[Mod] Mesecons (= redstone) [GitHub] [minetest-mod-mesecons]

[deivan]

Nice idea.

[jojoa1997]

Builders rejoice! Mesecons wire now has a larger selection box, making building above the ground much easier.

But that means i will mistakenly place it more in the wrong spot

[12Me21]

It would be cool if there was a liquid crystal block, that is normally clear but turns dark grey when it receives power from a mesecon.

[Temperest]

Try Ghoststone for that. It turns completely invisible when powered.

[Evergreen]

I noticed some unused textures in the textures folder in mesecons. Things like inverters, sockets, and such. Are those features that are/were going to be added?

[Temperest]

They already exist, but are not in the default distribution. For plugs, sockets, and inverters, you will need Mesecons-extension-temperest, available at the downloads page at Mesecons.net. This particular one is not available for a reason though: using it incorrectly will crash the server, and unfortunately this is not fixable without compromising on it being instantaneous.

The battery extension is not included by default because it does not fit quite perfectly with the mechanics of Mesecons, since it implies a power and electricity based metaphor, which is not the case.

We can't change it because texture packs rely on the textures staying in the same place throughout versions.

[Evergreen]

They already exist, but are not in the default distribution. For plugs, sockets, and inverters, you will need Mesecons-extension-temperest, available at the downloads page at Mesecons.net. This particular one is not available for a reason though: using it incorrectly will crash the server, and unfortunately this is not fixable without compromising on it being instantaneous.

The battery extension is not included by default because it does not fit quite perfectly with the mechanics of Mesecons, since it implies a power and electricity based metaphor, which is not the case.

We can't change it because texture packs rely on the textures staying in the same place throughout versions.

The reason I was wondering, was because I was making a personalized texture pack for myself, and noticed that there were extra textures. Thanks for the info.

[Temperest]

Quick update on development, newest to oldest news:

• Pistons make sounds when extending or retracting.
• Pipelining support: Mesecons receptors now work based on ticks, at around 20 ticks per second. That means a slight delay is now introduced whenever you use a receptor, around 0.05 seconds usually.
• Yellow lightstone! Craft it with a MESE crystal fragment as the coloring item.
• Luacontrollers don't drop when overheating now - they turn into "burnt luacontrollers" that still have all their metadata, so you don't lose your work! Just press the Program button again to re-enable it.
• Pressure plates and vertical wires should look better.

There's no new stable release, but as always, you can download the very latest code here, it's quite stable as it is.

[Nore]

I just discovered a way to segfault the server, using luacontroller:

Code: Select all

mem.i=string.sub

This puts a function in the mem table, and segfault the server when mem tries to be serialized.

[Temperest]

Fixed! See here for reference.

[Nore]

Now I have other code that crashes it (with the bugfix):

Code: Select all

mem.i={}
mem.i[0]=mem.i

This causes a recursive structure to be created, and minetest crashes (stack overflow) when trying to remove all functions in it, since the function to do that calls itself recursively endlessly.

EDIT:
It is moreover possible to make loops using luacontroller, using the goto keyword:

Code: Select all

i=0
::b::
if i<100 then
    i=i+1
    print(i)
    goto b
end

[Temperest]

Nice catch! I didn't realize goto had made it in yet. The cyclic references crash was also fixed, again thanks to your bug hunting.

Servers, please upgrade Mesecons as soon as possible to avoid possible crashes when Luacontrollers are available to griefers.

[VoidLord]

Read this http://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php ... 525#p94525. Also, I don't know how to code in lua

[Temperest]

VoidLord: thanks for the feedback. Here's what I think:

How about a better redstone alternate? That's the reason I got into this stuff. With mesecons there is no slight delay that allows stuff to happen, such as with the torches, those don't recieve signals quick enough.

Torches have a 1 second delay and yes, I agree that they are not great for making timing-sensitive stuff. Instead, try Delayers or Luacontrollers or Microcontrollers. They all have adjustable delays and very reliable timing capabilities.

Another problem is that you can't power blocks with mesecons, so you can't, for exmple, hide complex circuitry in plain sight.

There is unfortunately no simple way of doing this. To use your example, redstone does not simply conduct all over the place with normal blocks; it needs dust/repeaters/torches/etc. to function correctly. The same goes for mesecons. If want to transmit signals over a small (1 meter) distance without any visible wires, just like redstone, the mesecon torch is probably what you want.

Basically, I want to be able to make this a piston elevator or a zipper elevator without having to use microcontrollers or lua controllers, 'cause the first takes too long and I don't know how to use the second.

Takes too long to execute or to program? Microcontrollers work very quickly - one server tick, in fact. Luacontrollers work in much the same way, but is the more advanced cousin of the Microcontroller and is much more powerful. It is programmed in Lua, by the way; check out this tutorial if you want to learn how it works: http://mesecons.net/luacontroller/

Also, I'd like the "power noticing range" to be more like minecraft's for the torches. If I should put this in the mesecons place someone tell me, 'cause I didn't know where to put it.

What is a "power noticing range"? If you meant the signal transmission distance, it is generally 1 meter for most items, and 2 for special items such as pressure plates, buttons, levers, and torches.

[VoidLord]

For B) Yeah, I know about redstone. Too bad. For C) I meant it took too long to program. Also, I checked the page once before and think the problem lies knowing the structure of the game and how to use "."s correctly, mainly a problem about knowledge of functions. For D) I think it was a problem w/powering the blocks, but I meant the blocks around the node that are powered as a result. In general: Personally, I just want to play w/o digilines and luacontrollers and microcontrollers becase it's like a shortcut to me, and it removes the beauty of being able to see it work in action (not to say that I don't use microcontrollers ). BTW, do you think it possible to make a BUD switch?

[Temperest]

Personally I find that Luacontrollers work best if you have a basic knowledge of the Lua programming language already before programming things. At first, I found the whole controllers thing a bit overpowered, but eventually I found that the incredible new things we can do with them definitely outweigh the elegant but humongous machines we had before.

In fact, I find myself missing my old worlds sometimes:



Today, that can be built with 3 Luacontrollers. An entire computer in Mesecons is now trivial!

BUD switches aren't really possible since there's no block updates, and therefore nothing to detect. I suppose you might have a block that triggers on nodeupdate, but that seems a bit hacky to me.

I highly recommend learning Lua anyways, since once you do, you also know the same language that Minetest mods are written in! And the programming skills that you get are invaluable in many more area than just games.

[VoidLord]

I know. I'm reading a C++ book, and frankly I'm apt to point out that declaring a parameter for a function so that it recieves adresses doesn't make sense, AKA
void f(int &a , int &b)
In any case, I guess i'm stuck w/what i've got. Thanks anyway.

[Nore]

If you want to understand how mesecons components work, you can try to download contraptions from the mesecons competionhttp://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?id=5285, since there are luacontrollers, computers built without luacontrollers/microcontrollers, etc. However, those circuits were done before the small delay was added, thus they may not work perfectly.

[VoidLord]

Wait, for some reason the MESE block isn't conducting at all, no matter what I try. What should I do?

[Ragnar6645]

Hey all, just out of curiosity has anyone thought of electromagnets? I didn't look through all 49 pages and I really don't want to either so just thought I would ask.

If nobody has thought of this then please let me know as I have a detailed explanation of how they could work as far as funtionality goes that I am writing up so I don't forget, just encase lol

[Temperest]

VoidLord: the MESE block conducts only from directly adjacent faces, i.e., no diagonals. It will change colours to be slightly brighter when on. Only receptors that conduct to that side will turn on.

See the article "Mesecons Basics" in my post signature for a detailed description of the MESE block as a conductor, with plenty of pictures of course. Or visit the page directly: http://uberi.mesecons.net/projects/Mese ... index.html

Ragnar6645: what would that do? Some more information would be nice.

[Ragnar6645]

Ragnar6645: what would that do? Some more information would be nice.

Sorry, I am in the middle of writing up the details in a text document but I'm making sure my understanding of magnetism is as correct as I can so that I can make the idea as coherent as possible.

As an example they could be used as a means to pull iron based items or natural magnets that are dropped or placed to them, or to repel natural magnets from them.

Some things that you could make with these are platforms that could be used as elivators or gathering point for easy iron mining and much more.

I will post the text document's contents here or something when I'm done writing it.

[Nore]

VoidLord: Are you sure that mesecons_extrawires is enabled? Check whether you have insulated wires.

Ragnar6645: It looks like a good idea... I want to know more about it!

[Ragnar6645]

Ragnar6645: It looks like a good idea... I want to know more about it!

Thank you, I want to make sure the idea is as whole and coherent as I possibly can before I post it so it won't be done untill at least tomarrow. I will post it as soon as I have it finnished.

[VoidLord]

Yes Nore, I do have extrawires on because I do have insluated wires working. I checked the file and it should be working from the init.lua (basically a bunch of dofiles). I don't know why it shouldn't work, even though everything else is. Maybe it is being masked by the default pack?