One of my attempts to inform about the current situation: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/59qoru/16w43a_how_much_intuitive_design/ The 1.11 snapshots past *16w39c* have spawned a lot of controversy with changes and bug fixes to **Redstone**: *Piston Translocation*, *Observer Block*, and most recently, *no updates to Air blocks by Redstone Repeaters and Comparators*. - - All of these changes have me question about the intuitiveness to Redstone. How intuitive should Redstone be? There are benefits for newer players, but not to some long-term players. - I imagine when most people are first introduced to Redstone, they compare it to electricity. They expect circuits to be all directly connected to one another, as real world circuit boards are. But Redstone has had many quirks and exceptions, including *Quasi-Connectivity* and powering through Air. These odd behaviors may throw newcomers off and/or confuse them. According to their perceived nature of electricity, diagonal and Air power don't make sense. How can a piston extend, or a dropper or dispenser fire, without an adjacent power source? Removing these inconsistencies would make learning Redstone easier for novice players. On the opposite, at *The End*, there are master Redstoners that know nearly anything and everything there is to Redstone. Some exploit bugs and quirks to make machines of mind-blowing specifications. However, creations using these often unintentional behaviors are fragile, as shown from updates. Frustration or anger tends to follow by a broken contraption. - - Regardless of the change, there’ll be complaints — *Jeb’s Law*. The Minecraft developers at Mojang have been trying to gradually improve the experiences for the majority of players. And if there’s a more specific target audience for something, I think it should only interfere with a minimal number of play-styles. In some cases, like the recent changes to Redstone, it’s impossible to not harm a particular demographic. Instead of pressuring Mojang on an overly biased addition or change, I prefer to calmly inform. - Any MC developer reading this would be very appreciated, as well as comments. -
Before I go on: please keep in mind that I know very little about farms because I hardly use them. Having said that I do know a fair share about redstone and as I mentioned above I'm convinced that the observer block is going to change a lot. So I took on a bet with a friend of mine, deadline is upcoming Friday (the winner treats the other to a drink or two), and I did something Note: this is a design in progress so it's not optimized. First I put my attention on making things work, and after that I'll start wondering how (and if) I can compact the design a bit more. So here we have a fully automated and (time) optimized melon/pumpkin farm. What's the first problem with these farms (same with sugarcane)? You can hardly detect when it's finished so most farms work on a timer: after x minutes all areas get dropped. It works, but it's not 100% efficient. This farm only activates when an x amount of melons have grown, x is to be determined by the user. So in my configuration above it will only harvest when all melons have grown. Here's how it works (is going to): the plants are below glass and can only place the melon on dirt which has a sticky piston under it. So when the pistons activate it creates a lane filled with dropped melons (or pumpkins). The dispenser at the end releases water which flushes everything into the hopper at the front. Leaving all the plants fully protected and ready for the second round. I'm achieving this thanks to the observer block. Every time a melon grows it triggers an observer block which in its turn triggers a dropper filled with an unstackable item. This gets pushed into a hopper chain and collected in another dropper at the end. This dropper gets checked by a comparator to see how many items there are, which represents the amount of grown melons. When the right amount is collected it'll start processing: collecting the melons and pushing the unstackable items into the top hopper chain (to feed them back into the droppers). The moment an item gets pushed into the first hopper chain it also activates a memory unit which does 2 things (you can see only one, the rest is buried): it activates the hopper chain in the middle, which ensures that when the unstackable items get sent back they're fed into the right droppers again. And it also disables the droppers at the bottom to prevent endless loops from happening (when the melons get collected there are several block updates happening: melon destroyed, replaced by dirt, and the dirt eventually retracting again (replaced by air)). The memory unit will eventually get reset when an item falls through the 2nd row of hoppers (currently working on that routine). Eventually this design should end up stackable, but that's something to worry about later. My first priority for tomorrow is actually getting the reset routine to work But yeah, figured I'd share
Jeb is back in-office from New York City last week (likely for Microsoft's digital event). He has said some more information about 1.11 on Twitter: Jeb's Tweets (2): https://twitter.com/jeb_/status/794094321804988417 P.S: Jeb will also be a judge for an indie game festival, which takes place in-line with the 2017 Game Developer Conferences.
That sounds like good news to me. Right now there are definitely quite a few issues with the observer block (inconsistent behavior) and if they manage to resort all that it would sure make things easier. I don't think anyone is waiting for yet another weird "piston" or "dropper" bug (where a redstone source which is officially not within range still manages to interfere). But then again... While writing this down I suddenly can't help wonder if the observer is simply behaving in the way it is because of those existing issues. That could be a very interesting problem for the Mojang devs. to fix here.
Newest snapshot is out. Lots of changes to Observer Blocks. I found a new bug with the Observer: https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-109584
I'm somewhat unhappy with the change in the observer blocks, even though they make a lot of sense. They used to output a "2-tick" signal which could be used to control redstone torches. Now the signal only lasts 1 tick and... nope: no more workie . Fortunately for me I always (try to) make my redstone designs 'modular'. My almost finished pumpkin farm (now with pumkins instead of melons ): Forget most I wrote above: I overcomplicated things, as I always do when I start with a design The approach is more or less the same though: when a pumpkin grows it triggers the observer which triggers the redstone torch (as soon as I placed additional repeaters) which then signals the control section. Now the magic begins: The hopper under the chest gets briefly activated to pull the item out, which ends up in a 'collection' hopper to determine how many pumpkins (or melons) have grown. When the threshold is reached the machine activates: it raises the floor to break the pumpkins/melons (and to protect the plants). Then the dispenser places water to move it all into the hopper/chest combination in the front. During this moment all the hoppers below the chests get locked to avoid issues from the constant block updates in the farm section. A redstone clock powers an item elevator which moves all (unstackable) items to the top hopper chain which will place everything back in the chests. The new improved control section no longer uses a memory circuit (what was I thinking?!) but a mere comparator which controls a redstone torch to (un)lock the hopper which allows for the item to be put into the chest. In other words: as soon as the chest contains an item the hopper gets locked so that no more items can be pulled in. This allows me to move all items back in the chests (one by one). So thanks to the new update I'll now have to add repeaters Fortunately for me though I can easily save both parts using structure blocks and then remove this, re-load but then move the control section one block away. My friend (who uses my server as well) is less lucky. His elevator contraption seems to fully rely on observer blocks. And last he was online nothing worked anymore (we agreed to use the latest snapshot no mater what, also because I use this environment to test and spot & report bugs to Mojang). pfff, 20min left for work, can't wait until my shift ends.
1.11 Pre-Release! "Give me the Boxes!" "Give me the Observers!" https://mojang.com/2016/11/minecraft-111-pre-release-1/
I seriously love the screenshot of that Vex (see announcement). As it's already in anticipation of going after many hapless players in order to make 'm drop all their stuff and ragequit, it even has a bit of an evil laugh Aaaanyway, I guess I'll be upgrading my LAN server now. I've build so many contraptions in my LAN world it's became decently easy to spot weird stuff as of late: all I had to do was 'do' things PS: My bug report has also made to the Mojang frontpage, that's kind of cool too: [Bug MC-109605] - Inverting redstone torches prints “lskdjfldskjf” to log Even though I initially messed it up a little bit (at first I thought it was related to observer blocks, then got corrected, but didn't realize ). There's a good reason why you shouldn't send in bug reports around 3am I guess
Mojang's office is in Stockholm. They're 6 hours ahead from the Eastern U.S. It's almost midnight in Sweden right now.
The Spigot Team (Spigot is one of EMC's base plugins, from what I last known) posted their plans for when 1.11 is released. It seems they'll have it ready in the week after November 14. And then hopefully, EMC can update before Christmas. https://www.spigotmc.org/threads/minecraft-1-11-roadmap.192111/
No, it's not a plugin. Spigot is an open source version of the Minecraft server. The main difference between Spigot and vanilla is that Spigot adds plenty of extra enhancements (for example: anti x-ray provided with the server, full control over the hunger system, full control over entity tracking (when a mob spots you)) as well as the option to actually use (server) mods. And the Empire also runs Spigot. I wouldn't be surprised if Aikar also had a (small?) part in that. I don't keep up with the project that much, but I know Aikar also has an account on their forums and from posts here I also know Aikar has sometimes also provided bugfixes and such. But yeah, this is good news! And I also like their self-reflection a lot. It's usually better to take your time and then get it right than rushing into things and somewhat ignoring the aftermath. I think it is. EMC has already officially announced that the Wastelands will reset in 25 days (note: at the time of writing obviously ) #1.11hypeisreal
Thanks for clarification, Shel. The 2 to 2 1/2 week range is realistic for 1.11 to come. Twenty-five days from today would be Monday, December 5. Although, that day doesn't seem fair for most players, because of school and/or work. Friday the 2nd or 9th might be better. Remember: we're getting into another item to compete for, on top of elytra: Shulker Shells.
I'd read through this entire thread but I don't think I quite have that sort of stamina, at this moment in time. Fishcat and I were actually playing in 1.11's pre-release Tuesday, and of course... llamas were of the first things we dabbled with. I have to say, I am very intrigued by the llamas and their behavior, as well as the peculiar nature of carpets giving them various patterns, and then being able to add a chest to them much like a mule or donkey (though if I remember correctly, they can only hold 9 stacks of items whereas donkeys and mules can hold 15? Seems strange, but eh). For someone such as I who absolutely loves mobs in the game, these could be an awesome additive for wastelands adventuring, or even travel around a wilderness outpost. When a llama is put on a lead, any other llamas nearby will attempt to form a line behind the one on the lead (a "caravan"). I don't see this as being a practical way to move things in town or the wastelands, really, but I do see it being a fun thing to do in the frontier worlds, and here's why. For example, I have a wild outpost I am working on that's roughly 40k blocks out, which isn't all that far, no. But I still use a nether rail to get there, and my goal is to eventually have this area I've made with some farms and maybe even invite others to use it alongside me. But for now, it's my private resource gathering unit, and let's say I gather a bulk amount of wool. I know from experience running back and forth to transport even a few DCs of items on a rail is annoying, and with my outpost eventually going to be as big as I plan it to be, I can foresee llamas actually being useful, because I would plan to add chests to them and use them to transport items across the outpost itself, and then move the items into my cargo rail for transport. Also, if you're feeling adventurous, you could travel about a good amount of the frontier with llamas! What if you're trying to travel to new lands, and want to take some cool stuff with you? Llamas could be good with that - and oceans? No problem, as long as you don't have a full caravan of ten llamas, frost walker will handle that easily. (This isn't to say these same characteristics would be great for vanilla, singleplayer or multiplayer, survival - I just enjoy drawing connections to its use in the server because I quite frankly don't play a lot of vanilla Minecraft anymore, mainly just Empire Minecraft). I apologize again if someone's already brought these points up or already given their reason for loving the llamas and their part in the adventure update, but I'm already browsing forums when I should be doing schoolwork, so I don't have time to quite read through all the older posts.
I like to be unrealistically optimistic sometimes as well... lol. I do believe there was an official statement somewhere saying that the waste would be reset like every 3-4 months as well, that it would not be set in stone the exact time because of updates taking precedence. Obviously, however, this whole waste reset thing is a bit of a, " say one thing and do another." type of thing though. Many a player are ready for another waste reset. I do want to get those shulker boxes for sure but also, I would like to be able to get some elytra again without having to spend 8+ hours for the slight chance that I MIGHT find one, but more than likely won't. This is a 1.11 discussion though, and while the waste reset will be a big part of that I don't really want to get too far off track #littlelateonthatone My post there about being "not nice" with expecting the emc staff to get updated soon is taking into consideration: thanksgiving and christmas and the whole super depressive season of this getting colder bit Winter and the holidays it brings really is a drag.
1.11 is said to be out now. But I'm not seeing it in the java launcher. EMC Staff, get ready to alert/remind us to not update! https://mojang.com/2016/11/seek-out-the-exploration-update-111-on-pc-mac-now/
