Buildcraft Changes of Note

[Vauthil]

Hi folks!

As Buildcraft 3.2 has been in a "pre-release" state through the lifespan of 1.3.2 and up to the current version, there haven't really been any changelogs provided, even though a number of changes have occurred since the 1.2.5 implementation (those guys have been hard at work!). Since I find myself running around being repetitive about some of these, I figured I'd try and put together a list for folks who may just be dabbling in the latest straight from playing in 1.2.5.

The most prominent change, of course, is that Buildcraft 3 is now officially working on SMP, rather than only working with an unofficial port. This means server users of Buildcraft get fun toys like the Assembly Table and Logic Gates. I won't go into these changes as they've been around long enough that there are plenty of materials online about them. A great deal of codework has gone into refactoring and optimizing Buildcraft in general for server play as a result.

Here are some other things that have changed:

• Steam Engines have been renamed and are now called Stirling Engines, for those looking them up in NEI and getting confused. Recipe and functionality remain the same.
• Facades have been added. Rather than being microblocks like the RedPower covers, facades only attach to pipes in order to conceal them. Facades are created in the Assembly Tables with a combination of the source block and Cobblestone Structure Pipe.
• Hoppers have been added. Hoppers are a four-slot inventory block you can place on top of machines/inventories that will automatically and gradually supply the machine/inventory with the contents of the hopper. Hoppers can be stacked to feed into one another as well, increasing the capacity of the chain.
• Sandstone Pipes and Void Pipes are now standard in BuildCraft, rather than requiring an additional add-on. For those unfamiliar with them, Sandstone Pipes are Transport Pipes that will only connect to other pipes and will not connect with machines/inventories, allowed for some more compact pipe-running. Void Pipes will delete any items that enter them, allowing for better automation of item disposal (versus, for example, dropping said items into lava).
• Transport Pipe mechanics have been updated; they will now attempt other valid connected routes if a route has become invalid, rather than merely popping out of the pipe and on to the ground (one could call this "semi-Insertion Pipe behavior", for those familiar with the modded Insertion Pipe). This allows for some interesting behavior (see: jadedcat's Factorization barrel sorting system).
• Golden Transport Pipes now default to "on" behavior and shut off when a redstone signal is applied.
• Redstone Engines will no longer provide power via wooden conductive pipes, i.e. they can no longer power anything they aren't directly facing. Say goodbye to those oddball Let's-power-a-quarry-with-a-bunch-of-redstone-engine systems, among other things.
• Combustion Engine fuel-to-power has been given a boost for the non-renewable fuels: Oil has been upgraded from 2 to 3 MJ/t, and Fuel has gone from 5 to 6 MJ/t.
• Quarries now have built-in chunkloading, and will report the coordinate data and number of chunks loaded when placed in the world. No more strategic placement of World Anchors and other chunk loaders required!
• Another Quarry change: the orange construction frame will now decay (like tree leaves) when the quarry is removed.
• The Advanced Crafting Table has been added. This is a crafting table with a chest-sized inventory that autocrafts products using the same laser power system as the Assembly Table (note: is a relatively recent addition, perhaps more likely to change in the future).
• Mining Wells no longer leave behind Mining Pipes.

And that's what I have off the top of my head. Major hats off to Sengir, Krapht, CovertJaguar, cpw, and all the others who are contributing to BuildCraft. Can't wait to see the official list and what I may have missed. If anybody else has any additions to this list, please do reply so other folks can see some of the changes. =)

 

[nicktonton]

Not trying to insult anyone, but was daisy chaining redstone engines a thing?

 

[enoch]

Not trying to insult anyone, but was daisy chaining redstone engines a thing?

I never did that. Only thing I used redstone engines was for powering pump and and pumping pipes. I'd usually go straight to combustion engines after looking for some oil for my energy sources.

BTW, thanks for the unofficial changelog. I've always wondered what had changed in the latest version.

 

[Vauthil]

Not trying to insult anyone, but was daisy chaining redstone engines a thing?

Look up "Redstone Engine Quarry" on youtube. It's a rather gimmicky thing, but yes, it was being done. =)

BTW, thanks for the unofficial changelog. I've always wondered what had changed in the latest version.

You're quite welcome. I'm sure I'm missing a few things, and with all the work being done since the last official BuildCraft release the guys certainly have their work cut out for them for an official changelog, but since folks will be playing the Buildcraft pre-release live in even greater numbers come tomorrow I figured it might be handy for reference in the interim.

 

[nicktonton]

I could just Google the answer, but in the spirit of forum conversation, wouldn't a redstone engine powered quarry also double as a great lag machine?

 

[Vauthil]

Exactly, which is probably why the capability was removed with such enthusiasm. =)

 

[Vauthil]

For those that didn't see slowpoke's stream yesterday (recorded version can be found at http://www.twitch.tv/slowpoke101/b/338986254 but no guarantees it'll behave for you), it's looking like quarries will now gainfully accept more power, going at ludicruous speed with enough power now. Also, passively overfilling conductive pipes with unused energy will risk explosions. (Code jockeys: see https://github.com/SirSengir/BuildCraft/commit/cbc621550ddecf7eac74eb0073512ef15c8c54a6 for cpw's extensive code commit on these changes).

Also, sharp-eared listeners could hear at the beginning of the stream some musings regarding a vanilla Buildcraft implementation of infinite water (considering what pumps do with in-world infinite water sources even with a chunk loader installed if a player isn't around, i.e. they suddenly don't work as well and your lovely combustion engine battery goes up in smoke). Will be interesting to see what ends up coming of that. =)

 

[Andrew2448]

For those that didn't see slowpoke's stream yesterday (recorded version can be found at http://www.twitch.tv/slowpoke101/b/338986254 but no guarantees it'll behave for you), it's looking like quarries will now gainfully accept more power, going at ludicruous speed with enough power now. Also, passively overfilling conductive pipes with unused energy will risk explosions. (Code jockeys: see https://github.com/SirSengir/BuildCraft/commit/cbc621550ddecf7eac74eb0073512ef15c8c54a6 for cpw's extensive code commit on these changes).

Also, sharp-eared listeners could hear at the beginning of the stream some musings regarding a vanilla Buildcraft implementation of infinite water (considering what pumps do with in-world infinite water sources even with a chunk loader installed if a player isn't around, i.e. they suddenly don't work as well and your lovely combustion engine battery goes up in smoke). Will be interesting to see what ends up coming of that. =)

I was present during said stream and beforehand in the TS room, and both assumptions are correct. The new quarries accept up to around 50MJ/t (I believe thats the number) now and go incredibly fast. As for the water, he wants to make it so that if you have a pump above a water source block, it pumps out infinite water without actually pumping, therefore removing the problems with water sources drying up when they shouldn't.

 

[RivingtonDown]

Has anyone heard anything about Copper Logic Gates? Basically a regular Gate but with the ability to send a Red Pipe Wire signal (instead of having to build Iron AND Gates)

I think it was CPW who was talking about it a while ago on one of Direwolf20's let's play... which, in reality, was probably recorded a couple weeks ago. He seemed to just be brainstorming, and questioning how he would implement it if someone didn't have IC, Forestry, or some other mod that added copper to the world gen. I've been checking the commits to see if anyone implemented that yet, since it would be awesome, but it seems to have never been added unfortunately.

 

[Vauthil]

I was present during said stream and beforehand in the TS room, and both assumptions are correct. The new quarries accept up to around 50MJ/t (I believe thats the number) now and go incredibly fast. As for the water, he wants to make it so that if you have a pump above a water source block, it pumps out infinite water without actually pumping, therefore removing the problems with water sources drying up when they shouldn't.

Yeah. I tend to avoid taking the tone definitely expect this to be like this! until I've seen it in action, so since I came in late I hedged it a bit in my post. I blame being a former project manager for server software that often didn't end up working as the engineers told me it would. =)

Has anyone heard anything about Copper Logic Gates? Basically a regular Gate but with the ability to send a Red Pipe Wire signal (instead of having to build Iron AND Gates)

I think it was CPW who was talking about it a while ago on one of Direwolf20's let's play... which, in reality, was probably recorded a couple weeks ago. He seemed to just be brainstorming, and questioning how he would implement it if someone didn't have IC, Forestry, or some other mod that added copper to the world gen. I've been checking the commits to see if anyone implemented that yet, since it would be awesome, but it seems to have never been added unfortunately.

Haven't heard anything about it myself since listening to the same broadcast you referenced.

Inside development baseball note of the day: as was also hinted at in-broadcast, it looks like cpw's moved the liquid API out of Buildcraft and transitioned liquid API to forge in general. 99% of you probably won't care too much about this, but as I'm working on something involving liquid API this is awesome news to me at least. =)

 

[Omicron]

I really like the Quarry changes, especially the ability to "throw more power at the problem". Might save some time if your pipe system can handle the ginormous item throughput

Much less enthusiastic about the proposed pump changes though. One of the things I have planned for the future is playing in a strict finite resource world, with no "free" power generation and such (I like that kind of challenge). GregTech offers you an option to drop a tiny little file into the .jar that makes water non-renewable, much like lava. You'd have to rely on things like Railcraft's water tanks to provide water without drying up every puddle around you. If the pumps are changed to not actually consume source blocks anymore, though, then that idea won't work anymore

 

[NosajDraw]

Another Quarry change: the orange construction frame will now decay (like tree leaves) when the quarry is removed.

ALso, the quarry frame no longer auto repairs if damaaged, but the quarry works regardless, and any sections of the frame that become sperated from the main part of the frame will decay like leaves.

Basically its now possible to have a quarry with virtually no frame at all.

Oh and if a second quarry places its frame inside (or particailly inside) the frame of an existing quarry, anywhere where the frames touch will decay when one of the quarries is removed.

 

[Vauthil]

Hm, I'll have to check on the "does not regenerate" bit; I was having pieces of the quarry frame return on an active quarry when I broke them if I unloaded the chunk and returned, but that was also when I was first clumping this all together on my server two months ago and a fair bit of changes to quarry code and the like have happened since then.

 

[Vauthil]

Confirmed on the "does not regenerate" thing for the quarry frame. Rather handy for a view inside the quarry when you don't feel like building up a platform on top.

Also to confirm from NosajDraw's post, I had two sets of quarry frames meet up; the quarryless ones continued to decay no problem even where they connected with the running frames.

 

[TnTBlockMan]

Another interesting change to BuildCraft Quarry, is that it now has the ability to pick up loose items on the floor. So things like mob drops (Arrows,bones,zombie flesh, and such...), seeds, and saplings, I'm guessing that if the quarry comes across chests it to would also collect the contents as they drop on the floor.

Edit: Just did a quick test on whether quarry will collect dropped items from chests, and I'd say its a 50/50 chance that the quarry drill will collect the items. It looks like items that drop in front of the drill will be collected, but items dropped behind the quarry drill will not.

 

[Vauthil]

Yep, it'll even crack open beehives and pick up the bees. Also handy for when somebody kamikaze jumps down the mineshaft and needs their stuff retrieved. =)

 

[sciguyryan]

Another interesting change to BuildCraft Quarry, is that it now has the ability to pick up loose items on the floor. So things like mob drops (Arrows,bones,zombie flesh, and such...), seeds, and saplings, I'm guessing that if the quarry comes across chests it to would also collect the contents as they drop on the floor.

That's quite a nice change. That will probably let it pick up xycraft crystals and whatnot when they are added to world gen.

 

[enoch]

Another interesting change to BuildCraft Quarry, is that it now has the ability to pick up loose items on the floor. So things like mob drops (Arrows,bones,zombie flesh, and such...), seeds, and saplings, I'm guessing that if the quarry comes across chests it to would also collect the contents as they drop on the floor.

Edit: Just did a quick test on whether quarry will collect dropped items from chests, and I'd say its a 50/50 chance that the quarry drill will collect the items. It looks like items that drop in front of the drill will be collected, but items dropped behind the quarry drill will not.

Ahh, good to hear. In my older playtime with Buildcraft, I was bummed that chest loot was lot if it came across a dungeon or abandoned mine.

 

[jessassin]

Thanks for this A Some of these changes I was completely unaware of! Good to hear redstone engines can't be used as a power source, and I am sooo happy that gold pipes default to on!

 

[Omicron]

Okay, so I am just testing out the Pipe stuff in the current FTB build, and it's not working. Items spill out right away, without trying other paths.

Are you sure that change is in the current build? <_<