[*:2tyndexc]I think buckets shouldn't create infinite springs, we should use Windmills connected to water wheels to power aqueducts.
[*:2tyndexc]Windmills should be fairly large, built by arranging certain blocks a certain way (crafting outside of a crafting box, i.e. right in the 'real world' would be pretty interesting, imo). Wood, cloth, string, etc. You could keep it manageably simple enough. Besides, people are building crazy XNOR gates with redstone, a windmill is much simpler than that!
[*:2tyndexc]They should require a certain elevation on the map, and only work if facing South or North (and they turn based on a northerly 'wind' on par with the clouds).
[*:2tyndexc]They generate slow but steady power, maybe relative to their elevation (like 1 'newton' for lack of a better word) at sea level, 5 on a mountain top.
[*:2tyndexc]I don't see them being very good for mine carts, certainly not like they're depicted. You don't want gears all over your track, and a hot-wheels style massive boost to the cart from a windmill-powered gear box doesn't jive. Now, if it was used for cranking the cart up a hill slowly, so it could then coast down the other side via gravity (think rollercoaster), that I'm down with. The recipe could simply be a track combined with a 'cog' (craftable from a stick, a board, and maybe a rope), and would take up no more space than a regular track, and each track 'connects' to a neighboring cog'd track, and if one cog'd track is adjacent to your windmill drive gear, they all 'pull' carts on them in a given direction (but only in that one direction - based on the wind driving the windmill)
[*:2tyndexc]Make them expensive enough and the gear/axle system appropriate, and you can prevent spamming of windmills across the country side.
[*:2tyndexc]You could power draw bridges, portcullis's (plural spelling?), crude rope & wood cage elevators, etc.
[*:2tyndexc]Water wheels could be used to push water up an aqueduct to irrigate your wheat fields, or used as a power source when built into a dam with a mountain lake behind it.
[*:2tyndexc]Now you've added recipes for rope, cloth, gears, axles, wooden cage/box, pulleys, portcullis, and on and on.
I don't entirely agree with the argument of "don't make things complicated" - the whole reason people love Minecraft is that there are SO many options and so many ways to build things. The more ways to build things, the better! Yes, there is such a thing as too complicated... but I think the general population of Minecraft players has a higher threshold of "too complicated, I don't get it" than some are giving them credit for.
Actually windmills as a source of power is not too complicated nor is it out of place.
One of the big problems I have with most suggestions is they're overly complex and don't fit into the style of the game, however wind power solves both those problems.
I don't think the technical problems will be the real issue with these kinds of objects (such as getting the resources to build them) but the real problem will lie in how it will be used, and how to get people to use it. I agree it looks complex but I disagree that it doesn't fit the style of the game. I can't imagine this being useful for more then a decoration, in infdev you don't need to deal with intelligent players out to get your delicate windmill which is where it could be practical to use. But in SMP if someone was making one of these it would be apparent and a prime target since a player constructing it would have the raw materials to make it, and I imagine it would be quite costly to make. Therefore raiding said player would be profitable.
Also I imagine those gears turning could be moved underground via a shaft and connected to the object in question. A watermill could do the same but I don't understand how you would make such a large circle from your itty bitty
Thats a prtty good point, but what if there was a way to make a larger workbench and build things like larger boats too.
I would like to have seen wind/watermills pumps and so on with shafts to connect from DF in MC. I think Notch was thinking of it at one time but then got buckets for water and lava sources followed by redstone power. I think there is a place for both. Maybe even remove the bucketed infinte water/lava source and make sources like in DF. You could still bucket water and lava, but it would only expand out and change levels following the rules of DF.
I like this way of doing track boosters, except instead of bulky windmills, what about attaching electric motors to the sides of such booster tracks? The recipe for electric motors could be 8 iron ingots with a redstone in the middle.
[*:2tyndexc]I think buckets shouldn't create infinite springs, we should use Windmills connected to water wheels to power aqueducts.
I don't entirely agree with the argument of "don't make things complicated" - the whole reason people love Minecraft is that there are SO many options and so many ways to build things. The more ways to build things, the better! Yes, there is such a thing as too complicated... but I think the general population of Minecraft players has a higher threshold of "too complicated, I don't get it" than some are giving them credit for.[*:2tyndexc]Windmills should be fairly large, built by arranging certain blocks a certain way (crafting outside of a crafting box, i.e. right in the 'real world' would be pretty interesting, imo). Wood, cloth, string, etc. You could keep it manageably simple enough. Besides, people are building crazy XNOR gates with redstone, a windmill is much simpler than that!
[*:2tyndexc]They should require a certain elevation on the map, and only work if facing South or North (and they turn based on a northerly 'wind' on par with the clouds).
[*:2tyndexc]They generate slow but steady power, maybe relative to their elevation (like 1 'newton' for lack of a better word) at sea level, 5 on a mountain top.
[*:2tyndexc]I don't see them being very good for mine carts, certainly not like they're depicted. You don't want gears all over your track, and a hot-wheels style massive boost to the cart from a windmill-powered gear box doesn't jive. Now, if it was used for cranking the cart up a hill slowly, so it could then coast down the other side via gravity (think rollercoaster), that I'm down with. The recipe could simply be a track combined with a 'cog' (craftable from a stick, a board, and maybe a rope), and would take up no more space than a regular track, and each track 'connects' to a neighboring cog'd track, and if one cog'd track is adjacent to your windmill drive gear, they all 'pull' carts on them in a given direction (but only in that one direction - based on the wind driving the windmill)
[*:2tyndexc]Make them expensive enough and the gear/axle system appropriate, and you can prevent spamming of windmills across the country side.
[*:2tyndexc]You could power draw bridges, portcullis's (plural spelling?), crude rope & wood cage elevators, etc.
[*:2tyndexc]Water wheels could be used to push water up an aqueduct to irrigate your wheat fields, or used as a power source when built into a dam with a mountain lake behind it.
[*:2tyndexc]Now you've added recipes for rope, cloth, gears, axles, wooden cage/box, pulleys, portcullis, and on and on.
Thats a prtty good point, but what if there was a way to make a larger workbench and build things like larger boats too.
I tweeted notch. :smile.gif: