New Release! (BTW V4.10)

[Last_Jedi_Standing]

I'm totally pumped! This was a great thing to wake up to!
I'm both extremely happy and slightly annoyed*grumblegrumblegrumble* that I have to rebuild most of my builds now. Oh boy the massive mobtrap is gonna be fun...
I'm surprised that the screw doesn't use SFS, but I guess you can't just say screw moving water around for people who don't have it yet.
And those rascally semicolons. Popping up everywhere...

Well, the screw pump is probably going to be like the hopper, in that it tends to turn up in multiple places in nearly every machine, be it an auto-kiln or a mob trap or whatever. They nearly all use water flow somewhere. If it was too expensive, those machines would become much less practical, and it would lessen the motivation to automate stuff. As it is, nothing in BTW is really that expensive, except the lens, and that's only because of the diamonds. 4 SFS ingots isn't that much, of course, but it becomes exponentially more expensive in large scale.

[Rianaru]

True. Although the first thing I do on every world is build auto pottery and kiln and acquire several stacks of SFS, so I'm not really used to a shortage of that. It was just my first impulse. Of course it makes perfect sense for it to be iron instead of SFS. And it's not like I'm complaining! I get to keep more of my precious SFS blocks :)

And of course I didn't realize that the screw requires an anvil to make. Just looked back now that I thought about it. My point was mostly about the tech tree requirement.
Note to self: think harder before posting
*facepalm*

[TheAnarchitect]

I am PUMPED! Moving water around was what I missed most from BTB, so I can't wait to play with this. A pumping station and aquaductery all over the place. Oh yeah. And since the underside of any aquaduct is going to need a drive train to drive the screws, it's also an easily tap-able source of mech power as well. I'm looking forward to establishing utilities.

[embirrim]

I have a concept of fun, I just think it would be awkward enabling Hardcore buckets in a non-HCB world. :P

But, I'll give HCB a try, I hope it doesn't get too weird. :)

Yeah, I think I'm going to do the same thing. The projects I'm currently working on and what I've already designed I'll leave as is, and if the opportunity arises to build some stuff using the screws, I most certainly will.
I think some stuff leans more to having HCB enabled than others. Mob traps are a good example of that, although challenges are always welcome!

[TSA]

Thanks for another update.

=) glad to see that the spout pump was implemented.

This means that we are no longer able to carry lava from side to side, right?

[FlowerChild]

I think some stuff leans more to having HCB enabled than others. Mob traps are a good example of that, although challenges are always welcome!

Well, yes and no. Yes...some mob trap designs become much more difficult, however, others remain relatively unchanged (like drop traps), and will be far more practical in HCB mode.

We'll see how it plays out in the long run, as obviously testing these things under all circumstances wouldn't be feasible for me alone. I think I've considered *most* possibilities over the months I've been pondering this block, but I definitely can't consider them all.

[FlowerChild]

*EDIT* I know you do not support creative mode, FC, but the screw pump is missing in here, although the screw is in.

I've made a decision not to include new mod features in creative mode in the first few releases in which they appear to give people playing legit a chance to experience them properly before they get spoiled through cheating. I'll add them later.

[riels418]

I haven't gotten a chance to test this as I've been at school all day, but with the introduction of the screw, is it possible to make power generation using a water mill, without a source block? That is, use a source block to start the water wheel, then bring the stream back up using screws, then remove the source block?

[FlowerChild]

I haven't gotten a chance to test this as I've been at school all day, but with the introduction of the screw, is it possible to make power generation using a water mill, without a source block? That is, use a source block to start the water wheel, then bring the stream back up using screws, then remove the source block?

If you'd like to ask questions about functionality that I haven't described, please start another thread. Spoilers aren't allowed in release threads.

[embirrim]

Well, yes and no. Yes...some mob trap designs become much more difficult, however, others remain relatively unchanged (like drop traps), and will be far more practical in HCB mode.

We'll see how it plays out in the long run, as obviously testing these things under all circumstances wouldn't be feasible for me alone. I think I've considered *most* possibilities over the months I've been pondering this block, but I definitely can't consider them all.

Mob traps wasn't the best example at all. What I meant was more along the lines that if you already have a running world/project in making, adding HCB may not be the best thing.

In my current world, I've just finished building a tower which will house all my hemp farms, reeds, chickens, that kind of stuff, and I've started making the actual farms now. Adding HCB now is not a good option. It won't break the immersion, for me, but it just won't seem right in the final product.
When I build the next tower, or a mob trap, whatever the next project is, I'll turn HCB on and build the tower from scratch with that in mind.

I'm just afraid this feature will be the spawn of many exploits, maybe even as worse as the infinite power loop series. But yeah, I have faith in you.

[FlowerChild]

I'm just afraid this feature will be the spawn of many exploits, maybe even as worse as the infinite power loop series. But yeah, I have faith in you.

As I mentioned in the dev diary thread, I spent months considering this block and potential exploits involved with it. The underlying design for how it works remained basically unchanged that entire time, while I mulled over the ways of stopping exploits without negatively impacting performance in a significant manner.

To give you an idea, the block functionality took me about 2 hours to implement, whereas the logic to prevent exploits took be in the neighborhood of 10.

And yeah, it's largely the same thing for me with regards to incorporating it mid-project. As many of you know, I've been playing on the same single world since I started playing MC about a year and a half ago, and while I have small isolated bases that are HCB based, the vast majority of it is not, so I may myself turn it on and off from time to time.

However, there are a heck of a lot of new worlds starting up right now due to SMP, so I thought it best to make this change sooner rather than later. I was just waiting on me figuring out the final pieces in the exploit puzzle, which finally happened a couple of days ago.

[Sarudak]

As I mentioned in the dev diary thread, I spent months considering this block and potential exploits involved with it. The underlying design for how it works remained basically unchanged that entire time, while I mulled over the ways of stopping exploits without negatively impacting performance in a significant manner.

To give you an idea, the block functionality took me about 2 hours to implement, whereas the logic to prevent exploits took be in the neighborhood of 10.

10 hours?!?!? Man I can't even think of a single possible exploit for a block like this! :P

[Graphite]

Not getting past the "endless powerloop" one myself. Though I'm mostly wondering how FC took care of that one. The slight powerdrain that fixed it for gearboxes doesn't seem all that applicable to water-streams. Guess I'll have to try building escher's waterfall, then see how it fails :P

[demerzeliv]

Thank you so much for this update FC! I've always really liked the creative challenge and aesthetic of building canals to redirect water flows to my farms and contraption, and the pump just adds so much more dynamism and flexibility for this! I'm really excited to start playing with the new mechanic (I never got into Buildcraft or BTB so it's new to me).

[Sarudak]

Not getting past the "endless powerloop" one myself. Though I'm mostly wondering how FC took care of that one. The slight powerdrain that fixed it for gearboxes doesn't seem all that applicable to water-streams. Guess I'll have to try building escher's waterfall, then see how it fails :P

You think he made it so that the water stream can't power a gear box? I never thought of that as an exploit more as just the way water works. Kinda like dwarven water reactors in dwarf fortress... Lol

[Graphite]

You think he made it so that the water stream can't power a gear box? I never thought of that as an exploit more as just the way water works. Kinda like dwarven water reactors in dwarf fortress... Lol

From the way I read viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5458&start=75#p90052, it seemed to be one of the possible exploits he was targetting, yes. I could ofcourse have misinterpreted it, though in that case I seem to lack the imagination to think up further exploits as well :P

[FlowerChild]

You think he made it so that the water stream can't power a gear box? I never thought of that as an exploit more as just the way water works. Kinda like dwarven water reactors in dwarf fortress... Lol

It's not really a matter of infinite power generators, as much as say pumping water up to a high elevation, running it in a circular loop, then removing the rest of your pump system that got it up there, effectively creating a source block in HCB, albeit a slightly larger one.

If that's allowed, then it pretty much invalidates HCB and the pumping system entirely.

[Sarudak]

Oh... I think I see.... You could maybe build it up and then have the top stream flow back down to the second to the top pump and remove everything below then reuse all your pumps to go higher. Finally one you get the water as high as you want you can recycle the rest of the pumps or whatever and only need 2 to provide water for everything of course. You would need some kind of check in the code to make sure that ultimately it's actually coming from a real source block.

EDIT: Ninjad

[FlowerChild]

Oh... I think I see.... You could maybe build it up and then have the top stream flow back down to the second to the top pump and remove everything below then reuse all your pumps to go higher. Finally one you get the water as high as you want you can recycle the rest of the pumps or whatever and only need 2 to provide water for everything of course. You would need some kind of check in the code to make sure that ultimately it's actually coming from a real source block.

EDIT: Ninjad

Yup, pretty much, and as I'm sure you know, that kind of recursive check, while entirely feasible, is a potential huge performance drain.

[Graphite]

Yup, pretty much, and as I'm sure you know, that kind of recursive check, while entirely feasible, is a potential huge performance drain.

And exactly that has me wondering just how you did fix it. Then again, I suspect some secrets are best kept or people might get creative based on the extra knowledge.

[Sarudak]

Yup, pretty much, and as I'm sure you know, that kind of recursive check, while entirely feasible, is a potential huge performance drain.

Yeah you made me curious with that statement too although I know you don't like discussing implementation details. :)

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I'm really not willing to go into details. I'm fairly confident it's bullet-proof, but I don't want to kick off any potentially painful conversations about technical implementation.

Suffice it to say I solved this problem like I do every other one: through long contemplation and utter tenacity ;)

[orlandu84]

Thank you, Flower Child! I have been waiting for something like the Screw and Screw Pump since BtB introduced HCB. Now I get to see how creative I can be with water distribution:) Keep up the great work.

[Sarudak]

since BtB introduced HCB

This just goes to prove the point that for 99% of people the default option is the only thing that exists.

[FlowerChild]

This just goes to prove the point that for 99% of people the default option is the only thing that exists.

Yup, agreed, and why default options are such a big deal for me.