Benie's Games Blog

Some non-W2TS v2.0.1 news to start this blog post off. I’m taking a break, due to the fact I NEED to see someone else’s transit system using Railcraft. Burns my ass why everyone’s too lazy to make one.

I really wanted to get my house in after seeing JeetTol’s 18th Let’s Play episode of creepifing his Nether Portal, by making it look like the nether is seeping into the real world. I thought “I can use a nether portal too for my house.” Speaking of the house, I found a place for it of my preliminary search of the map, near where the INNER LOOP LINE would go. It’s at the bend of a nice river near the edge of the map that sets the stage of the entire map.

Prepping the area wasn’t fun, but it had to be done. I couldn’t just MCEdit the house in and expect it to fit in like a puzzle piece. Soon I got the area smooth enough to plop my old log cabin from Minecraft Classic in it. Because the area called for a log cabin with all of the trees and the river.

So I got the house on and made it nice-looking by adding a porch. I also wanted a basement; something I’ve only attempted once but never completed. Then I made my Portal Room, which is a tier under the basement.

One thing I wanted was an End Portal. Searched the wiki of how to make one. Though it didn’t really tell me how to, there was a video that showed me how to find a Stronghold using the Eye of Ender.
It was located, deep west in a very large Snow biome. Dug down and boom. My first Stronghold! It also had the same End Portal thing as the video. MCEdited it over to my house and placed it where I wanted it.

Before I continue, there’s something I have noticed for quite awhile. I don’t know what mod is causing it, but mobs… are friendly to me. They only attack if I attack them. And this is on Hard difficulty, which baffles me. I could say it’s MoCreatures, but mobs from that mod do attack me (only at night, though). I’m thinking SPC is at fault here. Though I really don’t mind the.. “I promise I won’t explode unless you attack me. Just hug me!” Creepers, but zombies that don’t follow me and skeletons that don’t shoot at me, is getting a bit serious.
I first thought this was a new feature for Easy difficulty, but for it to also happen in Hard, something is wrong here.
EDIT: Found out the issue. It was so simple. It’s Creative mode! In Creative, they don’t attack you. They only attack in Survival, which makes sense. Still, would of been awesome if I knew that before.

Well, as for the W2TS v2.0.1, since putting the stations mainly underground and making a diamond dome for the Main Hub’s entrance points, FOREST LINE hasn’t moved one inch. The problem? Me! I don’t know where to put the stations, or what the fuck to do with the landscape! I have very little to no ideas!

I have a very faint idea for roads for the Residential area, but that’s it. Building placement, my brain’s a blank. However, connecting my house to the FOREST LINE is clear as crystal.
The BLUE LINE has seen no changes since I got Railcraft installed. I still haven’t made Sundune Village Station automated, because I don’t really know how to work with it.

Plus, I’m disliking the idea of throwing all stations underground, all because I can’t fucking properly hide the inner workings of the station.
Minecart Mania wasn’t really a problem hiding shit. But this is. And making it realistic on top of it is next to impossible. Elevator Rails are not realistic.
This all started with the Main Hub. I made a station like that (the first station for the LOOP LINE) in the W2TS Minecart Mania-automated. Yet, this is like if Spawner/Deleter blocks don’t work anymore and I’m forced to use chest dispensers.
I had to put Swamps Station underground due to its close proximity to FOREST LINE, and due to the forced underground with Main Hub.

This, is why I’m waiting for someone’s lazy ass to make a video showing off their system in Railcraft and how they made it. And hopefully the person didn’t make the entire thing underground as I’m being forced to do. This map is too pretty to have rails underground. I want to be able to see the landscape as I go by to the next station. But I also want it to be automated.

However, there IS hope in the future. A true successor to Minecart Mania is being worked on. Afforess finally replied to my message today, stating he is no longer working on it. So that proves MM is dead.
Now, I’m not dissing Railcraft, but GOD DAMNIT do I need that Spawner/Deleter block! Screw his shitty Minecart Dispenser. I want something that will give me UNLIMITED minecarts! Without having to fucking reload the system!

I made a request for it, and got a reply about three minutes later from someone else. Somehow… somehow an idea popped into my head. An idea that’s been in my head but keeps being thrown away. I finally gave it a chance, and it’s like the idea said “See? I told you I would work! Give me a chance next time, ok?”.
The idea is to use a 10 block wide section along the Boarding Rail, with a rail dropping down under the station platform and connecting to the Storage Dispenser/Loader/Unloader/Call Dispenser and back out the other way. With this, I will not have to bury my stations underground. And it’s SMP-friendly.

Ever since I saw Jeet’s Let’s Play series, I’ve been wondering if I should do my own, except a twist. Most Let’s Plays are about learning a game, or in Jeet’s case, the mods he plays.

If I was able to do one, it would feature me re-constructing the W2TS. Seeing how no one would probably care (except me and maybe friends), I’ll keep them Private listings.

I can use Fraps to record the video, and maybe Windows Movie Maker to edit it or something. I have made a video before, featuring an idea I had months ago for the W2TS (when I still had Minecart Mania) of the Cart Call/Destroy thing. You can view it here. I used Procaster to record it. Still using that skin. Heh. Also still using Painterly as my texture pack of choice.

And here‘s a “small” video I just uploaded to Youtube, via Windows Live Movie Maker, recorded by Fraps (legit full version too). I still have a head cold, and with no script I go “uhh” alot, so please bare with me. Remember, it’s just a test video to see if I can even do this.

First off, I got a head cold. I got it a few days ago, but so far all it’s done is kinda.. ruin WoW for me, temporarily. Fortunately, the dizziness isn’t keeping me away from Minecraft.

As for that video, the guy never made it (he explains what happened with it at the end of Part 14 in his Let’s Play! series). But I don’t need it anymore. I now know how to use these Detector blocks now. They’re quite simple once you sit down and read the Railcraft Wiki! The “Detector (Advanced)” detector was the one I wanted a video about. But reading the wiki helped answer my questions. I didn’t even need the damn thing for the four-way station idea.

Anyway, I’ve been hearing about this mod that never really interested me ’till I kept watching the guy’s video of the Minecart Dispensers. I wondered “How did he wire that?” and thought “Maybe it’s compatible with Railcraft”. And sure enough, it is. Thanks to Forge. And tried grabbing it. The first time, I grabbed the wrong version. Managed to grab the right one and got it working.

What I know, is Redpower is like Redstone, except you can do what you cannot with Redstone. And that is make it go up walls, and sit on ceilings. What’s better, they got these covers. Allowing for seamless design without showing the wires.
TMI gives you what you need, but you unfortunately have to craft the wires. It is simple, though. You can also make colored Insulted wires using any color of wool you want. Using this, you can lay down multi-colored wiring and they won’t touch eachother to fuck up your idea. And the fact they’re colored, you can tell them apart.

And there’s more than just that with this mod. Redpower is split into several sub-mods, with one called Logic, which I will be discussing next.

The Logic sub-mod makes all known Redstone logic gates, compact. Such as a compact RS-NOR Latch, or a compact NOT Gate (an Inverter). But what the best thing is, is the improved Repeater. It gives you a much longer delay, and it’s just what I needed to make my stations automated again. However, it’s not without a flaw. But I’m sure that can be fixed (just not by me due to my severe lack of Redstone knowledge).

Basically, what I’m trying to do is re-create one of my favorite, greatly-missed features in Minecart Mania; the Hold For sign in the Sign Commands sub-mod. To do this, I use a ‘Detector (Any)’ block to detect any type of minecart (Player/Empty/Mob, whatever) and connect that through Redpower and a Redpower Repeater (set on Delay 7), and connect that to a Boarding Rail. The cart rolls over the block and hits the boarding rail.

It delays the circuit for about 6-8 seconds, then sends the signal to the boarding rail which auto-launches the cart on its way. The flaw is that the circuit isn’t being cut off after the cart leaves said boarding rail, which would allow griefers to gum up the cart call system. But since this is Single Player, it will work for me.
Maybe connecting it to an RS-NOR Latch or something to cut the circuit off after the cart passes over another ‘Detector (Any)’ block.

So get out there and play with this mod, and wonder how in the hell you were able to tolerate with Redstone for this long. Because you will never want to go back.

I’ve put work on the W2TS on both maps, on hiatus until I get a video showing how the Detector blocks of Railcraft work. Which should be tomorrow.

There’s a video of how to get the new Minecart Dispensers work as a.. somewhat of an automated station. But I’m sure with some tweaking using that design, I can get it to work. Trouble is, making it work with existing stations.
Anyway, I asked the author of the video if he could make me a video showing the Detector blocks, of how they work. He said to look for it Tuesday (estimated. It could take longer).

Since my RPing friend went to bed early yesterday, I decided to do what I haven’t done in months; play WoW the way it’s supposed to be played by doing dungeons and shit. So that’s what I did. First thing was dealing with the changes to Winter Veil this year. Greatfather Winter is still in IF, but the infamous quest “You’re a Mean One…” is now a daily. The Greench (now named “The Abominable Greench”) has been upgraded to a heavy-hitting Elite boss that requires a “group” to kill.
But the fact he’s untagged, you don’t have to group or queue up. He still hits like a truck. His location hasn’t been modified too. But except from stealing Christmas, he’s also stealing Metzen the Reindeer. Yeah, he’s taken over for the terrorists.

The reason they made the quest a daily, is after you turn it in you get a present. It has a rare chance of having a lump of coal. A pet named “Lumpy”, similar to Pebble. You also get Justice points as if he was a dungeon boss. You also have a chance at other things. Some shitty, some not so shitty, and one that can give you another achievement.

After that and a Tempest Keep run, I went to work at End Time. Starting the run was a complete mess, as the group kept wiping when they shouldn’t of, and people blaming eachother. But, we finally pulled it off.

The next day (today), we did Well of Eternity. Using what I’ve learned from the PTR, there were no deaths of mine. It was still fun and I managed to complete quests I didn’t before, on the PTR.

Finally, I did Hour of Twilight. The one escorting Thrall to Wyrmrest Temple. It was actually quite fun. We past that barricade I was talking about before. And I was right that Thrall knocks it down. Then I saw him.. Deathwing, flying around Wyrmrest. Fortunately he was too busy with other things to “play” with us.
Soon we finally got to the temple’s “portal room”, and had to defeat the final boss. Who was easier than I thought. Hell, the entire fight, no one wiped. Not bad for my first time. And I saw all the portals where disabled. Going by an RP standpoint, I assume the aspects shut the portals down to prevent Deathwing from entering.

With this done, and another quest, Mr.robot told me it was time to upgrade my gear again using the new 4.3 stuff. I managed to get two new pieces of gear. A new belt, and a new primary ring.
I was also capped on Justice Points. 4000 is the cap. So, going back to SW and to the Justice Quartermaster, I noticed not only is there less stuff available, but the Lightning-Charged gear set is gone. I assume replaced with this new Flamewalker set. Apparently they made Firelands gear accessible with Justice Points now. This, is great for me.

Getting the new gear will definitely give me something to do, and increase my chances to do the Dragon Soul raid (or at least allow me to solo dungeons better).

I said before there was no way I could just MCEdit my troubles away. I was wrong, and then some. I had forgotten about the handy Brush tool that sealed the holes the Enderdragons carved into my mountains.
So I decided to give it a go, and low and behold, it did its job sealing up the tornado paths. But that didn’t undo the thousands of blocks and holes scattered everywhere. That was until I found the Smooth filter.

This filter is exactly what I needed. It does what it says, smooth out terrain by using existing flat terrain and removing discrepancies. In laymens terms, it acts as a Disk Defragmenter.
And did it ever. It filled up holes, and flattened blocks that were displaced by the tornadoes. Completely undoing all the damage, and saving the map. MCEdit, you are my hero. 🙂
.

Yesterday, the author of RailCraft released an update, which included the long-awaited by me; Minecart Dispenser. The final piece I need to rid myself of Minecart Mania forever.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work as I planned it to. He has set it up where a cart not only gets placed on the track infront of it, BUT also gets picked up the same way.

This isn’t going to work for me, so I protested over it. But the author tried to show me how it will work. I just have to use my brain and think of another design idea. He claims I need to use a Detector rail, and Cart Loader/Unloader system. He also showed me two examples of what he meant.

That’s easier said than done. All I can think of is my current design I used before for the W2TS of Wayward Desert Station when Deleter blocks weren’t working, and I had to resort to using chests again.
Of having a looped track to send an incoming cart back to the chest, and it would automatically get picked up. This, doesn’t work like that unfortunately.

I’ll have to think long and hard. Got to remember how long it took me to even create the current design for my stations of the W2TS. Unfortunately, there’s no Youtube videos of how to use them.

Kids. Never do what I did. It was stupid, and I deserved what I got. ALWAYS back up your maps before you “play” with something so… uncontrollable.

So anyway, the damage was.. “minor”. If you call blocks that were pulled out of the ground and scattered around the map “minor”. Four tornadoes spawned before I said “HOLY FUCK enough!!” Plus there’s no way to stop their sucking unless you remove the mod all together.

I had thought I did something in the config file to do said thing. Bad idea. Should of backed up the map anyway. But..I didn’t.
Tornadoes seem to spawn in the area to where the player is, instead of just anywhere.

The first one that spawned cut a path through the ground, but didn’t last long.
The second one spawned just out of sea, then hit land and made a b-line for the South ILL Connection, but it died out. But it did damage to the INNER LOOP LINE.
The third tornado started on land, plowing through the under construction section of the INNER LOOP LINE, and out to sea where it remained a waterspout for awhile, pulling every sea creature from MoCreatures in with it before finally dying.
I went north to the Main Hub, when the forth one spawn, heading right for it. Fortunately it died out before it got close.

All four tornadoes didn’t hit any of the stations, but the paths they took are now scars in the ground. Scars that will take a VERY LONG time to undo. I can’t just MCEdit this thing and call it ‘fixed’. Not with the different block heights.

But anyway… I’ve been thinking. Maybe this is a good thing. Since this map pretty much sucks (worse than the tornadoes did) except for the massive Swamp biome in the East, Southeast area of the map. So, I tried another map.

This one, is more inland. Has a very large Desert biome, but more Forest biomes and less Ocean biomes. As an added bonus, it has a Tundra biome!
After running and flying over the map on my EnderDragon, the map looks more promising than the last one. So much a new line will be needed.
I think I’m going to dub this, W2TS v2.0.1.

The new line will be named FOREST SUBWAY, accessible by the RED LINE’s Southbound route (Southbound is key in this map). A first for me. First time I didn’t use the word “LINE” in the line’s name, and the first time of having a line staying fully underground.

It will still have the RED and BLUE lines, and the INNER LOOP LINE. But the Main Hub will be further north, sitting on the large Desert biome. This is due to how “unstable” the ground is south of it. And, there seems to be more “action” north, than south. A reason for the BLUE LINE.

I’m still planning to throw in the Residential area, but this time, will be more difficult. But I’m sure I can make it work with some terrain tweaking, like I did to make it work in World2. And it was also in a Forest biome.

I’m planning to re-create Mystic Woods from World2. I have no idea how, but I hope to think of something.
Both Residential and Mystic Woods will be accessible through the new FOREST SUBWAY.
I had originally thought of the name “W-LINE” for the line’s name, connecting to the BLUE LINE. But this is proving too difficult to accomplish due to the terrain (and the fact there’s an NPC Village right where the W-LINE hub was going to be on the BLUE LINE’s Eastbound route).

Alright.. that’s enough of that. I’ve been quite busy today. I finally found a way to snake the BLUE LINE’s Eastbound route where I wanted it, and joined it with the INNER LOOP LINE’s East Connection, which connects 1/4 of the loop line.

But I’ve discovered something. I may’ve screwed up royally in the placement of the ILL, going by the Ingame Map.
What I mean, is when I “crafted” the map, it wasn’t where the Main Hub would soon be located. You see, it picks its center the exact point where you craft it, which is ENE from the Main Hub.

You can have multiple maps, which show more of the world. Since a map is an item, keeping track of all of them sounds tedious. Multiple maps. Multiple items. And you can’t name said maps. They all use “map_#”. “#” being what number the map is. Creating more would give you “map_1”, “map_2”, “map_3”.. etc. And there’s also a limit brought by the coding. You can have a total of 65,536 maps per world (this includes the Nether and The End). Why would you need so many maps is beyond me.

To create a new map, you have to craft it using a Crafting Table at the exact spot you want the new map to be. It has to be off the edge of the current map for it to work.
There’s an editing tool called Image to Map, that you can create your own custom ingame maps. Make a story for players on an SMP Server, or mark the locations of your transit system and the routes. By doing this, it can’t be overwritten by moving into unexplored areas.

I managed to take a picture of my current ingame map, which I edited in Paint.NET to mark station locations;

The exact center of the world, WNW of North Forest, is dubbed “EnderDragon Island”. This is where Enderdragons go after they get bored chasing me around the world (and leaving holes in my system and mountains). They always head to the center of the world. Beats me why.

Been working off and on, on the new map. I made a WIP of the first station for the new INNER LOOP LINE design (it’s similar to Stone Tower station in the W2TS), that I’m currently using for the “new” Great Swamp station.
The reason I say “new” is I had the station planned for a week, just couldn’t think of a proper design for the station. I thought it would look too wide. Instead, it’s worse than I thought. I’ll actually have to make the damn thing wider to make the stairs wider, and for adding a roof to keep the rain off.

I had an idea for a path that connects to most of the islands of the swamp, and it turned out better than I planned. It’s a 4×4 wooden pathway, one block above sea level. If only Notch added some swamp sounds like crickets and shit. At least with MoCreatures, Gators spawn, snapping their jaws at you.

I’ve played the second hub for the INNER LOOP LINE, which is on the Northbound end of the RED LINE. Due to how close North Desert station was to it, I had to wipe it out and extend the line to the new station. I discovered something interesting father north of it. An NPC Village, half-missing due to a chunk fail. I decided to name it “Chunk Fail Village”, which gave me a reason to extend the RED LINE even further north. That’s not the only thing that’s missing. It’s like a large chunk of the world seamlessly snapped off and fell into the ocean. Beyond that is more mountains, and more desert.

The BLUE LINE hasn’t really been touched since the creation of the W2TS in this map. I extended the Eastbound route a bit, through the mountains. Found a small bay on the other side, that I named “Eastern Bay”. But twisting the line to it, is why I postponed it. I know I have to, to complete the INNER LOOP LINE (as long as the BLUE LINE going Westbound). But it’s such a fucking chore. Not only do I have to turn it, I have to lower it at the same time. I don’t even think it’s worth the time, but I want it to at least have one station before going to the INNER LOOP LINE. It’s sad there’s not really anything interesting to make me slap a station down.

Speaking of the BLUE LINE going Westbound for the planned revival of Residential, I tried to prep the landing area for the new underground station I got planned, somewhere in the memory area of my brain. But it’s not easy, and I’m not even sure if I can. Maybe I’m just not doing it right. What I’m trying to do is flatten the land behind the mouth of the river, to add a road and bridges to connect to the other areas.
Then, I’m planning to put the station even directly under the river, or directly under the road. Whichever is easier on myself, avoids auto-generated mine shafts. and the walkways up to it hit the road right where I want them to.

Other than that, that’s pretty much it.

I’ve been watching the development of a mod called RailCraft for about two weeks since I saw it. It promises to do the same thing Minecart Mania did, but even better.
It doesn’t have a Minecart Spawn Rail unfortunately, but with a bit of effort, something like it can be made. The same as a Holding rail. Sign Commands aren’t used, but being able to make control boxes do the same thing for you, can.

What it boils down to, is giving people like myself what they fucking want! For example, the new and improved Booster rail, called the Boarding Rail (perfect name for stations). It grabs the cart and doesn’t let that damn thing go unless a redstone current hits it. And it launches! It don’t just fucking sit there like the vanilla booster rail does. It says FUCK YOU to ugly launch ramps and throws those hideous things out the door, and hello to doing what you want it to do!!

And that’s not the only thing RailCraft is capable of. There is so much more, like having high speed rails where carts will go 3x faster than normal. But beware… if it hits a standard rail, the cart derails and goes boom, taking that section of track with it. That’s why there’s rails for that too, to safely slow the cart down to prevent that from happening.

This fucking thing has ACTUAL WORKING TRACK SWITCHES, with real animations! Yes! Something I’m really going to be playing with of what to do with empty carts (or better stations). Did I mention it has Detector blocks, similar to Sign Commands in MM? They work just like Station blocks in MM. I think. I know very little about this mod. Need time to learn. It took me something like 1-2 weeks to learn MM, constantly playing with prototypes.

It has Elevator rails. Need to get up in a hurry or fucked up by placing a station too close to another? This rail, when powered by redstone, pulls the minecart up and onto the tracks above it, similar to the [Elevator] signs in MM. These will be useful to the planned Minecart Dispenser the author is making for (hopefully) the next release of RailCraft.

And the best thing, it fixes the drag issue with normal minecarts. It made a long right turn in my system look easy compared to doing it before.

The only thing that’s holding me back now, is placement of more stations. Because how carts move on my system is no longer an issue. I’m inlove with RailCraft. 🙂 This is a fine replacement for Minecart Mania.