Extra Utilities: New Power Generators

[Zenthon_127]

Another mod that is using Redstone Flux.
One thing I find quite surprising is so many mod authors have changed or are changing from MJ to RF.

BC basically eliminated all flexibility from its system in terms of code. All mods using MJ must have leaky power, which in the eyes of many is stupid and pointless. The devs refuse to accept that it has been proven repeatedly that players will find every possible way to get around their system, making it nothing more then an annoyance. This also conflicts with many others' views on power, like KingLemming. Since RF is built on a mod that has, IMO, vastly superior mechanics and coding while STILL pulling off everything BC can do with relative ease, there is no practical reason for anyone outside of Railcraft and Forestry to use MJ.

 

[casilleroatr]

I love the pink generator that is wonderful.

I also like that the diverse array of "fuels" will encourage players (and by players I mean me) to delve into different aspects of gameplay. I for one have never felt like brewing potions but this gives me a good excuse to get into it.

 

[kaiomann]

I'm so going for potato power!

 

[Dodge34]

BC basically eliminated all flexibility from its system in terms of code. All mods using MJ must have leaky power, which in the eyes of many is stupid and pointless. The devs refuse to accept that it has been proven repeatedly that players will find every possible way to get around their system, making it nothing more then an annoyance. This also conflicts with many others' views on power, like KingLemming. Since RF is built on a mod that has, IMO, vastly superior mechanics and coding while STILL pulling off everything BC can do with relative ease, there is no practical reason for anyone outside of Railcraft and Forestry to use MJ.

Tell this to Binnie, the coder of Binnie Extra bees and trees, his machines are so hard to power, they require only MJ and use so much of it, I understand that they are high end stuff but I'm banging my head on the wall at the moment to figure out how to power them with the new way Thermal Expansion work with the Energy cells, the machines constantly draw power no matter if in use or not, and they need a lot of it...

 

[PsionicArchon]

Tell this to Binnie, the coder of Binnie Extra bees and trees, his machines are so hard to power, they require only MJ and use so much of it, I understand that they are high end stuff but I'm banging my head on the wall at the moment to figure out how to power them with the new way Thermal Expansion work with the Energy cells, the machines constantly draw power no matter if in use or not, and they need a lot of it...

Use conduits to power all of your extra bees machines, connect them to a resonant energy cell and, use gates to detect if a machine "has work". You can then configure the energy cell to only activate when it receives a redstone signal. I use this method on near all leaky machines. I'm not sure if OpenPeripherals supports the new energy cells yet or binnie's machines but, if it does you have an extremely robust option there.

 

[Dodge34]

Use conduits to power all of your extra bees machines, connect them to a resonant energy cell and, use gates to detect if a machine "has work". You can then configure the energy cell to only activate when it receives a redstone signal. I use this method on near all leaky machines. I'm not sure if OpenPeripherals supports the new energy cells yet or binnie's machines but, if it does you have an extremely robust option there.

Main problem is creating the gates, I'm not there yet, but I will have to do this, other massive problem with gates is they require either a BC pipe or a structural pipe from BC to work and this add a lot of stuff around the machines that already need a lot of conduits, adding BC Pipes to them would make the job a lot more complex, but we will have to work with it this way...

 

[casilleroatr]

Open peripherals definitely works with the new Thermal Expansion cells. I made a bar chart to show how full one was. It uses pretty much the same commands as they used to but just use peripheral.getMethods to be sure.

 

[Badger]

The only problem with TE is that it has no auto-mining options.

other than that I agree it's a superior replacement to most of BC.
If you add in RC or Steve's carts or nether ores or something that can provide building materials without spending every instant at level 11 making tunnels, Then yes, TE makes BC optional.


Am I the only one that wonders if Ender IO eliminates most of TE?[DOUBLEPOST=1387584841][/DOUBLEPOST]And I am looking forward to running my army and base on Pumpkin Pies...

 

[PierceSG]

There's automated mining options in RotaryCraft, Mekanism as well as Engineer's Toolbox.

 

[PsionicArchon]

EnderIO lacks the wealth of power generation options available for Thermal Expansion, especially with these puppies coming out.

 

[PierceSG]

If you have noticed, Ender IO added a lot of functionality but almost nothing in terms of power generation. It only has a Stirling Engine and a Photovoltaic Cell which both generates only 1 MJ/t so you will want some other supported mods that have power generation options.
TE3 is one of them, although all of them generates the same amount of power (80RF/t now, IIRC?) but with different fuel choices. One for solid fuel, one for fluid fuel and one for hot fluid (lava and misc).
Mekanism with it's Heat Generator either for passive power or solid fuel burning or both at the same time. Hydrogen Generators paired with Electrolytic Separators. Bio-Generators running on solid bio-fuel. There's also Wind Turbines, Solar Panels and Advanced Solar Panels for more passive power generation options.

The 2 options I listed above does some things that Ender IO does better but they also do have their own functions that Ender IO doesn't have.

 

[SpitefulFox]

I love the interesting new generators! One thing I hated about the power generation status quo was how your choices were either Nether-pumping, Steam, or Compact Solars. I'm excited to see more interesting builds coming out of stuff like this.

 

[TJFOXHOUND]

Open peripherals definitely works with the new Thermal Expansion cells. I made a bar chart to show how full one was. It uses pretty much the same commands as they used to but just use peripheral.getMethods to be sure.

I've been trying over and over to get it to work but I cannot get CC/Open peripherals to work with any of the new energy cells. I keep getting "Invalid number of parameters. You should be passing 1 parameters" Nothing I do is working to solve this. Would you be willing to upload your code to pastebin so I can compare what I'm doing wrong? Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[casilleroatr]

I will upload some code in the next day or two. In the mean time, you may not have tried these parameters.
_
any cardinal direction in speech marks

Another thing that may help if you are familiar with the for i,v in pairs() style loops, use peripheral.getMethods on a cell (beware of tables within tables - *)

There is a chance that there is a method that is called something like getAdvancedMethodData. It might give you more details about the correct parameters for each method before I consult the code I wrote that I have only a fuzzy memory of.

*I don't know how familiar you are with tables so I will just say that if you make a method return a table to a variable you can iterate through that table using

for i,v in pairs(the name of the table variable) do
stuff
end

i is the key - or the index of the table and v captures the data behind that key, it can be any sort of variable.

By any sort of variable, I do mean any, including other tables. It is common in open peripherals for returned tables to be very nested so some experimentation with running through those tables is required

 

[TJFOXHOUND]

I have tried many combinations to get it to work. I am not too familiar with tables. I have tried getAdvancedMethodData and it just throws random table data at me. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong as I'm also still new to CC and Lua in general but so far as I can tell and from what I've tried I haven't been able to find any solutions or make any progress. I've just gotten more questions the more I try different things. The thing that's throwing me off is I'm looking at other peoples code for the old version of TE and there are many methods you can call upon but when I run getMethods it gives me only 4 [listmethods(), getAdvancedMethodsData(), getEnergyStored(), getMaxEnergyStored()]. I don't know what I'm missing but I'm scraping the the bottom of the barrel of the internet trying to find any information to help me.

Edit: When I try to just simply call getEnergyStored it throws the "invalid number of parameters" at me and when I try to list it as specified in the getMethods list [getEnergyStored()] it says "No such method..."

 

[casilleroatr]

Here is a bit of info on how to use open peripherals in current versions of Thermal Expansion inside a spoiler so it doesn't derail the thread

Spoiler

First of all if when you iterate through a table and you try to print a nested table you get a string that looks something like this "table:323fwerf44" or other such gobbledigook, then you can iterate through that too. For example

for i,v in pairs(parentTable) do
   if type(v) == "table" then
      for k,w in pairs(v) do -- v is a nestedTable
          print(w)
      end
   else
        print(v)
    end
end

Like I said a lot of the methods in open peripherals return complicated table structures which are great in that you get loads of useful information but can take a while to actually get all the information you want.
Another good trick that I used to look into complicated table structures without having to mess around with for loops that I wish i remembered earlier is serialization. Computercraft offers a couple of easy serialization functions in the textutils api that allow you to turn a table into a string. You can read this string to find out more about the structure - it reads like a linear version of any table that you write manually.

Now that is out the way I will tell you how I did the Redstone energy cell stuff. This works with the latest stable version of Resonant Rise which is pretty up to date in both mods.
A few details about my set up - the computer is connected to the cell via wired modem and computercraft cable. When I clicked on the modem which was on the cell it gave me a name for the cell which I used to wrap it as a variable. If your cell is adjacent to your computer then replace that big string with the side. What follows is a truncated version of my code which shows the bits that are relevant to redstone energy cells

local cellName = "cofh_thermalexpansion_energycell_0" -- [[This is right at the top of my program before I do anything else. It sets the name of the cell that was given when I connected it via modem. This is what you replace with side if appropriate]] 

local modem = peripheral.wrap("back")
local cell = peripheral.wrap(cellName) -- This wraps the cell using cellName

--This here is the important function
function getRFBuffer() -- A function I wrote to get some data from the cell
    print("Scanning Redstone Energy Cell")
    local data = {
        ["capacity"] = {"Cell Capacity", cell.getMaxEnergyStored(cellName)}, -- This method gets the max energy that can be stored, the parameter is the name the cell if you are on wired modems (or probably - cont. on next line
        ["stored"] = {"Current Buffer", cell.getEnergyStored(cellName)}, --cont.- probably the side of the computer the cell is on if it is directly adjacent)
        } -- This is a nested table btw
    tablePrint(data) -- Ignore this line it is a debugging tool that I forgot to take out.
    print("Finished Scanning Redstone Energy Cell")
    return data
end

function setRFBuffer() -- This function draws a barchart to show how full the cell is. I am using the barChart to monitor this cell because it is a buffer for my ME system
    --Reading through this function and the mainProg() function is not really necessary. I just put them in so you can seem the stuff working in situ
    local powerBuffer = getRFBuffer() -- As you can see here, I get the data from getRFBuffer and store it in a new table here which I use to get information to display on a monitor
    local sX = 4 -- You can ignore most of these values because they are just there to make sure that the barchart draws where I want it to.
    local sY = 3
    monitor.setCursorPos(sX,sY)
    local bufferHeader = "Energy Reserves"
    monitor.write(bufferHeader)
    local len = string.len(bufferHeader)
    local width = len-4
    local height = 17
    local bars = round((powerBuffer["stored"][2]/powerBuffer["capacity"][2])*height,0) -- This is the variable I pass to barChart to tell it how full it needs to be shown as. If you look the calculation is just like a percentage
    barChart({sX+2, sY+1}, {width, height}, bars) -- This is the barChart function I wrote
    local cX,cY = monitor.getCursorPos()
    print(cX..":"..cY)
    monitor.setCursorPos(sX,cY+2)
    monitor.setBackgroundColor(colors.black)
    local r = round(powerBuffer["stored"][2]/powerBuffer["capacity"][2]*100, 2)
    monitor.write("RF Levels: "..r.."%")
    print("Energy Storage Monitor Set")
end

function mainProg()
    monitor.clear()
    monCentre("Bonnibel's ME System", 1)
    setRFBuffer()
    setStorageInfo()
    local x,y = monitor.getCursorPos()
    local menu = setMenu({x,y})
    mainEventHandler(menu)
end

This only a tiny bit of the code but hopefully it tells you what you need to know. I put in some extra information too just in case it helps.

 

[Lordlundar]

I love the interesting new generators! One thing I hated about the power generation status quo was how your choices were either Nether-pumping, Steam, or Compact Solars. I'm excited to see more interesting builds coming out of stuff like this.

Yeah especially on peaceful mode. An ender generator with an End located peaceful table and you have a pretty solid generator setup.

 

[trajano080]

How do you get these? The last version of Extra Utilities doesn't have them. I saw DW use them though.

 

[SpitefulFox]

How do you get these? The last version of Extra Utilities doesn't have them. I saw DW use them though.

If it was in DW's Forgecraft series, it's probably because the Forgecraft server uses test version of the mods that aren't available to the public yet.

 

[Lordlundar]

If it was in DW's Forgecraft series, it's probably because the Forgecraft server uses test version of the mods that aren't available to the public yet.

You are correct. The generators were introduced in the recent episode and Tema said in the episode he's still fleshing it out.