I actually tested this right after the 1.2 update, and mobs *will* spawn on redstone wire.
I was trying to keep the bottom of a pitch black obsidian-lined room from spawning loads of monsters. Going for an illusion of empty void. No luck though...
The only alternative I could think of (that isn't noticeably lighter than obsidian) was to replace my redstone with hacked ladder blocks in MCEdit. When MCEdit places ladder blocks, they don't "face" any particular direction and instead appear completely transparent in-game. They also prevent spawning. Of course, if you despise hacking in any form, the alternatives are aesthetics or practicality, but not both.
I've tried not putting a cactus in the pain corner. You only get 2x if you do that, despite there still being 3 cactus. You can remove the 2 cactus that destroy the wood and sticks and still get 2x. That would ensure 100% efficiency and you wouldn't need to stand in the center hole. But really, 4x makes a huge difference because of the cost to craft the boat. 2x = 1 wood and 4 stick profit, 4x = 7 wood and 8 stick profit.
If you place a ladder against the southern or western wall of the collection point, you can't get close enough to the corner for it to hurt you.
I put together a small test map demonstrating huge lag spikes when near lots of mobs. Poll's here with links to the map to see if this is consistent between all players or just me.
Bonus! Watch pigs drown each other as they fight for air! More oinking than you could possible have hoped for:
I was building a test bed for grinding and I'd already built farm animal collection canals. A large batch of animals built up while I worked on the grinder itself. I noticed the same stutter whenever walking to or from the area (though I didn't test enough to find distance out)
Yeah, it was a real pain building the farm this section was cut out of, because of the same thing. I'd be building a little ways away from where the animals were piling up and would keep stuttering around.
Quote from Pilot_Death »
Quote from Pilot_Death »
I don't think onlyanyone hackers keeps 60 pigs penned up within a two foot radius.
So I don't see a problem.
The farm this was on is legit. Normally I would have killed the pigs and let that pen fill up with chickens to farm their precious eggs, but they tend to multiply like rabbits. Basically this is a normal mob farm, but lit above ground and covered in grass. The waterway that used to deposit animals in the pen is removed so they won't escape onto the test area.
I've noticed a really bad stutter glitch in both of my two mob farms, with both friendly and hostile mobs. I'm pretty sure I've found the exact cause of the stutter, but I don't know if this is just my setup or a "feature" of the game for everyone.
The Bug:
When you leave the attention range ("aggro radius", etc.) of a big pack of mobs, the game will stutter for a few seconds, two to three in my case. Imagine you have a room full of many monsters on the middle floor of your base. If you go more than 16 blocks below that room, you'll stutter for a few seconds. Going 16 blocks above the room does the same. I found the number 16 experimentally; It seems mobs have a spherical attention range, radius 16 blocks.
Before you TLDR, my computer is more than enough to handle Minecraft. During any other point in the game, I run 150fps at max settings. The brief stutter only happens when I walk away from my mob traps.
The Map:
I put together a quick test case map so others can try this and report if they have the stutter too. I was surprised to not find any specific reference to stuttering like this in my searches, so I need to be sure it's not just me.
An aerial shot of the test. The center of this barn houses about 60 pigs and chickens, and the diamond ring marks the edge of a 16 block radius circle surrounding the barn.
Here are the culprits, swimming in their pen:
To repeat the stutter, start towards the center of the ring like so:
...Then walk outside of the ring:
That little graph in the corner shows a noticeable spike in frame draw times. You can view that graph while you test this by holding F3. Notice that my framerate doesn't really show that I have stuttered. Even though there was a significant 3 second pause there, the framerate reports about 70 just afterwards.
The Save:
What I'd like to know is if your game freezes up for a few seconds when you leave the circle.
Here's the download; Just load it up and walk out of the ring.
If most people see the same stutter, we report it to Notch.
____
Edit: If it doesn't make you stutter, please explain your game's configuration and possibly PC specs.
Currently I seem to get lag for two main reasons. The first is when the music chimes in, the game starts to lag and the music becomes quite stuttery, and there doesn't apear to be an option to turn the music off only turn the volume down. The second reason for my lag appears to be mob spawn, when there are large amounts of mobs near by it really begins to lag out. The worst is now down in my mines and caves post Halloween update due to the huge amounts of monsters that now seem to be spawning down there.
Switching over to peaceful mode has cut out a vast majority of my lag now, since there are no monster spawns and the day break, moon rise music doesn't seem to come in any more. However would be nice to see these issuse resolved at some point so I can get back to playing on hard or normal.
I've narrowed my lag down to this exact thing too. Any time I leave the attention radius of huge numbers of mobs, my game stutters for two or three seconds. If I have a mob farm on the middle floor of a base for example, going higher than three floors above it causes a stutter, and going more than three below it also causes a stutter. I assumed it was an issue with the mobs trying to find paths to me, but that doesn't make sense because I also get this problem near friendly mob farms. I've got a pit filled with maybe 60 chickens and pigs (for eggs!), and any time I move away from that room, it stutters.
I'll put together a quick test save to see if the same sort of dense mob group causes everyone to stutter.
Nothing suspicious... for now. Here's the script on Pastey. Just drop it in a folder along with I.gif and run with Python 2.7 or compatible.
____
Edit: Script wasn't loading the resource file in binary mode. Fixed.
Edit: Added a link to the main app's I.gif. The code block is just the updater's resources.
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I was trying to keep the bottom of a pitch black obsidian-lined room from spawning loads of monsters. Going for an illusion of empty void. No luck though...
The only alternative I could think of (that isn't noticeably lighter than obsidian) was to replace my redstone with hacked ladder blocks in MCEdit. When MCEdit places ladder blocks, they don't "face" any particular direction and instead appear completely transparent in-game. They also prevent spawning. Of course, if you despise hacking in any form, the alternatives are aesthetics or practicality, but not both.
0
If you place a ladder against the southern or western wall of the collection point, you can't get close enough to the corner for it to hurt you.
0
0
Bonus! Watch pigs drown each other as they fight for air! More oinking than you could possible have hoped for:
0
Yeah, it was a real pain building the farm this section was cut out of, because of the same thing. I'd be building a little ways away from where the animals were piling up and would keep stuttering around.
The farm this was on is legit. Normally I would have killed the pigs and let that pen fill up with chickens to farm their precious eggs, but they tend to multiply like rabbits. Basically this is a normal mob farm, but lit above ground and covered in grass. The waterway that used to deposit animals in the pen is removed so they won't escape onto the test area.
0
The Bug:
When you leave the attention range ("aggro radius", etc.) of a big pack of mobs, the game will stutter for a few seconds, two to three in my case. Imagine you have a room full of many monsters on the middle floor of your base. If you go more than 16 blocks below that room, you'll stutter for a few seconds. Going 16 blocks above the room does the same. I found the number 16 experimentally; It seems mobs have a spherical attention range, radius 16 blocks.
Before you TLDR, my computer is more than enough to handle Minecraft. During any other point in the game, I run 150fps at max settings. The brief stutter only happens when I walk away from my mob traps.
The Map:
I put together a quick test case map so others can try this and report if they have the stutter too. I was surprised to not find any specific reference to stuttering like this in my searches, so I need to be sure it's not just me.
An aerial shot of the test. The center of this barn houses about 60 pigs and chickens, and the diamond ring marks the edge of a 16 block radius circle surrounding the barn.
Here are the culprits, swimming in their pen:
To repeat the stutter, start towards the center of the ring like so:
...Then walk outside of the ring:
That little graph in the corner shows a noticeable spike in frame draw times. You can view that graph while you test this by holding F3. Notice that my framerate doesn't really show that I have stuttered. Even though there was a significant 3 second pause there, the framerate reports about 70 just afterwards.
The Save:
What I'd like to know is if your game freezes up for a few seconds when you leave the circle.
Here's the download; Just load it up and walk out of the ring.
If most people see the same stutter, we report it to Notch.
____
Edit: If it doesn't make you stutter, please explain your game's configuration and possibly PC specs.
0
I've narrowed my lag down to this exact thing too. Any time I leave the attention radius of huge numbers of mobs, my game stutters for two or three seconds. If I have a mob farm on the middle floor of a base for example, going higher than three floors above it causes a stutter, and going more than three below it also causes a stutter. I assumed it was an issue with the mobs trying to find paths to me, but that doesn't make sense because I also get this problem near friendly mob farms. I've got a pit filled with maybe 60 chickens and pigs (for eggs!), and any time I move away from that room, it stutters.
I'll put together a quick test save to see if the same sort of dense mob group causes everyone to stutter.
0
The main app's I.gif is a little longer: http://pastey.net/142402
Nothing suspicious... for now. Here's the script on Pastey. Just drop it in a folder along with I.gif and run with Python 2.7 or compatible.
____
Edit: Script wasn't loading the resource file in binary mode. Fixed.
Edit: Added a link to the main app's I.gif. The code block is just the updater's resources.