It seems like SOPA was nothing but a distraction while the real deal was being signed... Ladies and gentlemen, meet ACTA. With internet providers forced to keep a minimun of a year of your browsing history, and webpages censored at will, this looks like SOPA... but it will affect ALL signing countries. We need to protect the internet, or given enough time even the kitten videos on Youtube will be censored...
These seem to be really interesting times ideed.
Information:
http://www.laquadrature.net/en/acta
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ow1v5/acta_note_from_marietje_schaake_member_o
Sign against ACTA:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet_spread/?slideshow
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta opinion. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta opinion. Mostrar todas las entradas
jueves, 26 de enero de 2012
viernes, 20 de enero de 2012
Megaupload down...
SOPA & PIPA were turned down... and less than 24 hours after that, megaupload and other bunch of sites are taken down by the FBI and other USA "letter soup" agencies. To me, that sounds like bullying, not to mention that Megaupload wasn't based on the USA... Talk about tantrums.
Why I think it's important to face this censorship? I won't talk about how all the money and jobs affected by piracy are bogus (at least in the amounts claimed by the industry and the politicians). Instead I will simply say that modders (working under the "Fair act" rules of not getting any kind of profit from their work of modding parts of comercial games) are afraid of being prosecuted in a "guilty until proven otherwise" policy.
So ask yourselves what would happen if any game from now on would never have any free, non official mod. Imagine Minecraft without Redpower, Buildcraft, Industrialcraft... without Better than Wolves, without the Aether, without Mo's Creatures...
Or imagine more of Bethesda's games (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout...), Bioware's (Neverwinter Nights, KotOR...), or Valve's (Half Life... that gave birth to Counter Strike, for example) without mods. Imagine how any game you currently have without any mod whatsoever, aside from some DLC crafted only to get more money from a dehydrated lone man in the middle of the desert desperate enough to pay for some drops of hot water...
Depressing? That is what a world without liberty means. Bad things for everybody. Save for those few who control the water.
Why I think it's important to face this censorship? I won't talk about how all the money and jobs affected by piracy are bogus (at least in the amounts claimed by the industry and the politicians). Instead I will simply say that modders (working under the "Fair act" rules of not getting any kind of profit from their work of modding parts of comercial games) are afraid of being prosecuted in a "guilty until proven otherwise" policy.
So ask yourselves what would happen if any game from now on would never have any free, non official mod. Imagine Minecraft without Redpower, Buildcraft, Industrialcraft... without Better than Wolves, without the Aether, without Mo's Creatures...
Or imagine more of Bethesda's games (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout...), Bioware's (Neverwinter Nights, KotOR...), or Valve's (Half Life... that gave birth to Counter Strike, for example) without mods. Imagine how any game you currently have without any mod whatsoever, aside from some DLC crafted only to get more money from a dehydrated lone man in the middle of the desert desperate enough to pay for some drops of hot water...
Depressing? That is what a world without liberty means. Bad things for everybody. Save for those few who control the water.
miércoles, 30 de noviembre de 2011
Better than Wolves review, MC Forge 1.0.0!
Minecrat Forge for Minecraft 1.0.0 has been released! Grab it at MCForum! But keep in mind that, while MC Forge and ModLoader might be up to date, the mods themselves might not. And make backups before any actualization! That includes the mincraft.jar file! And of the big mods that use MCForge, I thing only Buildcraft has been actualized, and it's a version 2.2.6 (not 3.0, which seems to still be on beta).
So I was a little "saturated" from the let's play (frankly, I don't know what the hell I'm doing wrong, but I tend to face heavy FPS losses every now and then... maybe it's the outrageous amount of engines I use, or the huge concentration of teleporting pipes, or...), and I decided to go check some of the new parts of Better Than Wolves I had missed the last time I was able to play it with other mods. It's a pain in the ass, by the way, because the mod has to be injected inside the minecraft.jar file and uses a lot of itemIDs, but it is also a great mod, with a lot of interactions between its components ouside of machines (kinda like Buildcraft 2's interactions between the engines and the blocks).
Anyway, I was looking some awesome videos made by Battosay52 and I really wanted to make an automated pottery "factory". Well, not really automated (but changing the button for a timer would have made it fully automated) but I liked the way it looked at the end. Hell, I even installed a second .minecraft folder and I've been playing around in a clean world trying some stuff. And truth be said, Redpower 2 is a lifesaver (aah, those gems that you can only use to craft diamond-level tools... sadly, they don't seem to be hooked at BTW, unlike the Nethercoal working into an alloy furnace, but oh well...). Anyway, I'll stop the rambling and show you the final product here, in two videos. Yes, I know FlowerChild (BTW's developer) has decided to drop out from the MC Forge project.
And don't worry, tomorrow you will have your dose of Tale of Kingdoms ^^
So I was a little "saturated" from the let's play (frankly, I don't know what the hell I'm doing wrong, but I tend to face heavy FPS losses every now and then... maybe it's the outrageous amount of engines I use, or the huge concentration of teleporting pipes, or...), and I decided to go check some of the new parts of Better Than Wolves I had missed the last time I was able to play it with other mods. It's a pain in the ass, by the way, because the mod has to be injected inside the minecraft.jar file and uses a lot of itemIDs, but it is also a great mod, with a lot of interactions between its components ouside of machines (kinda like Buildcraft 2's interactions between the engines and the blocks).
Anyway, I was looking some awesome videos made by Battosay52 and I really wanted to make an automated pottery "factory". Well, not really automated (but changing the button for a timer would have made it fully automated) but I liked the way it looked at the end. Hell, I even installed a second .minecraft folder and I've been playing around in a clean world trying some stuff. And truth be said, Redpower 2 is a lifesaver (aah, those gems that you can only use to craft diamond-level tools... sadly, they don't seem to be hooked at BTW, unlike the Nethercoal working into an alloy furnace, but oh well...). Anyway, I'll stop the rambling and show you the final product here, in two videos. Yes, I know FlowerChild (BTW's developer) has decided to drop out from the MC Forge project.
And don't worry, tomorrow you will have your dose of Tale of Kingdoms ^^
viernes, 23 de septiembre de 2011
The future of mods in short term
Notch released this tweet yesterday... with the 1.9 preview. So we can expect a 1.10 version of Minecraft before a month or so, so my advice: Stay in Minecraft 1.7.3 if you want to keep all your mods.
For what I saw in the Minecraft forums, we can expect a 1.8.1 version for RedPower and Industrialcraft 2 (meaning a new version of Minecraft Forge, most likely), but I didn't found more mentions about other mods (I didn't checked them all, anyway). What is really important, however, is that unless the code related to the mods remain unchanged, there won't be much mod actualizations for a while, at least until the whole "adventure update" is released (yeah, Notch is releasing that update in minipatches).
In case you want to check the news, by the way, I found some tours made by Paulosoaresjr and updated to Youtube. Here you have them:
For what I saw in the Minecraft forums, we can expect a 1.8.1 version for RedPower and Industrialcraft 2 (meaning a new version of Minecraft Forge, most likely), but I didn't found more mentions about other mods (I didn't checked them all, anyway). What is really important, however, is that unless the code related to the mods remain unchanged, there won't be much mod actualizations for a while, at least until the whole "adventure update" is released (yeah, Notch is releasing that update in minipatches).
In case you want to check the news, by the way, I found some tours made by Paulosoaresjr and updated to Youtube. Here you have them:
- Village monks, swamps and a little of snow biomes
- The update to the Nether
- Snow biomes, and a snow golem
I'll advice to subscribe to his channel, since about 13 hours ago only the first one was up (I'll live in GMT+1, so I was sleeping while he was uploading XD).
Have a nice weekend!
martes, 20 de septiembre de 2011
1.8 and mods: Buildcraft & Millénaire
Hi folks, welcome to... wait, I might have been listening too much to Paulosoaresjr videos XD. Anyway, welcome to my little corner of the Minecraft universe.
First, regarding actualizations, Buildcraft has been ported to the 1.8 version of the game. However, it's not the Minecraft Forge version, but the one that doesn't require it. Also it's a first port, not fully tested (the 1.7.3 version of the mod and the forge-dependant versions remain in the page, though), so I'd advice to backup everything before updating.
And there is another mod I'd like to talk about today. It's related to 1.8's empty villages, because I think it was the inspiration to the project. The name is Millénaire, and it's a mod that, like all the ones adding stuff to the world, requires you to explore new, unvisited chunks. I tried this in 1.6.6 or so, with IC and BC installed, and for what I saw in the changelog, the mod is growing and being fixed without losing the original intent.
Millénaire was a mod that added NPC's to the game, living in towns (Norman towns, to be precise, but the current version includes indian towns too. Indian as in Hindi, not native american) that require the player's help to develop, paying for goods that are used to make new buildings, making it possible to get more and better items in the future (items you buy with the coins they payed you before for the raw materials).
The Millénaire wiki is quite useful and up to date, but we don't need it to play (unlike, for example, Industrialcraft; Millénaire doesn't add new recipes, or at least not very complex or with items that need other items to be crafted), but it's good to have at look at it before playing and from time to time. I'd suggest to have a look at the village types page, where we can discover not only the kind of settlements we can visit, but images of how do they look like and what items are they going to need (and what items can we buy later). There is currently 9 different norman settlements, and 5 hindi, and the best part of it it's that you can become the founder of a new settlement (in time and with a special item a village with enough population will sell to you).
In my experience, it's good to have a huge reserve of basic mats before going to the village. The first blocks they will ask for are going to be wood (don't turn the wood into planks... they might prefer it with bark!), stone (be ready for them asking for smooth stone), and sand/glass. Eventually they will ask for iron, coal, and whool (the forge, for example, requires them), so save them all the time. You are going to need a carpenter, too, since a new building block has been added since I last played the mod, and the only way to get it is to buy it from the carpenter... meaning sometimes you will need to explore and look for another village if the one you are trying to develop lacks one or cannot have it for whatever reason.
Another piece of advice, once you find a village, level the terrain all around so they can expand easily. The village's NPCs don't clear place for buildings, sadly...
Well, that's all for today. I'll see if I can add Millénaire to my mix of mods, and come back to you in a few days. Have fun!
First, regarding actualizations, Buildcraft has been ported to the 1.8 version of the game. However, it's not the Minecraft Forge version, but the one that doesn't require it. Also it's a first port, not fully tested (the 1.7.3 version of the mod and the forge-dependant versions remain in the page, though), so I'd advice to backup everything before updating.
And there is another mod I'd like to talk about today. It's related to 1.8's empty villages, because I think it was the inspiration to the project. The name is Millénaire, and it's a mod that, like all the ones adding stuff to the world, requires you to explore new, unvisited chunks. I tried this in 1.6.6 or so, with IC and BC installed, and for what I saw in the changelog, the mod is growing and being fixed without losing the original intent.
Millénaire was a mod that added NPC's to the game, living in towns (Norman towns, to be precise, but the current version includes indian towns too. Indian as in Hindi, not native american) that require the player's help to develop, paying for goods that are used to make new buildings, making it possible to get more and better items in the future (items you buy with the coins they payed you before for the raw materials).
The Millénaire wiki is quite useful and up to date, but we don't need it to play (unlike, for example, Industrialcraft; Millénaire doesn't add new recipes, or at least not very complex or with items that need other items to be crafted), but it's good to have at look at it before playing and from time to time. I'd suggest to have a look at the village types page, where we can discover not only the kind of settlements we can visit, but images of how do they look like and what items are they going to need (and what items can we buy later). There is currently 9 different norman settlements, and 5 hindi, and the best part of it it's that you can become the founder of a new settlement (in time and with a special item a village with enough population will sell to you).
In my experience, it's good to have a huge reserve of basic mats before going to the village. The first blocks they will ask for are going to be wood (don't turn the wood into planks... they might prefer it with bark!), stone (be ready for them asking for smooth stone), and sand/glass. Eventually they will ask for iron, coal, and whool (the forge, for example, requires them), so save them all the time. You are going to need a carpenter, too, since a new building block has been added since I last played the mod, and the only way to get it is to buy it from the carpenter... meaning sometimes you will need to explore and look for another village if the one you are trying to develop lacks one or cannot have it for whatever reason.
Another piece of advice, once you find a village, level the terrain all around so they can expand easily. The village's NPCs don't clear place for buildings, sadly...
Well, that's all for today. I'll see if I can add Millénaire to my mix of mods, and come back to you in a few days. Have fun!
viernes, 9 de septiembre de 2011
Industrialcraft 2: first impressions
First of all, the wiki has been updated. You can found it here, and it's quite interesting because it has a lot of recipes.
Ok, so I've been playing for some hours in a newly generated map, and these are my conclussions (I also checked some of the new stuff in a testing map using TooManyItems):
Map Seed: Industrialcraft2
Coordinates: 19, 85, -183
Time played: around five or six hours.
Mods used: Industrialcraft2, Buildcraft 2, RedPower (with all "addons"), Mo' Creatures, and some more that had no impact over the game, because I didn't use anything (in fact, from Buildcraft I still have to make something, but I can see oil around).
What I have now: some rubber trees plantation, a normal tree subterranean plantation, 11 solar panels, 2 batboxes (I'm only using one), an extractor, a macerator and two electric furnaces. And tons of cobblestone, of course XD. I also have more raw materials (inlcuding about 5 uranium ore), but it would be of small interest.
One of the first changes I noticed is that copper and tin ore are quicker to mine using the non-IC picks, and that you now need at least an iron pick to harvest the uranium ore. I also noticed in this map that, while I found lots of redstone in the lower levels, I found nearly no iron, and about minimun quantities of iron; coal, however, was nearly everywhere with in big veins.
Another thing I noticed (and I think it's a bug) is that the rubber trees grow insanely fast.
About my thoughts on the new ways the mod works, I'm happy to see the cabling is now more easy, setting solar plants is also more simple (no more need for the flowers!), and things look much more smooth. The only downside I found was that, coupled with Buildcraft's piping system, things work randomly regarding blocks inserted/extracted (no matter if you cannot put those items manually, with the pipes they will be put wherever there is free space).This means that a battery has to be put in the powering hole, and the item extraction might be something a little complicated. Hopefully this problem will be solved in the next release of Minecraft Forge, Buildcraft or Industrialcraft.
On monday I'll share with you all a new video about my Food Factory idea, with the new IC2 and BC2, so until then stay tuned and enjoy this small video about the new block of IC2 called "induction furnace" (it can take two blocks different or equal and process them quicker the longer it's burning).
Oh, and a good youtube channel with some videos about IC2 is this one, which has a lot of the new stuff showed up and explained. Enjoy!
Ok, so I've been playing for some hours in a newly generated map, and these are my conclussions (I also checked some of the new stuff in a testing map using TooManyItems):
Map Seed: Industrialcraft2
Coordinates: 19, 85, -183
Time played: around five or six hours.
Mods used: Industrialcraft2, Buildcraft 2, RedPower (with all "addons"), Mo' Creatures, and some more that had no impact over the game, because I didn't use anything (in fact, from Buildcraft I still have to make something, but I can see oil around).
What I have now: some rubber trees plantation, a normal tree subterranean plantation, 11 solar panels, 2 batboxes (I'm only using one), an extractor, a macerator and two electric furnaces. And tons of cobblestone, of course XD. I also have more raw materials (inlcuding about 5 uranium ore), but it would be of small interest.
One of the first changes I noticed is that copper and tin ore are quicker to mine using the non-IC picks, and that you now need at least an iron pick to harvest the uranium ore. I also noticed in this map that, while I found lots of redstone in the lower levels, I found nearly no iron, and about minimun quantities of iron; coal, however, was nearly everywhere with in big veins.
Another thing I noticed (and I think it's a bug) is that the rubber trees grow insanely fast.
About my thoughts on the new ways the mod works, I'm happy to see the cabling is now more easy, setting solar plants is also more simple (no more need for the flowers!), and things look much more smooth. The only downside I found was that, coupled with Buildcraft's piping system, things work randomly regarding blocks inserted/extracted (no matter if you cannot put those items manually, with the pipes they will be put wherever there is free space).This means that a battery has to be put in the powering hole, and the item extraction might be something a little complicated. Hopefully this problem will be solved in the next release of Minecraft Forge, Buildcraft or Industrialcraft.
On monday I'll share with you all a new video about my Food Factory idea, with the new IC2 and BC2, so until then stay tuned and enjoy this small video about the new block of IC2 called "induction furnace" (it can take two blocks different or equal and process them quicker the longer it's burning).
Oh, and a good youtube channel with some videos about IC2 is this one, which has a lot of the new stuff showed up and explained. Enjoy!
viernes, 26 de agosto de 2011
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:
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!
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!
martes, 19 de julio de 2011
Farming 101: what and how much
So we are all impressed by the big an amazing farming contraptions out there that allow, with a simple click of a button or turn of a lever, to get a lot of wheat to make bread, or get tons of sugar cane, or an endless stream of cacti... Now I wonder: is it really necessary?
Let's take a look at all the resources that grow on Minecraft:
1. Mushrooms. Used to make stew, they expand by themselves, so you can make a self-harvesting machine with some pistons and water, which is quite the good part, and they heal a lot. The bad parts are that, first, you need two different mushroom types to make the stew, and that Mushrooms tolerate levels of light that are dangerous: sunlight is light level 15, but mushrooms will "die" (in the game, they will pop out, like a destroyed block) when the light surpasses level 7... which is the limit at which monsters spawn. Lastly, you need three wooden planks per mushroom stew to make the bowl (well, to make 4 bowls), which is not consumed (unless you use the canning machine from Industrialcraft). While I think this all balances the mushrooms in the good side, if you want to carry the raw materials you need to leave 4 spaces at least (crafting table, 2 mushrooms and the bowls), and they take a lot of time to expand, but you can make a safe automatic harvesting machine (I'll get to it on thursday, I promise).
2. Wheat. You need three to make bread, which heals for 2.5 hearts or so. Unlike the mushrooms, it requires light, at least a torch in the next 3-4 spaces (I usually put one every 2 blocks one block above the one with the wheat) when you make an underground farm. The good points are that you only need wheat to make the bread and that you only "sacrifice" two slots to carry the materials (that is, wheat and a crafting table). The bad points are that farming wheat requires water, a hoe, dirt, and manually replanting (unless you use some mods). This last point is what makes the big farms a little like a waste: you can set up a small "farm" you can manually harvest quickly, and you are setting up a smal farm you can replant quickly. I takes more time for me to harvest and plant a big auto-harvesting farm that to harvest and plant two small manual farms...
3. Cacti. While these are not edible, they can be farmed for different uses, among them for furnace use as burning material, or to be burned to get green dye (or the more extended "defense wall"). While cacti have no problem with diagonally-placed blocks, they will drop if a block is north, east, west or south of them, and won't grow if there is a block over them; not to mention you can plant cacti only on sand (which obeys gravity), making the cacti automated farms a little too big in the vertical axis. Their best point, however, is that once you have set up the farm, you only need to collect the items (and a well-placed obsidian pipe with some chests does a great job for that).
4. Flowers. Used for dye crafting (and in some mods for other recipes), this will expand like mushrooms over grass, and they would be better suited to be used in great farming projects thanks to that (and because they take much more time to expand to the same surface).
5. Sugar cane. The best suited for farming, you can use it to craft sugar (needed to make cake) or paper (needed to make maps and books; paper is needed also in some mods). You only need to set up water, with dirt adyacent to it, and plant the sugar cane on top of the dirt. Since you can harvest the second or third part of the plant without removing the base, pistons (and a wall to stop the dropped items from flying all across the world XD) can be used with a water current for quick farming. Also, with Eloraam's Integrated Redstone you can set up a clock to activate the pistons once every 5 minutes or so (300 seconds) and use an obsidian pipe to gather the materials after a water current has put them all in a block, making them fully automated (meaning that you will usually need small farms since they are harvesting all the time, unless you need a lot of paper/sugar). The only bad thing about sugar cane is that is hard to find unless you are lucky with the starting position.
6. Wood. The most important resource is also the only one you can't set up in an automated harvesting farm. The best you can do is to plant trees with two blocks between them and three blocks from any other high obstruction, and try to keep homogeneous farms (I have noticed that when two trees of different kind get their leaves mixed, they drop less saplings), aside from that there is nothing to do there.
I expect to provide you all with some videos and images from some examples on thursday for different farms and contraptions, so stay tuned!
Let's take a look at all the resources that grow on Minecraft:
1. Mushrooms. Used to make stew, they expand by themselves, so you can make a self-harvesting machine with some pistons and water, which is quite the good part, and they heal a lot. The bad parts are that, first, you need two different mushroom types to make the stew, and that Mushrooms tolerate levels of light that are dangerous: sunlight is light level 15, but mushrooms will "die" (in the game, they will pop out, like a destroyed block) when the light surpasses level 7... which is the limit at which monsters spawn. Lastly, you need three wooden planks per mushroom stew to make the bowl (well, to make 4 bowls), which is not consumed (unless you use the canning machine from Industrialcraft). While I think this all balances the mushrooms in the good side, if you want to carry the raw materials you need to leave 4 spaces at least (crafting table, 2 mushrooms and the bowls), and they take a lot of time to expand, but you can make a safe automatic harvesting machine (I'll get to it on thursday, I promise).
2. Wheat. You need three to make bread, which heals for 2.5 hearts or so. Unlike the mushrooms, it requires light, at least a torch in the next 3-4 spaces (I usually put one every 2 blocks one block above the one with the wheat) when you make an underground farm. The good points are that you only need wheat to make the bread and that you only "sacrifice" two slots to carry the materials (that is, wheat and a crafting table). The bad points are that farming wheat requires water, a hoe, dirt, and manually replanting (unless you use some mods). This last point is what makes the big farms a little like a waste: you can set up a small "farm" you can manually harvest quickly, and you are setting up a smal farm you can replant quickly. I takes more time for me to harvest and plant a big auto-harvesting farm that to harvest and plant two small manual farms...
3. Cacti. While these are not edible, they can be farmed for different uses, among them for furnace use as burning material, or to be burned to get green dye (or the more extended "defense wall"). While cacti have no problem with diagonally-placed blocks, they will drop if a block is north, east, west or south of them, and won't grow if there is a block over them; not to mention you can plant cacti only on sand (which obeys gravity), making the cacti automated farms a little too big in the vertical axis. Their best point, however, is that once you have set up the farm, you only need to collect the items (and a well-placed obsidian pipe with some chests does a great job for that).
4. Flowers. Used for dye crafting (and in some mods for other recipes), this will expand like mushrooms over grass, and they would be better suited to be used in great farming projects thanks to that (and because they take much more time to expand to the same surface).
5. Sugar cane. The best suited for farming, you can use it to craft sugar (needed to make cake) or paper (needed to make maps and books; paper is needed also in some mods). You only need to set up water, with dirt adyacent to it, and plant the sugar cane on top of the dirt. Since you can harvest the second or third part of the plant without removing the base, pistons (and a wall to stop the dropped items from flying all across the world XD) can be used with a water current for quick farming. Also, with Eloraam's Integrated Redstone you can set up a clock to activate the pistons once every 5 minutes or so (300 seconds) and use an obsidian pipe to gather the materials after a water current has put them all in a block, making them fully automated (meaning that you will usually need small farms since they are harvesting all the time, unless you need a lot of paper/sugar). The only bad thing about sugar cane is that is hard to find unless you are lucky with the starting position.
6. Wood. The most important resource is also the only one you can't set up in an automated harvesting farm. The best you can do is to plant trees with two blocks between them and three blocks from any other high obstruction, and try to keep homogeneous farms (I have noticed that when two trees of different kind get their leaves mixed, they drop less saplings), aside from that there is nothing to do there.
I expect to provide you all with some videos and images from some examples on thursday for different farms and contraptions, so stay tuned!
sábado, 9 de julio de 2011
Base 101: Underground base
So here we are, with the underground base finally. I took my time there because since I started a new world with the Mo's Creatures mod, I've been busy farming a lot (and for once I had a lot of luck finding diamonds, so I was able to make four quarrys now).Anyway, I just made a small underground base between layers 12 and 22 (aproximately) and decided to show it to you all.
I put three trees here, separated 3 blocks from all the walls and between each other (2 blocks of separation between the tress would have been enough, but then the leaves blocks tend to merge, and we will get less saplings after cutting the tree).
Finally I made a small recess of three high and one depth, then excavated a 2 high and one depth additional one, added a line of dirt , water, covered the water, added some torches, and used a hoe to plant some wheat, then added two chests, a crafting table and two furnaces (you can't see them in the photos, I'm afraid), plus a bed in case I want to sleep.
So there we are, a fully functional base underground. It only lacks animals, but the pain of taking dirt with grass all the way to the underground, with all the time it takes for animals to spawn once you are down there makes it for me something not to worth the effort.Ok, so now with the pros and cons of an underground base:
Pros:
Self-sufficient: it's the only base with ready access to all the material needs you might have in Minecraft, given enough work to make room for the trees. Mi advise would be to chop the trees every time you go back to the base, and replant, no matter your needs of wood.
Mining-oriented: extremely easy access to mining.
Stealthy: it's underground, so it's unlikely other players will find it in SMP (saving glitchs).
Cons:
Effort-intensive: unlike a surface base, you will have to clear room in all directions so the trees will grown up. Also, you need to provide light.
Stealthy: you might have trouble being able to reach your base back unless the path is marked... in which case the base turns into one more easy to find in SMP by other players.
No sun: again, you will need to provide lightning to your plants, and more importantly if you play using Industrialcraft, you won't have access to solar light unless you make a solar generator in the surface with HV cables taking the power down there... which again will make the house easy to spot in SMP.
In case you want to look into more detail this kind of base, Paulosoaresjr has two or three videos showing how to setup underground farms in his "how to survive and thrive" video list.
Have fun!
lunes, 4 de julio de 2011
New mod: Mo' Creatures
Well, I was planning on other entry in the blog, but the planned work got derailed because, first, I had literally no time to play on saturday or Friday, and second because my idea of using the Allocator to load a minecart with a chest didn't worked. And since none of the mods I use have been actualized to 1.7, I'm still playing on 1.6.6... Which leads to the next spotlight mod: Mo' Creatures.
First, this mod requires two other mods: the GUI API and Modloader with audiomod (remember if you are going to install this mod, to download 1.6.6 compatible versions of ModLoader, the API and Audiomod).
Second, Paulosoaresjr has a video on the mod in his channel.
So, what does Mo' Creatures add to Minecraft? More creatures. More than that, you can adjust the number of different creatures that will spawn of each type thanks to the API mod, and change the level of difficulty at which those creatures will spawn. Since I'm a kind of chicken, I set them all to show up on Easy difficulty XD.
While the mod is great and adds things like mounts, it also adds Ogres and Werewolves. Werewolves can only be killed permanently by using gold weapons (well, during daytime with a stone sword you can kill one in his human form if you are fast enough ^^). Ogres are... really dangerous. They are the first mob I've seen in Minecraft that can destroy blocks without inmolating himself (creeper!! XD), and thus far only obsidian and ores are safe materials to build houses (and if use Industrialcraft, they don't break reinforced stone, doors or glass). Also, Ogres are 3 blocks high, so consider making your grinders 4 or even 5 blocks high for them to spawn and die.
My quick and small advice about setting up defensive structures when playing with this mod would be to use water currents to protect your house (so the water will take the mobs away), use double or even triple block walls, or the most safe measure I can think of: make a floating base as soon as you can, but add more than one access to it so in case an ogre breaks one of the stairs you can still reach the base. And have more than a single safe spot, of course ^^.
The next update will be, if all goes ok, on thursday, unless a couple of my mods get actualized and I can start exploring them in 1.7.
Also, regarding Industrialcraft, his creator has said that he will update the mod to 1.7 and add some new stuff too.
Have fun!
First, this mod requires two other mods: the GUI API and Modloader with audiomod (remember if you are going to install this mod, to download 1.6.6 compatible versions of ModLoader, the API and Audiomod).
Second, Paulosoaresjr has a video on the mod in his channel.
So, what does Mo' Creatures add to Minecraft? More creatures. More than that, you can adjust the number of different creatures that will spawn of each type thanks to the API mod, and change the level of difficulty at which those creatures will spawn. Since I'm a kind of chicken, I set them all to show up on Easy difficulty XD.
While the mod is great and adds things like mounts, it also adds Ogres and Werewolves. Werewolves can only be killed permanently by using gold weapons (well, during daytime with a stone sword you can kill one in his human form if you are fast enough ^^). Ogres are... really dangerous. They are the first mob I've seen in Minecraft that can destroy blocks without inmolating himself (creeper!! XD), and thus far only obsidian and ores are safe materials to build houses (and if use Industrialcraft, they don't break reinforced stone, doors or glass). Also, Ogres are 3 blocks high, so consider making your grinders 4 or even 5 blocks high for them to spawn and die.
My quick and small advice about setting up defensive structures when playing with this mod would be to use water currents to protect your house (so the water will take the mobs away), use double or even triple block walls, or the most safe measure I can think of: make a floating base as soon as you can, but add more than one access to it so in case an ogre breaks one of the stairs you can still reach the base. And have more than a single safe spot, of course ^^.
The next update will be, if all goes ok, on thursday, unless a couple of my mods get actualized and I can start exploring them in 1.7.
Also, regarding Industrialcraft, his creator has said that he will update the mod to 1.7 and add some new stuff too.
Have fun!
martes, 28 de junio de 2011
Ground level bases: defenses
I made some snapshots and two videos about how to protect your base from hostile mobs.
First, the videos (I use brick blocks because the map is a stone-based flat map, to avoid passive mobs spawning):
Murder holes:
I got this concept from Paulosoaresjr, you can see the link to his channel to the left. To build a murder holes protected base, the inside must be 1 block lower than the outside, and the rest is to leave an uncovered hole. If you were to leave a hole one block up instead (and not making the inside 1 block lower than the outside) you would be vulnerable to skeleton's arrows.
Spider's bane:
This one I found by experience: a spider can't attack to something under itself, and it has a 2x2 blocks base (and 1 up), so this shows what to do before getting out of your house in the morning: check the roof for spiders ^^.
Now, some more defenses against stuff... like a lava pit (with a piston middle jump point), a cacti perimeter and what I call "the house's hat", something that, believe it or not, prevents spiders to get to the top of the house:
Lava Pit:
Cacti perimeter:
"House Hat" (be advised that undeads might find protection from sunlight under its shadow, so it works best with the murder holes):
First, the videos (I use brick blocks because the map is a stone-based flat map, to avoid passive mobs spawning):
Murder holes:
I got this concept from Paulosoaresjr, you can see the link to his channel to the left. To build a murder holes protected base, the inside must be 1 block lower than the outside, and the rest is to leave an uncovered hole. If you were to leave a hole one block up instead (and not making the inside 1 block lower than the outside) you would be vulnerable to skeleton's arrows.
Spider's bane:
This one I found by experience: a spider can't attack to something under itself, and it has a 2x2 blocks base (and 1 up), so this shows what to do before getting out of your house in the morning: check the roof for spiders ^^.
Now, some more defenses against stuff... like a lava pit (with a piston middle jump point), a cacti perimeter and what I call "the house's hat", something that, believe it or not, prevents spiders to get to the top of the house:
Lava Pit:
Cacti perimeter:
"House Hat" (be advised that undeads might find protection from sunlight under its shadow, so it works best with the murder holes):
domingo, 26 de junio de 2011
Base 101: the ground level base
Ok, lets look at the most basic kind of base of all: the ground level one, a simple design with the floor at (more or less) the same level as the ground around it, and the roof 4-5 levels above.
Pros: it's quick and easy to make, you can expand it with ease (just take down a wall, and that's it, or add higher walls in the roof, then another roof) and allows equal access to all blocks in the game. Also, it's not so much of a tragedy if you can't find your way back (unless you use it for storage too...)
Cons: you might need something to mark where is it to be able to find it again, you will need to expand this base quickly if you don't throw away some items, and you can only expand it safely by daytime.
As an example, this is a screenshot of my base in one of the worlds I play at. It's two stories high, plus the "growing tower" with glass ceiling and a lava signal. The lava pit was a late adittion (I hit bedrock and several lava deposits before any diamond, so I decided to get rid of my spider problem), but initially it was about 1/4 smaller (one story high, and half the lenght). Funny thing is, when I ended adding the tower (a process that I made one level at a time), some monsters started spawning in the higher rooms while I was away, so I had to put more torches.
Also as you can see the base walls are 2 blocks thick, because of the creepers (that was before the pit). The access, by the way, is by a piston raising in the middle of the pit.
Later on, I added torches at ground level to be able to see mobs at night, but since the house has an access to my mining operation, I mine during nighttime. As for the solar panels, those are a small arrangement I made while expanding the base, and are part of the Industrialcraft mod.
Speaking of diamonds, I can't believe how much it takes to find them at the beginning! It took me about 6 hours of real time before I found my first diamond in that map, and in the map I'm currently playing it took me about the same... and then when I got inside a deep cavern, and wandered around like mad, I ended with 11 in less than half an hour. Luck... XD
Pros: it's quick and easy to make, you can expand it with ease (just take down a wall, and that's it, or add higher walls in the roof, then another roof) and allows equal access to all blocks in the game. Also, it's not so much of a tragedy if you can't find your way back (unless you use it for storage too...)
Cons: you might need something to mark where is it to be able to find it again, you will need to expand this base quickly if you don't throw away some items, and you can only expand it safely by daytime.
As an example, this is a screenshot of my base in one of the worlds I play at. It's two stories high, plus the "growing tower" with glass ceiling and a lava signal. The lava pit was a late adittion (I hit bedrock and several lava deposits before any diamond, so I decided to get rid of my spider problem), but initially it was about 1/4 smaller (one story high, and half the lenght). Funny thing is, when I ended adding the tower (a process that I made one level at a time), some monsters started spawning in the higher rooms while I was away, so I had to put more torches.
Also as you can see the base walls are 2 blocks thick, because of the creepers (that was before the pit). The access, by the way, is by a piston raising in the middle of the pit.
Later on, I added torches at ground level to be able to see mobs at night, but since the house has an access to my mining operation, I mine during nighttime. As for the solar panels, those are a small arrangement I made while expanding the base, and are part of the Industrialcraft mod.
Speaking of diamonds, I can't believe how much it takes to find them at the beginning! It took me about 6 hours of real time before I found my first diamond in that map, and in the map I'm currently playing it took me about the same... and then when I got inside a deep cavern, and wandered around like mad, I ended with 11 in less than half an hour. Luck... XD
martes, 21 de junio de 2011
Mod's review: Industrialcraft
First of all, apologies for the wall of text from the previous entry. Second, apologies again: Industrialcraft cannot be described in detail in a single blog entry (not to mention, Alblaka, the mod's author, already has a blog, and a wiki). So I will just give a fast course about the critical points of the mod, starting with Alblaka's words: Industrialcraft is a second tier mod, meaning you won't get to see all the goodies in a fresh map without a lot of time and effort.
The other three new resources in the mod are Tin, Copper and Uranium. The first two have independent uses or can be merged into bronze (which will act as Iron, only with more durability in armor, sword and tools, but can be used to craft rails, for example. This is great because Iron will be used for a lot of other stuff), and each uranium ore can be refined in a nuclear reactor (keep those surrounded by water or they will explode) into four uranium bars, and you can use those to craft bigger explosives or provide energy.
More than a hundred new items. See the wiki for a detailed description (my only complain here is the absence of a complete recipe guide like the one in the Minecraft Wiki, you will have to look a lot of pages), but the most important are the chainsaw (use it to never need an axe again, it runs on energy), the drill (same as the chainsaw, making obsolete the shovel and the pick, and can be upgraded with three diamonds to make a diamond drill), and an endless string of upgrades for the base, to an extent that you will, most likely, either move to a new location after some time to mount a real base, of demolish entirely your old one to make it again with new mats.
While I think the mod is extremely great, it can also be extremely frustrating, also because the recipe to make artificial diamods requires obsidian... which requires diamonds to get in the inventory. When I tested the mod for the first time, well, I spent about five hours and never found any diamond. I ended crafting them from "universal matter", a new item you can make with a lot of time and energy (but fortunately it can be done with stuff you can mine with an iron pick). I'll give it an 8/10, and tell you that there is a SMP server with both IC and BC implemented, called Industrial Rage.
The only improvement I would ask for right away would be an automated wood harvesting method, since you will end going out of your mine a lot just to gather wood to be able to keep mining and building stuff. There was a mod that included it, but sadly it has fallen behind, being made for the 1.5 version of Minecraft.
- New resources:
The other three new resources in the mod are Tin, Copper and Uranium. The first two have independent uses or can be merged into bronze (which will act as Iron, only with more durability in armor, sword and tools, but can be used to craft rails, for example. This is great because Iron will be used for a lot of other stuff), and each uranium ore can be refined in a nuclear reactor (keep those surrounded by water or they will explode) into four uranium bars, and you can use those to craft bigger explosives or provide energy.
- New items:
More than a hundred new items. See the wiki for a detailed description (my only complain here is the absence of a complete recipe guide like the one in the Minecraft Wiki, you will have to look a lot of pages), but the most important are the chainsaw (use it to never need an axe again, it runs on energy), the drill (same as the chainsaw, making obsolete the shovel and the pick, and can be upgraded with three diamonds to make a diamond drill), and an endless string of upgrades for the base, to an extent that you will, most likely, either move to a new location after some time to mount a real base, of demolish entirely your old one to make it again with new mats.
- Buildcraft integration:
While I think the mod is extremely great, it can also be extremely frustrating, also because the recipe to make artificial diamods requires obsidian... which requires diamonds to get in the inventory. When I tested the mod for the first time, well, I spent about five hours and never found any diamond. I ended crafting them from "universal matter", a new item you can make with a lot of time and energy (but fortunately it can be done with stuff you can mine with an iron pick). I'll give it an 8/10, and tell you that there is a SMP server with both IC and BC implemented, called Industrial Rage.
The only improvement I would ask for right away would be an automated wood harvesting method, since you will end going out of your mine a lot just to gather wood to be able to keep mining and building stuff. There was a mod that included it, but sadly it has fallen behind, being made for the 1.5 version of Minecraft.
sábado, 18 de junio de 2011
Mod's review: Buildcraft
Short version: superb mod. Get it here (also there are some videos, and the building recipes). The autor's nick is Spacetoad.
Now with the more elaborated version:
This mod can be broken into three different parts: pipes, machines and markers.
Markers are just that: placeholders that are used to select an area. The area can be a line (using two markers), a surface (using three) or a block (using three). The markers must be aligned in the same line with another, and their range is about 63 blocks (you can test this by making a line, and feeding the filler with two stacks of anything for rapid counting). They have an extra functionality very interesting for unrelated reasons: by placing a redstone torch near a marker, the marker will emit a blue line (that can go through solid blocks and liquids) to the max range of the block, in the six possible directions. I've used this to make a grid so I didn't had to count blocks to place trees, but there are more possibilities.
Pipes are, again, just that: tubes. They go from a machine or chest to anywhere you want, and are best used with the included machines in the mod. You can see what items go through them, also. There are several types of pipes:
Wood: when receives redstone current it takes one item from the attached block (usually a chest, forge or automated crafting table) into the pipe system. Using a clock seems to not be necessary, but it also seems to bug after 10 minutes of use in SMP, so I'll stick to clock using. They are brown-colored.
Stone: the battle horse, they are just black-colored pipes.
Steel: this steel-colored pipe acts as blocking pipe, allowing all the stuff going through it to exit only in one direction (so you will use it when two or more pipes join into a main lane). You can change the exiting pipe by right-clicking on the steel pipe, which also reacts to redstone current.
Gold: this yellow pipe works like powered rails, but it doesn't break any block inside it.
Diamond: light blue, with up to six colors added to parts of it, it's a sorting pipe. After right clicking on this pipe, you will see a window quite similar to the one used by large chests, but with color rows. You place an example in a row, and all the blocks of that type will exit the diamod pipe through that exit (or, if there is an exit without any example, the blocks which don't match the other filters will go through there). I found the only non-wasteful filter here is making cobblestone go into one exit, dirt, sand, sandstone and gravel into another, and everything else in a third one when using a quarry.
Obsidian: this purple pipe will suck any item dropped in front of it. However, the item needs to be in the same block, but you can add redstone current to enlarge the range to one extra block. Very useful if you don't want to be in the collection spot of a farming machine.
Redstone: this pipe has been added by Eloraam (the author of the Integrated Redstone mod), and it's a pipe that emits redstone current anytime a block goes through it. It can be found in here.
Machines: The Automated Quarry, the Automated Miner, the Automated Crafting Table and the Filler are the four machines in the mod.
automated Quarry: It's a machine that makes a hole in the ground every time it takes a right click or a redstone tick (so a clock is needed to leave it in automatic). The mined items go out from its upper side, and using a pipe system is very advisable since the machine will make a big hole all the way to the bedrock (or a lava lake, which is good if you have a water source falling into the bottom when it comes to harvesting obsidian). You can use three markers to select an area and thus deciding the size of the quarry, or you can let it be its default size. The olny downsides to the machine is that you require 11 diamods and 8 gold bars (plus 20 iron bars, 20 cobblestone and 22 wood sticks), which can be difficult. However, the machine can be picked after it has finished and positioned somewhere else.
Automated Miner: anytime you right click or apply a redstone click, this machine will dig a block downwards, leaving a placeholder pipe you can't retrieve but can easily break by hand (easier than leaves, I think). Like the Quarry, you can retrieve the machine after it has reached the desired depth (or bedrock), expels the mined block by its upper side, and can put what mines directly into a chest by its side (much more practical than doing that with the Quarry, since there won't be more than one stack of each block in the game). Since I have Industrialcraft (with a much more interesting mining machine), I only use this one to make infinite cobblestone machines that automatically output 2 cobblestone blocks to large chests (by placing 3-4 large chests, I can be sure it will take 23+ hours of continous gameplay before the chests get full).
Filler: the king of the realm, this machine will fill any area delimited by the markers (line, surface, volume...), but won't substitute any present material. Remember, it fills, so if you want to make a big house or a castle's walls, you need to make several vertical/horizontal surfaces, or you will get a big cube you will have to manually empty. And a 60x60x60 cube is 216.000 blocks, or 3.375 stacks!!! Also, since its top speed seems to be 1 block/second, you would need 60 hours of continuous gameplay (two days and a half) just to fill that.
Automated Crafting Table: this one, while very interesting, is (in my opinion) the least useful part of the mod. You put a recipe inside it the same way you would be using a regular crafting table, then exit (the machine won't spit the contents), and everytime you feed the table with the components you put in the master recipe, the table will craft it after receiving a right-click or a redstone click. So you would usually make a chain of 1 chest/large chest per used input, one wooden pipe per chest to get the items out, several stone pipes to get the stuff to the crafting table (plus a single steel pipe to ensure the items won't go through the wrong pipe), another wood pipe exiting from the table, and a chest/large chest to store the finished product.
While awesome, I think this is not really a practical machine, because... What crafted thing in Minecraft you need in enourmous quantities? Torches, sure, and steel pickaxes (or diamond ones), but it's better to carry 32 wood logs and 64 charcoal, using 2 slots to make 4 stacks of torches, for example.
Also, there is a problem in the table: you need to be able to stack the items for the Automated Crafting Table to work its magic, so forget about anything that uses buckets, and remember there are 3 different logs of wood, so you can't put several stacks of each one in a single chest and then feed it to a single table, it will only make wood planks from a single stack (and leave the other logs in the floor near the table).
I personally give the mod an 8/10, and commend the effort of the modder by making the latest version a SMP one.
I also think it would be awesome to be able to feed the filler with some predefined building plan, made from a .schematic file (and that would tell you how many blocks it would need of each material, both in single blocks and stacks), and let the machine run the job, also using the markers to define the area of the .schematic file to be made.
Now with the more elaborated version:
- Components:
This mod can be broken into three different parts: pipes, machines and markers.
Markers are just that: placeholders that are used to select an area. The area can be a line (using two markers), a surface (using three) or a block (using three). The markers must be aligned in the same line with another, and their range is about 63 blocks (you can test this by making a line, and feeding the filler with two stacks of anything for rapid counting). They have an extra functionality very interesting for unrelated reasons: by placing a redstone torch near a marker, the marker will emit a blue line (that can go through solid blocks and liquids) to the max range of the block, in the six possible directions. I've used this to make a grid so I didn't had to count blocks to place trees, but there are more possibilities.
Pipes are, again, just that: tubes. They go from a machine or chest to anywhere you want, and are best used with the included machines in the mod. You can see what items go through them, also. There are several types of pipes:
Wood: when receives redstone current it takes one item from the attached block (usually a chest, forge or automated crafting table) into the pipe system. Using a clock seems to not be necessary, but it also seems to bug after 10 minutes of use in SMP, so I'll stick to clock using. They are brown-colored.
Stone: the battle horse, they are just black-colored pipes.
Steel: this steel-colored pipe acts as blocking pipe, allowing all the stuff going through it to exit only in one direction (so you will use it when two or more pipes join into a main lane). You can change the exiting pipe by right-clicking on the steel pipe, which also reacts to redstone current.
Gold: this yellow pipe works like powered rails, but it doesn't break any block inside it.
Diamond: light blue, with up to six colors added to parts of it, it's a sorting pipe. After right clicking on this pipe, you will see a window quite similar to the one used by large chests, but with color rows. You place an example in a row, and all the blocks of that type will exit the diamod pipe through that exit (or, if there is an exit without any example, the blocks which don't match the other filters will go through there). I found the only non-wasteful filter here is making cobblestone go into one exit, dirt, sand, sandstone and gravel into another, and everything else in a third one when using a quarry.
Obsidian: this purple pipe will suck any item dropped in front of it. However, the item needs to be in the same block, but you can add redstone current to enlarge the range to one extra block. Very useful if you don't want to be in the collection spot of a farming machine.
Redstone: this pipe has been added by Eloraam (the author of the Integrated Redstone mod), and it's a pipe that emits redstone current anytime a block goes through it. It can be found in here.
Machines: The Automated Quarry, the Automated Miner, the Automated Crafting Table and the Filler are the four machines in the mod.
automated Quarry: It's a machine that makes a hole in the ground every time it takes a right click or a redstone tick (so a clock is needed to leave it in automatic). The mined items go out from its upper side, and using a pipe system is very advisable since the machine will make a big hole all the way to the bedrock (or a lava lake, which is good if you have a water source falling into the bottom when it comes to harvesting obsidian). You can use three markers to select an area and thus deciding the size of the quarry, or you can let it be its default size. The olny downsides to the machine is that you require 11 diamods and 8 gold bars (plus 20 iron bars, 20 cobblestone and 22 wood sticks), which can be difficult. However, the machine can be picked after it has finished and positioned somewhere else.
Automated Miner: anytime you right click or apply a redstone click, this machine will dig a block downwards, leaving a placeholder pipe you can't retrieve but can easily break by hand (easier than leaves, I think). Like the Quarry, you can retrieve the machine after it has reached the desired depth (or bedrock), expels the mined block by its upper side, and can put what mines directly into a chest by its side (much more practical than doing that with the Quarry, since there won't be more than one stack of each block in the game). Since I have Industrialcraft (with a much more interesting mining machine), I only use this one to make infinite cobblestone machines that automatically output 2 cobblestone blocks to large chests (by placing 3-4 large chests, I can be sure it will take 23+ hours of continous gameplay before the chests get full).
Filler: the king of the realm, this machine will fill any area delimited by the markers (line, surface, volume...), but won't substitute any present material. Remember, it fills, so if you want to make a big house or a castle's walls, you need to make several vertical/horizontal surfaces, or you will get a big cube you will have to manually empty. And a 60x60x60 cube is 216.000 blocks, or 3.375 stacks!!! Also, since its top speed seems to be 1 block/second, you would need 60 hours of continuous gameplay (two days and a half) just to fill that.
Automated Crafting Table: this one, while very interesting, is (in my opinion) the least useful part of the mod. You put a recipe inside it the same way you would be using a regular crafting table, then exit (the machine won't spit the contents), and everytime you feed the table with the components you put in the master recipe, the table will craft it after receiving a right-click or a redstone click. So you would usually make a chain of 1 chest/large chest per used input, one wooden pipe per chest to get the items out, several stone pipes to get the stuff to the crafting table (plus a single steel pipe to ensure the items won't go through the wrong pipe), another wood pipe exiting from the table, and a chest/large chest to store the finished product.
While awesome, I think this is not really a practical machine, because... What crafted thing in Minecraft you need in enourmous quantities? Torches, sure, and steel pickaxes (or diamond ones), but it's better to carry 32 wood logs and 64 charcoal, using 2 slots to make 4 stacks of torches, for example.
Also, there is a problem in the table: you need to be able to stack the items for the Automated Crafting Table to work its magic, so forget about anything that uses buckets, and remember there are 3 different logs of wood, so you can't put several stacks of each one in a single chest and then feed it to a single table, it will only make wood planks from a single stack (and leave the other logs in the floor near the table).
I personally give the mod an 8/10, and commend the effort of the modder by making the latest version a SMP one.
I also think it would be awesome to be able to feed the filler with some predefined building plan, made from a .schematic file (and that would tell you how many blocks it would need of each material, both in single blocks and stacks), and let the machine run the job, also using the markers to define the area of the .schematic file to be made.
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