Walling off lava lakes

[ItharianEngineering]

You do realize that Greg already added an advanced pump that uses mining pipe to drain a 128x128 area without causing block updates so the flowing block lag is taken out of the picture? You are asking Greg to add something he already added...
It also can pump up an oil geyser that is surrounded with water without messing up and trying to pump out the water like the BC pump has a tendency to do.

 

[Guswut]

You do realize

No, I did not realize that as trying to figure out what is new with GregTech is like trying to get blood from a stone. I've yet to find a way to get good updates on that, as well as looking up what things do. It's a failing on Greg's part.

That aside, it's good to know that there is something that'll do what is requested. The next logical question to ask is "Why is this not used?". The answers surely being "Because it is more expensive", "Because it is harder to do", and "Because we did not know it existed".

As such, Greg's solution has failed to solve the issue, because the issue is going to continue happening as server administrators aren't aware that this solution exists. It sounds like a good idea, but with the lack of communication, and the lack of a reason to upgrade for the enduser (who don't normally care about lag), it isn't a solution.

Thanks for the update on that, though!

 

[zilvarwolf]

I didn't know either. I don't use IC2 or any of the sub mods much at all and don't attempt to follow his frequent changes.

(Edit to be less of a jerk)

 

[Guswut]

I didn't know either. I don't use IC2 or any of the sub mods much at all and don't attempt to follow his frequent changes.

(Edit to be less of a jerk)

That's another factor, and one that cannot just be ignored. GregTech's Advanced Pump requires the usage of the IC2 system, which is something some people just don't want to use as there are many other systems. So, again, it's an issue of it costing too much in time/effort for a person to resolve it, thus it falls on administrators to fix it if they want to keep the server stable.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Would walling off sections of a lava lake help to reduce lag due to lava flow? Drop gravel or sand walls down, and drain it in chunks at a time (not literally "chunks", but maybe you could align the walls on chunk boundaries for maximum chunkloading efficiency). I would imagine that the lava drain is going to stop on chunk boundaries anyway, and then when you go there it'll have to suddenly calculate all the cross-chunk flow causing a big spike in calculations. I might program a turtle to build the walls. Is the theory sound though?

Turns out this doesn't really work. It leaves a 15x15 area of randomly flowing lava.

 

[PhilHibbs]

No, I did not realize that as trying to figure out what is new with GregTech is like trying to get blood from a stone. I've yet to find a way to get good updates on that, as well as looking up what things do. It's a failing on Greg's part.

Yeah 'cos whenever I want to build something complex in vanilla I look up the official Mojang documentation. Greg's should be at least as good as that.

 

[Memorian]

Do falling sand remove flowing lava?

 

[PhilHibbs]

No, it only removes lava if it is placed in the lava block and then falls from there. A turtle destroys lava blocks as it goes through them, though, so you could program a turtle to spiral outwards from where the pipe was to clear up the mess. I'm tempted to install GregTech just for the advanced pump - I understand it's possible to use GT for just the new recipes, without it changing existing recipes, right? I'm using DW20.

I just loaded up the latest DW20 Season 5 map, and his nether is a complete mess. There's a massive circle of zigzag flowing lava around his pump. I once saw a video of a drained Nether, I think it was when Monkeyfarm and DocM visited a server when they were starting out their Modded Minecraft series, and that looked really clean with the only flowing lava being neatly flowing in from the edges of the drained area. Does anyone know how that might have been done? Would that have been the GT pump?

 

[Memorian]

I'm considering building a frame ship, with two deployer "rings". It will be one chunk large, and once in position have the outher ring drop sand 10 times( or more will need to test this) then lower a pump that sucks up lava, this could in theoi be a repower pump on a fram arm in the center of the monster, or bc pump. this clears the area of lava and once done the inner ring of deployers (this is every block that isnt needed for the pump) drops 10 sand to clear up any mess... this machine offcause would extreamly inefficient and leave it's own kind of mess by turning the nether lave ocean into a desert, i might even run after it and plant cactus

 

[Antice]

No, it only removes lava if it is placed in the lava block and then falls from there. A turtle destroys lava blocks as it goes through them, though, so you could program a turtle to spiral outwards from where the pipe was to clear up the mess. I'm tempted to install GregTech just for the advanced pump - I understand it's possible to use GT for just the new recipes, without it changing existing recipes, right? I'm using DW20.

I just loaded up the latest DW20 Season 5 map, and his nether is a complete mess. There's a massive circle of zigzag flowing lava around his pump. I once saw a video of a drained Nether, I think it was when Monkeyfarm and DocM visited a server when they were starting out their Modded Minecraft series, and that looked really clean with the only flowing lava being neatly flowing in from the edges of the drained area. Does anyone know how that might have been done? Would that have been the GT pump?

the flowing lava issue has to do with how lava flows decay once the source is gone. that is, some flowing lava blocks starts to behave as if they still had a source block feeding them.
when unloading, and then reloading a chunk, these blocks will get unstuck, and then decay away like they should have done from the start. so unloading, then reloading the chunk will gradually remove all the stuck lava flows, and thus allow them to finally decay away like they should have done from the start.

you can see this bug with water too if you have a very wide waterfall, and then block all the source blocks off. water updates faster tho, so it's less likely to remain stuck for any length of time. unlike lava that decays slowly....

 

[Hydra]

Err. Lava 'moving' only causes lag when the block actually updates (it has to recalculate light values). A static animated block of lava doesn't cause any lag.

The best option for a server owner that doesn't want to disallow all pumping of lava would be to set up an infinite lava tesseract.

We simply disallow people pumping from the nether. Fortunately people on our server are mature enough not to "do it anyway".
They're also mature enough to not even want a free lava source. Where's the fun in that?

 

[PhilHibbs]

Err. Lava 'moving' only causes lag when the block actually updates (it has to recalculate light values). A static animated block of lava doesn't cause any lag.

I see. So, maybe putting a ceiling over the lava would help, to reduce the area over which lighting has to be re-calculated? Or does that not make a difference? I think all blocks have some level of translucency so maybe not.

We simply disallow people pumping from the nether. Fortunately people on our server are mature enough not to "do it anyway".
They're also mature enough to not even want a free lava source. Where's the fun in that?

"Because it's there"? I guess the novelty might wear off, but I've not done it even once yet so I don't know.

 

[Hydra]

I see. So, maybe putting a ceiling over the lava would help, to reduce the area over which lighting has to be re-calculated? Or does that not make a difference? I think all blocks have some level of translucency so maybe not.

Might work, but why not simply not pump lava from the Nether? Instead of spending time putting walls / roofs in you could spend time to set up a proper renewable source.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Where's the fun in that?

 

[Guswut]

Yeah 'cos whenever I want to build something complex in vanilla I look up the official Mojang documentation. Greg's should be at least as good as that.

Exactly. GregTech is one of the worst documented mods I've found to date, and I'm fairly sure it's a terminal condition.

 

[Hydra]

Where's the fun in that?

The fun of setting up a proper boiler instead of pumping up Nether cheese?

 

[Guswut]

The fun of setting up a proper boiler instead of pumping up Nether cheese?

Yeah, pretty much this indeedily do. Pumping nether lava is nice, but setting up a Steve's Cart tree farm is a good deal easier and never needs moving.

 

[Hydra]

Yeah, pretty much this indeedily do. Pumping nether lava is nice, but setting up a Steve's Cart tree farm is a good deal easier and never needs moving.

Fully automating a sugar cane > biomass > biofuel > boiler process is one of things I like doing most. It's also one of the first things I try to accomplish when I start out, just because it gives a lot of satisfaction when you finally get it working.

And now I have 4 boilers, complete overkill. 2 on biofuel, 2 on charcoal. I will be adding 2 more on fuel when I get my distilled bee production up and running.

 

[Guswut]

Fully automating a sugar cane > biomass > biofuel > boiler process is one of things I like doing most. It's also one of the first things I try to accomplish when I start out, just because it gives a lot of satisfaction when you finally get it working.

I will safely disagree with you here, after having fully automated a 120y-ish high tower around 20x20 in size. It wasn't too bad with turtles, but it was not something I'd consider a logical first automation step, whereas Steve's Cart is much easier to setup and deal with as such, I've found.

Still, a massive sugarcane tower is a lot of fun the first time you do it.

And now I have 4 boilers, complete overkill. 2 on biofuel, 2 on charcoal. I will be adding 2 more on fuel when I get my distilled bee production up and running.

I was running two HP36 off of six layers (with ten layers set up, but the last four disabled because of too much sugarcane), and I went from around 1,000 buckets of biofuel (I turned the entire system off, so that went down a bit from my stockpile) to a full 10,100 buckets (or whatever the full 9x8x9 railcraft tank holds) in less than a day, roughly.

It's nice, but having to baby sit the system whilst getting there isn't worth it in the short term, and the long term is par with the Steve's Cart tree farm.

But you cannot make a massive tower for Steve's Cart tree farms that'd look anywhere near as sweet as sugarcane:

 

[Hydra]

I see yours are a bit smaller than the max 21x21. I have 2 21x21 sugar cane farms and those supply more cane than my 2 boilers need.

At startup I don't build more than one farm though; a 21x21 farm is large enough in size. And I tend to start with just biomass power production first before I have build my first boiler (you need steel and stuff). I liked doing that way more because in my few a steve's cart farm is a bit too easy to build. I would be going for pure forestry if it wasn't for the non-renewable fertilizer.