Hopper usage poll

I personally think that the multi item setting should be standard, since its clear to us now that hoppers seem to be the biggest lag factor now. The amount of people who use sorters isn't that large compared to the server as a whole. But I do think that there should be res flag, or a way to designate columns of "single item" hoppers.

Just get rid of the hoppers all together to cut down on the lag...

ive made several hopper creations and if from what I gather from quickly reading everything, I think it would break everything ive made with them, but I suppose I could try and edit them to fit the changes, and maybe I wouldn't see a difference, but I wouldn't want to take the risk if it was up to me

I'm a little confused. What is the downside to this?

um... well i am making a casino and the design for the machine is based off the hoppers moving 1 thing at a time. ... Maybe (only a suggestion dont chew me out) you can make another hopper where when u put a trapped chest, to make it (instead of a normal chest) could move the stack

It could be restrictive for the use of sorting systems and auto furnace systems.
But, that's why we are talking here, to think of a good compromise

I have a Gold farm where I use a sorter to discard Zombie Flesh. I noticed Friday night that it was spitting some of the Gold Ingots into the garbage. Was this caused by the Spigot change?

Are you considering reducing the Hopper duty cycle? If the changes you mention above increase the amount of time it takes for a Hopper to take in an item, I think it may cause the same problem I was seeing at the Gold farm and people using sorters may have to run items through multiple times to get them to work. It could also be a problem for anyone using a farm that kills with Lava for obvious reasons.

How much overhead does an empty Hopper take up as opposed to one with items in it? Most large Hopper applications I've seen use a large percentage of the Hoppers to catch a small percentage of items that then merge the items together. I'm all for any speed improvements, but since most Hoppers are empty most of the time, I would not expect smarter Hopper behavior to improve lag much which means doing anything meaningful might mean updating them less often.

Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm afraid even with a change now and especially if the servers continue to grow, we might eventually be left with a Silence of the Lambs type situation where we either need to limit the number of Hoppers (or Redstone in general) or have to make performance changes that might break things.

I voted that it would hurt above, but I know you gotta do what you gotta do.

The only thing of mine I could see this breaking is hopper timers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYwzd62cLSw), but I'm sure those could be tweaked to cope with the changes, if for whatever reason you end up deciding against providing the option to set them back to single mode. As long as the option is there, I'm fine with this update.

It's much better, instead of waiting ages just drop it

This would break dirt filters in a way.
From what I hear, because it takes items through by stacks, it would not stop to check if there was dirt in the filtering chest.
This will also effect many other filters.
Still, this update would be useful because it would transfer things FASTER. Allowing for more storage to happen in a short period of time.
That's all I have to say.

I'm saying no because I believe this would hurt my creations, for instance I have a massive item sorter for every item in the game up to 1.6 however because the hopper activates a pulse to sort the item when it has 22 items in it if a whole stack went through the pulse would not be triggered correctly as the signal strenght of the redstone would be to strong and cause overflow of other hoppers which in all would cause a clog. Unless you can have the stacks go through as a whole and the hopper consider a stack as 1 single item this would break my sorter...

If this is not clear I can take you to where this item sorter is and explain the mechanics. Also note I am not the only player who has one of these or something that uses the same principals, many players have them or something similar.

Oh man, you sure did

I need them to move 1 at a time for red stone sorting systems. A big part of redstone cant work with this change.

Yes! I arranged leaves and sticks into my favourite color!

Well good thing I am not a Hopper user so Im sure people will adapt to the new changes over time and get used to it

We should stop and get back on topic now, I really like this idea Aikar!

The number of people using sorters may not be that large, but that's where the most stringent requirements for hoppers exists - they're fine-tuned very specifically for the function, and interfering with that function will break them in a big way.

It's not so much that I'm trying to say the good of the few is greater than the many, I'm just explaining that the most delicate mechanisms are going to be hit the hardest, and there's certainly enough people using sorter systems to justify a preservation of those mechanics.

What it really boils down to is how any changes are implemented of course. I'm simply advocating that by default the setting should be as it is with vanilla (more or less) so as to break as few mechanisms as possible.

...Actually residence flag probably would be the best bet. That way the people who do use sorters could at least maintain their functionality (assuming the other changes don't completely break it).

Cool and awesome idea! I likey a lot!

A reason for it to be turned on by default (as a res flag) is so that new players, and people who rarely visit the forums, don't cause lag because they don't know of the change. I think that a week long in game warning before hand to the change would be enough so that people could preset if they way it to be turned off or on. Add the flag to the system, but don't do anything with it until everyone has had a warning. Im not trying to argue greater > few, I intend to get a sorter eventually, I just think that its better for server performance to assume that most players are uniformed and that those who know it will break their machines will realize that during a week long warning.

Ive been lagging out like crazy on smp9. Anything that helps i'm ok with!