When you layout your machines in your workshop, whether it be Industrial Craft 2, Thermal Expansion, Buildcraft, Mekanism, or others, it can be a hassle to manage your power cables. When you have to move machines around it can be even more of a hassle. Why not have a way to wirelessly route power to all of your machines?
Introducing my first mod: Omni Routers!
This mod will have a few tiers of routers, along with upgrades for the rate of energy transfer, the range of the router, the speed energy can be transmitted, radiation shielding, and mod compatibility (explained later). Once the player uses the Linking Rod to link a machine (Redstone Furnace for example), to a router, the player can actually access that machine's GUI from inside the router. This feature will require lots of work with other mods and API's, so I wouldn't expect it right away! The Linking Rod will work similar to Botania's Wand of the Forest.
All routers will have the capability to work with EU, MJ, and RF power, but the modules giving that compatibility will need to be crafted and installed first! No power system will be favored over another, therefore no router will come ready to transmit power when it is crafted.
The convenience of wireless power is not without cost however! If your router is not upgraded with the necessary shielding, you will experience unpleasant effects like radiation sickness. This sickness won't deal direct damage to the player, but instead will slowly give the player negative effects, eventually ending in death if exposure is not limited.
The simplest router will be very costly, and have a limited range and low efficiency. You can either use resources to upgrade the router, or decide to gather higher-grade materials to build the next best router. There will be modded recipes to take advantage of steel and other modded items, in order to make the routers more costly. There will be a peaceful-mode recipe also, that will be costly.
At the moment I only have a few routers, the linking rod, and a few base upgrades coded for appearance. I am still learning Java, and this will most likely be a long term project because I will be heading back to college on the 22nd. This thread is for me to see the potential interest for the mod, and to take in any suggestions you guys provide. Thanks to TehNut for the initial texture designs, and for helping me get started! Thank you for giving this thread a look, and leave feedback or suggestions below!
For now I am learning more about the source code for Minecraft before tackling more development. I don't want to get started releasing things that aren't optimized and fully ready. If you would like to track the changes and updates to the mod, see the GitHub: https://github.com/capSAR273/OmniRouter
Make sure Class names start with a uppercase letter.
There's no point in doing this, when the other code overrides it
And, remember to @Override almost every method that you may get from the previous Class.