Access Signs On The Side Of Chests

Access signs are very handy if placed on top of a chest to give another player access.

However, if placed on the side of a chest, they do nothing. Well, except look like they give access to the same chest.

For a new player, this behaviour is confusing. It results in frustration for buyers when chests can't be opened and the other player is not online, and for sellers when they realize this and need to reorganize their storage area and allocate more space to accommodate the signs. Access signs placed on the side of chests look much neater in a storage room, for example, and allow chests to be stacked on top of each other.

It's become such a common occurrence for me to see access signs placed on the side of chests that I've taken a habit of expressly telling sellers to make sure the access sign is on top of the chest. And even despite that, I still get sellers putting it on the side of chests.

I understand that there may be cases where an access sign is ambiguous about what chest it refers to. ie it's above a chest and on the side of another chest. In that case, we can allow access to all chests, or give preference to one of the chests, though I have never once seen an access sign placed in an ambiguous position.

If the rule is left as is, I feel there should at least be a warning when an access sign is placed and no chest is present. This way the player can at least correct the placement right away.

I have abstained from voting and want to see what the community thinks on this issue.

+1 I have always wanted to be able to put the access sign on the side of the chest, especially when you're operating in someone else's shop. It's very frustrating to have to put the shop sign on the front of the chest and the access sign on the top.

Also, first!

You've already stated the problem with this idea - if it was allowed it could be ambiguous as to which chest the grantor is allowing access to. Example for everyone: Set two chests one space apart and put an access sign on the side of one chest between the two. The person being granted access to the one chest now has access to both because the sign is technically on the side of both chests. This is the same reason you don't place buy:sell signs between two chests with differing products. Hmm, why are xp bottles in my golden apple :sell chest

The "on top" may be a pain sometimes, but there is only one chest you can be on top of at a time.

But +1 for the warning that no chest is present when an access sign is placed incorrectly.

A+, I like the idea. this should be in the emc community, but it would be nice if a warning came up when a situation like the one MocoMiner said happened(Set two chests one space apart and put an access sign on the side of one chest between the two. The person being granted access to the one chest now has access to both because the sign is technically on the side of both chests). the warning should say, 'Warning:the access sign is in between 2 chests letting access to both of them'

I think that the signs should decide which chest they work upon by their tags. There are two types of sign: standing and wall signs, each of which is their own block type (minecraft:wall_sign and minecraft:standing_sign). The standing sign should work on the one beneath it, as that is what it would have been placed on. The wall sign would choose the block by its orientation. Wall signs are given a value depending on the orientation: if it faces east it is given the value of west, if facing north it is given south and vice versa. This should be drawn up by the system, so if a sign faces east, it would work for the west chest, if facing north, it would work for the south chest. The signs would not work for any other chest parallel or beneath it. All is decided by the type of sign and the orientation.

Thank you for saying what I wanted to say, now I don't have to do it anymore

Why don't we make them work like preview signs? They go to the chest they're connected to, so why can't assess signs do the same?

Note: I'm quoting Chickeneer here (see this post). Using a sign on the side of a chest could pose a problem due to the way the whole system is (or was) coded. Searching for a match doesn't begin with the sign, but the chest! So when a sign would be placed in between chests like Krysyy showed up there then the system could confuse one chest for another and you'd risk that it would grab the wrong one instead.

Edit: Or we'd be stuck with signs which can only be placed on the left or right side of the chest, which could cause even more confusion.

Now, this is a guess on my part but I think this could also be an issue with warnings. But like I said: that is a rough guess on my part.

So having read a little a bit about this I'd go with -1 on the place suggestion, simply because it would cause a lot of issues for the dev. team. The warning would be nice though, I have no idea how feasible that is, but I like the idea nonetheless.

+1 on the warning.

Can you explain me how preview signs work?

I wouldn't mind having the signs on the side of the chest only, aka the chest they are attached to as you see in almost every other plugin that does signs, including essentials.

I find my designs from other servers and local don't work right when I need to do locks or access signs because of this system, but the other problem is changing it now would have a massive impact on existing builds causing countless problems and people needing to reset those signs.....the harm this could cause in a change would be too great at this point I think.

Sure thing!

You place a sign which says "preview" on the first line near a chest. Then, when another player right clicks on it, they can see the contents of your chest without the option to take out (or put in) any items. For more information I'd like to refer you to the wiki page on feature signs.



Obviously I know what you're getting at though: preview signs can be placed in other locations than access signs (like the side of the chest, I'm using that feature myself). Obviously I don't know the inner mechanics (although it seems obvious that both signs use different code).

Still: a mishap with a preview sign isn't much of a big deal. But having that happen with an access sign could cause a major upset. I assume that's one of the reasons different (check) routines are being used.

Indeed, that's why I wonder about it "not being possible", because it works fine for preview signs

While that's true, I'm not really sure what could go wrong with placing access signs, if they would always "connect" to the chest they're standing on, or hung to... (yes, a temp warning for the change might be a good idea, for the few people that maybe hang signs on chests above them, to work for the chest beneath, but I don't expect that many people (have) use(d) this)

I can, but its based on a lot of assumptions. Don't forget that there are 2 situations in which these signs become important. One moment is when you place them, the other is when someone (tries to) open(s) the chest. That situation would be way different from right clicking a preview sign; I can well imagine that the sign gets associated with a chest so when you click the sign you'll trigger that chest.

But I think that might not apply to opening a chest, because you'd have to check for multiple conditions when that happens. For example: players could have the container or admin flag (overrides other limits). Here's where the guessing takes part: I think that the moment you open a chest then the code starts searching its surroundings for signs. And the reason it does that is to allow us the use of "group locks" (as I call them). You know: using #name you can actually set up chest access for a specific group of players.

So that means that the access to that chest is variable and should always be checked. Example: I set up a group, I set up an access sign for that group then I accidentally remove the group. If you'd be using a system where an access sign gets "linked" to a chest then this could cause problems. But having the chest always check its permissions whenever you open it would prevent that from happening.

So then we reach another stage: now you need to keep performance in mind as well. That's why my suggestion on accessing multiple chests with one sign wasn't feasible, yet I think this is also why sideways signs might pose a problem here as well.

Of course this doesn't mean that's totally impossible. If it were then other systems wouldn't be able to use this approach as well. But it could cause way too much problems for the EMC dev. team, especially if they already chosen to use a specific setup where this would require a complete code rewrite.

As always: just my 2 cents.

Hmm, there you've got a good point, thanks I think we should wait for the developers/people that for some reason know this stuff to reply about this, how this actually works.

No, I did not know that

Recently I had a person show up for 10 dc of product for pickup. I figured no problem, they are all stacked up neatly . But when the person arrived, I realized I had to download all the product into new chests laid on the floor in order to stick an access sign on top. Maybe there was a better way to do it but I could think of nothing at the moment. I guess had I set up hoppers and dispensers and what not it would have been slightly easier to start shooting product at the person, but a way to put access on a stacked chest would be great.

Thanks for telling me. Now I can place another new topic on my "guide todo list" Expect a more in-depth guide appearing on either the blog or forum in the near future

Of course we (contribs) did make sure to add it to the wiki already: you can find more about it here.

I can say from personal experience that this is an awesome system. I use it to give specific players access to my shop signs, and can control it by only using /res gadd <group> <name> or /res gdel <group> <name>. But then again, I'm a total geek with these things. Some people tell me that using /res info on my main residence (3544) gives them an headache

To clarify my idea, the arrow with an X is not correct. It's only on the side of the one chest. The others I don't see a problem with. There are plenty of non-ambiguous places to put the access sign.


I don't understand the shop sign argument. Shop signs can only work to sell to one chest, and they do work on the side of chests if no chest is below them. Access signs do not work on the side of a chest, ever, and give absolutely no indication that this is the case.

Here is what I'm dealing with right now, and this is after I mentioned that the chests were not working because they were on the side of the chests:

Yeah figured this too. (but didn't post it because lazy )

Idea: open access chests by right clicking? So like preview chests, but with being able to take out/put in items. How possible/feasible would this he, @development team?