soon the new engines would run a little too quick, so the filler would think it's done with the job and go idle (yeah, with the engines, it's like working with continuous current, so it doesn't check if there is something or not after a full cycle with an empty area). So I ended making a two-lanes cobblestone generator again, but using the second one as a backup.

Here is the new video:

At first I show you the patched old version, then the new version, and the last three minutes or so show how to make the new version.
Short explanation for those who already know how to make the old one: make it like always, without the mining wells, and put the obisian blocks one block more away, then put a filler with the "clear area" program (a 3x3 glass grid) with the area selected over the two exiting lanes for cobblestone. Behind the three blocks the filler will clear put obsidian pipes, connect them to steel pipes and those to the main pipe lane (in the video I connected the central steel pipe to some stone pipes, and those to a chest), then fill the borders so the cleared blocks will fall over the obsidian pistons.

Old Vs New: comparison.
The old version, with the patch and the new needed filler adding, would use tfour stone engines, 2 mining wells and two fillers (or it will have one of the mining wells idle most of the time).
The new version eliminates the mining wells and, while it will produce less cobblestone, it will need only one engine and one filler.

New problems:
I have noticed that, from time to time, the stone engines overheats and start accelerating. This can only be solved by removing the engine and putting it again, so don't put more than 8-10 coal/charcoal inside. Also, if for some reason the filler shows red lights instead of green ones (after you set up the clearing program), just removing one of the glass blocks and putting it again into the programming slot will restart the machine.
Also, the wooden engines (the slowest ones that don't need fuel or coal, just redstone current) cannot power fillers, so...

I will attemp to make a tree farming for the next video, but I'm afraid each tree will require its own filler, so it might be "awesome but inpractical" (yeah, I know there is already a mod called "factory mod". However, I think it isn't actualized to 1.7.3... and I think it is not integrated with Minecraft Forge).

Until the next time, have fun!

RedPower and Buildcraft with Minecraft Forge

Ok, I just managed to bundle most of the stuff together.

Mods I currently have installed in the Minecraft.jar (in order of installation):

• Modloader & ModloaderMP, and Audiomod
• SinglePlayerCommands & Worldedit
• TooManyItems
• Minecraft Forge
• Wireless Redstone with almost all of its extras

Mods I currently have in the mods folder:

• Redpower 1.6.0 with all the options
• Buildcraft 2.0 with all the options
• Portal Gun v4

Necessary tweaks for all to work together:
Buildcraft:
The mod comes pre-configured to keep working with redstone clocks (but if you install the "energy" addon, the oil and the engines will appear). To enable the engines, you need to go to the folder .minecraft\builcraft\config and, using some .txt editor (like notepad), open the file Buildcraft.cfg.
There, inside the "general" block, you need to paste this file:

power.framework=buildcraft.energy.PneumaticPowerFramework

So it has to looks like this:

###########
# General #
###########


general {
# set to true for allowing machines to be driven by continuous current
current.continuous=false
mining.enabled=true
# set to false to deactivate pipe connection rules, true by default
pipes.alwaysConnect=false
power.framework=buildcraft.energy.PneumaticPowerFramework
version=2.0.1
}


#########
# Block #
#########


block {
autoWorkbench.id=152
builder.id=157
cobblestonePipe.id=159
diamondPipe.id=149
drill.id=151
engine.id=161
filler.id=155
frame.id=160
goldenPipe.id=148
ironPipe.id=147
marker.id=154
miningWell.id=150
obsidianPipe.id=156
oilMoving.id=162
oilStill.id=163
quarry.id=153
stonePipe.id=146
template.id=158
woodenPipe.exclusion=
woodenPipe.id=145
}


########
# Item #
########


item {
bucketOil.id=3807
diamondGearItem.id=3004
goldenGearItem.id=3003
ironGearItem.id=3002
stoneGearItem.id=3001
templateItem.id=3005
woodenGearItem.id=3000
wrench.id=3806
}

RedPower:
There is a problem with this one and TooManyItems, derived from some resitance values. It makes TMI to not show any wires in the extra tab, but the wires can be crafted manually using the mats and a Crafting Table. To solve the issue, a patch has been written, and you can download it here. The post of the thread where you can find about it (including the author, Jay) is here.

EDIT: instead of that patch, you can use this, which will be also compatible with the version 1.6.1

Installation: download the patch and put it inside the Minecraft.jar, that's it.
Side effects: a lot of previously hidden blocks might show up. I went from 2 to 12 pages of different blocks, almost all of them Portal's weighted companion cubes and about a thousand templates for Buildcraft 2.0, so don't freak out.

Now on to work! ^^

Buildcraft Forge released

The new API is out and running, but from my current mods only Eloraam's collection uses it (there is also a beta of Buildcraft, but I tend to wait until betas end anyway). I'll look into it tomorrow, however, I tried to run the game with this mods and didn't worked:


ModLoader Beta 1.7.3
mod_RedPowerCore 1.6.0
mod_RedPowerLighting 1.6.0
mod_RedPowerLogic 1.6.0
mod_RedPowerWiring 1.6.0
mod_Renderhook 1.7_01
mod_TooManyItems 1.7.2 2011-07-01
mod_WorldEditCUI 1.7_01
mod_WirelessSniffer 0.5
mod_PowerConfigurator 0.5
mod_WirelessRedstone 1.4
mod_WirelessRemote 0.4
mod_FCBetterThanWolves 2.70

So tomorrow I will look into a clean install of the game. Godd night!

Another on secret doors

Well, I had this one in my hard disk, so... ^^U.

First, a new way to open doors, in the video I make it with Buildcraft pipes, RedPower and Integrated Redstone... but you could make it with just buildcraft:

The basic idea: drop an item in the pipe system and get the door open. more than just one block to act as a lock can be added, both as an option ("any of this blocks will open the door") or as a need ("you need X blocks of each one of this list to open the door")

And here we can see the application to make a (somehow) snealy door with pistons:

The best part of this is that I managed to squeeze the circuit for the pistons in just 4 blocks of depth.

Well, enjoy the videos and think how to put them into your worlds ^^ I'll see you all on the weekend.