Minecraft Forums

That's a good point about the beacon. I'll look into how the beacon renderer works.

As for the steam drill, it is placing drill bit blocks, much like Yorple's suggestion. The reason that I don't do that with the laser drill is I want to use the same solution for both the laser drill and the laser turret (which is not shooting directly along a block axis).

My impression about mods in Minecraft 1.9 is that there are no new compatibility breaking changes to the rendering system, but they will be adding some new features that I'm looking forward to (like being able to have both the parent and elements members in the same block model). You still won't be able to simply drop a 1.8 mod into the mods folder of a Forge 1.9 install, so think of it as being like the MC 1.5 to 1.6 update.

I do plan to update to 1.9 as soon as that's possible.

New version of Steam Advantage: v1.3.4

I fixed the Steam Drill (texture and behavior) in this release.

Quote from DrCyano»

New version of Steam Advantage: v1.3.4

I fixed the Steam Drill (texture and behavior) in this release.

Very nice, that works a treat! Thank you for your efforts.
I put some more work into the vanilla inspired resource pack. Did a couple things with a few block models just for fun. I've got the Steam blocks done, except the lift, and the Power blocks done, except the tanks. Hopefully have an early release pretty soon

That's a great showcase! Thanks!

I'm putting that on the front page now.

Aha! Break-through!

I discovered that the TileEntity class has a method called getRenderBoundingBox() for changing how the renderer interacts with the point of view. I was able to make the laser render properly by adding this to my laser machine tile entity classes:

@SideOnly(Side.CLIENT)

	public net.minecraft.util.AxisAlignedBB getRenderBoundingBox()

	{

		return new net.minecraft.util.AxisAlignedBB(getPos().add(-MAX_RANGE, -MAX_RANGE, -MAX_RANGE), getPos().add(MAX_RANGE, MAX_RANGE, MAX_RANGE));

	}

Soon there will be an update with this fix (and a few others).

EDIT: Update is now live: Electric Advantage 1.0.2

Quote from DrCyano»

Aha! Break-through!

I discovered that the TileEntity class has a method called getRenderBoundingBox() for changing how the renderer interacts with the point of view. I was able to make the laser render properly by adding this to my laser machine tile entity classes:

@SideOnly(Side.CLIENT)

	public net.minecraft.util.AxisAlignedBB getRenderBoundingBox()

	{

		return new net.minecraft.util.AxisAlignedBB(getPos().add(-MAX_RANGE, -MAX_RANGE, -MAX_RANGE), getPos().add(MAX_RANGE, MAX_RANGE, MAX_RANGE));

	}

Soon there will be an update with this fix (and a few others).

Awesome! Thanks as well for sharing the fix.

I made a break-through in RF compatibility!

I realized that I could add RF TileEntity discovery to the conduit scanning algorithm. Since conduit scanning only happens when you change the layout of your power network, this reduces the long-term performance hit from dealing with RF machines and fixes some graphical bugs related to the old method of handling RF compatibility.

Therefore, RF handling is no longer considered unstable and will automatically occur if you have mod compatibility enabled (which is enabled by default). Get the latest Power Advantage here:

Power Advantage v1.3.1

I've also updated Steam Advantage and Electric Advantage to fix bugs related to redstone control and coparator output:

Steam Advantage v1.3.5

Electric Advantage v1.0.3

YAY!

Question: are you using the phrase "RF" to describe the power your using as convenience, or is it actually RF? I know the Team CoFH guys are working on 1.9, so I was just curious.

Quote from DrCyano»

I made a break-through in RF compatibility!

I realized that I could add RF TileEntity discovery to the conduit scanning algorithm. Since conduit scanning only happens when you change the layout of your power network, this reduces the long-term performance hit from dealing with RF machines and fixes some graphical bugs related to the old method of handling RF compatibility.

Therefore, RF handling is no longer considered unstable and will automatically occur if you have mod compatibility enabled (which is enabled by default). Get the latest Power Advantage here:

Power Advantage v1.3.1

I've also updated Steam Advantage and Electric Advantage to fix bugs related to redstone control and coparator output:

Steam Advantage v1.3.5

Electric Advantage v1.0.3

Awesome, thanks for the fixes. Breaking frames feels much nicer at this speed, steam furnace is working great with a hopper, and the laser for the turret is always rendering for me at any angle. The laser for the mining drill still disappears if my view is far enough away from the mining drill. Meaning if it's digging down let's say, and I go down 3 or 4 blocks, then also look straight down (the drill is a couple blocks straight behind me) the laser disappears.

I've updated my Explorer's Club modpack to include the updates and a selection of other nifty 1.8 mods: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/minecraft-mods/mod-packs/2399428-modpack-drcyanos-explorers-club

@Majestyc2k1: Power Advantage does not use redstone flux (RF), but it now does a better job of finding RF machines from other mods. Power is converted to RF at the RF machine (conversion factors are specified in the config file, note that 1 steam unit is equal to 31.25 electricity units).

The thing that I don't like about the RF mechanic is that it requires you to have a ticking TileEntity in every single conduit block, not just the machines. This means that physically large builds will require a lot of CPU processing power, even if there are very few machines. In Power Advantage, the wires/pipes have no internal data at all, so you can have any number of them in your build without increasing the CPU usage.

@Mr_Pike: Yeah, I noticed that there was a limit (1 chunk width?) to how far you could go with your back to the drill before it would stop rendering, no matter how big I set the rendering box.

Quote from DrCyano»

@Mr_Pike: Yeah, I noticed that there was a limit (1 chunk width?) to how far you could go with your back to the drill before it would stop rendering, no matter how big I set the rendering box.

When I first tested there was some scenario where the lasers didn't show when I was only a few blocks away, but I can't recreate it any more.
I tested what you said and yeah at about 16 blocks away if I'm not facing the drill the lasers can't be seen. Also noticed just now if I go out close to the extent of the laser ~60 blocks, even if I look at the drill the laser can't be seen. The fixes you've done work much better than it did before.

New update to Steam Advantage: Steam Advantage v1.4.0

Now you can create steam power without consuming coal. Now you can use lava or electricity.

Quote from DrCyano»

New update to Steam Advantage: Steam Advantage v1.4.0

Now you can create steam power without consuming coal. Now you can use lava or electricity.

Because coal is soo 19th century.

Now also an update to Power Advantage: Power Advantage 1.3.2

This update makes the filtered item conveyors less prone to clogging. I also added a new filtered conveyor called the Overflow Filter Conveyor. It basically tries to insert an item into the inventory below it, but passes the item along to the next conveyor if it fails to insert the item below. The Overflow Filter Conveyor is perfect for feeding machines in a sorting system where you'd rather items get sorted than wait to be processed in a machine when the machines are all full.

Cool new additions. Nice to have even more options! Just tried them out a little bit and they seem to work great.

Still really impressed with all of ideas and the fact that you are still adding to these mods so regularly.

Edit: I was having a weird issue with the new Overflow filter, just figured out what is happening. I tried to set up a test sorting system with overflow. But if you use the Overflow filter to put items into a chest, it only input one stack, then the rest of the items bypass the chest.

-Also, is the Overflow conveyor supposed to accept an item to filter, or is it to be used with a loop like I have here?

Thanks,

Mr_Pike

That's not quite what I had in mind for how to use the overflow filter. I don't have a screenshot handy, but try this:

Put two chests in the air, 1 block apart, and then connect them with an overflow filter. Now put a furnace underneath the the overflow filter.

Whatever you put in the source chest, only smeltable items will go into the furnace. Furthermore, if the furnace is already full, then the remaining smeltable items will go into the destination chest (hence the "overflow" name).

Quote from DrCyano»

That's not quite what I had in mind for how to use the overflow filter. I don't have a screenshot handy, but try this:

Put two chests in the air, 1 block apart, and then connect them with an overflow filter. Now put a furnace underneath the the overflow filter.

Whatever you put in the source chest, only smeltable items will go into the furnace. Furthermore, if the furnace is already full, then the remaining smeltable items will go into the destination chest (hence the "overflow" name).

What you are describing does work, but it's actually not true that only smeltable items are accepted in a furnace, and this is true of a lot of machines (accept items other than those which can be processed.) I think this block would be most useful if it could reliably work with a sorting machine like the one you show in the screenshot in the wiki, with all the filters in series. If you happen to get a seed in your furnace, it will never accept items again until you notice what happened and clear it out.

I do understand what you are trying to do with it. I wonder if having an Overflow 'mode' for all the types of filter conveyors would work more reliably, since you'd know which items it will attempt to transfer. Maybe in the GUI for each filter conveyor is a checkbox to enable Overflow mode. Or make Sneak+Attack with the wrench could toggle Overflow mode. Alternatively, the Overflow Conveyor block could have a single slot for an item filter.

Please don't take this input as unappreciative in any way. Just trying to give some reaction and feedback from testing.

Thanks again

PS. Also just noticed, if I use a Steam-Powered Furnace instead of the vanilla one, the furnace doesn't accept the seed, but the Overflow Conveyor doesn't send it down the line, so it's stuck in the inventory of the Overflow Conveyor and stop other items from passing.

Here's a picture of my sorting system from my Minecraft server:

The Overflow Filter may still have some bugs in it, but it seems to work in this setup, dropping anything that the rock crusher can accept into the rock crusher and passing the rest along. It also passes-along crushable items when the crusher is full. However, it appears to only be checking the first inventory slot to determine whether the crusher is "full".

The other filters are supposed to stop if the target item matches the filter, even if the machine below them is full, but I tried to make them do a similar validity check as the overflow filter so that they wouldn't stop if the machine is not full but simply refuses the item from the filter. That does not appear be working quite right either.

Based on your testing and feedback, it looks like there are some other bugs too. I'll have to do some more rigorous testing.

EDIT: I found and fixed a few bugs to make them work as intended: Power Advantage v1.3.3