Dinnerbone adds "Comparator". Curse or Blessing?

[finite8]

You decide:

https://twitter.com/Dinnerbone/status/2 ... 9420673024

Long story short, it looks like it works a bit like a transistor, changing outputs based on the strength of the redstone signal. This, while sounding cool, i think it's curse as it is adding a new overcomplicated mechanism to redstone that has never before dealt with this kind of stuff before. We have only ever had to worry about whether there is a signal or not, and as we can't really "coil" redstone wire in a space efficient way, this seems very impractical. Some people are already really daunted by Redstone but at least there has always been hope that the simple "on or off" binary logic to it has always kept it within reach. Adding analogue mechanics to it will just make for more trouble i feel.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah...I think this trend is rather silly. There's still a shit-ton of untapped potential in redstone as a system the way it is right now, and this really just seems like a "just because it sounds cool" feature.

Will wait and see what they actually do with this, but I'm not exactly optimistic about what the end result will be. It really does strike me as a bunch of wankery.

[Stormweaver]

You know, with the amount of sheer potential redstone has as of now (just torches, dust, repeaters and pistons), I don't see why they're going from simple devices to...needlessly complex ones. I was expecting maybe a repeater subtype that only outputs if the input is of a particular strength, not an asymmetrical redpower wannabe.

[FlowerChild]

You know, with the amount of sheer potential redstone has as of now (just torches, dust, repeaters and pistons), I don't see why they're going from simple devices to...needlessly complex ones. I was expecting maybe a repeater subtype that only outputs if the input is of a particular strength, not an asymmetrical redpower wannabe.

Lack of creativity? Honestly, I think Jeb and Dinnerbone are out of ideas, hence they implement stuff like this instead.

As I've often said...they're not designers.

[finite8]

As I've often said...they're not designers.

Yeah. They're modders. I mean seriously, the stuff they've been adding is a bit of a combination of some Redstone mods, Mo Creatures, etc.

It took a lot of thought and consideration to implement Pistons which was originally a mod. It wasn't a rash decision, Notch thought pretty long about implementing it and when it was implemented, it worked great. It was implemented in a fully featured way.

Sigh. I miss Beta.

[AdvSummer]

I think they just reached a point where jeb and dinnerbone discuss features, and if it "sounds cool", it'll probably get added to the game, for the sake of endless continuous updates.

[Stormweaver]

I just can't figure their line of reasoning. It's going to be used once per detection circuit, and otherwise completely forgotten (unless they completely overhaul the redstone mechanics), simply because with such specific functionality and 3 I/O, there's no 'generic' use for the thing.

One-use-only is bad game design in a sandbox, and I'm no game designer. Did they really just come up with the idea and fail to think "What will it be used for?"

[johnt]

i'm confused.. does having multiple torches add to the signal strength?

[odranoel]

while i must agree that the direction of mojang features lately seems to be a bit "blind" at the moment. however to be fair dinnerbone said that as of now they are pretty much useless, however they will apperently be adding new blocks to take advantage of this new redstone funtionality.

i admit that the vanilla redstone system could deff use a massive overhaul, but it seems this overhaul should take a more....BTW route? by adding funcional redstone powered blocks, rather then altering the way redstone it self works. (which as far as we know MIGHT be the case, with the comparator being the first of these new redstone blocks.) but alas we should probably take FC's stance on not judgeing features before they are released. while we may not have much faith in mojangs desgin ability, the feature is still unreleased and we have virtually not clue what uses it will get.

lets wait until the wolf actually gets here befor crying wolf prematurly ;)

[finite8]

I'm actually not convinved that redstone needs an overhaul. The way it works, while quirky is for the most part consistent (except for the few dodgey things with the dispenser and pistons with block updates). I think the solution to this "redstone wall" everyone seems to feel is in creating more modular components. People love the doing more in less space, but the kind of complex math to achieve compression using something like this is not easy. I mean, we can all imagine simple "if... else" statements, and generally we can extrapolate this into "signal goes into that block, which turns its output off". Now try to understand this in an Analogue environment. I found it confusing in my Electronics labs and was one of those "Yeah okay... i will take it for granted that works" situations.

I really think with the ability to add arbitrary data to items, we can have some sort of "redstone circuit board" that could work like a miniaturized x*y redstone board. It has terminals on its sides and you can build your own custom wiring in some GUI. This should obviously be further down the tech tree (although, in vMC, there really isn't any kind of tech tree other than what pickaxe you have) allowing Steve to work his way up to more complex systems.

[MoRmEnGiL]

It took a lot of thought and consideration to implement Pistons which was originally a mod. It wasn't a rash decision, Notch thought pretty long about implementing it and when it was implemented, it worked great. It was implemented in a fully featured way.

To be fair, notch had nothing to do with pistons, it was jeb's work entirely.

[Katalliaan]

The only already-existing use I can think of this is maybe as a control for those rare builds that rely on having just enough signal from a source and need an on/off switch. So, in other words, few and far between.

[finite8]

To be fair, notch had nothing to do with pistons, it was jeb's work entirely.

Correct... but wasn't it Notch who gave the go-ahead and made the decision on how it was to be implemented. At that time, Notch was still in charge i think.

edit: Fixed quote tags.

[FlowerChild]

To be fair, notch had nothing to do with pistons, it was jeb's work entirely.

You're confusing design and implementation here. While Notch was still on the project, all the design went through him.

It's like with wolves...when I complained about them saying Notch should have known better, people kept saying "but it was Jeb who did them", missing the point entirely.

[BlackCat]

I don't think I could even begin to put into words how bad of a taste this leaves in my mouth.

I was ecstatic when they added the shift clicking function in 1.4.6, to see more of this just makes me sad.

[The Lord of Brick]

Well...
It does open up quite a few possibilities for people like Sethbling...

[Ferrus.Manus]

I was expecting maybe a repeater subtype that only outputs if the input is of a particular strength, not an asymmetrical redpower wannabe.

But that's exactly what comparator is. Input B is simply used to tell what what that particular signal strength is without using GUIs (which is a very good thing).

i'm confused.. does having multiple torches add to the signal strength?

Signal strength is related inly to distanc from the signal source (so redstne dust next to torch/lever/etc. have signal strength 15, next one have 14, etc.)

All in all I'm mildly postive about the "signal strength matters" mechanic, it should allow some more compact/advanced circuitry without turning redstone system into oersimplified Duplo like RedPower did.

[Wafflewaffle]

In my "complete redstone noob" perspective, this is just one of those features that I'll see people using at youtube but i will never touch. The whole Redstone Update and this "Compactor" thingy dont serve me any purpose other then the potential to brake my existing (and scarce) building or dont to nothing at all.

I call it "the curse of not that interesting"

[Gears]

They need to just get the damned mod API finished, fix some game breaking bugs, then beg for notch to get back into the loop or just stop adding features.

Like that's ever gonna happen.

[Charzy]

The fact that they're adding an Op-Amp is quite silly, considering there's nothing in the game that needs different voltage levels, and no analouge sensors like LDRs to actually amplify.

EDIT: Oh hey, it doesn't have all the features that actual Comparators have IRL, like the amplification. Making it even more useless.

[Kombucha]

The fact that they're adding an Op-Amp is quite silly, considering there's nothing in the game that needs different voltage levels

...in 1.4.6. Perhaps this is a precursor to the overhaul to Redstone we've been told to expect in 1.5.

[Gears]

The fact that they're adding an Op-Amp is quite silly, considering there's nothing in the game that needs different voltage levels

...in 1.4.6. Perhaps this is a precursor to the overhaul to Redstone we've been told to expect in 1.5.

They better pull one fucking huge rabbit out of their hat with this update, then. Because so far I am very disappointed in what we've been shown.