Working on new mod: Deep Resonance (powergen)

[McJty]

Ok, that makes sense. I didn't know that fluids could have extra data formatted in such a way that other mods' pipes and tanks wouldn't just flip out without having to register a gazillion different types of fluids. Good to know.

Also, another question, this one a bit more technical: Since the core mechanics of this mod involve mixing varying amounts of different fluids with varying stats (which I imagine must be represented internally by floating point numbers), surely you'd get rounding errors if you try to repeatedly mix a very small amount of some fluid into a tank containing much more fluid. How do you deal with this in the mod?

Fluids support NBT just like items. It is just rarely used as far as I know.

About the rounding errors. This mod is not about precise numbers. A 10% purity liquid will work almost exactly as good as a 10.00001% purity liquid. It doesn't really matter. It is floating point all the way so rounding errors are not an issue really.

 

[Someone Else 37]

Fluids support NBT just like items. It is just rarely used as far as I know.

About the rounding errors. This mod is not about precise numbers. A 10% purity liquid will work almost exactly as good as a 10.00001% purity liquid. It doesn't really matter. It is floating point all the way so rounding errors are not an issue really.

Makes sense, I guess... it just bugs my OCD a little.

*schemes about feeding low-purity, freshly smelted fluid into a large tank almost filled with high-purity, heavily processed fluid one millibucket at a time in an attempt to break the system*

 

[OreCruncher]

Deep Resonance should be seen more as a mod that heavily depends on liquid processing. The crystals are just the end product and you only have to place them near your generator to generate power.

Maybe I missed something in this thread, but would there be a benefit to using a lower purity fluid rather than a higher purity fluid? If there isn't it seems that a build will always go the highest purity route (because the incremental cost really isn't that much) and all that means is more machine tweaking to loop the fluid.

To be honest when I saw the different purity levels for fluid the first thing I thought of was gas at a gas station. Those installations use a blend valve to mix the appropriate grade of fuel at the time of pumping. Not sure how applicable this is, but it is what resonated with me (no pun intended. )

 

[Someone Else 37]

Maybe I missed something in this thread, but would there be a benefit to using a lower purity fluid rather than a higher purity fluid? If there isn't it seems that a build will always go the highest purity route (because the incremental cost really isn't that much) and all that means is more machine tweaking to loop the fluid.

To be honest when I saw the different purity levels for fluid the first thing I thought of was gas at a gas station. Those installations use a blend valve to mix the appropriate grade of fuel at the time of pumping. Not sure how applicable this is, but it is what resonated with me (no pun intended. )

While I don't know exactly what McJty has planned, I would guess that lower-purity fluids can accept more reagents that would increase RF/t produced and/or energy stored.

According to this page on McJty's GitHub, the fluid in this mod has five properties: Quality, Purity, Strength, Lasting Time, and Crystallizing Time. Quality is set when the ore is smelted and cannot be changed later on; according to my conjecture, this acts like a maximum for the sum of the other properties, which can be modified by the Filter and Infuser. So, to maximize the energy produced, you could forego Filtering, which would leave more "room" to Infuse in reagents that would improve RF/T and lasting time, at the expense that you'd have to shield your whole generator because pollution is bad.

I'm pretty sure there is no upside to low-Quality fluids, though, since that would just reduce the amount that you could upgrade it later on. So, you always want to keep the amount of lava in the tank beneath the Smelter as close to half-full as possible all the time. If that's what you were referring to.

That's my guess, though, and is not really based on anything other than how I would make it work if I were in McJty's position.

 

[McJty]

Maybe I missed something in this thread, but would there be a benefit to using a lower purity fluid rather than a higher purity fluid? If there isn't it seems that a build will always go the highest purity route (because the incremental cost really isn't that much) and all that means is more machine tweaking to loop the fluid.

To be honest when I saw the different purity levels for fluid the first thing I thought of was gas at a gas station. Those installations use a blend valve to mix the appropriate grade of fuel at the time of pumping. Not sure how applicable this is, but it is what resonated with me (no pun intended. )

A valve is planned. This will allow purifying the liquid with one tank + machine by repeatedly letting the fluid go through the purifier until it is good enough.

The benefit of a lower purity fluid is that it is easier to obtain. Less machinery needed.

 

[McJty]

Due to lack of documentation. Here is an image that might help a little:

 

[McJty]

Deep Resonance tutorial: https://github.com/McJty/DeepResonance/wiki/Tutorial

 

[McJty]

Here you see the upcoming liquid infusion process in action. With the current version of Deep Resonance you can produce crystals up to 1700 RF/tick because the liquid is limited to 85% purity, 10% strength and 10% efficiency. with the new laser system you can infuse the purity above 85% and get strength and efficiency up to 100%. This can now produce a crystal that gives up to 20000 RF/tick.


This system is still very new and needs proper testing and balancing. I will upload a test version of this soon. This infusion process needs both a depleted crystal (or a non-depleted will work too but that's a bit wasteful) and some catalyst item. Both are inserted into the laser block. Then the laser block must point to a tank on which a lens is connected. The distance should be exactly like on the screenshot. i.e. Laser, air, lens, tank. The infuser also needs power and a redstone signal.


The laser will always (by default) work on 500mB liquid at a time and on that liquid it will do the following changes depending on the catalyst:

• Diamond: add 5% purity to a maximum of 100%
• Emerald: add 8% purity
• Redstone: remove 1% purity and add 5% strength
• Gunpowder: remove 8% purity, add 8% strength and 4% efficiency
• Glowstone: remove 2% purity, add 6% strength and 3% efficiency
• Quartz: add 1% purity and 7% efficiency
• Nether Star: remove 80% purity, add 80% strength and 80% efficiency
• Ghast Tear: remove 8% purity, add 30% strength and 30% efficiency
• Slime Ball: remove 10% efficiency
• Coal: remove 1% purity and 10% strength

Remember that strength affects the total amount of power (RF) that the crystal will be able to yield while efficiency affects the RF/tick. That's why it may be useful to actually use something like slime balls to reduce the efficiency if you want the power to last longer.

 

[Someone Else 37]

Here you see the upcoming liquid infusion process in action. With the current version of Deep Resonance you can produce crystals up to 1700 RF/tick because the liquid is limited to 85% purity, 10% strength and 10% efficiency. with the new laser system you can infuse the purity above 85% and get strength and efficiency up to 100%. This can now produce a crystal that gives up to 20000 RF/tick.


This system is still very new and needs proper testing and balancing. I will upload a test version of this soon. This infusion process needs both a depleted crystal (or a non-depleted will work too but that's a bit wasteful) and some catalyst item. Both are inserted into the laser block. Then the laser block must point to a tank on which a lens is connected. The distance should be exactly like on the screenshot. i.e. Laser, air, lens, tank. The infuser also needs power and a redstone signal.


The laser will always (by default) work on 500mB liquid at a time and on that liquid it will do the following changes depending on the catalyst:

• Diamond: add 5% purity to a maximum of 100%
• Emerald: add 8% purity
• Redstone: remove 1% purity and add 5% strength
• Gunpowder: remove 8% purity, add 8% strength and 4% efficiency
• Glowstone: remove 2% purity, add 6% strength and 3% efficiency
• Quartz: add 1% purity and 7% efficiency
• Nether Star: remove 80% purity, add 80% strength and 80% efficiency
• Ghast Tear: remove 8% purity, add 30% strength and 30% efficiency
• Slime Ball: remove 10% efficiency
• Coal: remove 1% purity and 10% strength

Remember that strength affects the total amount of power (RF) that the crystal will be able to yield while efficiency affects the RF/tick. That's why it may be useful to actually use something like slime balls to reduce the efficiency if you want the power to last longer.

Neat! I've been waiting for this.

Questions:
- What happens if you try to add a reagent (or a catalyst, as you call it; as I understand it, the "catalyst" is consumed, so it's not really a catalyst) that would cause one of the fluid's stats to exceed 100% or drop below 0%? Does the infusion fail, or does the stat just get capped at 0 or 100?
- Following that, what happens if I were to, say add a nether star to a tank containing 1000 mB of a 50%-50%-50% fluid? Does the star infuse into half of the fluid, resulting in 500 mB each of 50-50-50 and 0-100-100, which then immediately mix into 1000 mB of 25-75-75 fluid? Or is the star spread out over the entire contents of the tank, resulting in 1000 mB of 10-90-90 fluid?
- Is there anything to prevent players from raising all the modifiable stats of a fluid to 100%? Does quality actually have any effect on how powerful your crystals can be?
- What happens to the depleted crystal used in the laser? Does it just act like the ruby crystals used in some real-life lasers and allow the laser to function, or does it degrade over time?

 

[Lethosos]

Will there be a way to add other mod items and tweak their stats for varying effects? Like, say, Thaumcraft crystal clusters.

Sent from my Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron using Tapatalk 2

 

[McJty]

Neat! I've been waiting for this.

Questions:
- What happens if you try to add a reagent (or a catalyst, as you call it; as I understand it, the "catalyst" is consumed, so it's not really a catalyst) that would cause one of the fluid's stats to exceed 100% or drop below 0%? Does the infusion fail, or does the stat just get capped at 0 or 100?
- Following that, what happens if I were to, say add a nether star to a tank containing 1000 mB of a 50%-50%-50% fluid? Does the star infuse into half of the fluid, resulting in 500 mB each of 50-50-50 and 0-100-100, which then immediately mix into 1000 mB of 25-75-75 fluid? Or is the star spread out over the entire contents of the tank, resulting in 1000 mB of 10-90-90 fluid?
- Is there anything to prevent players from raising all the modifiable stats of a fluid to 100%? Does quality actually have any effect on how powerful your crystals can be?
- What happens to the depleted crystal used in the laser? Does it just act like the ruby crystals used in some real-life lasers and allow the laser to function, or does it degrade over time?

- They are currently capped.
- The way the infusion process works technically is that 500mb is removed from the tank. It is improved with the catalyst given the above table and then it is injected back into the tank which will cause it to mix with the liquid that was still remaining.
- You can lower the caps in the config. The table with catalysts and their bonuses is configurable. You can even remove catalysts or add your own.
- When you insert a depleted crystal in the laser it is immediately consumed and converted to some internal buffer (a bit like a liquid but not really a liquid). If you open the GUI of the laser you can see how much crystal you have in it with a blue bar.

 

[McJty]

Will there be a way to add other mod items and tweak their stats for varying effects? Like, say, Thaumcraft crystal clusters.

Sent from my Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron using Tapatalk 2

yes, it the catalyst table is fully configurable.

 

[Someone Else 37]

- They are currently capped.
- The way the infusion process works technically is that 500mb is removed from the tank. It is improved with the catalyst given the above table and then it is injected back into the tank which will cause it to mix with the liquid that was still remaining.
- You can lower the caps in the config. The table with catalysts and their bonuses is configurable. You can even remove catalysts or add your own.
- When you insert a depleted crystal in the laser it is immediately consumed and converted to some internal buffer (a bit like a liquid but not really a liquid). If you open the GUI of the laser you can see how much crystal you have in it with a blue bar.

Ok, that all makes sense. So... as I understand it, it is impossible to achieve perfect stats if the tank being infused has more than 500 mB of fluid in it, since the lens would take out 500mB of almost-perfect fluid, upgrade it to the 100% cap, then mix it back into the tank with less-than-100% fluid, correct? So the most efficient way to achieve 100% strength/efficiency would be something like this:

1. Smelt exactly five ore blocks to get 500 mB of resonating fluid at 10%-10%-10% purity-strength-efficiency, and put it in a tank with a lens.
2. Add some combination of purity-reducing reagents to increase strength and efficiency as desired. Three ghast tears would increase both to 100% perfectly; a nether star, a piece of quartz, a glowstone dust, and a redstone dust combined would do it with a very small amount of wasted material. If the purity hits zero before you're done with this step, don't worry- each thing you infuse into fluid whose purity is already zero saves some filter material later on.
3. Run the fluid through filters until the purity maxes out at 85%.
4. Take 500mB of 85%-100%-100% fluid and put it in another tank with a lens and infuser. Mix in three diamonds.
5. You're done! Repeat 6.4 times, and you're ready to crystallize.

Having to have no more than 500 mB in the tank to get the last n% of stat into your fluid just seems a little... nitpicky to me. If you want this sort of micromanagement to just be what the player has to deal with, that's A-OK with me. However, if I was writing your mod, I would allow the lens to raise/lower the purity/strength/efficiency past 100 or 0%, and have the tank implement the caps after each mixing cycle. So adding an emerald, say, to 1000 mB of 96% purity fluid would raise the purity of the entire tank to 100% (after combining equal portions of 96% and 104% purity fluid), not just half of its contents.

Either that or just add a convenient way to pull exactly 500 mB of fluid out of a tank.

Also, what impact does the Quality of a fluid have? I had earlier assumed that it would pose a limit on the total purity, strength, and efficiency; however, this does not appear to be the case. Maybe it could affect the final crystal or the amount of depleted crystal "fluid" consumed in infusion in some way?

 

[McJty]

Ok, that all makes sense. So... as I understand it, it is impossible to achieve perfect stats if the tank being infused has more than 500 mB of fluid in it, since the lens would take out 500mB of almost-perfect fluid, upgrade it to the 100% cap, then mix it back into the tank with less-than-100% fluid, correct? So the most efficient way to achieve 100% strength/efficiency would be something like this:

Well eventually it will get very near optimal values. Every time you improve 500mB the total volume does get improved.

Having to have no more than 500 mB in the tank to get the last n% of stat into your fluid just seems a little... nitpicky to me. If you want this sort of micromanagement to just be what the player has to deal with, that's A-OK with me. However, if I was writing your mod, I would allow the lens to raise/lower the purity/strength/efficiency past 100 or 0%, and have the tank implement the caps after each mixing cycle. So adding an emerald, say, to 1000 mB of 96% purity fluid would raise the purity of the entire tank to 100% (after combining equal portions of 96% and 104% purity fluid), not just half of its contents.

I personally feel that this mod is not about exact stats. It is about trying to get as good as you can. If that's 99% then you will hardly see the difference between 100%. Internally everything is floating point anyway so there will always be inaccuracies.

Also, what impact does the Quality of a fluid have? I had earlier assumed that it would pose a limit on the total purity, strength, and efficiency; however, this does not appear to be the case. Maybe it could affect the final crystal or the amount of depleted crystal "fluid" consumed in infusion in some way?

The quality does affect the maximum cap of the infusion process. A liquid that has only 80% quality can only be improved up to 80% strength and not 100%.

 

[Someone Else 37]

Well eventually it will get very near optimal values. Every time you improve 500mB the total volume does get improved.

I personally feel that this mod is not about exact stats. It is about trying to get as good as you can. If that's 99% then you will hardly see the difference between 100%. Internally everything is floating point anyway so there will always be inaccuracies.

Eh, I'm a perfectionist. Asymptotically approaching 100% is not enough. But, if that's how you want it to work, have at it- I'll just sit in my corner with my slightly overcomplicated 500mB rig.

The quality does affect the maximum cap of the infusion process. A liquid that has only 80% quality can only be improved up to 80% strength and not 100%.

Ah, that makes much more sense. Certainly provides a good incentive to make sure that smelter tank is exactly half full (plus or minus 10% capacity, right?)

 

[McJty]

Indeed. The lava between 40 and 60% gives the best results

 

[McJty]

I'm trying to see if the balancing for Deep Resonance power generation mod is more or less ok so I did some calculations. If I made no mistakes then to generate a crystal with the following specifications:

• No radiation
• A total of 500 000 000 (500 million RF)
• An output of 20000 RF/tick

You would need the following materials (ignoring the materials needed to build the machines and infrastructure, this is just what the machines themselves require to make this crystal):

• 30 resonating ore blocks
• 6 bukkets of lava
• 370 gravel
• 370 coal
• 91 sand
• 216 redstone
• 156 nether quartz
• 36 diamonds
• 10 spent or unspent cyrstals
• 1894000 RF

This is one way to make such a perfect crystal. Using other catalysts there are also other possible ways.

Does this seem reasonable or should I tweak the defaults a bit more?

 

[McJty]

I just released version 1.10beta2 of Deep Resonance. This version should be very close to release now. There is one known bad bug and that is if you break a tank out of a multiblock tank. In that case the blocks that didn't get broken will be emptied completely. So don't do this! We'll get this bug fixed before the real release.

Other then that I changed the balancing numbers that I wrote about yesterday. In summary: I doubled the maximum amount of power that you can get out of a top crystal (1 billion RF instead of 500 million). But I made it harder to get to that point. Getting to 500 million should be slightly easier then it was yesterday because I reduced the amount of spent crystals needed (the strength that the spent crystal had will now affect how much you can infuse with it).

The way it works now is that there are caps to the infusion bonuses. For example, with redstone you can now only get strength up to 60% and no longer up to 100%. Most other catalysts have been limited like that. The only way to get to 100% for strength and efficiency is to use nether stars or ghast tears. However, these have a big cost for purity so you'll probably need a multi-layered setup where you purify first, infuse with nether star, and then purify again to get back to proper levels.

I added blaze powder and ender pearls as catalysts too. That means that most of the catalysts you can use are actually obtainable from mob farms (like gun powder, glowstone, redstone, ender pearls, and blaze powder are all obtainable from vanilla mob farms).

You can now see the effect the catalyst will have in the user interface of the laser. That should help.

The full changelog for the upcoming 1.1.0 is here: https://github.com/McJty/DeepResonance/wiki/Deep-Resonance-Changelog

You can get the latest beta (remember it is beta!) from: http://www.curse.com/mc-mods/Minecraft/233398-deep-resonance#t1:other-downloads

BTW. I recommend you delete your DR configs first to get the fresh values.

Have fun!

 

[Someone Else 37]

I just released version 1.10beta2 of Deep Resonance. This version should be very close to release now. There is one known bad bug and that is if you break a tank out of a multiblock tank. In that case the blocks that didn't get broken will be emptied completely. So don't do this! We'll get this bug fixed before the real release.

Other then that I changed the balancing numbers that I wrote about yesterday. In summary: I doubled the maximum amount of power that you can get out of a top crystal (1 billion RF instead of 500 million). But I made it harder to get to that point. Getting to 500 million should be slightly easier then it was yesterday because I reduced the amount of spent crystals needed (the strength that the spent crystal had will now affect how much you can infuse with it).

The way it works now is that there are caps to the infusion bonuses. For example, with redstone you can now only get strength up to 60% and no longer up to 100%. Most other catalysts have been limited like that. The only way to get to 100% for strength and efficiency is to use nether stars or ghast tears. However, these have a big cost for purity so you'll probably need a multi-layered setup where you purify first, infuse with nether star, and then purify again to get back to proper levels.

I added blaze powder and ender pearls as catalysts too. That means that most of the catalysts you can use are actually obtainable from mob farms (like gun powder, glowstone, redstone, ender pearls, and blaze powder are all obtainable from vanilla mob farms).

You can now see the effect the catalyst will have in the user interface of the laser. That should help.

The full changelog for the upcoming 1.1.0 is here: https://github.com/McJty/DeepResonance/wiki/Deep-Resonance-Changelog

You can get the latest beta (remember it is beta!) from: http://www.curse.com/mc-mods/Minecraft/233398-deep-resonance#t1:other-downloads

BTW. I recommend you delete your DR configs first to get the fresh values.

Have fun!

Two questions:
1. Is there actually any point in purifying first? As I understand it, if you were to add a nether star to 500 mB of freshly-melted 10%-10%-10% resonating fluid, the strength and efficiency would increase by 80 percentage points to 90%, while the purity could only go down by 10 percentage points because it's capped at zero, thus saving you a great deal of filter material. Is this behavior intended?

2. What all controls how long a spent crystal will last in a laser? I know you said stronger crystals will last longer, but is the crystal consumed per reagent or per unit time? Do the more powerful reagents (like ghast tears and nether stars) consume the crystal faster?

 

[McJty]

Two questions:
1. Is there actually any point in purifying first? As I understand it, if you were to add a nether star to 500 mB of freshly-melted 10%-10%-10% resonating fluid, the strength and efficiency would increase by 80 percentage points to 90%, while the purity could only go down by 10 percentage points because it's capped at zero, thus saving you a great deal of filter material. Is this behavior intended?

2. What all controls how long a spent crystal will last in a laser? I know you said stronger crystals will last longer, but is the crystal consumed per reagent or per unit time? Do the more powerful reagents (like ghast tears and nether stars) consume the crystal faster?

1. Yes. Because if you purify to 0% then almost all of the liquid will be destroyed. So to be able to apply (for example) a nether star it must already have enough purity.

2. The crystal is consumed per catalyst. Every catalyst needs exactly the same amount of spent crystal