Mod Feedback ChromatiCraft questions and suggestions

[Reika]

- The cooldown on clicking buttons. It's especially annoying in the 2D layouts of multiblock structures in general, and the Lumen Tree in particular, because it's hard to tell how many identical layers of crystalline stone you clicked through when there's no indication that a click was skipped because it was too soon after you clicked the last time. Also, paging through the recipes just seems to take forever. Much longer than in the RoC/ReC books.

The cooldown is there because MC guis are stupid and sometimes process one click as two. Also stupidly, it is tied to the framerate, meaning as it drops, the cooldown real-time increases. I may be able to fix this.

- Whenever you click on something in the lexicon, the cursor jumps to some random place on the screen. Granted, it was usually closer to where I was going to click next than where the cursor was before, but that may only be because the three pages that I only ever put into the book at a time usually only appeared at the bottom of the interface.

Cannot reproduce. I see persistent cursor locations.

- Also, I don't see the point in the two tabs. There's rarely more than one page of information in the first tab, so why not just move the crafting recipes and rune placements and such to the second, third, and fourth pages?

That would mean more clicking.

- The lumen tree is hardly explained at all. There's a recipe for the "controller" blocks, and there's a layout of the multiblock structure, and there's a thing that says something bad/good/weird might happen if you break the leaves, but nowhere does it say what the tree actually does, or how to use it. I set one up away from my other ChromatiCraft stuff and clicked all over it with the wand thing wondering what I was doing wrong.

The lumen tree page only tells you how to build the structure. Refer to the luminescent battery page for the function of the actual block.

Also, the thing where your maximum charge triples or quadruples when you max out all sixteen colors, while a cool mechanic, is maddening. It makes it impossible to be fully charged, which really bugs my OCD. The first time, flying around to the different pylons (the compass thing helped a lot) was kind of fun, then when I realized I had to do it again, I set up teleporters to all the different pylons; by the time I finished going through it the third time and found that there STILL wasn't an upper limit, I gave up because it felt too grindy. I just want to have all sixteen colors maxed out.
I guess this isn't a very big problem, but a ritual that would increase your max capacity that only works if all sixteen colors are already at the current maximum level would fix it nicely. Doesn't have to be much, just as long as it doesn't happen the moment I thought I was finished.

This is not going to change.

Now on to less gripey suggestions:
Some way to tell what blocks each repeater is actually connected to would be nice. If the repeaters just shot a particle at all the other blocks they're connected to (i.e. all pylons, casting tables, and (most importantly) repeaters of the same color within range) when you place them on top of a rune, that would do quite nicely.

This is not how the network works. Connection tests are only done on request.

It only needs to happen once- if I know that any given repeater was connected to the next repeater when I placed it, I can assume that it'll stay that way. If it turns out to be easier to add some sort of magical Angular Transducer, that might even be better, because it would help debug my network if a tree grows in the way of a repeater somewhere or something.

Right-click it with a manipulator.
Before you complain that you (and others) would never think of this, I ask - why does absolutely every possible action need to be detailed beforehand? What happened to trying things?



Also, I fixed the pylon movability issue. Attempting to do so (on mods that do not allow me to cancel the move entirely) will do this:

Reika.ChromatiCraft.Magic.Network.CrystalNetworkException$InvalidLocationException: Network tile Tile Entity Crystal Pylon @ DIM0: 1030, 74, 280 moved to invalid location 1030, 74, 280 in DIM0! It is supposed to be at 1016, 81, 277 in DIM0!
Moving pylons with TileEntity moving devices has a VERY high risk of world corruption, and the game has been terminated to prevent damage to your world save.
   at Reika.ChromatiCraft.Magic.Network.CrystalNetworker.verifyTileAt(CrystalNetworker.java:223)
   at Reika.ChromatiCraft.Magic.Network.CrystalNetworker.addTile(CrystalNetworker.java:212)
   at Reika.ChromatiCraft.Base.TileEntity.TileEntityCrystalBase.cachePosition(TileEntityCrystalBase.java:31)
   at Reika.ChromatiCraft.Base.TileEntity.TileEntityCrystalBase.onFirstTick(TileEntityCrystalBase.java:25)
   at Reika.ChromatiCraft.Base.TileEntity.CrystalTransmitterBase.onFirstTick(CrystalTransmitterBase.java:61)
   at Reika.ChromatiCraft.TileEntity.Networking.TileEntityCrystalPylon.onFirstTick(TileEntityCrystalPylon.java:132)
   at Reika.DragonAPI.Base.TileEntityBase.updateTileEntity(TileEntityBase.java:483)
   at Reika.DragonAPI.Base.TileEntityBase.updateEntity(TileEntityBase.java:373)
   at net.minecraft.world.World.updateEntities(World.java:2133)
   at net.minecraft.world.WorldServer.updateEntities(WorldServer.java:515)
   at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.updateTimeLightAndEntities(MinecraftServer.java:703)
   at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.tick(MinecraftServer.java:614)
   at net.minecraft.server.integrated.IntegratedServer.tick(IntegratedServer.java:118)
   at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.run(MinecraftServer.java:485)
   at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer$2.run(MinecraftServer.java:752)

 

[shinyarceus4]

-snip-

So I can finally build that floating rainbow magic temple, am I right?

 

[Reika]

So I can finally build that floating rainbow magic temple, am I right?

Trying to move a pylon will crash the game. It will reload fine - which is what the crash is designed to ensure - but the pylon will be destroyed.


(Also, what is that in your avatar?)

 

[Eruantien]

Trying to move a pylon will crash the game. It will reload fine - which is what the crash is designed to ensure - but the pylon will be destroyed.


(Also, what is that in your avatar?)

Aggressive bugsquashing at its finest.

And I think that's some anthropomorphization of Mega Mewtwo.

 

[shinyarceus4]

Aggressive bugsquashing at its finest.

And I think that's some anthropomorphization of Mega Mewtwo.

Still going to have to use repeaters, I guess...

Also, FYI it's a Reshiram.

 

[linkhyrule5]

Right-click it with a manipulator.
Before you complain that you (and others) would never think of this, I ask - why does absolutely every possible action need to be detailed beforehand? What happened to trying things?

The search space is just too large.

Let's imagine what possible things alternate Reika's might imagine would make sense to debug a network.

- Empty-handed right-click.
- Manipulator right-click.
- Same rune right-click.
- Same colored pendant right-click.
- Chromic lexicon right-click.
- Page matters. Select the right info fragment page, then try the above again.
- Shift-right-clicks: Double the above.
- Faces are asymmetric. Sextuple the above.
- Only works while repeater is active. Create power draw and try all the above again.
- Only works while repeater is not active. Clear all power draws and try all the above again.

That's off the top of my head. That's 72 base actions, each of which need to be tried with and without power draw. Why on earth would you choose any of those? Who knows - we only know you through your mods, which just aren't very good at capturing someone's personality to the point of predicting what actions you need to take.

Fundamentally - people don't understand how you think. Look up the illusion of transparency sometime - not only are things that are obvious to you not obvious to others, they are significantly more non-obvious than you would expect, to the point that often people writing textbooks find that they have to attempt to write for six grades below their target audience to create something legible. And that's just the list of what I thought made sense, which is obviously biased - someone else might find it obvious to try unused vanilla items like sticks or redstone dust or hit it with a lever.

There's two layers of data scrambling - your brain to the mod and people's expectations to the mod - and trying to think past that, or experiment past that, is impractical. Languages do a lot of work in condensing and clarifying that sort of information - so please, please, please document your mods.

 

[Reika]

The search space is just too large.

Let's imagine what possible things alternate Reika's might imagine would make sense to debug a network.

- Empty-handed right-click.
- Manipulator right-click.
- Same rune right-click.
- Same colored pendant right-click.
- Chromic lexicon right-click.
- Page matters. Select the right info fragment page, then try the above again.
- Shift-right-clicks: Double the above.
- Faces are asymmetric. Sextuple the above.
- Only works while repeater is active. Create power draw and try all the above again.
- Only works while repeater is not active. Clear all power draws and try all the above again.

That's off the top of my head. That's 72 base actions, each of which need to be tried with and without power draw. Why on earth would you choose any of those? Who knows - we only know you through your mods, which just aren't very good at capturing someone's personality to the point of predicting what actions you need to take.

Fundamentally - people don't understand how you think. Look up the illusion of transparency sometime - not only are things that are obvious to you not obvious to others, they are significantly more non-obvious than you would expect, to the point that often people writing textbooks find that they have to attempt to write for six grades below their target audience to create something legible. And that's just the list of what I thought made sense, which is obviously biased - someone else might find it obvious to try unused vanilla items like sticks or redstone dust or hit it with a lever.

There's two layers of data scrambling - your brain to the mod and people's expectations to the mod - and trying to think past that, or experiment past that, is impractical. Languages do a lot of work in condensing and clarifying that sort of information - so please, please, please document your mods.

Not to be rude, but several of your cases are frankly ridiculous, especially right-clicking with random items unrelated to the network, and seeing as you are testing connectivity, requiring an active power draw is clearly false too, and because of this, your example is to me still an example of not putting any forethought into an action, not determining if it is reasonable or not.

Moreover, the manipulator, true to its name, is the manipulation tool, the wrench/screwdriver of ChromatiCraft. I cannot imagine how that cannot be the first thing that comes to mind.

 

[linkhyrule5]

The problem is, Reika.makes_sense() is not the same as linkhyrule5.makes_sense(). Once I get through the set of things that actually make sense to me, I simply cannot predict what will be used next; I can't use A* anymore, I have to just randomly search the space of possible actions, trying increasingly silly things until something works. I can't order by reasonableness, because I know my sense of "reasonableness" is biased. Even if it turns out I would have been right, I'd give up from the start, because I just have better things to do than take a risk on spending hours trying random things.

Yes, my cases are ridiculous. That's because once I'm past the one or two things that I would do, I'm down to things that seem ridiculous to me be definition.

 

[Someone Else 37]

The cooldown is there because MC guis are stupid and sometimes process one click as two. Also stupidly, it is tied to the framerate, meaning as it drops, the cooldown real-time increases. I may be able to fix this.

I keep my framerate cap at 30FPS so that my laptop doesn't burn my fingertips if I touch the metal space between the keys. Maybe that's the problem?
In any case, I've never had trouble with MC making me double-click when I didn't intend to before. Needs research.

Cannot reproduce. I see persistent cursor locations.

Huh. Maybe I just need to update... I'm running Java 7 on a Mac with a slew of other mods, if that makes any difference. I might get around to testing it with just Forge, DragonAPI, ChromC, and maybe RoC (if it's still required) at some point.

That would mean more clicking.

It would mean less than one extra click, on average, if you're not using the Control hotkey, because you wouldn't have to click the tab. Perhaps Control could be re-bound to skip the page or two of description and go straight to the recipes. And if you want to read the description AND look at the recipe, it would save at least two clicks.

The lumen tree page only tells you how to build the structure. Refer to the luminescent battery page for the function of the actual block.

I don't see anything on either of those pages that links the two together. Now that you've mentioned it, it makes perfect sense that the battery block would fit into that random hole in the top layer of the lumen tree structure, but in-game, I had no way of knowing that. If that hole was filled in with a Luminescent Battery block, it would solve this problem completely... at least, if it is clear that that's what the block is.

Also, how do you make it grow leaves and increase its capacity? Fill it with all 16 colors, I'm guessing?
Hmm... nope. Seems my tree grew a couple Galazio leaves while I was writing this post. Seems very slow, though.

This is not going to change.

/me groans

This is not how the network works. Connection tests are only done on request.

Ok, so it might be hard to implement with the way you've already built your code. I can understand that, I guess.

Right-click it with a manipulator.

So it shows me how many other blocks it's connected to. When it says '5', how do I know which five? I suppose this is sufficient if I'm trying to space out my long lines of repeaters so that I use as few as possible (and therefore save on resources), but it doesn't help me figure out which repeaters in the mess that is my "base" I don't need, thereby reducing both transmission losses and computational load.

Before you complain that you (and others) would never think of this, I ask - why does absolutely every possible action need to be detailed beforehand? What happened to trying things?

Looks like linkhyrule ninja-explained that pretty well while I was posting. Not to be rude or anything, but all of his examples seem perfectly reasonable to me, as someone who didn't code the mod. I might also try elemental stones, tree berries, saplings, shards, boosted shards (if I could ever figure out how to make them), Goggles of Revealing, Thaumometers, Thaumcraft wands, other mods' wrenches, the RoC screwdriver, Bibliocraft glasses, ReC radiation (maybe the repeaters work like fluorite?), RailCraft goggles, Railcraft magnifying glass... The list goes on and on. Linkhyrule hit this nail on the head, I'd say. With literally thousands of possibilities and no reason to believe that any of them will actually work, I have little to no incentive to try any of them.

As an example, say you installed ThaumCraft without knowing anything about it. You look through the NEI and see lots of cool stuff, but you don't have the Thaumcraft NEI plugin, so NEI doesn't seem to have recipes for any of it. One of the things with no recipe is the Thaumonomicon, which looks like a book and might be the key to unlocking everything else. However, you still have no clue how to make it, and say you're not in cheat mode, so you can't just spawn one in. So what do you do? You might look through NEI and check every single item in the mod to see if it has a recipe. You find:
- Table
- Obsidian Tile
- Amber Block and Bricks
- Block of Flesh
- Silverwood and Greatwood Planks
- Scribing Tools
- Thaumometer
- Iron Capped Wooden Wand, as well as the Iron Caps needed to make it
- Glas Phial
- Jar Label
- Triple Meat Treat
- Mundane Amulet
- Mundane Ring
- Mundane Belt
- Golemancer's Bell
And that's not counting the thaumium and void tools and armor, whose recipes include ingots that NEI won't tell you how to craft. Maybe I should've even left the amber blocks and great/silverwood planks off, since you may not have found those materials yet.
Ok, now what? You don't know about TC's in-world crafting mechanic, so clicking on the blocks with the various items may not come to mind. If it does, you'll probably try left-clicking, right-clicking, shift-left-clicking, and shift-right-clicking on every single Thaumcraft block you can find- the ones in the list, as well as all the ores, magical trees, tainted blocks and mobs, and weird purple pillars you can find. You might even create an Arcane Workbench that way- a table with a green tablecloth whose GUI looks kind of like that of a crafting table. You note that doing this eats your wand, and on closer inspection, you see that it's sitting in an extra slot in the workbench's GUI. You might figure that that's where the wand is supposed to be, and leave it there.

Sound reasonable? Maybe. Will you ever get a thaumonomicon that way? Nope. There's simply nothing to lead you toward clicking your wand on a bookshelf. A vanilla block, of all things, and not one many people have laying around before they have an enchantment table.

Anyhow, in the using-the-manipulator-on-repeaters case, I concede, I didn't read the lexicon page recently and/or thoroughly enough. However, his point still stands for the lexicon navigation and the lumen tree. I've never encountered a GUI in Minecraft navigable using the arrow keys, even if it seems perfectly sensible to you- I've never had trouble with the Thaumonomicon. Furthermore, while the obvious (to me, at least) hole in the top of the Lumen Tree should be filled in with something, ChromC already adds a lot of blocks that could fit there. Even if it was called the "Lumen Battery" rather than "Luminescent Battery", it might help because then it would show in NEI when I type "lumen" in search of the missing block because that's what Lumen Tree and the potentially related Lumen Leaves have in common.

The process of making boosted shards is also very unclear. Once again, I never would've guessed that I had to dump 24 dye tree berries into a Liquid Chroma sourceblock, then drop a shard (of a different color?) into said sourceblock and wait five or ten minutes. Once I read on this thread that the berries can color liquid chroma, making each of the sixteen source blocks in the Infusion Ring a different color seemed reasonable enough. However, it's still not clear to me what the ring actually does- after all, an isolated colored chroma source block will boost a shard just fine. Does the ring make the boosting process more efficient, so each boosting event uses up fewer berries' worth of color?

 

[Dorque]

Not to be rude, but several of your cases are frankly ridiculous, especially right-clicking with random items unrelated to the network, and seeing as you are testing connectivity, requiring an active power draw is clearly false too, and because of this, your example is to me still an example of not putting any forethought into an action, not determining if it is reasonable or not.

Moreover, the manipulator, true to its name, is the manipulation tool, the wrench/screwdriver of ChromatiCraft. I cannot imagine how that cannot be the first thing that comes to mind.

He's right, though, because many of our cases here don't follow Minecraft logic.

I'm not exactly a dumb boy or a stranger to experimentation. I almost refuse to use wikis entirely and always have. And ChromatiCraft has been, while a fascinating puzzle, the most obtuse mod I've ever bashed my head against (that didn't involve actual real-world knowledge I simply don't have/grasp). It took me about a month before I realized you could move the Lexicon pages around with WASD. Of course I felt stupid when I figured it out but it took me that long. It took me just as long to figure out how to craft anything with the table; putting your crafting items in a crafting table, closing it and clicking it with a tool runs counterintuitive to all established Minecraft logic. I STILL haven't figured out how to actually do anything USEFUL with the mod and I've been playing with it since about Christmas. I still have no idea how to make Liquid Chroma. I'm confused by all the mentions of berries in this thread. I could go on.

I don't mean this to be negative feedback; putting aside that I know you really react poorly to criticism, I've always thought you're pretty much the best dev out there and I still do, but your pushback against the many people who have a problem with the documentation is beginning to verge on sheer contrariness and I've gotta call you on it, because someone has to; you've stopped listening for no better reason than that people aren't agreeing with you on this point.

So. Takeaway. The whole mod is fascinating and beautiful and seems like it could do very many useful things in the long run. But please for the love of all that is holy, if you're making documentation, use it to actually explain a few things. Be condescending if you need to be, we're ok with that.

I want to really, really like ChromatiCraft, even if for no other reason than it's a Reika project, and I tend to love your work but I can't really like something if I can't get any sort of a handle on it, you know?

(Just a quick edit to add this thought which struck me: right now, we are quite literally using the mod developer (you) as a replacement for a wiki. That strikes me as... both ungood and telling in a lot of ways.)

 

[Arkandos]

Looks like linkhyrule ninja-explained that pretty well while I was posting. Not to be rude or anything, but all of his examples seem perfectly reasonable to me, as someone who didn't code the mod. I might also try elemental stones, tree berries, saplings, shards, boosted shards (if I could ever figure out how to make them), Goggles of Revealing, Thaumometers, Thaumcraft wands, other mods' wrenches, the RoC screwdriver, Bibliocraft glasses, ReC radiation (maybe the repeaters work like fluorite?), RailCraft goggles, Railcraft magnifying glass... The list goes on and on. Linkhyrule hit this nail on the head, I'd say. With literally thousands of possibilities and no reason to believe that any of them will actually work, I have little to no incentive to try any of them.

Trying every single item combination from other mods is just silly

 

[Reika]

So it shows me how many other blocks it's connected to. When it says '5', how do I know which five? I suppose this is sufficient if I'm trying to space out my long lines of repeaters so that I use as few as possible (and therefore save on resources), but it doesn't help me figure out which repeaters in the mess that is my "base" I don't need, thereby reducing both transmission losses and computational load.

No, the number is the number of jumps it is from a source. If there is no source found, no particle is spawned and it plays an error sound.

The process of making boosted shards is also very unclear. Once again, I never would've guessed that I had to dump 24 dye tree berries into a Liquid Chroma sourceblock, then drop a shard (of a different color?) into said sourceblock and wait five or ten minutes. Once I read on this thread that the berries can color liquid chroma, making each of the sixteen source blocks in the Infusion Ring a different color seemed reasonable enough. However, it's still not clear to me what the ring actually does- after all, an isolated colored chroma source block will boost a shard just fine. Does the ring make the boosting process more efficient, so each boosting event uses up fewer berries' worth of color?

The book explicitly calls Chroma a solvent, and suggests using berries as a solute for something. Furthermore, when you toss in the shard, it starts spawning particles, making it very clear something is happening.

The infusion ring is a totally unrelated structure used for the Infusion Stand.

Trying every single item combination from other mods is just silly

This. Had I not known better, SomeoneElse37, I would have thought your suggesting them was satirical, because there is no way anyone can reasonably assume those are valid items to debug a network with instead of the manipulator.
Again, it says to me that you are not even putting the slightest effort into screening the items beforehand for what makes sense.

It seems to me to be a derivative of this:

I see it as being similar to when people complain to me that RC does not do what IC2(?) does and literally make it impossible to put items into slots where that item does nothing (like a dirt block in the macerator). To me, that says the developer thinks I am too stupid to realize I cannot grind dirt, and has to force my hand (and the accompanying implication that I will sit there trying one item after another with no comprehension of what I am doing).

In other words, I should not have to screen the unreasonable examples out beforehand, and my doing so would be actively insulting to you, as it implies you were not capable of the task. Unfortunately, the responses have not been reassuring.

 

[DC2008]

Reika--I love every one of your mods I have installed. I am consistently amazed at their elegance, and particularly appreciate the way you've created a progression system that feels more based on understanding than on grinding. In addition, I am constantly and consistently impressed with your responsiveness and patience on the various online Minecraft forums.

I very much like the ChromatiCraft approach of requiring you to go out and try things. Seeing more and more fantastical things appear in the world as I explore has been an amazing experience, and I understand your resistance to requests that you add so much additional documentation so as to essentially remove the exploration element of the mod. Would it be possible, however, to add additional in-game feedback as to partial progress?

Examples:

1) As you mouse-over pylons, you get a note in your Lexicon saying "You have begun your research of the various pylons, and have investigated pylons of the following type, however further research will be needed".

2) As you gain additional instances of something you need to get n of to proceed, a note in your Lexicon appears saying "You have begun your studies of ..., however additional samples are necessary so as to continue your studies."

3) As you get closer to leveling up the casting table, you are able to get a sense that its inherent power level is increasing. Perhaps in the casting GUI. Or perhaps you can use something equivalent to the Angular Transducer to tell that its power level is rising (perhaps it is a function of the manipulator).



At present, it can be very frustrating to test hypotheses in-game, as it is often difficult to tell whether a failure is due to (i) my hypothesis being wrong, (ii) my procedure being wrong due to my error (e.g., misclick), and (iii) I have not yet intuited the procedure the mod expects me to use. This is particularly frustrating in the context of anything I have to repeat 16 times for the various colors (i.e., anything involving pylons).

Finally, is there now (or could there be in the future) a means of obtaining new Lexicon entries other than by finding pages in the world? For example, if you do sufficient research on your own, being able to prepare your own page based on accumulated knowledge, perhaps via a crafting or casting recipe or perhaps via a new tool (e.g., some sort of desk)? Presumably, much or all of the initial research would still have to be done by collecting pages in the world, however it seems odd that for higher-level stuff you both have to (i) conduct lots of experiments yourself AND (ii) grab someone else's research. It seems that an "Or" would be more appropriate there. I apologize if this already exists--I am still fairly early in the Chromaticraft progression.

Thank you again for all your work on your mods--they are all fantastic.

 

[linkhyrule5]

The book explicitly calls Chroma a solvent, and suggests using berries as a solute for something. Furthermore, when you toss in the shard, it starts spawning particles, making it very clear something is happening.

The infusion ring is a totally unrelated structure used for the Infusion Stand.

Again - clear to you. If I see particles spawning but nothing happening, I assume that the potion/ritual/infusion is incomplete - it's a signal that I'm making progress, I did something right, but I'm not getting anything so I need to add something else.

This. Had I not known better, SomeoneElse37, I would have thought your suggesting them was satirical, because there is no way anyone can reasonably assume those are valid items to debug a network with instead of the manipulator.
Again, it says to me that you are not even putting the slightest effort into screening the items beforehand for what makes sense.

*sigh*

Reika, do me a favor and read that article on transparency. The point that I'm trying to make is since we know that "what makes sense to me" is different from "what makes sense to you," we by definition can't rely on our judgement of "what makes sense."

It's like trying to find something you've lost. Sure, the first place you check is going to be obvious places like "under the couch you were sitting last night" and "behind the bed" and so on, but once you've eliminated the obvious places, you by definition have to start checking places that don't make any sense at all. There's no way it could have gotten on top of the refrigerator - but once you've checked everything that does make sense, you must logically conclude that it's somewhere you wouldn't expect - at which point you start trying things at random.

Except that unlike a wallet, figuring out how to use this mod is something we do for fun, and rather than trying to search a space of thousands of combinations, we just give up and ask the wiki. Or you.

In other words, I should not have to screen the unreasonable examples out beforehand, and my doing so would be actively insulting to you, as it implies you were not capable of the task. Unfortunately, the responses have not been reassuring.

It's not insulting, any more than writing a textbook is insulting. You've invented a whole new world with its own rules and systems, a world of magic and wonder and power - and it's far too complex for us to rederive on our own. You're essentially trying to teach us physics - and like physics, different things confuse different people.

 

[JoshBogs]

It's not insulting, any more than writing a textbook is insulting. You've invented a whole new world with its own rules and systems, a world of magic and wonder and power - and it's far too complex for us to rederive on our own. You're essentially trying to teach us physics - and like physics, different things confuse different people.

This comment really sums up the current topic. Another analogy is how college level physics and engineering professors wonder why students have a tough time wrapping their minds around fundamentals. Its so easy once its learned but its a different story when trying to absorb new material first time through.

Mystery and ambiguity are a deep seeded trait of this magical mod and it should stay that way. However it would be nice to have a little more in game guidance/ clarity.

 

[Dorque]

This comment really sums up the current topic. Another analogy is how college level physics and engineering professors wonder why students have a tough time wrapping their minds around fundamentals. Its so easy once its learned but its a different story when trying to absorb new material first time through.

Mystery and ambiguity are a deep seeded trait of this magical mod and it should stay that way. However it would be nice to have a little more in game guidance/ clarity.

Enough clarity to actually progress, at any rate. I'm currently utterly stuck.

I think a big part of the disconnect here is that compared to Reika, practically everyone's an idiot, and I can sympathize with that, at least.

Sent from my Refrigerator using Tapatalk

 

[Someone Else 37]

No, the number is the number of jumps it is from a source. If there is no source found, no particle is spawned and it plays an error sound.

Good to know. But not what I thought initially. I had assumed that the number was how many things it was connected to.
Also, it's a little hard to tell what the number actually means when there are two different sources- for instance, a pylon and a Lumen tree. Would it be possible to make the manipulator show the number of hops to each source of the given color, or at least how many other sources there are in addition to the one whose distance is shown?

The book explicitly calls Chroma a solvent, and suggests using berries as a solute for something.

Uhm, where? Neither the Liquid Chroma page nor the page for the block that creates it (whose name escapes my memory) contain the word "solvent" in v3d (I updated just so I could check this), and I haven't found any info at all about the berries outside of this thread.

Furthermore, when you toss in the shard, it starts spawning particles, making it very clear something is happening.

Something, yes, but it's not clear what. I did notice the crystals jumping up and down periodically, which I figured was your code deleting them and respawning them again in the same place in order to keep them from despawning after five minutes. This led me to leave them in there, but I don't expect the average Minecrafter to make that connection.

This. Had I not known better, SomeoneElse37, I would have thought your suggesting them was satirical, because there is no way anyone can reasonably assume those are valid items to debug a network with instead of the manipulator.

If you had called it the Network Debugger, I would agree with you. However, the page in the lexicon aside (didn't I already concede this issue?), there's little reason for anyone who doesn't know that anything can actually debug the network to try any particular item before another. Many mods with power systems don't have any such tool at all- and of those that do, none of them (to my knowledge) use their "wrenches" for that purpose. IC2 has the EU-reader, TE had a Voltmeter (at least, before the switch to RF), Factorization has the Charge Meter, RoC has the Angular Transduer, TC has the Goggles of Revealing...

Again, it says to me that you are not even putting the slightest effort into screening the items beforehand for what makes sense.

Because, lexicon page aside (can we please put this issue to rest already?), someone who doesn't know that any tool can actually show what repeaters are connected will see it as a potentially huge effort that may get them nowhere at all. With a typical puzzle, you know that each piece has to go somewhere. With a poorly-documented mod that's as big and complicated as Chromaticraft, you don't even know if any of the pieces fit, much less where.

Also, I think I found a bug: Glass blocks seem to be opaque to the repeater lasers, so the luminescent battery on top of the lumen tree can only connect to repeaters south or west of it.

And another bug: I placed down a storage crystal charger near my multi-aura-repeater-fed lumen tree because the tree, which had grown some leaves, didn't seem to want to charge, even though the manipulator said none of the colors were full and it was connected to a half-dozen different pylons. I wanted to see which pylons were actually connected, in case I managed to break one of the connections somewhere, so I used the charger to test the network. I saw a beam going from the tree directly to the charger, then another refilling the tree from my Galazio pylon, if not some of the others as well. I thought that was a little odd, so I looked at the luminescent battery block with the manipulator to see what was going on, and a couple seconds later, this happened:

Spoiler: I really hope this didn't corrupt my world

---- Minecraft Crash Report ----
// Hey, that tickles! Hehehe!

Time: 1/21/15 8:50 PM
Description: Exception in server tick loop

java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: -1
at java.util.ArrayList.elementData(ArrayList.java:400)
at java.util.ArrayList.get(ArrayList.java:413)
at Reika.ChromatiCraft.TileEntity.TileEntityPowerTree.grow(TileEntityPowerTree.java:302)
at Reika.ChromatiCraft.TileEntity.TileEntityPowerTree.drain(TileEntityPowerTree.java:396)
at Reika.ChromatiCraft.Magic.CrystalNetworker.tick(CrystalNetworker.java:149)
at Reika.DragonAPI.Auxiliary.Trackers.TickRegistry.serverTick(TickRegistry.java:87)
at cpw.mods.fml.common.eventhandler.ASMEventHandler_154_TickRegistry_serverTick_ServerTickEvent.invoke(.dynamic)
at cpw.mods.fml.common.eventhandler.ASMEventHandler.invoke(ASMEventHandler.java:54)
at cpw.mods.fml.common.eventhandler.EventBus.post(EventBus.java:138)
at cpw.mods.fml.common.FMLCommonHandler.onPreServerTick(FMLCommonHandler.java:260)
at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.func_71217_p(MinecraftServer.java:536)
at net.minecraft.server.integrated.IntegratedServer.func_71217_p(IntegratedServer.java:111)
at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.run(MinecraftServer.java:427)
at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer$2.run(MinecraftServer.java:685)


A detailed walkthrough of the error, its code path and all known details is as follows:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- System Details --
Details:
Minecraft Version: 1.7.10
Operating System: Mac OS X (x86_64) version 10.10.1
Java Version: 1.7.0_71, Oracle Corporation
Java VM Version: Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (mixed mode), Oracle Corporation
Memory: 531845192 bytes (507 MB) / 2101346304 bytes (2004 MB) up to 2101346304 bytes (2004 MB)
JVM Flags: 3 total; -Xms512m -Xmx2048m -XXermSize=128m
AABB Pool Size: 0 (0 bytes; 0 MB) allocated, 0 (0 bytes; 0 MB) used
IntCache: cache: 0, tcache: 0, allocated: 13, tallocated: 95
FML: MCP v9.05 FML v7.10.85.1240 Minecraft Forge 10.13.2.1240 53 mods loaded, 53 mods active
mcp{9.05} [Minecraft Coder Pack] (minecraft.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
FML{7.10.85.1240} [Forge Mod Loader] (forge-1.7.10-10.13.2.1240-universal.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
Forge{10.13.2.1240} [Minecraft Forge] (forge-1.7.10-10.13.2.1240-universal.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
appliedenergistics2-core{rv2-alpha-29} [AppliedEnergistics2 Core] (minecraft.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
CodeChickenCore{1.0.4.29} [CodeChicken Core] (minecraft.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
<CoFH ASM>{000} [CoFH ASM Data Initialization] (minecraft.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
NotEnoughItems{1.0.3.73} [Not Enough Items] (NotEnoughItems-1.7.10-1.0.3.73-universal.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ThaumicTinkerer-preloader{0.1} [Thaumic Tinkerer Core] (minecraft.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
OpenModsCore{0.6} [OpenModsCore] (minecraft.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
<DragonAPI ASM>{0} [DragonAPI ASM Data Initialization] (minecraft.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
appliedenergistics2{rv2-alpha-29} [Applied Energistics 2] (appliedenergistics2-rv2-alpha-29.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
BiblioCraft{1.9.1} [BiblioCraft] (BiblioCraft[v1.9.1][MC1.7.10].jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ChickenChunks{1.3.4.14} [ChickenChunks] (ChickenChunks-1.7.10-1.3.4.14-universal.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ForgeMultipart{1.1.0.314} [Forge Multipart] (ForgeMultipart-1.7.10-1.1.0.314-universal.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
MrTJPCoreMod{1.0} [MrTJPCoreMod] (MrTJPCore-1.7.10-1.0.3.5-universal.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ProjRed|Core{4.5.8.59} [ProjectRed] (ProjectRed-1.7.10-4.5.8.59-Base.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
Mantle{1.7.10-0.3.2.jenkins184} [Mantle] (Mantle-1.7.10-0.3.2.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
CoFHCore{1.7.10R3.0.0B8} [CoFH Core] (CoFHCore-[1.7.10]3.0.0B8-36.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ThermalFoundation{1.7.10R1.0.0B3} [Thermal Foundation] (ThermalFoundation-[1.7.10]1.0.0B3-8.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ThermalExpansion{1.7.10R4.0.0B6} [Thermal Expansion] (ThermalExpansion-[1.7.10]4.0.0B6-16.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
Waila{1.5.5} [Waila] (Waila-1.5.5_1.7.10.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
TConstruct{1.7.10-1.7.1.build771} [Tinkers' Construct] (TConstruct-1.7.10-1.7.1c.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
Baubles{1.0.1.10} [Baubles] (Baubles-1.7.10-1.0.1.10.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
Thaumcraft{4.2.2.0} [Thaumcraft] (Thaumcraft-1.7.10-4.2.2.0.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
DragonAPI{1.0} [DragonAPI] (DragonAPI 1.7.10 V3d.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ChromatiCraft{Alpha} [ChromatiCraft] (ChromatiCraft 1.7.10 V3d.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
RotaryCraft{Gamma} [RotaryCraft] (RotaryCraft 1.7.10 V3d.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ElectriCraft{beta} [ElectriCraft] (ElectriCraft 1.7.10 V3d.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
EnderIO{1.7.10-2.2.4.309} [Ender IO] (EnderIO-1.7.10-2.2.4.309.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
EnderStorage{1.4.5.26} [EnderStorage] (EnderStorage-1.7.10-1.4.5.26-universal.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ExpandedRedstone{Gamma} [Expanded Redstone] (ExpandedRedstone 1.7.10 V3b.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ThaumicTinkerer{unspecified} [Thaumic Tinkerer] (ThaumicTinkerer-2.5-1.7.10-162.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ForbiddenMagic{1.7.10-0.551} [Forbidden Magic] (Forbidden Magic-1.7.10-0.551.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
funkylocomotion{1.0} [Funky Locomotion] (funky-locomotion-1.7.10-beta-3.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
GeoStrata{Gamma} [GeoStrata] (GeoStrata 1.7.10 V3b.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
OpenMods{0.6} [OpenMods] (OpenModsLib-1.7.10-0.6.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
OpenBlocks{1.3} [OpenBlocks] (OpenBlocks-1.7.10-1.3.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ProjRed|Integration{4.5.8.59} [ProjectRed-Integration] (ProjectRed-1.7.10-4.5.8.59-Integration.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ProjRed|Transmission{4.5.8.59} [ProjectRed-Transmission] (ProjectRed-1.7.10-4.5.8.59-Integration.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ProjRed|Illumination{4.5.8.59} [ProjectRed-Illumination] (ProjectRed-1.7.10-4.5.8.59-Lighting.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ProjRed|Expansion{4.5.8.59} [ProjectRed-Expansion] (ProjectRed-1.7.10-4.5.8.59-Mechanical_beta.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ProjRed|Transportation{4.5.8.59} [ProjectRed-Transportation] (ProjectRed-1.7.10-4.5.8.59-Mechanical_beta.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ProjRed|Exploration{4.5.8.59} [ProjectRed-Exploration] (ProjectRed-1.7.10-4.5.8.59-World.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ReactorCraft{beta} [ReactorCraft] (ReactorCraft 1.7.10 V3d.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
RedstoneArsenal{1.7.10R1.1.0RC1} [Redstone Arsenal] (RedstoneArsenal-[1.7.10]1.1.0RC1-19.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
rftools{2.00beta5} [RFTools] (rftools-2.00beta5.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
thaumcraftneiplugin{1.7.10-1.6a} [Thaumcraft NEI Plugin] (thaumcraftneiplugin-1.7.10-1.6a.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ThaumicExploration{0.6.0} [Thaumic Exploration] (ThaumicExploration-1.7.10-1.1-34.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
TiCTooltips{1.1.11b} [TiC Tooltips] (TiCTooltips-mc1.7.10-1.1.11b.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
TMechworks{1.7.10-86.e500b88} [Tinkers' Mechworks] (TMechworks-1.7.10-0.2.10.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
McMultipart{1.1.0.314} [Minecraft Multipart Plugin] (ForgeMultipart-1.7.10-1.1.0.314-universal.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
aobd{2.3.5} [Another One Bites The Dust] (AOBD-2.3.5.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
ForgeMicroblock{1.1.0.314} [Forge Microblocks] (ForgeMultipart-1.7.10-1.1.0.314-universal.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available
OpenModsLib crash transformers: [gl_capabilities_hook:FINISHED],[player_render_hook:FINISHED],[map_gen_fix:FINISHED],[movement_callback:FINISHED],[stencil_patches:FINISHED]
AE2 Version: alpha rv2-alpha-29 for Forge 10.13.2.1230
Mantle Environment: Environment healthy.
TConstruct Environment: Environment healthy.
Stencil buffer state: Function set: ARB, pool: internal, bits: 8
AE2 Integration: IC2:OFF, RotaryCraft:ON, RC:OFF, BC:OFF, MJ6:ON, MJ5:ON, RF:ON, RFItem:ON, MFR:OFF, DSU:ON, FZ:OFF, FMP:ON, RB:OFF, CLApi:OFF, Waila:ON, InvTweaks:OFF, NEI:ON, CraftGuide:OFF, Mekanism:OFF, ImmibisMicroblocks:OFF, BetterStorage:OFF
Profiler Position: N/A (disabled)
Vec3 Pool Size: 0 (0 bytes; 0 MB) allocated, 0 (0 bytes; 0 MB) used
Player Count: 1 / 8; [EntityPlayerMP['Someone_Else_37'/399, l='Testworld for Not RFTools', x=5.05, y=78.10, z=276.89]]
Type: Integrated Server (map_client.txt)
Is Modded: Definitely; Client brand changed to 'fml,forge'

My guess is that the tree doesn't like being charged and discharged at the same time.

Also, can you confirm that repeater beams block other beams, meaning that in order to have a maximally efficient network, you have to either use lots of multi-aura repeaters, or make sure that the space between any given pair of normal repeaters doesn't intersect that between any other pair of repeaters? I ask because while I was setting up repeater lines, I found that the nearest yellow and cyan pylons were roughly in line with my base, so I decided to place the yellow and cyan repeaters right next to each other, so I wouldn't have to measure as many distances. I swapped which color was on what side every now and then because I thought having the beams zigzagging across each other would look cool, only to find that, after doing so, my trusty storage crystal charger would only drain from one pylon at a time (and would switch to the other when the first color's buffer filled), thus ruining the effect I wanted to create. When I straightened the paths out, it drew from both pylons simultaneously once again.

 

[Reika]

Also, I think I found a bug: Glass blocks seem to be opaque to the repeater lasers, so the luminescent battery on top of the lumen tree can only connect to repeaters south or west of it.

I am aware of this, though have no idea why. Glass is explicitly coded to be transparent to it.

And another bug: I placed down a storage crystal charger near my multi-aura-repeater-fed lumen tree because the tree, which had grown some leaves, didn't seem to want to charge, even though the manipulator said none of the colors were full and it was connected to a half-dozen different pylons. I wanted to see which pylons were actually connected, in case I managed to break one of the connections somewhere, so I used the charger to test the network. I saw a beam going from the tree directly to the charger, then another refilling the tree from my Galazio pylon, if not some of the others as well. I thought that was a little odd, so I looked at the luminescent battery block with the manipulator to see what was going on, and a couple seconds later, this happened:

My guess is that the tree doesn't like being charged and discharged at the same time.

No, something drained the tree to negative charge. This is fixed in v4, but until then, break the tree.

Also, can you confirm that repeater beams block other beams?

They do not.[/QUOTE]

 

[RavynousHunter]

Its things like this that make me wanna start my own LP series, almost entirely to spotlight (not a dedicated spotlight, but as part of the series itself) Reika's mods for folks that don't seem to get it. I found my headset, I just dunno how well my recording software will work with a heavily-modified MC instance. Worth a test, at least. Besides, modded Minecraft needs an unstoppable, fearless blood knight. It might as well be me.

 

[Chaos Logic]

How is liquid chroma obtained?