First off, I want to give kudos to a guy on Youtube who designed one HELL of a transit system. How I found it is unknown.. I think I followed a link on the minecraft forums.
Whichever is the case, his transit system is semi-automated. It requires actions from the user but it brings shame to mine. The heart of it all is his stations. They blow me away of how complex they are. Fully automated with redstone wiring.
He has a system that you can step on a pressure plate to summon a cart, and you’ll actually see the cart being released from a hopper and a redstone light lights up when the cart is ready for you.
Then you simply walk over, get in it, wait a few seconds, and it will automatically take you out of the station and to the awaiting rail system.
Also, he explains it as calm as possible. I guess I would too if I was a master of redstone wiring, and lied that I only know the basics.
I was able to grab a copy of this map (he has a link in the description of the video), to get inside of it to see what makes it tick. He even wants you to implement his stations into your map to see what you can come up with (of course.. give the guy credit, he deserves it), by releasing an MCedit schematic he made. I might just do that in the distant future. I have no plans or ideas how it would work out or where to place it.
I could make it into a loop track. Like LOOP LINE or something to connect to the BENIE and WAYWARD lines as a means of a secondary way to get on the two major ones.
He has two versions of the system, and you can see his videos here, here, and Version 2 here. The second one obviously being better designed. He used a new system that’s supposed to work in SMP, and made two underground stations for you to impliment into your map. They’re exactly like the others, except designed for subway use.
Again, might be useful in the future.
It still blows me away how well-designed everything is. But there’s a few ideas from it I threw into my own transit system, and I didn’t use a schematic.
BENIE LINE’s Valley station is in need of redesign or something. So I chose it to impliment those ideas from the guy’s map. The main thing is redoing the ramps up to the station. Seeing how he had the path connecting the two station platforms inside the ramp stairs, I used this idea.
Of course, given the limit with size of the area, I had to make some adjustments. Such as “blowing up” a hill (editing it out in MCedit) the northern ramp had to deal with, so it can directly go all the way down to ground level.
Another thing I did was make a sort of a concourse area with the path, using the guy’s ingenious idea of indoor gardens.
I’m not too happy with the way I got the station platform doors. I need to backup the ramps by one block each to allow free flowing space on the platforms.
You can’t put pressure plates on half blocks, sadly.
One thing I did do differently that I don’t like from his map is the main entrance. He has it where you got to smack a button and quickly walk in through the doorway before it closes in your face.
I fixed this by simply placing a pressure plate infront of the door, allowing a user to not have to hurry through the door before it shuts, because it will shut when the user gets all the way in.
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Seriously, though. I need my own type of automated cart system. Zombe’s Modpack’s “cart” mod only goes so far. And having a system that will take my cart when I decide to stop at a station would be nice, as well as another system that gives me a cart when I’m ready to leave. Angry says he may be able to make one using Bukkit, but to not hold my breath.
There is a coming soon “mod” (if it’s even a mod, I’m not sure anymore) called Minecarts MK II. It combines rails with redstone wiring, infusing them into the track. Much like a electric model trainset.
It’s like Minecart Mania in ways. You have booster/breaker tracks, and full stop tracks. But as I said, none of it needs redstone wiring. Thanks to a Cart Detection Block that acts like complicated redstone wiring. Just place the infused track pieces where you want incoming carts to speed up or slow down, and a cart detection block next to it, and that’s all you have to do. No complicated wiring.
The idea is ingenious, and I seriously want to hug the one that came up with the idea, since I won’t have to redesign my transit system due to redstone wiring. However, it looks like to me this isn’t going to come out anytime soon. It’s a proposal to Notch to allow these blocks in Minecraft by default.
IMO, it should be in the Suggestions forum then if it’s just a proposal instead of a coming soon mod.