There have been numerous suggestions for Redstone microchips and how to craft them—craft being the key word. All of these are inherently limited, as I see it, by the need to strike a balance between flexibility of what you can build, and the complexity of the crafting screen UI.
Which to me suggests that building microchips rather than crafting them would be the more powerful and intuitive approach. But how is it possible to build something in the world and have it be miniature at the same time? The answer, I think, lies in the portals that Notch will be adding in the Halloween update.
I envision a "Redstone World" portal block which, when visited, transports you to a flat, empty world populated only by the return portal block. That return block not only takes you back to the real world—it also interfaces directly, on all six sides, with the real world—thus its faces are inputs and outputs. So, for example, a Redstone wire connecting to its East face will connect directly to a Redstone wire leading to the East face of the real-world block.
In this way, arbitrarily large (although probably on a finite map) Redstone structures can be abstracted to single blocks with several inputs. Not only that, but for more complex systems there's nothing to prevent you from building Redstone Worlds within Redstone Worlds! It's like TRON meets Inception. Asplode. (Bonus points to Notch if the world is neon-and-dark themed.)
One further refinement: since many larger chips will probably want more than six inputs and outputs (and the most you can physically interface with at one time is actually five faces), I envision that any contiguous collection of Redstone World blocks constitutes a single portal—and thus the microchip's interface can also be of arbitrary size and shape. (This means the shape would be the same both in the real world and inside the Redstone World, and that adding or removing blocks from the portal changes its shape in both worlds.)
Note that several problems arise when you consider the game's behavior with multi-block portals in more detail, which you may or may not find interesting. I'll discuss all the problems I've thought of, as well as my suggested solutions. The solutions might seem to make the rules which govern portal design and placement overly complex, but I think it would actually be extremely intuitive and straightforward to implement.
Firstly we would need to consider the block's mining behavior. If you have a single portal block, you would probably expect that mining it would simply allow you to place it elsewhere and retain its link with the world you built inside of it. But what if you mine away portions of a contiguous collection of Redstone World blocks which constitute a single portal?
I figure there would need to be two variants of Redstone World block: generic, or "unpaired" blocks (which are stackable and can be used to shape existing portals or create new ones), and "paired" blocks (which are not stackable and which link to a specific, already-created world). Paired blocks would remain paired until the world they link to is somehow destroyed—after which, mining that block would drop a generic block. Mining away any of a contiguous collection of Redstone World blocks up until the last one would drop generic blocks, thus allowing you to change the interface's shape; mining the last would drop a specific block "paired" with the world it links to.
This brings up another problem to solve: what if you bisect an existing collection of portal blocks, so that there are now two separate contiguous collections of Redstone World blocks? Is a new world created? If so, which of the now two contiguous collections retains the old world, and which becomes a new world? To resolve this I propose the following three rules of Redstone World block placement and mining:
[*:3t7stdkp] Worlds are created when visited, not when Redstone World blocks are placed.
[*:3t7stdkp] Placed Redstone World blocks retain their link to the world they previously linked to, if any, until they are mined.
[*:3t7stdkp]If, when mining a Redstone World block, there are no remaining Redstone World blocks which link to the same world in-game, a "paired" block will be dropped which links to that specific world.
So for example, if I place three Redstone World blocks in a contiguous line, and then remove the middle one, visiting each of the two remaining portals would result in the creation of two separate worlds. However, if I had visited the single three-block portal before removing the middle one, either of the two remaining blocks would link to the same previously-created world. This would theoretically permit one to have an extremely spread-out interface simply by placing portal blocks contiguously, visiting (and thus creating) the world, and then removing any unwanted intermediate portal blocks. Which could be extremely powerful.
There is also the converse problem: what if I have two previously-visited portals separated by a single space, and I attempt to place a new portal block between the two? I suggest that bridging Worlds is not possible, and thus placement there would not be allowed. (Placement would be allowed if the two blocks link to the same Redstone World.)
One final problem the multi-block interface raises is that of conflicting surrounding blocks when expanding the interface. What if, for example, I place a single Redstone World block, visit that world, and inside the world I place a Dirt block immediately to the East of the return portal. Then I exit the world and attempt to place another Redstone World block immediately to the East of the real-world portal. I've attempted to change the shape of the portal—which should be reflected inside the Redstone World as well. But inside the Redstone World I have a Dirt block placed there. What to do? The solution is fairly straightforward, and leads to the final two rules of Redstone World block placement:
[*:3t7stdkp] Redstone World blocks are placeable in some space only if:
[*:3t7stdkp] All immediately adjacent Redstone World blocks link to the same World, and
[*:3t7stdkp] There is an Air block in that space in both the Redstone World and the real world.
That's about all the behavior I've been able to think of. Thoughts?
I have to say it'd be a great way of making IC's, and keeping your redstone systems a little more organized.
Currently, some minecart-stations have a massive redstone 'backbone' (picking destinations, etc.) which takes up a lot of space in your mine and these could be simplified a lot with your system, as you do not have to watch out for interference (of side-by-side systems) as much as if you build them in the real world. This would eliminate a problem I faced regularly when working with redstone the first bunch of times (and still do, now and then).
While, I'm not sure if it fits the Minecraft world (after all, electrical ICs/microchips are pretty darn modern compared to stone pickaxes, furnaces running on coal and torches instead of electrical lighting), I would definitely love to see this implemented!
It's a nice idea, but you do realize how redstone microchips will work? You won't lay out a design of redstone and then craft that into a chip you can carry around, you'll have basically a chest that you lay out the design in.
This is overcomplicating things, IMhO.
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Quote from dusty328 »
This man really is a genius. Never have i seen such a clear and well written forum post.
It's a nice idea, but you do realize how redstone microchips will work? You won't lay out a design of redstone and then craft that into a chip you can carry around, you'll have basically a chest that you lay out the design in.
This is overcomplicating things, IMhO.
That's not how the OP is suggesting it here:
In this case you'd place it, warp 'inside' of the IC/microchip, work on it in 3D, then warp back to the real world.
placing the redstone wire and torches will be exactly like it's now, but it will occupy much less space in your mine / home / whatever.
It's a nice idea, but you do realize how redstone microchips will work? You won't lay out a design of redstone and then craft that into a chip you can carry around, you'll have basically a chest that you lay out the design in.
This is overcomplicating things, IMhO.
It sounds like you believe the crafting approach is how it will in fact be implemented. Do you know that Notch has decided to do it that way? I haven't heard anything to suggest that he's even considering implementing microchips, much less using a crafting table approach. I'm suggesting that if he does tackle the problem he should consider NOT using a crafting table approach. And on the contrary, once you understand how the blocks work, in-game I imagine they would be extremely intuitive to use.
Not to mention easy to implement: assuming Notch's portals are currently single blocks (which would be easiest for him to implement), all he would need to do is make Redstone connections on all six sides connect to the corresponding sides in the outside world (which would be fairly straightforward) and implement the rules of placement and mining (which again are straightforward). No complex crafting-table UI design—which, being only two-dimensional, doesn't really suit the 3D nature of Redsone circuitry as it is anyhow. The rest is just styling of the blocks themselves.
Not to mention the fact that it's a bit odd to imagine building something on a table with full-size, real-world materials that somehow ends up in a single-block form. Adding portals to the mixture solves that discrepancy. It's still magic either way, but somehow I find portal magic more realistic than a magical miniaturizing table.
Hells main aim : a place for new blocks, and fast transportation.
Now people wanna live there.
Don't you think people might do the same here?
And this place is safe!
Sure, they might! There's nothing to prevent you from importing water, trees, dirt, flowers, etc. into the Redstone World. You could easily build yourself a home there. In fact, for this reason, the Redstone part of my idea is almost incidental: if portals and portal blocks worked as I describe, ignoring the Redstone stuff, it would already be extremely powerful.
Perhaps regular portals should be implemented this way, and the part about each portal block face connecting to the real world would simply be a special feature of portals that would be commonly used to build Redstone microchips. No special "Redstone World" theme necessary.
I tend to agree with Pyro627 on this one. Although OP has come up with a very well thought out system, I think it's slighty too complex. As he points out above, you're not really adding a redstone microchip, you're just adding recursive worlds which happen to allow redstone microchips.
I think the better alternative is what Pyro627 suggested. Basically, you would craft a microchip at a regular old crafting table (or, I suppose, some sort of more sophisticated crafting table if there were enough more sophisticated things like this to warrant one) and it would create a block in your inventory that doesn't stack. When you placed it, an inventory screen would open up and you would be able to create a 2d redstone circuit (with a similar sort of format to the redstone simulator). You could also have a labelled squares in the middle of the four sides and maybe two other squares somewhere else that could toggle between input and output and would represent connections to the six faces of the block. The compactness of the block would have to be offset by a) requiring just as much redstone as building the normal circuit in real life and :cool.gif: making the cost of crafting a microchip high.
Which to me suggests that building microchips rather than crafting them would be the more powerful and intuitive approach. But how is it possible to build something in the world and have it be miniature at the same time? The answer, I think, lies in the portals that Notch will be adding in the Halloween update.
I envision a "Redstone World" portal block which, when visited, transports you to a flat, empty world populated only by the return portal block. That return block not only takes you back to the real world—it also interfaces directly, on all six sides, with the real world—thus its faces are inputs and outputs. So, for example, a Redstone wire connecting to its East face will connect directly to a Redstone wire leading to the East face of the real-world block.
In this way, arbitrarily large (although probably on a finite map) Redstone structures can be abstracted to single blocks with several inputs. Not only that, but for more complex systems there's nothing to prevent you from building Redstone Worlds within Redstone Worlds! It's like TRON meets Inception. Asplode. (Bonus points to Notch if the world is neon-and-dark themed.)
One further refinement: since many larger chips will probably want more than six inputs and outputs (and the most you can physically interface with at one time is actually five faces), I envision that any contiguous collection of Redstone World blocks constitutes a single portal—and thus the microchip's interface can also be of arbitrary size and shape. (This means the shape would be the same both in the real world and inside the Redstone World, and that adding or removing blocks from the portal changes its shape in both worlds.)
Note that several problems arise when you consider the game's behavior with multi-block portals in more detail, which you may or may not find interesting. I'll discuss all the problems I've thought of, as well as my suggested solutions. The solutions might seem to make the rules which govern portal design and placement overly complex, but I think it would actually be extremely intuitive and straightforward to implement.
Firstly we would need to consider the block's mining behavior. If you have a single portal block, you would probably expect that mining it would simply allow you to place it elsewhere and retain its link with the world you built inside of it. But what if you mine away portions of a contiguous collection of Redstone World blocks which constitute a single portal?
I figure there would need to be two variants of Redstone World block: generic, or "unpaired" blocks (which are stackable and can be used to shape existing portals or create new ones), and "paired" blocks (which are not stackable and which link to a specific, already-created world). Paired blocks would remain paired until the world they link to is somehow destroyed—after which, mining that block would drop a generic block. Mining away any of a contiguous collection of Redstone World blocks up until the last one would drop generic blocks, thus allowing you to change the interface's shape; mining the last would drop a specific block "paired" with the world it links to.
This brings up another problem to solve: what if you bisect an existing collection of portal blocks, so that there are now two separate contiguous collections of Redstone World blocks? Is a new world created? If so, which of the now two contiguous collections retains the old world, and which becomes a new world? To resolve this I propose the following three rules of Redstone World block placement and mining:
[*:3t7stdkp] Worlds are created when visited, not when Redstone World blocks are placed.
[*:3t7stdkp] Placed Redstone World blocks retain their link to the world they previously linked to, if any, until they are mined.
[*:3t7stdkp]If, when mining a Redstone World block, there are no remaining Redstone World blocks which link to the same world in-game, a "paired" block will be dropped which links to that specific world.
So for example, if I place three Redstone World blocks in a contiguous line, and then remove the middle one, visiting each of the two remaining portals would result in the creation of two separate worlds. However, if I had visited the single three-block portal before removing the middle one, either of the two remaining blocks would link to the same previously-created world. This would theoretically permit one to have an extremely spread-out interface simply by placing portal blocks contiguously, visiting (and thus creating) the world, and then removing any unwanted intermediate portal blocks. Which could be extremely powerful.
There is also the converse problem: what if I have two previously-visited portals separated by a single space, and I attempt to place a new portal block between the two? I suggest that bridging Worlds is not possible, and thus placement there would not be allowed. (Placement would be allowed if the two blocks link to the same Redstone World.)
One final problem the multi-block interface raises is that of conflicting surrounding blocks when expanding the interface. What if, for example, I place a single Redstone World block, visit that world, and inside the world I place a Dirt block immediately to the East of the return portal. Then I exit the world and attempt to place another Redstone World block immediately to the East of the real-world portal. I've attempted to change the shape of the portal—which should be reflected inside the Redstone World as well. But inside the Redstone World I have a Dirt block placed there. What to do? The solution is fairly straightforward, and leads to the final two rules of Redstone World block placement:
[*:3t7stdkp] Redstone World blocks are placeable in some space only if:
[*:3t7stdkp] All immediately adjacent Redstone World blocks link to the same World, and
[*:3t7stdkp] There is an Air block in that space in both the Redstone World and the real world.
That's about all the behavior I've been able to think of. Thoughts?
Currently, some minecart-stations have a massive redstone 'backbone' (picking destinations, etc.) which takes up a lot of space in your mine and these could be simplified a lot with your system, as you do not have to watch out for interference (of side-by-side systems) as much as if you build them in the real world. This would eliminate a problem I faced regularly when working with redstone the first bunch of times (and still do, now and then).
While, I'm not sure if it fits the Minecraft world (after all, electrical ICs/microchips are pretty darn modern compared to stone pickaxes, furnaces running on coal and torches instead of electrical lighting), I would definitely love to see this implemented!
I don't think it could really run anything amazing, but it would be awesome.
Nerdgasm* +1
This is overcomplicating things, IMhO.
That's not how the OP is suggesting it here:
In this case you'd place it, warp 'inside' of the IC/microchip, work on it in 3D, then warp back to the real world.
placing the redstone wire and torches will be exactly like it's now, but it will occupy much less space in your mine / home / whatever.
Now people wanna live there.
Don't you think people might do the same here?
And this place is safe!
Thanks, voicelessbard for the great avatar and sig! (search him in the MC forums)
It sounds like you believe the crafting approach is how it will in fact be implemented. Do you know that Notch has decided to do it that way? I haven't heard anything to suggest that he's even considering implementing microchips, much less using a crafting table approach. I'm suggesting that if he does tackle the problem he should consider NOT using a crafting table approach. And on the contrary, once you understand how the blocks work, in-game I imagine they would be extremely intuitive to use.
Not to mention easy to implement: assuming Notch's portals are currently single blocks (which would be easiest for him to implement), all he would need to do is make Redstone connections on all six sides connect to the corresponding sides in the outside world (which would be fairly straightforward) and implement the rules of placement and mining (which again are straightforward). No complex crafting-table UI design—which, being only two-dimensional, doesn't really suit the 3D nature of Redsone circuitry as it is anyhow. The rest is just styling of the blocks themselves.
Not to mention the fact that it's a bit odd to imagine building something on a table with full-size, real-world materials that somehow ends up in a single-block form. Adding portals to the mixture solves that discrepancy. It's still magic either way, but somehow I find portal magic more realistic than a magical miniaturizing table.
Sure, they might! There's nothing to prevent you from importing water, trees, dirt, flowers, etc. into the Redstone World. You could easily build yourself a home there. In fact, for this reason, the Redstone part of my idea is almost incidental: if portals and portal blocks worked as I describe, ignoring the Redstone stuff, it would already be extremely powerful.
Perhaps regular portals should be implemented this way, and the part about each portal block face connecting to the real world would simply be a special feature of portals that would be commonly used to build Redstone microchips. No special "Redstone World" theme necessary.
I think the better alternative is what Pyro627 suggested. Basically, you would craft a microchip at a regular old crafting table (or, I suppose, some sort of more sophisticated crafting table if there were enough more sophisticated things like this to warrant one) and it would create a block in your inventory that doesn't stack. When you placed it, an inventory screen would open up and you would be able to create a 2d redstone circuit (with a similar sort of format to the redstone simulator). You could also have a labelled squares in the middle of the four sides and maybe two other squares somewhere else that could toggle between input and output and would represent connections to the six faces of the block. The compactness of the block would have to be offset by a) requiring just as much redstone as building the normal circuit in real life and :cool.gif: making the cost of crafting a microchip high.