Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Actual Content

Hey Guys,

Been taking these couple of days to just unwind and think about actual usable things to add to Femtocraft.

Had a good bit of fun coding up a block + tileEntity movement system.

Crappy Gifs:

Moving blocks


Moving pistons


Moving TileEntities



The way I think I'm going to implement it is as a configurable-face block.  With an interface device, you'll mark 2 sides.  The block will only work if 2 and only 2 sides are marked.  A redstone rising pulse will cause the blocks on those sides to swap.

EDIT:

Some more crappy gifs, but...

The one in the center back has its sides configured to swap the two closest to the cam.


Placing a redstone block triggers the pulse as well, pulling the redstone to the top of the block.

 Placing the block on top of the one on the left, moves it inbetween the two blocks.  This then triggers the block on the right, moving it to the top of that block.



Here we can see the coloring to let you know the block is setup wrong.  Here we have too many active sides.  The two reflecting the two connected blocks, plus the one on top.  Thus, the block stops working and every side turns red to reflect invalid state.




So I started to have some fun...



What horror hath I wrought?

Monday, December 29, 2014

The Moment is Finally Here

DISCLAIMER:  This is an alpha version.  Things may break.  Do not say I didn't warn you.  Various mechanics are still in the works.  Feel free to post bug reports on the github issue tracker.  If it crashes, include logs.



I'm finally at a point where almost everything works.  I know people have been interested, and honestly I just want to get something out for people to look at, even though certain things are still in development.


Known "Issues":
  •     Femto Stellarator is craftable, but not implemented.  It says this in the research.  Build at your own consequence.  Not risk.  Consequence.
  •     Industry and crafting system over-reliance on Assembler.  The next thing I am working on is redesigning the crafting and industry tree.  I want to add about 4-5 more machines spread out over the entire tech tree for use in crafting the majority of items so schematics aren't required for every little fiddly bit.  Also included in this is additional crafting items to replace the 'builds out of precurser tiers'.  The feel I want to go towards is the Femto logic gates.  I would like to have a 'start fresh' feel to each new tier, rather than the current setup with the plating or nanochips.  As such, expect the industry system to change dramatically as I'm working on making it easier and a lot more interesting.
  • Vacuum Tubes are fiddly.  Yes they are.  I am rewriting them to be a lot easier and more manageable.  A simple rule of thumb is, place tubes at the DESTINATION, leading back to the source.
  • Suction Pipes are spammy.  I need to rethink how I'm going to do packets for suction pipes.  For small systems without constant transfer, they're fine.  They quickly go overboard for other uses though.  As such, all Suction Pipes start out in Blackout mode, which means they don't send packet updates.  Shift-right-click with an interface device toggles this mode.
  • Machine sidedness.  Machine inputs are accessible from the top.  The sides are generally for output.  For the Furnace and Deconstructor, the bottom is the input and only enabled if the machine doesn't know what to do with the input.  The Reconstructor accepts input anywhere but 'East' face, which is for output.  Configurability is also in the works.

The API is mostly stable.  If anything, only more things will add to it.  There is already a developer working to make a RF->OP conversion mod.





Please feel free to join #Femtocraft on irc.esper.net if you have any questions about the mechanics.


Download the latest build here, or on the sidebar.


I want to give a big thanks to Cozza38 and the wonderful people at OTEGamers for hosting the Jenkins server, and just being a great place to play.


If you're expecting a fully functional mod with tons of content to just drop into any pack and have a hayday with, you've come to the wrong place.
This is for people who want to support the development of this mod, or to see what all the fuss is about.
Additionally, due to unforeseeable cross-mod interactions, the larger the pack you drop this into the more configuration you will need to do. 


DISCLAIMER:  This is an alpha version.  Things may break.  Do not say I didn't warn you.  Various mechanics are still in the works.  Feel free to post bug reports on the github issue tracker.  If it crashes, include logs.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Done Streaming

I really should have updated or posted with the stream link.  Hopefully those who came here were redirected from somewhere with the actual link.

Edit:  I did. I'm just so tired I forgot doing it.

Thank you all who came for watching!  Was a really productive stream and was great talking to you all!

A lot of people were interested if I was going to stream again.  I wasn't planning on it originally, but knowing that people are interested I might plan a few more.

Follow my stream at twitch.tv/Itszuvalex to know when I go live.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

End of Exam Celebratory Stream

Hey everyone.

I finish my exams for the year tomorrow!

To celebrate, I'll be livestreaming me attempting to polish off the remaining systems code for Femtocraft.

The stream will start at around 7:00 PM EST Wednesday 17th, and continue until whenever I feel like stopping.  I anticipate at least a 5 hour stream.  Feel free to hop in whenever you want and say hi!  I will be talking about what I'm doing and answering questions.  If I get enough done I may show what's there for those who haven't seen yet.

Looking forward to seeing some of you!

Friday, December 5, 2014

Content!

I realize that what I've been posting up here has been a lot of talk and not a lot of show.  I don't like showing off things until they're pretty much complete, and everything else is still in its final stages.  However, I do want to show off the core driving mechanic behind everything Femtocraft.


The Goal


As I said in the past, I was inspired to make Femtocraft to fulfill the void left by Equivalent Exchange 2.  However, I definitely did not want to follow in the footsteps of this mod, as it was a polarising force in the modding community.  Some people loved it because it essentially gave you creative mode in survival within a few days.  Other people hated it because it essentially gave you creative mode in survival within a few days.  As such, this is not an easy problem to tackle.

When I set about designing Femtocraft, I had to analyze EE2 to attempt to understand what made it so ridiculously powerful.  I essentially boiled it down to 2 main mechanics.  First, EE2 had means of generating free mass.  Not only this, but it contained multiple tiers, so called "Power Flowers", that were capable of generating diamonds, dark matter, and even red matter in matters of seconds.  This output was greater than any quarry would ever be capable of, and completely eliminated the need for mining anything that could be converted.  Secondly, it was extremely simple to use.  Most mining setups devolved into saving a single stack of every item, and otherwise just pumping the quarry output directly into a chest that converts it into a more compact form, such as diamonds. 

Thus, I set about attempting to keep the core mechanics of EE2 -> Equivalent Exchange, while minimizing the influence of these other 2 mechanics.  First off, I did away completely with free item generation.  This is arguably the most influential thing of EE2 when combined with its exchange, as it was balanced for exponential item requirements, where all other mods were much more linear.  As for ease of use, I personally love automation.  However, I love automation through clever machine set ups, and resource costs.  I set about designing all core machines such that, with clever set ups and resource investiture, you can completely automate all aspects of Femtocraft.  This works particularly well with an automated crafting system such as AE2 or Logistics Pipes.  However, it is not unreasonable for the player to also utilize the full capabilities of Femtocraft, if used for a small number of cases.  Using Femtocraft to its full potential will be hard but rewarding.

As such, let's dig down into what you've all been waiting for.  Let's see actual in-game mechanics.

The Assembler Manager

When you start up Femtocraft for the first time, it will scrape through all recipes in the Minecraft recipe tree and attempt to map them to something called an Assembler Recipe.  These are basically 1:1 mappings of 9 Inputs to 1 Output.  The mapping is determined by ItemStack id and damage, and location in the recipe crafting grid.  What this allows me to do is to look up input items based on an output item, and visa versa.  Essentially, it maps the entire crafting system such that I can go up or down the item tree.

These recipes are then cached in a database and will never have to be computed again, saving several minutes of load time in larger packs.

The Machines

All tiers have 2 main machines, termed the "Deconstructor" and "Reconstructor", or thesaurus-ized equivalents.

 The Deconstructor

The deconstructor's job is to locate an Assembler Recipe with a given output, and break it down into its inputs.  As it does so, it may potentially generate a fluid called mass.  This is generated in miniscule amounts, based upon the tier of the decomposition recipe.  Mass is used for rebuilding the recipe, as well as encoding recipes into schematics, which we'll get into later.


The Encoder

This block is the player's access to the Assembler Manager database.  Simply place an item in the left hand crafting grid to see the equivalent recipe output on the right.  Now that the player has discovered the recipe he wants to use, he needs to transfer it over to a reconstructor.  The way to communicate the recipe is via an item called a Schematic.  Lower tier schematics have limited uses, with the final tier allowing for infinite uses.  Every time the recipe is created via a schematic, the schematic loses a use.  When a schematic has used its final use, it reverts to an un-encoded schematic, and can be re-encoded.


The encoder uses mass and power to encode the given recipe on a specific schematic.


Higher tier recipes require more mass, as do higher tier schematics.
Advanced tooltips will show you the recipe encoded on a particular schematic.


The Reconstructor

You can think of this as the nemesis machine to the deconstructor.  This machine takes in the input components and a recipe, and automatically creates the output.
Here we can see the recipe shown for us for reference in the reconstructor machine, once we have put in the encoded schematic.  There are no items in the inventory of the reconstructor, so no crafting is currently being done.
Once we put some Mineral Lattice in the inventory, we can see the reconstructor use one of its uses , consume some power and the required mass, and begin to craft.
And here we can see the output dirt.  Thus, we have successfully deconstructed Stone into Mineral Lattice, created a schematic, and turned it back into Dirt.


The Implication

Now, you have seen me use an item called a Mineral Lattice.  This is one of many items in the Micro tier that regular minecraft items will decompose into.  I will henceforth refer to these types of items as Components.  Micro tier Components are not the end of the line, however.  Once you have a Nano Deconstructor, you can break down Micro tier Components into their Nano tier.  With a Nano Reconstructor, you can reassemble those Nano tier Components into Micro tier.  The same occurs with Nano -> Femto and back.

Thus, as you progress down Femtocraft, the decomposition/recomposition tree widens, as you can start breaking items down further into the Components required for a particular reconstructed item.

However, it is not entirely equivalent.  It is very unlikely that you can use 100% of the deconstructed Components from one particular Item in the reconstruction of another.  However, those items still exist for use in another particular cause.

The Tease