Hoppers as Chunkloaders

[Saice]

I wanted to get this up before going to work today but saddly the time shift here in the US messed with my whole plan. But I figured I'd at least get this basics down and then add screen shots when I get home.

So some of you might already know this but I figured I would share for those that do not know.

Something that has been around for awhile now (at least since 1.6) is that a hopper pointing at an invtory across a chunk boundary will chunk load that invtory's chunk. You can if you needed say 4 chunks loaded go to where they meet up and place 4 hoppers so that each is pointing to another across the chunk line and they will keep all 4 chunks loaded.

I have played with this a little bit and it seems fairly fool proof once setup. This might be a bug or an unintended side effect of hopper code. So this might get patched away and depending on your point of view this my be cheating.

But there you go. As stated I'll add a few screeen shots later tonight for those that need that sort of thing.

 

[Smog ShadowSeth]

So this glitch basicaly reduce the cost of a chunkloader down to 5 iron ingot and 8 wood planks. And made chunkloaders a vanilla feature. With tile entities that are so common and used that they can't be desactivated by sever admins.

...You know what, I'm suddently very happy to only have a very small server with almost nobody on it. This is going to be a nightmare for the bigger ones...

 

[Shakie666]

This sounds great. Chunk loading in FTB is pretty much a given now, meaning I end up spawning one in. With this trick I guess I won't have to.

Also, I doubt it would be patched. It would cause more problems that it would solve.

 

[Lathanael]

Unfortunately it already seems to be patched/fixed in 1.7 (http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/2038635-bring-back-the-chunk-loaders/, https://mojang.atlassian.net/browse/MC-35587) and will no longer work

 

[Saice]

Unfortunately it already seems to be patched/fixed in 1.7 (http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/2038635-bring-back-the-chunk-loaders/, https://mojang.atlassian.net/browse/MC-35587) and will no longer work

That is good news actually.

One of the reasons I was bringing this up is that you can have unintended chunkloading with hoppers. So both builders and admins it is something to be aware of. That is actually how I found it in the frist palce looking for weirdness on a test build I had.

 

[Saice]

Yeah saw that video. A few things to note that he brings up.

The hopper as a chunk loader does not work like a full chunk loader. It allows for block updates but not randomized block updates (ie stuff like plant growth) or keeps enties loaded. So it is not nearly as good as a chunkloader from a mod. But it could be useful for some other sorts of things.

Really I recommend watching that video he does a real good job explaining the limits of using a hopper as a chunk loader something I had not really noticed myself because I was not really doing much with it and it was just something that popped up while working on some other things.

I still believe it is something players and server admins need to be aware of since it can impact load on your system if you have a lot of these unplanned loaded chunks going on.

 

[Eyamaz]

You used to be able to do this with sticky pistons and Redstone clocks to increase the loaded chunks around spawn if you set it up right. Not sure if it still works anymore.

 

[Yusunoha]

I always hoped Mojang would add a vanilla method of chunkloading, but I guess they haven't done that yet to prevent vanilla servers of going haywire because of it.
there was one modded server though that did not allow modded chunkloading blocks, but did set it up so a tamed wolf/dog would load the chunk it was in

 

[Hoff]

I always hoped Mojang would add a vanilla method of chunkloading, but I guess they haven't done that yet to prevent vanilla servers of going haywire because of it.
there was one modded server though that did not allow modded chunkloading blocks, but did set it up so a tamed wolf/dog would load the chunk it was in

... How could that possibly be any better....

 

[Bomb Bloke]

... How could that possibly be any better....

It brings to mind the bug where occasionally mobs get multiplied however many hundreds of times over. Imagine that with chunk-loading mobs. Heh.

 

[Yusunoha]

... How could that possibly be any better....

don't really know, but it was an interesting way of chunkloading