I think we can do better than Direwolf20

[OmegaPython]

Agree completely, and expounded upon in my post in the Mods forum

I disagree entirely and completely.

LUA is braindead-simple to code, the dumbed down version used by CC even more so. It would take me far less time to code a turtle to run a program than it would be to make the build via other means. Most of the things DW20 uses Turtles for can be easily done via other means, it's just being lazy to use turtles because they're so easy.

A perfect example are his mobgrinders (up to the very latest one he made in a void age). The entire system is turtles attacking in front of them, sucking up the results, and dropping it into the tubing below.This was a work-around for the sole use for Soul Shards mod, and caused the author to nerf it so hard that it has become worthless.

As far as pastebin, there's a forum with sticky threads of actually viable code. Anything you'd want your turtle to do, code-optimized in that one thread. Bookmark, Search, and Done.

I think modders should create a database of all the fake players they use, and then hard code their machines to not work with those players, unless it is intended to be automated like that.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I think modders should create a database of all the fake players they use, and then hard code their machines to not work with those players, unless it is intended to be automated like that.

Wut.

 

[VikeStep]

LUA is braindead-simple to code, the dumbed down version used by CC even more so.

OK let me just say something, Lua is as easy to code with as many other languages.Sure there are harder languages such as Forth and Lisp (God there are so many brackets ), but most languages are simple and logical
Most programmers will agree that programming is never brain-dead simple.
There will almost always be bugs and the good thing about turtles is that if you want to upgrade the system or task the turtle is fulfilling you can code that in instead of refurbishing a whole build to make it better.

 

[GPuzzle]

I think like a programmer but I can only work with raw Rednet logic/RP2 logic.
SEND HELP SOON.

 

[KirinDave]

LUA is braindead-simple to code, the dumbed down version used by CC even more so. It would take me far less time to code a turtle to run a program than it would be to make the build via other means. Most of the things DW20 uses Turtles for can be easily done via other means, it's just being lazy to use turtles because they're so easy.

Well I mean, he built a rig in RP2 for the lighting in about 30 seconds while talking about it. He could have EASILY made it work, but it was huge. It's all but impossible to make a more compact rig. His pack literally does not have anything except turtles that meets the requirements.

A perfect example are his mobgrinders (up to the very latest one he made in a void age). The entire system is turtles attacking in front of them, sucking up the results, and dropping it into the tubing below.This was a work-around for the sole use for Soul Shards mod, and caused the author to nerf it so hard that it has become worthless.

DireWolf20 should not be blamed, and quite frankly the nerf was silly. And his mob grinding+enchant program? "So simple!" we say, but the truth is that it was a very, very bad mob grinder. So yeah... But the thing is, I challenge anyone out there to build a mob grinder with turtles faster than I can with MFR. I'll put real money on the line, because I'm quite confident I can get a grinder going a lot faster.

As far as pastebin, there's a forum with sticky threads of actually viable code. Anything you'd want your turtle to do, code-optimized in that one thread. Bookmark, Search, and Done.

Funny; almost everything I want to do is never listed on those forums. And anything that involves a turtle moving? Basically terrible. Turtles are a pain to fuel and maintain, and have itty bitty inventories. Put Underground Biomes in your pack and watch your turtle mining speeds plummet and their fuel efficiency fall through the floor. Academic, you say? UB is merging into the revamped EBXL, and is in a lot more than just my pack.

And it sort of ignores that, basically, Applied Energistics blows the doors off a lot of the things that we used to use stationary turtles for. Yet somehow infinite instant item transfer, incredible crafting, dead simple automation and trivial sorting is acceptable because certus quartz is a bit painful to mine?

I've struggled for a long time to understand turtle hate. I myself was afflicted for it and for the life of me, I cannot remember a coherent argument why. Especially given studies I've read that basically put fully 60% of the educated college students at, "Unable to code and extremely challenged to learn." I have to remind myself, constantly, that my ability to write software is the result of a dedication that has taken nearly 28 of my 34 years.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

OK let me just say something, Lua is as easy to code with as many other languages.Sure there are harder languages such as Forth and Lisp (God there are so many brackets ), but most languages are simple and logical
Most programmers will agree that programming is never brain-dead simple.
There will almost always be bugs and the good thing about turtles is that if you want to upgrade the system or task the turtle is fulfilling you can code that in instead of refurbishing a whole build to make it better.

Speaking as someone who started programming with FORTH, FORTRAN, COBOL, and even Pascal and Basic... LUA is braindead-simple to code.

The code is so simplistic and intuitive that the only bugs will be typos. And the bad thing about turtles is how ridiculously universal they are. They can do literally ANYTHING. I'd say that at that point, creative is simpler, but it's actually more simple to just write some turtles than to go to creative mode.

Also, you write a good code, you pastebin it for yourself. Now you don't have to write that section again. Then you use modular coding which calls those programs to do whatever you want them to do. Hell, you can make a pretty solid API by accident that way.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Well I mean, he built a rig in RP2 for the lighting in about 30 seconds while talking about it. He could have EASILY made it work, but it was huge. It's all but impossible to make a more compact rig. His pack literally does not have anything except turtles that meets the requirements.

Eh, the methodology was silly to begin with. He's trying to light up the area by hanging wrath lamps in the air, then wanting to remove them. First off, WHY BOTHER REMOVING THEM? They're 25 blocks up in the air, and spaced out one every 20 blocks. If anything, I'd probably just pull up the chunk boundaries GUI and put one in the center of each chunk and be done.

Or, yanno, you could've just put lights into the pathways and had the same effect.

DireWolf20 should not be blamed, and quite frankly the nerf was silly. And his mob grinding+enchant program? "So simple!" we say, but the truth is that it was a very, very bad mob grinder. So yeah... But the thing is, I challenge anyone out there to build a mob grinder with turtles faster than I can with MFR. I'll put real money on the line, because I'm quite confident I can get a grinder going a lot faster.

Placing one block is easier than placing five blocks and hitting ctrl+v. But not that much more.

Funny; almost everything I want to do is never listed on those forums. And anything that involves a turtle moving? Basically terrible. Turtles are a pain to fuel and maintain, and have itty bitty inventories. Put Underground Biomes in your pack and watch your turtle mining speeds plummet and their fuel efficiency fall through the floor. Academic, you say? UB is merging into the revamped EBXL, and is in a lot more than just my pack.

Easy enough, have it carry around an Enderchest instead of run back and forth. When inventory (slot 14, with 15 being the enderchest) is full, drop enderchest, dump everything, pull out coal to refuel, select slot 15, pick up enderchest, carry on. Problem? Solved.

And it sort of ignores that, basically, Applied Energistics blows the doors off a lot of the things that we used to use stationary turtles for. Yet somehow infinite instant item transfer, incredible crafting, dead simple automation and trivial sorting is acceptable because certus quartz is a bit painful to mine?

Applied Energistics has a far higher resource investment in terms of not only both kinds of quartz, but also iron, gold, and diamond. I can build a Turtle the moment I have redstone. I also can't program my ME Network to remote-control turn on/off my farms, mob grinders, nether lava pumping station, and the outside lights... with the same single block.

I've struggled for a long time to understand turtle hate. I myself was afflicted for it and for the life of me, I cannot remember a coherent argument why.

Because they really are a 'do anything you want and get away with it'. The game mode is 'survival', not 'have turtles run your game for you'. At least setting up an ME network or a Rednet network is entertaining. Turtles are just pastebin and done.

 

[ICountFrom0]

Eh, the methodology was silly to begin with. He's trying to light up the area by hanging wrath lamps in the air, then wanting to remove them. First off, WHY BOTHER REMOVING THEM? They're 25 blocks up in the air, and spaced out one every 20 blocks. If anything, I'd probably just pull up the chunk boundaries GUI and put one in the center of each chunk and be done.

Because the invisible light air blocks cause trouble to so, so many things that leaving a wrath lamp active is just asking for a crash.

 

[GPuzzle]

Odedex needs to be watched more.
I mean, c'mon, the guy made several projects without the need of turtles/computers. Moreover, in his frame quarry of world-raping doom, he made it with RP2 logic, creating an inchworm drive with it.
Or his super simple FZ barrel self-expanding system that is so ingineous.
The guy REALLY needs more recognizement.

 

[KirinDave]

Eh, the methodology was silly to begin with. He's trying to light up the area by hanging wrath lamps in the air, then wanting to remove them. First off, WHY BOTHER REMOVING THEM? They're 25 blocks up in the air, and spaced out one every 20 blocks. If anything, I'd probably just pull up the chunk boundaries GUI and put one in the center of each chunk and be done.

Or, yanno, you could've just put lights into the pathways and had the same effect.

Well you do wanna clear wrath lamps when you're not using them because they inhibit crop, tree and plant growth. The road lighting wouldn't quite do it either.

Easy enough, have it carry around an Enderchest instead of run back and forth. When inventory (slot 14, with 15 being the enderchest) is full, drop enderchest, dump everything, pull out coal to refuel, select slot 15, pick up enderchest, carry on. Problem? Solved.

And of course the fuel restocking on the other side. At some point this build is at least as complicated as a quarry.

I also can't program my ME Network to remote-control turn on/off my farms, mob grinders, nether lava pumping station, and the outside lights... with the same single block.

I don't get why it matters that 1 block can do lots of things, but actually what you described the turtle doing there is pretty much exactly what wireless redstone does so...

The game mode is 'survival', not 'have turtles run your game for you'.

Watching someone who is a competent Lua programmer use computercraft for everything does not give me the impression of OPness. It's more of a comedy.

At least setting up an ME network or a Rednet network is entertaining. Turtles are just pastebin and done.

What is "fun" and "not fun"... I mean, I get that. I'm not tellin' ya to use a turtle. Could everyone stop yelling at Dire for thinking it was fun? And is there this implicit assumption that if someone DOES "just pastebin and done" really deserve derision?

 

[Fuzzlewhumper]

I spent about an hour toying with Ars Magica to see if it had anything I could use with the Caster block - Magelight. But sadly, the caster wont accept that spell to cast. Thought I had an idea there. It did have a spell to raise a block and lower a block - but it's buggy as can be in that it destroyed the wrath lamp. It did raise a block 1 space into the air but then refused to raise a block any higher than that. Sad face. Oh well. I often try things that don't work. Off to go play and have more fun.

 

[KirinDave]

I spent about an hour toying with Ars Magica to see if it had anything I could use with the Caster block - Magelight. But sadly, the caster wont accept that spell to cast. Thought I had an idea there. It did have a spell to raise a block and lower a block - but it's buggy as can be in that it destroyed the wrath lamp. It did raise a block 1 space into the air but then refused to raise a block any higher than that. Sad face. Oh well. I often try things that don't work. Off to go play and have more fun.

See that video I linked. I love it.

 

[Bigglesworth]

Turtles are mediocre quarries by my math, and generally more effort than RP2.

Your math is bad.

1. Make a ruby/diamond class pick and an enderpearl
2. Make wireless mining turtle
3. Download quarry LUA

Feed it coal and you have a quarry that goes roughly 40% of a fully powered quarry. Add more at your leisure. Way easier than any other method and much faster to get when first starting a map.

Also mods *can* be OP. Anything that trivializes content is overpowered and should be balanced. Gravisuits are OP. Youre not going to die to anything in that. If youre having fun, fine, but be honest. The very core of what is OP is when an item or tool makes content that should be a challenge in some way, not. Plenty of mods do this and their authors know it (soulshards for example). GregTECH was born in large part because of this and thats why its notorious as so many soiled people that had EZ mode are suddenly faced with challenges.

Play FTB with normal enchanted gear on and go exploring and caving. Game is more fun when you might actually die to content and things you gather came at an actual risk.

 

[Bomb Bloke]

Most programmers will agree that programming is never brain-dead simple.

This depends on how much programming you've done. It's like learning another language - you eventually get to the point where you can hold a basic conversation and switch between languages easily.

For example, I would call a program that has a turtle swing a sword and dump loot "brain-dead" simple. I honestly don't think you'll have a lot of trouble finding people who agree.

Mods cannot be OP. It literally is a nonsensical statement. You can only be OP relative to something else. Please, what are they OP compared to?

Maybe he's speaking in the context of other FTB mods. What with us being on the FTB forum and all. He's even given you the example you ask for; a regular quarry - relative to the resources/time/effort involved, turtle output is far, far higher then that from quarries.

Anyway, if everyone limits themselves to only using their own code, and even then only uses the minimal amount of turtles required to get the job done, then they have reason to take some pride in what their turtles can do. But in practise, people are going to just slap turtles everywhere rather then dealing with the complexity of getting them to move or multitask, and they're going to copy their code off others rather then work it out for themselves.

It also doesn't help that one player might look at a turtle building a fortress and see an impressive coding feat, while another player might look at it and assume the code was either flogged off pastebin or otherwise fail to comprehend the amount of work that went into making it do that.

Either way, turtles aren't "balanced". Some players are going to be able to make them run circles around others in any situation. But they're far from being the only mod with "balance" issues; so the best answer is to go with whatever you find fun at the time and forget what everyone else is doing.

Who cares what some guy puts on a stream, anyway? Because then "everyone else will start doing it too"? If you think you can do better, go ahead and do better. Again, forget what others are doing.

 

[KirinDave]

This depends on how much programming you've done. It's like learning another language - you eventually get to the point where you can hold a basic conversation and switch between languages easily.

Allow me to sit upon my throne of bone and blood, the great gears grinding behind me driving a world-ending clock as I look upon the world in disdain and prepare to destroy it and pronounce, "Try learning an actually novel language, not a recapitulation of a half-dozen successful languages prototyped in the 70s." If you learn Haskell enough to write a non-trivial program in less than 6 months, I'd be very surprised."

Sorry. I just gotta say this. I've said it in nicer ways as well.

He's even given you the example you ask for; a regular quarry - relative to the resources/time/effort involved, turtle output is far, far higher then that from quarries.

It's really not though. It's way less fuel efficient and slower. It's cheaper, but... I dunno.

If everyone limits themselves to only using their own code, and even then only uses the minimal amount of turtles required to get the job done, then they have reason to take some pride in what their turtles can do. But in practise, people are going to just slap turtles everywhere rather then dealing with the complexity of getting them to move or multitask, and they're going to copy their code off others rather then work it out for themselves.

If I wanna make god mode there are easier ways and easier mods.

Either way, turtles aren't "balanced". Some players are going to be able to make them run circles around others in any situation. But they're far from being the only mod with "balance" issues; so the best answer is to go with whatever you find fun at the time and forget what everyone else is doing.

Fair enough. Although I suspect people will feel the same way about Rednet once they understand it. Is max potential is way over the top given the rest of MFR.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The problem I see with turtles is:

1) the only 'gate' on their ability to perform a task is the operator's knowledge of the programming language, and

2) Pastebin a competent programmer's code so you don't have this problem.

In fact, once a competent programmer has pastebin'd code for a specific project, ANYONE can access that code with copypasta. You don't need to be able to code in Haskell in order to perform that simple task. You don't even need to comprehend what the program is actually doing. You just need to pastebin it to your startup and done.

It would be like being able to pastebin your Thaumcraft 3 research so anyone can download it and have all the research.

You know, I'm tempted to do it now... write a series of programs which can then be copypasted to perform any task using common lingo. of course, the entire library of words would have to be uploaded to the turtle to do it, so you might write a single 'master program' which does all that for you, call it BOOT. BOOT copypastes all of the pastebin'd words. Then you just tell it what to do, and it does it.

 

[KirinDave]

The problem I see with turtles is:

1) the only 'gate' on their ability to perform a task is the operator's knowledge of the programming language, and

2) Pastebin a competent programmer's code so you don't have this problem.

In fact, once a competent programmer has pastebin'd code for a specific project, ANYONE can access that code with copypasta. You don't need to be able to code in Haskell in order to perform that simple task. You don't even need to comprehend what the program is actually doing. You just need to pastebin it to your startup and done.

It would be like being able to pastebin your Thaumcraft 3 research so anyone can download it and have all the research.

You know, I'm tempted to do it now... write a series of programs which can then be copypasted to perform any task using common lingo. of course, the entire library of words would have to be uploaded to the turtle to do it, so you might write a single 'master program' which does all that for you, call it BOOT. BOOT copypastes all of the pastebin'd words. Then you just tell it what to do, and it does it.

I appeal to the betterment of society. Let's give every kid who learns to program infinite minecraft diamonds. Real life will be made better.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I appeal to the betterment of society. Let's give every kid who learns to program infinite minecraft diamonds. Real life will be made better.

This would only be relevant to kids who have an interest in Minecraft and aren't already interested in programming. I don't see this as being a large set.

 

[KirinDave]

This would only be relevant to kids who have an interest in Minecraft and aren't already interested in programming. I don't see this as being a large set.

It's actually a really big set. I was shocked to learn this, as well. Computer programming is completely disjoint from gaming.

 

[Bomb Bloke]

Gamers having no interest in programming doesn't surprise me, but I was amazed to one day realise that a soldering iron is not, in fact, considered an essential house hold item.

We're fast turning into a tool-less society where even a dish-mop is considered old-fashioned when compared to a dish washing machine (a magic, all-in-one block that does all the dishes for you with no thought or effort required).