Those little things that irk you about Minecraft

[ratchet freak]

The power creep that has settled in.

The core cause seems to be mods trying to balance their machines using power requirements. And then other mods coming along and upping the output of their generators to stop the laggy wall-o-generator to supply the power sinks.

If the machines just used a token amount of power then a handful of generators should be plenty for even the largest base.

 

[keybounce]

I thought that as of V7, Reika had relaxed his rules and permitted that.

Besides, he will add in any reasonable gating material on request.

 

[mathchamp]

The power creep that has settled in.

The core cause seems to be mods trying to balance their machines using power requirements. And then other mods coming along and upping the output of their generators to stop the laggy wall-o-generator to supply the power sinks.

If the machines just used a token amount of power then a handful of generators should be plenty for even the largest base.

Well, it does make sense that machines should have power requirements based on how powerful their function is. Something that just acts as a furnace shouldn't use too much, while something that can make matter from nothing should use a lot more.

It gets really ridiculous when you can have a single block that either generates or consumes a massive amount of energy. Stuff like Ender Quarries with speed upgrades. Or heck, just magic blocks in general, like Quarries. They take up one block and just automatically go ahead and mine an entire huge area by itself.

And making a single block generator that does the job of dozens or hundreds of standard ones is a bit overkill as well. It makes more sense that if you want to implement a large amount of generation without the laggy wall of basic generators, to implement a multiblock generator. But the worst offender has to be solar panels. A single block with enough generation to power even the hungriest machines, and all they need is to see the sky. Sure, most of them cost as much as the equivalent amount of basic solar panels (e.g. a 32768 RF/t solar requires 32768 of the basic 1 RF/t solar panels to craft), but having it fit inside a single block of space is just silly. If you want a solar farm, you should need the same space as a real solar farm would need. Again, they would have to act as a multiblock to reduce lag (each block would still have to check the sky separately but the power networks would see them as one big generator and you'd just need one wire connection).

 

[ratchet freak]

Solar panel produce a lot less in the night/rain/snow/thunder, even 0 with config.
Compacting solar panel have been made to reduce lag. If you then have to spread them again it completely ruin the point of them.
Now look at Advanced Solar Panel, they have solar panel that are a lot more expensive than just spamming resources, and the biggest change is the Molecular Transformer and the Sunnarium. Because it requires EU, and with simple tweaks, it can require a lot of it, to produce. Basically, when you have the power to craft them, they are not OP anymore.

And a multiblock solar panel would still cause a lot of lag. An option to consider every connected solar panel as one multiblock is not the "best" I think, except if only one of the multiblock is a tile entity and every other become regular blocks. And a solar panel don't produce power before a "multiblock test" is made.

half the reason a field-o-solars (or wall-o-generators) lags is because each sends their own 1 RF separately each tick. Allowing them to act as a multiblock lets just 1 connection send all the RF that is generated

The "see the sky" check is just checking the solar light level which is stored and updated separately from the torch/artificial light level.

 

[Type1Ninja]

half the reason a field-o-solars (or wall-o-generators) lags is because each sends their own 1 RF separately each tick. Allowing them to act as a multiblock lets just 1 connection send all the RF that is generated

The "see the sky" check is just checking the solar light level which is stored and updated separately from the torch/artificial light level.

A lot of the lag from multiblocks comes from the actual multiblock check - "Am I next to another solar panel? Should we multiblock? Does that solar panel have any neighbors?"
What @Plasmaboo says is right; a "solar panel controller" block which does the check each tick (instead of every single solar panel doing an individual check) would probably work much more nicely. Plus it would be a convenient spot to actually get the energy from.

 

[GreenZombie]

A lot of the lag from multiblocks comes from the actual multiblock check - "Am I next to another solar panel? Should we multiblock? Does that solar panel have any neighbors?"
What @Plasmaboo says is right; a "solar panel controller" block which does the check each tick (instead of every single solar panel doing an individual check) would probably work much more nicely. Plus it would be a convenient spot to actually get the energy from.

This is what block updates are there to manage. Any developer who has all multiblocks continually probing their surroundings is not taking full advantage of the mechanisims MC has to mitigate that kind of processing. "Water" is an example of a minecraft multiblock construct and it is remarkable both for the processing cost it incurs when changing, and the lack of processing cost when not.

Likewise, Solar cells do not need to keep on computing their light level. The game already computes light levels as blocks are changed and then caches those results.

 

[Type1Ninja]

This is what block updates are there to manage. Any developer who has all multiblocks continually probing their surroundings is not taking full advantage of the mechanisims MC has to mitigate that kind of processing. "Water" is an example of a minecraft multiblock construct and it is remarkable both for the processing cost it incurs when changing, and the lack of processing cost when not.

Likewise, Solar cells do not need to keep on computing their light level. The game already computes light levels as blocks are changed and then caches those results.

When I said "do the check" I meant "check how many solar panels are in the multiblock" not "check the light level." That's where the lag comes in - it's why, way long ago, decorating with certain blocks that were used in multiblocks (I think they were from Railcraft?) would cause huge lag because each block checked if it was in a multiblock every single tick. That's also why, nowadays, we use blocks like the Smeltery Controller to do the check, instead of having, say seared bricks do it.

 

[keybounce]

The real problem with most of these open, extensible power system is lack of "This is a set of guidelines to use when designing machines to use this system".

At least, I have never seen such a document, so everyone just extends based on what they see, and everyone looks at the same thing slightly differently.

===

Example?

1 unit: Free, when turned on. Can run pumps/minor machines.
4 units: High altitude, minor risk/contact danger. Can run the simplest infrastructure machines
16 units: Requires basic, simple consumable, and some minor bit of infrastructure.
64 units: Requires non-trivial consumable, significant infrastructure
128 units: Requires a complicated consumable that has to be built from something that consumes signficant power.
256 units: Similar, but now requiring nether materials, and one of the last two engines. Can overheat.
512 units: Requires high-altitude water, significant infrastructure using significant power (one of the last two engines). Serious contact risk.
2048 units: Massively involved consumable, all nether materials, one of the last two engines
65536 units: Upgraded version of previous engine, requiring that previous engine and massive volume of that consumable (and in turn requiring massive production of consumable). Serious "contact" risk at several blocks distance.

 

[RavynousHunter]

Problem is, that'd increase loading times by a lot. I believe one of the reasons GregTech chugs on loading is because its config is so extensive. Unless you're loading from a SSD, then your hard drive, no matter how fast, will always be your weakest link when it comes to data throughput.

 

[Type1Ninja]

I'm not modder yet, so I don't know if having every single value configurable is easy to implement or not.
I just see it as only requiring to read the config file, set the value according to it, and then run.
But that's probably too simplified?

Forge provides some neat stuff for config loading. It wouldn't be hard to program, but it would be tedious.

I don't know whether or not "configs increase loading times" is true, but lots of mods I play with advertise having everything configurable, and I've never heard anyone complain about that. Each value in the configs is most likely a boolean or a simple decimal, so the only lag I can see is in actually loading the file. I haven't got much experience with loading large amounts of data, though, so I may or may not be trustworthy on that front.

 

[lenscas]

If I remember correctly gregtech has indeed a pretty long loading time but that is not from its config file (which last time I used is was massive) but from all the things it does with the ore dictionary and whatnot.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Its a combination of all 3, with the 3rd being the sheer number of items and blocks that the game has to load when you start GT. In addition each block/item also has its corresponding recipe set [craft/machine/grind/smelt and its uses]; Forge only loads 1 recipe at a time.

[From the time I spent lurking in the GT thread]
​

 

[keybounce]

Except that the Nether have nothing special.
and,
There's one major problem. (§2)
Basically, if there's one guideline, it should be: "Every single value can be configured". (amount, flow, speed, duration, time.....)
And then, the default option should follow a guideline like that.

I'm not modder yet, so I don't know if having every single value configurable is easy to implement or not.
I just see it as only requiring to read the config file, set the value according to it, and then run.
But that's probably too simplified?

Sure, config options are fairly easy to work with. Not a big loss of time to read either.

But everything should be configurable? Name one significant mod that lets everything be configured.

---

Your "There's one major problem" link goes to Reika's "This is what people have tried to claim, don't be an idiot" page. What's the problem?

---

Nether has:
1. Ghast tears (dropped by ghasts)
2. Soul Sand (found in fortresses, or scattered on the ground)
3. Magma Creme (dropped by the nether slimes)
4. Nether wart (found in fortresses, but growable anywhere)
5. Nether rack (Fortresses)
6. Nether Brick (everywhere)
7. Blaze rods (dropped by Blazes in Fortresses)
8. ... Anything else? Oh, right, wither skulls and Stars for the beacons.

Nether Brick is much less of an issue since 1.7 (?) added recipes to turn rack into brick.

 

[AndyMASH]

The bloody achievements keep resetting! We've had this problem for YEARS! I know it took Mojang over a year to implement corner stairs, but COME ON! Now this happens to me not only with vanilla achievements, but with Arse Magica 2 too! (that was a joke, I've nothing with Ars Magica)

 

[sgbros1]

The bloody achievements keep resetting! We've had this problem for YEARS! I know it took Mojang over a year to implement corner stairs, but COME ON! Now this happens to me not only with vanilla achievements, but with Arse Magica 2 too! (that was a joke, I've nothing with Ars Magica)

Mojang fixed it in 1.7, didn't they?

 

[AndyMASH]

Mojang fixed it in 1.7, didn't they?

I think that's what I thought in 1.4

 

[Type1Ninja]

Mojang fixed it in 1.7, didn't they?

Yes.
Except some of them are still glitchy as all get out - "Getting wood" takes a while to actually work for me...
Also, it's totally broken in multiplayer. "Just because I haven't crafted a crafting table yet doesn't mean I haven't crafted a pickaxe..."

 

[Salamileg9]

Yes.
Except some of them are still glitchy as all get out - "Getting wood" takes a while to actually work for me...
Also, it's totally broken in multiplayer. "Just because I haven't crafted a crafting table yet doesn't mean I haven't crafted a pickaxe..."

On a vanilla RP server a while back, shortly after the 1.7 update, I had the "Taking Inventory" achievement at the top right of my screen for a few weeks. No idea what caused it, I forget if it happened in singleplayer as well...

 

[AndyMASH]

I got another one: changes occur as you make your settings, so if, for instance, I wanna set the mipmap levels to 0 ('cause it's just laggy bullshit) and I make a mistake (set it to 2, for example) I have to wait there 3 minutes until I'm given another shot!

 

[sgbros1]

I got another one: changes occur as you set you settings, so if, for instance, I wanna set the mipmap levels to 0 ('cause it's just laggy bullshit) and I make a mistake (set it to 2, for example) I have to wait there 3 minutes until I'm given another shot!

That's just how Minecraft renders. Theoretically it would be instant.