The Case for Sand Generators

Discussion in 'Community Discussion' started by divNadd, Jun 15, 2012.

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  1. Hello everyone. Today I am posting to start a discussion on the acceptance of sand (and gravel) generators in EMC. As some of you know (and some of you don't) sand/gravel generators are considered a cheat, deemed worth of banning. Now, rule 3 of the Empire Minecraft commandments states "Don't use any mods or game exploits that give an advantage over other players. This includes ... any game glitch or exploit that gives you an unfair advantage of any kind over other players." The word "unfair" deals with morality, and that is completely arbitrary and individual, so I won't attempt (nor is anyone capable of) arguing on that basis; however, I propose that there is no advantage provided to someone using a sand generator. The underlying physics of vanilla Minecraft allow anyone to make a sand generator anywhere, and while the ability to make one is an unintended bug in minecraft, that doesn't invalidate the lack of advantage they provide. I also submit the fact that how to build a sand generator is public information (e.g. youtube has plenty of designs) is further evidence of a lack of advantage.

    I understand there are arguments against sand generators, so I will explain my response to the ones I have already heard from various players/admin.

    1. It's bug abuse
    Ok, can't argue with that because abuse is an opinion. However, I'm curious how someone who considers this abuse reconciles that belief with their belief (or lack of thought on the matter) that glowstone diodes, 0-tick redstone signals, instant redstone wire/gates, block update detectors, silk touch pickaxes mining mycelium, using signs to prop up water in elevators, redstone to obsidian converters, and a plethora of other bugs which people exploit are considered part of normal gameplay.

    2. It's abuse because it's duplicating
    Yes, it is duplicating. More precisely, it is creating an infinite amount of sand or gravel from a contraption, much like accepted gameplay mechanics allow creating an infinite amount of cobblestone or stone from a contraption. An added argument is that stone/cobblestone generators require you to break the blocks, while sand/gravel generators don't, making it too easy to collect. Acquiring infinite chicken eggs from chicken farms is easy in exactly the same way.

    3. It will ruin the economy
    To make a small cobblestone generator requires more easily acquirable resources (lava vs slime balls) than the smallest sand generator. To make an automatic cobblestone generator requires about the same amount of redstone circuitry as a minimal (and slow) sand generator. Yet, I see cobblestone and stone sold in high volume in every large shop and plenty of small ones. People ask to buy stone or cobble on open channels daily, and there is a thriving market for these easily generatable blocks. Given that, I doubt infinite sand generators would ruin the economy for the simple reason that many players can't be bothered to even make a cobblestone or stone generator, for which there are compact and efficient designs readily available on forums, minecraft wiki, and youtube.

    4. The drops cause excessive lag
    I am a programmer, and while I haven't analyzed minecraft's source enough to determine how true this is, let alone have any idea of JustinGuy's server modifications to Bukkit, I can speak of anecdotal evidence from my observations. Drops are entities, and every entity causes extra lag for the server (keeping track of objects and their collisions) and clients (visual rendering, plus some redundant server-side stuff to try to hide net lag). From witnessing someone else's sand generator on EMC (who already got caught), I experienced extra lag while the machine was on, but no noticable extra lag once the machine was off and the drops were on the ground. From playing with F3 and my chicken farm, I determined that the majority of entity lag is caused by their collisions with other objects. Mobs keep moving if they're in water, so collision calculations must be recalculated continuously in the case of a floating chicken farm, sometimes making playing in the vicinity of one near impossible for those with slower computers. Because drops just sit there if not collected, their collisions don't need to be recalculated repeatedly, so that isn't a source of lag. Also, the drop grouping that either Bukkit or JustinGuy coded (which will officially be part of Minecraft 1.3 for the curious) makes all those sand drops take up only a few entities, far less than your average chicken farm. Changing my vantage point had no effect on my lag when the machine was off, and the extra entities rendered while facing the drops was about 10 in the worst case. With the machine being on, I had added lag when in the vicinity of it on par with other large-scale redstone contraptions.


    The goal of this topic is to foster community discussion on sand and gravel generators and to try to convince as many people as I can that these generators should be allowed on EMC. I personally can see no reason why these machines must be prohibited (which I see as masterpieces of redstone engineering), and I hope I have provided valid starting arguments for further rebuttals.

    Thank you for your time,
    divNadd
    Puredbest, _Stads_, MeVoid and 2 others like this.
  2. *waits for ICC to come flying in to lock thread*
  3. i seen a "player" can't say his name, was banned for 3 days making one then second time got a perm-banned
    the price for glass went to 60r a stack to 10r a stack in a single day sooo it can destroy the Glass market in EMC.
  4. Sand affects quite a bit of the market, actually.

    Sand affects the following with reasoning:
    Sand - the generated or duped item
    Sandstone - made from sand
    glass - smelted from sand
    coal - used to smelt the glass
    logs - used to smelt the glass (charcoal)
    diamonds/iron - used to make picks for mining coal/logs

    As you can see, if just one item changes in price, a vast portion of the market is affected.

    Redstone circuitry you were talking about is game mechanics. However, using it to duplicate an item, which is not meant to happen in Minecraft, is in fact illegal thus bannable.

    Stone/Cobble/Obsidian generators are simply using game mechanics to be functional. So those are allowed.
    Chicken Farms are in no way generators either, they are simply perfected game mechanics.

    "glowstone diodes, 0-tick redstone signals, instant redstone wire/gates, block update detectors, silk touch pickaxes mining mycelium, using signs to prop up water in elevators, redstone to obsidian converters"
    These are all game mechanics that are meant to be there. Do you understand the time people sit there and put into machines using redstone? It's not as much as you think, actually.

    TL;DR: This post is unnecessary and sand generators should in know way be allowed on EMC.
  5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aib2y2MYjPI
    skip to about 55:30 minutes and see just how fast he gathers sand i don't think this should be allowed ever if it was sand would become as cheap as dirt(which is free in most cases) and other items would be affected to as stated by roblikescake
    PThagaard likes this.
  6. Yes! I want to have 9999999999 64s of sand in 3 minutes!
    Cause thats how fast you get sand. So no, they should now be allowed.
  7. No need for that, it was just a waste of your time. We know it's bad and it IS against the rules. :)
    roblikescake likes this.
  8. Although I know that this will not be allowed, I would just like to say that you made a very good argument divNadd, and I've found myself wondering some of these points during the days also. +1 :)
  9. Sorry, while some of your points are well thought out, allowing or wanting to allow players to duplicate items goes against what EMC is. I have noticed extra lag when being around 1000s of dropped sand blocks from these machines. Maybe your computer is better than mine, but I'm sure the majority don't have super computers to handle being around that.

    When you can stock hundreds of thousands of stacks of sand in a matter of MINUTES (yes, I've seen it on EMC), it's simply not fair.
  10. I like your argument, dude. However, as others said, it would easily destroy an entire pillar of the EMC economy, effectively ruining many shops and such in the process. It just wouldn't be fair, but you made many good points in your argument, and I applaud you for that. :D
  11. Maybe they should make a source of sand in town, like a giant resetting 120x120 that everyone has build perms that is totally filled with sand and reset every week.
    Jeanzl2000 likes this.
  12. You want sand? Go to the desert and bring some shovels. Its not that hard
  13. And to clarify the difference between obsidian generators vs sand generators, sand creates "something from nothing", where as obsidian gens convert redstone, so your still consuming something.

    Now before you then comment on cobblegens creating cobble from nothing, that is a desired behavior game mechanic - its not a bug...
  14. Then why are BUD switches allowed? that is also not intended to happen. Many systems rely on them.

    Just as a BUD gives players -who know how to make them- advantage,
    sand generators also give advantage only to people who know how to make them.

    in both cases, everyone gets the same possibility to have one or not.
  15. Because BUD Switches are a redstone mechanic... Its not creating items.

    The problem here isn't the fact your using a glitch, glitches are fine to use when they aren't giving you items out of thin air, enabling you to flood the market with overstocked supplies, lowering the price and creating item inflation....

    It's called morale decency... using a glitch to negatively impact the economy of every player is by no means the same as having redstone lamps turn on and off automatically.
    Dwight5273 and Call_Me_DeJaja like this.
  16. You indeed have a point there.
    it's indeed really easy to gather sand from this machine because it does not need to be mined.

    But as divNadd said, chicken egg farms are just the same, and cacti farms as well.
    These farms can also be created to produce huge amounts which can flood the economy.
    It's even far worse than a sand generator (in the case of the chicken farm) because it creates huge lag.
  17. chicken egg and cacti farms are not abusing a glitch to achieve it

    and really, who buys chicken eggs >_>
    josh303011 likes this.
  18. But you are missing my point

    What I'm trying to argue is that "sand is created out of nothing, so therefor it shouldn't be allowed"
    so I say that it's just like chicken or cactus farms. so no reason to disallow it based on this argument.
  19. Sand generators is not ment to be in the game, few sand generators has already been patced and the one with tracks will be patched aswell.

    Cobble generator/Stone generator is not bug, it's works because of how lava and water are working together. But yea it is kinda abusing the way how lava and water works but cobblestone won't harm anybody they are cheap already so that won't even effect anything, also you have to mine it you self. And with sandgenerators you can stay afk for hours upon hours and get infinite source of sand.

    Obsidian genenerators is also not ment to be ingame but what I heard of is that Jeb knows about it and he thinks that it's cool so he decided to leave it. And again it is abusing the way it works but you do need to mine it you self and it takes almost 1min to mine 1 (normal diamond pick) and with obsidian generators you need redstone aswell, so you pay for the redstone but you still make profit by selling the obsidian.

    You will be succesful in life if you work hard for it. So why not try to do the same in minecraft? Do this legit and gain others respect and the staff' respect. If you make a sand generator you will piss of the staff and they will ban you. If you wanna take that risk go ahead make the generator but when you get banned then don't complain about it, every server has almost same rules and i've never seen a server there allows using exploits, it's like the diamond duping we had days ago, alot of people was abusing it and now they are taking the consequences.

    OH btw I made a sand generator on my singleplayer world for testing it out, and lemme say it like this if you KNOW how to do stuff with redstone you can get stacks upon stacks of sand withing minutes. I made a sand generator on my SP world there gives me 10stacks of sand in 2mins. My machine is really big and it's causing alot of lagg because of the entities laying on the ground and because of redstone ticks. So if this was allowed here on EMC I could had made a machine there was causing alot of lagg to nearby players. Sometimes you don't have to think about you self but the people around you ..
    josh303011 likes this.
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