Better Than Wolves Forum

Wanted to open this up for discussion. A lead in by quoting a post to the release thread:

someonetobe wrote:Almost my entire base is constructed around redstone powered trap doors. I'm confident I'm a minority of 1. But ouch.

(I actually sort myself in my base, using trapdoor flooring to dump me into the proper rooms). Big renovation needed now. Disheartened. Will come back in a week when I'm over it.

At least I'm not the same guy that was building a castle out of melons when HCM came out.

Really, I'm tempted to not continue BTW until you've moved on to RTH, so I can have that stability you used to be famous for. Anyway, sorry, I am just personally frustrated. Need that break.

Good luck and thanks for all of your hard work (sincerely).

Now, I think most of you know how seriously I take build breakage, so I will admit the above bothers me quite a bit. I do not think I fully clued into how much that change might affect people when I made it.

So, I'd like to open this point up for discussion. As usual, I am NOT looking for suggestions, but I'd like to know how the redstone changes to trap doors affect people. Note also that I do not wish to discuss wood doors (which have their alternative in iron already), or fence gates (which as far as I'm concerned are used more for their exploits than for legit builds).

It's affected my builds a bit, but most of my use of trapdoors really just serves to condense the required footprint of a given redstone build. So it's broken a couple things for my builds. But I've been spending most of my time in a new world since early game changes.

Ok. well without suggesting...
The problem with the change, I feel, is the removal of functionality from early tech and moving it to late, but that not all of the functionality made it.
I don't mind having to tweak builds, it's a little rough trying to expand the builds significantly. (I build things too tight probably)
Just my 2 cents... :)

I have somewhat mixed feelings on it.

On the one hand, in the context of other wooden objects such as doors and fences no longer interfacing with redstone, along with the planned addition of actual redstone interfacing mechanisms, trap doors definitely should follow the internal consistency defined and not respond to redstone either.

On the other hand, trapdoors are fairly common in sorting mechanisms, and given the previous internal logic of pretty much anything capable of moving also interacting with redstone, we had no indication that it was "cheaty" (considering the future consistency). Trapdoors' function is also largely handled by pistons; unfortunately they are slightly bulkier, and so in compact builds replacing the trapdoors essentially means replacing the whole device (or at least a large section of it).

I myself don't have too many trapdoor dependent machines (only 1), so for me it's largely not a big deal, and I would say in the move towards a "better game" (the consistency and whatnot), I view one rebuild worth it.

In my mind this is somewhat similar to any potential terrain generation changes Mojang might make in the future, on the one hand it may very well make the game much better, but is it worth forcing everyone to restart their worlds for? It's a difficult question, and largely depends on how much people use their worlds. Some would view the changes as horribly damaging to their game, and others would love it. The same is happening in this case, some people (like the quoted in the OP) use trapdoors a lot and thus view this change in an incredibly negative light, while others who use it less (myself) view the change as necessary for the overall improvement of the game.

TL;DR: No, in my opinion.

Yeah, I know for myself given that I was playing MC long before trap-doors, and even for a long time where they didn't respond to redstone after they were added, I just don't use them in my builds for anything other than aesthetic hatches. I was actually slightly annoyed when redstone functionality was added to them by vanilla as it fucked up the access hatches I had built into my automatic tree farm by causing them to pop open all the time :)

Hence why it didn't strike me as a particularly big deal to rip that functionality out for the sake of consistency.

In terms of design, I don't like them being a more compact alternative to pistons in automation builds, especially given their ridiculously cheap resource cost. However, I think why the post quoted in the OP struck me the way it did, is because the guy's use, while not something I had previously considered, sounds fairly legit.

Anyways, long story short is I personally believe the game is stronger overall not having that functionality, BUT, now that I'm more aware of it I don't particularly like the associated build breakage.

Why not make it a legacy config option? (Defaulted to off of course) Or would that give players too much power over their game?

Yhetti wrote:Why not make it a legacy config option? (Defaulted to off of course) Or would that give players too much power over their game?

See the part in the OP where I ask people not to make suggestions? Yeah...

FlowerChild wrote:

Yhetti wrote:Why not make it a legacy config option? (Defaulted to off of course) Or would that give players too much power over their game?

See the part in the OP where I ask people not to make suggestions? Yeah...

Sorry :/ I'll slap myself for you.

The removal of trapdoor-redstone interactivity did break a few of my minor builds, but I've honestly never used any wooden vanilla object with redstone (i.e., wood doors, trapdoors, fence gates, etc.) mainly because it's always just felt weird when compared to things like iron doors. I was a little fazed with this particular removal in the last release, but it definitely feels better knowing that this sort redstone door-opening is reserved for later in the tech tree, which is almost certainly where it belongs.

Like others above me, I have primarily been using them to compact mechanisms in which pistons would have been perfectly valid. Overall, I feel this was a good change, just one to which it will take people a long time to adapt both their playing attitudes and their redstone designs/technology (specifically sorting devices).

I used trapdoors in my old world quite a bit, especially as an alternative to pistons, and because pistons need to be sticky+block to be perfectly solid with items, taking up 3 blocks...
However, in my new world I'm just poking in the redstone part of the game, so I didn't used them yet, and I like the change for internal consistency. And the last one means a lot, for the suspenion of disbelief, at least for me.

The fact of the matter is that trapdoors are way too cheap for the functionality they make available. Furthermore, having wood trapdoors unresponsive to signalling is consistent with other wooden portals and opens up more options that it removes.

Whether this bothers you enough to put time into an alternative is of course up to you but I can't see anything to the overall good coming from reverting on this one.

Huh. Thanks for the support on this guys. I wasn't quite expecting that.

I agree that the change *is* far better from a logical POV that trapdoors don't respond to a redstone signal, and it feels more immersive. I just wish it didn't have to break my beloved twin cow masher towers that I'd more or less completed a week ago. A bit meh, but I'll fix it one of these days when I can be bothered. It will probably look cooler with pistons too.

I can't honestly see any other feasible way you could have made the transition any easier without spending a disproportionate amount of time on it though, so in my opinion it's a positive change and for the best.

Well, once more I'll have to be the lazy guy :P

The only reason I liked hatches and fence gates being reactive to redstone, was obsidian pressure plates. Being able to go through them without the need to manually open and close them is a big deal for me. For fencegates, I can easily go back to pistons lowering part of the fence via plates. For hatches it ain't that easy, but essentially pistons can do the same, only it looks much uglier.

Tbh, If I had a redstone controlled version of EVERY interactive block I would be a happy camper. I love redstone. But the only way this change affects me personally is inconveniencing in nature and not really breaking stuff.

I think you've gone further than previously, but not "too far". It's a frustration to some, and my mob trap runs on trap doors as well, but using a piston would make more sense to me, and for functionality like that (especially when tied to the billows) just wood is too cheap.

I saw that post too you quoted, and I get why you're concerned but I think it's just a hard decision that needed to be made. Wood sheets reacting to redstone just isn't consistent anymore, it had to happen.

The thing I will miss with my builds and redstone powered door is having the connected door opened when one of them is opened. This have pissed me off for so long that the doors connect, but do not open together, It was a huge relief when I found way to do this with redstone, now I can't anymore :(

I really like this change, though that's easier for me to say since it doesn't affect me at all. I've built a lot of redstone machinery in my worlds, but only one early build uses redstone-activated trapdoors, and I disliked the look of it enough that ever since then I've stuck to pistons. When everything else in BTW pushes builds to be large, mechanisms using trapdoors felt a bit out of place to me in their compactness.

To throw in my two cents, the trapdoor change breaks a few of my builds. I agree that there is no in-game justification for a chunk of wood to respond to a redstone signal, but I would appreciate it if you were able to find a "middle ground" somewhere between leaving trap doors as they are and completely tearing out their ability to be redstone activated.

It broke part of my mob trap filtering that was between the bulk storage and my auto kibble factory (temporary hold attached to a turntable timer used to give the bellows enough time to filter arrows out from the bones) but I can replace that functionality with pistons. Just means the apparatus will be like a block taller, which shouldn't be a big deal. Hardest part is motivating myself to tear out the wall and replace it, because it was pretty compact.

Didn't bring it up as I didn't want to incur another warning. I like it here :)

You can add my voice to the masses; the change didn't affect any of my builds.

I mean, I was surprised to see you make that change, because I never thought there was anything unusual about trapdoors being controlled by redstone. But, regardless, I myself didn't use them; when it came to opening and shutting paths mechanically, my first thought was always the piston.

While a few of my old worlds have some trapdoor shenanigans in item-based systems...I don't really play those worlds anymore, and it's nothing that can't be done with a piston.

On the other hand, trapdoors can now be used to frame light blocks without opening and shutting, which I feel makes the gains worth the costs.

ExpHP wrote: I mean, I was surprised to see you make that change, because I never thought there was anything unusual about trapdoors being controlled by redstone.

Well, there's a bit of weirdness there in terms of requiring redstone to make trap doors would be rather off, as they're just trap doors and you'd expect to be able to build plenty for decorative purposes at low cost. On the other side, them being just made out of wood provides for extremely cheap gating mechanisms for automation which I always thought was way too cheap in comparison to stuff like pistons and the BD.

I was thinking about the history of redstone in MC as I was falling asleep last night, and I think one thing that has really been lost with time, particularly in vanilla, is that it used to be rather challenging to figure out ways in which to put builds together. The functionality at your disposal was extremely limited, and at most, there was generally only one way to perform a particular action. When new functionality, like the ability to control water flows was added in, it was a huge deal and opened up all kinds of gameplay potential. Pistons in particular were a big fucking deal when they came out, but with time, we've seen their functionality slowly leak into other blocks, and even their code has fallen into neglect.

Now, we have crap like just putting a bucket in a dispenser to control water flow in vanilla. So much stuff is just randomly getting dumped in without considering the consequences on gameplay (because let's be honest...Mojang isn't, and hasn't been for a long time), that there winds up being five ways to do something, so people just gravitate towards the cheapest and/or easiest and/or most compact. We see this in many different gameplay systems (horses vs minecarts for example), but I think redstone itself has been suffering greatly from it as well. I've caught many of the more recent changes in this direction (basically the stuff in the "redstone update", and some of the crazier dispenser additions before then), but I think this has been going on for quite awhile, while I was either oblivious to some it, or at a time where ripping out vanilla functionality was something I wasn't willing to do.

When trap doors first came out (and I believe fence gates too), they weren't redstone powered. They were just plain old trap doors and fence gates. Then the masses bitched, so that got slapped in there without further consideration. As far as I'm concerned though, that decreased the value of more advanced blocks like pistons, and opened up a whole bunch of sploity behavior. If I was more aware, or willing, at the time, I don't think I would have let that leak through to BTW in the first place.

The last point I want to address is the easy pressure plate systems that Morm mentioned: honestly, I've always hated those builds, to the point of getting rather ticked off when people have installed pressure plates on my doors in SMP. I've talked before about how door building is one of the things that typically acts as an introduction to redstone for people, and those things always felt like a super-cheap bypass to that to me. I never build them in my own worlds because of that, and I think my gameplay experience is richer as a result.

I realize that trick is still applicable to iron doors, but that's something I'm still putting some thought into potentially eliminating.

i used them on a filtering trap like noir did in his video, but i can move on also.

FlowerChild wrote: When trap doors first came out (and I believe fence gates too), they weren't redstone powered. They were just plain old trap doors and fence gates. Then the masses bitched, so that got slapped in there without further consideration.

Just one thing to note: I've been wondering about this now that you mentioned it, and judging from changelogs and various videos, I believe Trapdoors responded to redstone from the very beginning.

Fence Gates, on the other hand, were initially incompatible with redstone. I think you've got the story for that change spot on. :)

ExpHP wrote: Just one thing to note: I've been wondering about this now that you mentioned it, and judging from changelogs and various videos, I believe Trapdoors responded to redstone from the very beginning.

I know they didn't in the case of trap doors man, as I had builds that got messed up when the redstone interaction was added.

FlowerChild wrote: The last point I want to address is the easy pressure plate systems that Morm mentioned: honestly, I've always hated those builds, to the point of getting rather ticked off when people have installed pressure plates on my doors in SMP. I've talked before about how door building is one of the things that typically acts as an introduction to redstone for people, and those things always felt like a super-cheap bypass to that to me. I never build them in my own worlds because of that, and I think my gameplay experience is richer as a result.

I realize that trick is still applicable to iron doors, but that's something I'm still putting some thought into potentially eliminating.

You are on to something here. My first doors were 3 block high piston doors. I was real proud of them, they were the focus of build.

Then, someone on the server showed me that easy pressure plate door. Since then, I've gravitated away from grand doors, why bother eh. The pressure plate door works..

It very much excites me that you are thinking about this, I'm sure what ever you come up with will open up new gameplay.