Basically the above. While is is certainly arguable whether the current implementation of MJ is good, the reason KL split off was simply due to his vision of power being different than Covert's.
Spacetoad is back to modding
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I actually had almost no influence on the BC API. It wouldn't look ANYTHING like it does if I did. The problem is that ultimately, the restricted design meant three things:
1) MJ-based Tile Entities use an additional 100+ bytes of memory that is flat out unnecessary. (Compared to RF)
2) MJ-based Tile Entities use roughly 5-10x the CPU during energy transactions. (Compared to RF)
3) Lossless machines are completely denied by the system, and any attempt to create one is met with silent failure by the API.
Yeah, no thanks.
EDIT: As far as the original post, I'm quite glad to see SpaceToad return to the scene. I loved BC - that's why I wrote TE to save it back in 1.2.5.
Things may have changed, but I don't have a strong desire to watch it die completely.
I love it how my joyful thread about Spacetoad returning morphed into a MJ vs. RF battle.
Enough arguing. Everyone knows blutricity is still the best power system anyway
Enough arguing. Everyone knows blutricity is still the best power system anyway
Blutricity was pretty useless, it was a nice attempt, but useless.
RF is the King's(Literally too!)power system now.
On Topic:
I wonder what he thinks about BC4...
RF is the King's(Literally too!)power system now.
On Topic:
I wonder what he thinks about BC4...
You know, I'd love to see Buildcraft going back to its roots. At its heart, it helped you build things, hence the name. It also helped to automate things, or at least transport them. For a long time, Pipes (or RP2 Tubes) were about the only way to get items moving around without manually hand-jiving them. Logistics Pipes increased this ability by an order of magnitude. Several, actually.
I'd love to see Buildcraft go back to those roots. I want to see something like an actually functional Blueprinter and Builder. MFFFS3 has something similar already, so it *should* be possible. Something that can build pre-designed buildings or layouts. Something that can build in shapes other than squares or rectangles. Something that can build patterns in materials, provided access to those materials.
I'd love to see a couple of enhancements to the Filler. Specifically, removing the antiquated requirement for the bricks and glass whose only purpose was to define which activity the machine was to undertake. There's dozens of better ways to tell a machine what to do these days. This would make it a more intuitive machine to use, which can only be a good thing. I'm completely in agreement with it destroying blocks it clears out, that's the function of a Quarry, not a Filler, and will significantly help with item lag, so how about simply not generating items when destroying blocks with a filler? It just makes things a bit more smooth. I'd also like to see it handle irregular shapes. Perhaps a new tool that works in conjunction with Landmarks, outlining an irregular shape, with landmarks required at all points. Once you define the shape of the area, the rest is easy.
I'd also like to see improvements to the pipe API. And by 'improvements', I mean largely trashing the latest version and starting with the older version. I'd like to see pipes go Forge Multipart compatible so you no longer need Facades. I'd like an effort to be made to determine what is viable and what isn't, and what people are looking to do with them rather than telling people what 'should' be done with them. Ask the mod authors what they'd like to see in the API. Then actually listen to them.
Of course, at this point, there's no way of knowing if Spacetoad is even going to bother picking BC back up, or start a whole new thing, so all this might well be just a pipe dream. But someday they'll find it... the Buildcraft Connection... the modders, the users... and me.
I'd love to see Buildcraft go back to those roots. I want to see something like an actually functional Blueprinter and Builder. MFFFS3 has something similar already, so it *should* be possible. Something that can build pre-designed buildings or layouts. Something that can build in shapes other than squares or rectangles. Something that can build patterns in materials, provided access to those materials.
I'd love to see a couple of enhancements to the Filler. Specifically, removing the antiquated requirement for the bricks and glass whose only purpose was to define which activity the machine was to undertake. There's dozens of better ways to tell a machine what to do these days. This would make it a more intuitive machine to use, which can only be a good thing. I'm completely in agreement with it destroying blocks it clears out, that's the function of a Quarry, not a Filler, and will significantly help with item lag, so how about simply not generating items when destroying blocks with a filler? It just makes things a bit more smooth. I'd also like to see it handle irregular shapes. Perhaps a new tool that works in conjunction with Landmarks, outlining an irregular shape, with landmarks required at all points. Once you define the shape of the area, the rest is easy.
I'd also like to see improvements to the pipe API. And by 'improvements', I mean largely trashing the latest version and starting with the older version. I'd like to see pipes go Forge Multipart compatible so you no longer need Facades. I'd like an effort to be made to determine what is viable and what isn't, and what people are looking to do with them rather than telling people what 'should' be done with them. Ask the mod authors what they'd like to see in the API. Then actually listen to them.
Of course, at this point, there's no way of knowing if Spacetoad is even going to bother picking BC back up, or start a whole new thing, so all this might well be just a pipe dream. But someday they'll find it... the Buildcraft Connection... the modders, the users... and me.
Aggreed, I really miss the builder and the possibilities we had when it was semi-working
Interesting ideas and definitely worth a second thought.
Now here i have to disaggree. Why should BC implement FMP support? If it did we could just remove the Facades all together and never bother with them again. Also i'd hardly call trashing the current pipe API 'improvements' it would be a rewrite. And the item pipes a pretty solid right now imho.(Not considering any computational improvements which could be made)
Isn't the point of an API to make things available to other developers while also ensuring how the interaction is handled thus limiting implementation freedom.
I really don't like the current scheme of bashing BC in our community and praising TE3 as an "end of all" thing which every other mod has to use or be left behind.
NOTE:
This is my personal opinion as a user not as a FTB Staff member!
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I'm all for removing facades and never bothering with them again.
Among other things, I'd like to see pipes go to a 'first available inventory' logic like every other item distribution system ever made since. I'd also like to see the code cleaned up a bit. There's been a lot of advances since the code was written.
The inability to make a lossless machine connect to BC is an inherent fail and needs to go away.
No.
An Application Programming Interface (API) is a library used to facilitate the interaction between the core program and any other programs that would like to work with it. In the case of mods, it is supposed to make it easier to make machines and other things that run on MJ without copying large swaths of BC code. Unfortunately, it does the exact opposite of this.
If you want to talk about API's in general, I suggest you look at the GNU Project and things like FreeBSD. This is what an API is supposed to do.
I'm not bashing BC, I'm wishing it hadn't been done the way it was. It is not intended in a derogatory fashion, nor is it intended as inflammatory. It is intended as a citation of what I perceive to be a negative example. In addition to the lack of user-friendliness, it also carries with it the implication that modders were 'too stupid to use it right', which I find to be somewhat offensive. BC itself has a lot of potential. Unrealized potential, perhaps, but potential. However, the API rewrite was basically a huge step in the wrong direction, in my opinion. It made it nearly impossible for anyone to work with the MJ system, which is going to eventually marginalize it. I feel it was a bad move. However, it was CJ's decision, and his right to make that decision.
It's almost impossible to look at MJ and RF and not say 'RF is a power API done right, and MJ is a power API done wrong', because both are (in my personal opinion) true statements, and whenever you are discussing a topic, it is always good to have both a positive and a negative example to show you where your believe something should fall in, and these are two power API's which a large part of this community is familiar with.
As a result, any time a discussion of power networks comes up, this comparison IS going to be made. And it will be to the detriment of the BC power API. This is not an attempt at being derogatory, this is an attempt at offering constructive criticism, citing an example, and trying to present things in as clear and accurate manner as possible.
Again, these are my personal opinions on the topic, and my point of view.
I like BC pipes being slightly different. Despite rarely using them any more, they have their benefits.
I actually enjoy how BC pipes had the whole "route is decided as it goes" system as opposed to RP2 and now TE's "route is planned in advance towards nearest inventory". The piping systems had distinctly different logic and were useful for different situations. Making BC pipes just imitate other systems would be a a disappointment. :/
I'm interested to see what comes of SpaceToad coming back. I see a lot of people hoping he "takes BC back," but I'm not sure if that could happen or not. SpaceToad handed his mod over to the community and made it open-source, didn't he? Is he even allowed to just go "Okay, give it back now" and take full creative control again? At best, all the other people who've been working on it could go "Oh, okay. Here you go." At worst, it would just turn into a tug-of-war or lead to a spinoff version of the mod.
I'm interested to see what comes of SpaceToad coming back. I see a lot of people hoping he "takes BC back," but I'm not sure if that could happen or not. SpaceToad handed his mod over to the community and made it open-source, didn't he? Is he even allowed to just go "Okay, give it back now" and take full creative control again? At best, all the other people who've been working on it could go "Oh, okay. Here you go." At worst, it would just turn into a tug-of-war or lead to a spinoff version of the mod.
I actually like BC's pipes, for all the hassle one has to take into making facades, pipe wires and gates for them. I am able to do stuffs that till now, no other mods can. For inventory sorting wise, it has it's ass handed back to it on a silver platter by a lot of other mods now. But for creative stuffs, I for one, have not been able to find a replacement for it, and that I applaud it.
Though I dislike how MJ is working now as a lossy system but that is the modder's vision, so I just play with BC's piping system and ignore the energy network for them.
Though I dislike how MJ is working now as a lossy system but that is the modder's vision, so I just play with BC's piping system and ignore the energy network for them.
The loss is a lot lower now than it was before the latest changes. The old MJ based Thermal Expansion Conduits had a 5% loss and the Conductive pipes had a massive loss up to 20% because of bugs. The new system is mostly loss less, but machines that are idle will still use a tiny bit of power. The default setting is 1 MJ/t, but mods can override that and reduce it to 0.1 MJ/t.
The power loss in idle machines are there to give the power system more depth. The player can attempt to deal with it by making smarter power systems. It is possible to remove all that idle loss by regulating power production. You can deny the machine access to power unless it actually have work to do.
If you use a machine from Forestry, RailCraft, BuildCraft, ExtraBees, ExtraTrees or any other mod with BuildCraft power integration, then the BuildCraft power transportation system is the superior choice. It means you can use gates to regulate power production in a far more effective way than with Thermal Expansion Conduits. Using Conduits doesn't stop the idle loss in machines based on BuildCraft power.
BuildCraft probably do loose players that don't want to deal with these things, but that's fine. It's not a goal to please everyone. The goal is to make an interesting experience for the players that already enjoy BuildCraft tech. A little bit unpolished, but with a lot of options.
That's like saying your work is shit use this one and never look back to the old system on which you spent hours upon hours to create. In all honesty i like facades and for me they serve a different purpose than FMP and thus i am against any move towards FMP. Also introducing a dependency on another mod should never be considered if it merely replaces a feature the mod already has. (Again my opinion!)
See i do not see Buildcraft as a Inventory "sorting" system. It is a factory piping system and that role it fits perfectly imo. Taking away on of the features which differentiate BC from all the other mods that have item routing isn't a good idea. That's what addons are for in this case Logistics Pipes!
I have to say that i am not in perfect aggreement with the inherent power loss to the system. But that's how it works even in real life (i know that RL argument again....). Players often want things the easy way and take every chance they can to go that route. That doesn't mean every mod has to follow that route and BC is one mod in the huge pile of mods which actually is again different which i like.
I'll cite Wikipedia here
As you can see it highly depends on what the creator of a mod thinks an API is. KL followed the first mindset in TE3 while the BC team thinks along the lines of a framework. Both are valid and have their uses. Of course we can now start a cite war to back up each of our words but i hope that isn't needed.
That last sentencs of mine wasn't pointed at you only. You are one of the few persons i'd say who are not right of bash the current BC and rather discuss its current state.
It's just that i have noticed a lot of "hate" against the direction the 2 major mods of past mc modding(IC2 and BC) have taken. It is really nice to see that people are so emotional about thing because it means they are attached to things and like them. On the other hand i can't help myself and notice a rather major part is outright saying something along the lines: "This is wrong it has to be done like this and if not the mod authors are idiots and their mod should die because they are doing it all wrong" (Note: I intentionally went a little bit over the top with that sentence!)
I aggree that parts of the code could be rewritten and streamlined to reduce their overhead but all in all i like BC having a diferent system compared to the route most mods have gone the last year.
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I have no issues with machines requiring a constant power draw when idle. Making power is easy, having to build an extra engine/power generator just to cover the loss is no big issue. In fact, I'd love if mods had a config to turn on/off idle power usage. The gate system for Has Work to turn on/off engines is an ingenious alternative to having a block that can store the power the engines create.
What I don't like in the current design of BC is all the different variations of the pipes (energy+item), it seems needlessly over complicated and messy.
The other part of the BC I currently don't like is the rewrite (nerfs) to the autocrafting table. A functional useful spacesaving block is now near useless.
What I don't like in the current design of BC is all the different variations of the pipes (energy+item), it seems needlessly over complicated and messy.
The other part of the BC I currently don't like is the rewrite (nerfs) to the autocrafting table. A functional useful spacesaving block is now near useless.
I do not think people dislike BC, after all we all love filler, quarry, gates and assembly table. I did not have any issue with BC pipes. Personally I think it is something special to stand and watch how stream of resources from a quarry goes thru sorting system based on BC pipes. It symbolizes prosperity.
If you ask me, SpaceToad should team up with KingLemming to rebuild BuildCraft from scratch.
Granting SpaceToad's coming up with very first "Industrial" mod idea and generic machines which most of following "Industrial-like" mods based off and KingLemming's efficiency and awesome execution, (In my opinion, KingLemming has hit the sweet spot of what I'd expect from buildcraft to have), they should create the best mod out there.
Granting SpaceToad's coming up with very first "Industrial" mod idea and generic machines which most of following "Industrial-like" mods based off and KingLemming's efficiency and awesome execution, (In my opinion, KingLemming has hit the sweet spot of what I'd expect from buildcraft to have), they should create the best mod out there.
There is no such thing as the best mod out there and there never will be. What we have is a number of different creative works which each have their own quirks and merits. This doesn't have to be a problem, in the same way that not every shop on the high street is the same.
Buildcraft may not currently be to everyone's tastes but given that Thermal Expansion exists, why do we need buildcraft to be more like Thermal Expansion. (Obviously that sentiment can be inverted too).
Ooh more shinies. I preferred it when BC and TE were more tightly coupled tbh.
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