[Morgoth]

they cause lag? Hmpf.. I guess I should fix it then.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Just having a lot of minecarts sitting on tracks causes lag...even if they arent' moving. It isn't an issue in single player because you aren't really limited by bandwidth. In Multiplayer, the server is communicating the position of all those carts to all players online rather than just to you. It just hogs the bandwidth unnecessarily. A lot of bigger servers have outlawed glitch boosters entirely for that very reason...if you get more than a few people building big booster complexes it breaks the server.

With the new booster tracks, you don't even need to have one sitting on the track or waiting in a dispenser. Just whip one down on the track, push the button and away you go. Plus the boosters are 2 directional so you only ever need 1 track to get from one place to another.

The new boosters can start you from a stop but only if they are up against a block

Build em like this, where [--] is a block, =B= is a booster track and =D= is a detector track

[--] =B========D==B==D=============================>>>> to destination

then hook the terminal booster to a push button. The boosters will start you from a dead stop in this configuration and the detector-Booster-detector combo placed nearby gets your momentum going for travel.

Mirror it at the destination and your cart will stop perfectly on the booster at the far end (because un-activated boosters act as stoppers). Put as many D-B-D combos along the way as is necessary to get you there. Max boost sends you 2 chunks away (128 blocks) but it's best to boost at half that distance to keep your speed up.

This post has been edited by cerveza_fiesta: 02 May 2011 - 07:23 PM

[Morgoth]

That would mean an absurd amount of booster-tracks though... my tracks are pretty long, and need to be two way too function. Still, I should be able to reduce it some I spose.

The problem is that the old booster system provides more energy from what I've read. I'll have to re build the whole system

This post has been edited by Morgoth: 02 May 2011 - 10:08 PM

[Morgoth]

Just came across some sort of glass / wool construction some way to the west of my cathedral. Who's established themselves out there? I thought I was exploring into the unknown.


Also, it seems access to the Nether will be included for multiplayer in v 1.6

This post has been edited by Morgoth: 03 May 2011 - 11:07 AM

[cerveza_fiesta]

Morgoth, on 02 May 2011 - 10:07 PM, said:

That would mean an absurd amount of booster-tracks though... my tracks are pretty long, and need to be two way too function. Still, I should be able to reduce it some I spose.

The problem is that the old booster system provides more energy from what I've read. I'll have to re build the whole system

The tracks to your cathedral from your fort are really not that long, considering some of the longer rails - like the one leading to Y'gatan.

I think the link from MS to Castle CF used 5 DBD combos and 2 boosters at either end.

There really aint a lot you need to do, just plop down the D-B-D combo at regular intervals. The way you have it set up there you could do it easily. It would take maybe 10 DBDs along your whole track. Check out the rail I have connecting MS to Castle CF. It is super basic and totally functional and could easily replace what you've built with very little modification. You just have to abandon the booster - dispenser idea. Bonus is that you can do it with 1 track, meaning you can salvage your whole second track and all the booster tracks / carts and reuse them for other branches. Also, the new boosters mean no stuck or lost carts clogging up the ride halfway along.

As for speed, yes they're a bit slower, but not noticeably so. And they don't cause your momentum to jump back and forth crazily while you're traveling along the track because they aren't glitching the game.

At any rate, I want to get as many of the idle carts from the old boosters out of our server as possible. Especially if they're enabling the nether. Lag is sure to spike after that so anything we can do to reduce it is good.

This post has been edited by cerveza_fiesta: 03 May 2011 - 11:23 AM

[cerveza_fiesta]

Morgoth, on 03 May 2011 - 10:00 AM, said:

Just came across some sort of glass / wool construction some way to the west of my cathedral. Who's established themselves out there? I thought I was exploring into the unknown.


Also, it seems access to the Nether will be included for multiplayer in v 1.6

I believe that is somebody's ice fort. Maybe Sheve's?? I can't remember.

[Kanubis]

I'll probably be back if the Nether really is there for SMP in 1.6

I really want to build in a new area, but with quick travel from my old estate (way too much shite in those chests to carry manually!)

I know the Nether is dangerous as fuck as well, but I've got enough obsidian to make a ghast-proof shelter to wherever I can make a tunnel too small for them to spawn in!

[D'rek]

Morgoth, on 03 May 2011 - 10:00 AM, said:

Just came across some sort of glass / wool construction some way to the west of my cathedral. Who's established themselves out there? I thought I was exploring into the unknown.


Also, it seems access to the Nether will be included for multiplayer in v 1.6

Trull's Son has an ice castle west of you, and Green Pig's pit of doom is southwest of you. There's a map half a dozen pages back in this thread.

cerveza_fiesta, on 03 May 2011 - 11:20 AM, said:

Morgoth, on 02 May 2011 - 10:07 PM, said:

That would mean an absurd amount of booster-tracks though... my tracks are pretty long, and need to be two way too function. Still, I should be able to reduce it some I spose.

The problem is that the old booster system provides more energy from what I've read. I'll have to re build the whole system

The tracks to your cathedral from your fort are really not that long, considering some of the longer rails - like the one leading to Y'gatan.

I think the link from MS to Castle CF used 5 DBD combos and 2 boosters at either end.

There really aint a lot you need to do, just plop down the D-B-D combo at regular intervals. The way you have it set up there you could do it easily. It would take maybe 10 DBDs along your whole track. Check out the rail I have connecting MS to Castle CF. It is super basic and totally functional and could easily replace what you've built with very little modification. You just have to abandon the booster - dispenser idea. Bonus is that you can do it with 1 track, meaning you can salvage your whole second track and all the booster tracks / carts and reuse them for other branches. Also, the new boosters mean no stuck or lost carts clogging up the ride halfway along.

As for speed, yes they're a bit slower, but not noticeably so. And they don't cause your momentum to jump back and forth crazily while you're traveling along the track because they aren't glitching the game.

At any rate, I want to get as many of the idle carts from the old boosters out of our server as possible. Especially if they're enabling the nether. Lag is sure to spike after that so anything we can do to reduce it is good.

CF, how many regular rails are you putting between your power rails?

And personally, I prefer using redstone torches to detector rails to save on resources, but it's only really a factor if you're really far away like me and dream of connecting the main zone eventually someday. On long tracks like mine, too, it's better to try and have two separate tracks if possible because the longer the route the more likely you have people simultaneously travelling in opposite directions on it. It would be possible to set up a redstone system that activates a light on each end when someone is using it, but it wouldn't be reliable and would probably take way too much redstone powder.

Kanubis, on 03 May 2011 - 12:22 PM, said:

I'll probably be back if the Nether really is there for SMP in 1.6

I really want to build in a new area, but with quick travel from my old estate (way too much shite in those chests to carry manually!)

I know the Nether is dangerous as fuck as well, but I've got enough obsidian to make a ghast-proof shelter to wherever I can make a tunnel too small for them to spawn in!

Ghasts don't damage glass, either, so that might be a cheaper option.

[cerveza_fiesta]

D, on 03 May 2011 - 01:35 PM, said:

CF, how many regular rails are you putting between your power rails?

And personally, I prefer using redstone torches to detector rails to save on resources, but it's only really a factor if you're really far away like me and dream of connecting the main zone eventually someday. On long tracks like mine, too, it's better to try and have two separate tracks if possible because the longer the route the more likely you have people simultaneously travelling in opposite directions on it. It would be possible to set up a redstone system that activates a light on each end when someone is using it, but it wouldn't be reliable and would probably take way too much redstone powder.

MC wiki has expanded their article since I first read it. Way better information now.

http://www.minecraft...ki/Powered_Rail

MC WIKI said:

A powered rail boost gives an occupied cart enough momentum to travel 64 tiles on a flat surface from a standstill, or 8 tiles for an unoccupied cart. Unlike the boosters, powered rails will not provide the cart with much momentum past the cart speed limit of 8 m/s. Thus it is usually impractical and expensive to place powered rails one after the other. Instead, space powered rails out at regular intervals once the cart is initially traveling quickly to maintain speed.^[1]

However, to launch carts from rest using only powered rails, four powered rails in a row is sufficient to boost a cart to the maximum travel speed of 8 m/s. It is easy to construct a simple cart launcher by placing a block, a single powered rail, a regular rail, then four powered rails and attach a button near the single power rail. Activate the four rails by other means so that they are always on. The activated button will launch the cart toward the group of four rails and will quickly reach top speed. An example of this is shown in the Effects section, above.

Once at speed, the optimal spacing of powered rails on a level track is to use 1 every 26 blocks (that is, a repeating pattern of one powered rail followed by 25 normal rails, then another powered rail, and so on) which maintains a constant minecart speed of 8 m/s.^[2] If gold is in short supply, it is possible to use powered rails with more space between them at a cost of a reduced overall speed:

• One powered rail every 30 blocks: 7.8 m/s–2.6% speed decrease
• One powered rail every 32 blocks: 7.2 m/s–10% speed decrease

For diagonal tracks on level ground, the optimal spacing of powered rails (before you need to break the diagonal in order to do a 3x1 straight stretch to use a powered rail) is 1 every 36 blocks (counting orthogonally, if you count diagonally instead it is 1 every 18 blocks). It is worth noting that 36 is roughly equal to 26 multiplied by the square root of 2, which is the actual distance one would travel diagonally (by Euclidean math) if a player moved 26 blocks on both coordinate axes.

The two bullets seem to answer your question. So the starter boost should look like this:

[--]=B=====B==B==B==B===============================


with a redstone torch powering the 4 adjacent boosters and a button to power the start booster.

And you can get away with boosters every 2nd step when climbing hills.

But I don't go anywhere near that 26 block spacing, nor do I have a quad-boost start for my track and it moves me right along. I think for longer distances you need to worry about that, but for shorter runs it aint so much of an issue.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Well, yet another weekend of heavy building.

My house on top of castle CF is finally done except for the furniture.

I also took a couple hours to revamp the spawn area last night. I detonated 20 TNTs on the spawn hut, making it into a spawn crater and posted signs leading newbies either up the ladder to the skybridge or to follow the line of torches over to the base of Jim's floating tower.

Signs direct new folks to go to the top floor where there is a good view of the nearby civilized world. I posted signs at the compass directions indicating the general direction of the major nearby projects. There is also a workbench, free bow & arrows and free picks.

and

QUESTS.

We were discussing adding quests the other day. I might jump on tonight and put the starter quest on the top of Jim's tower. It will likely go something like "collect a bow and arrow and fight your way into the azath along the main path". In which there will be a sign directing them to go somewhere else and a chest with an extra bonus item, like a shovel or sword or something.

At the end of the "orientation" quest I'll have a much nicer bonus item and folks will have explored all the major points of interest near the spawn.

I'm thinking of adding Morgoths, Apt's, Moon Spawn, Kanubis and the Azath. Not to intentionally leave anybody out, but those are the biggest and most complete structures near the spawn point that could be visited through the course of a day/night cycle.

Anybody else want to add a quest by all means do so. We'll make Jim's floating tower the quest hub for the moment. A quest can be as simple as "go to my place and get a surprise", "find me a mushroom and I'll give you some diamonds", "Take a railcart to such-and-such point of interest"... or you can build a giant dungeon in a cave complex with traps and monster rooms and stuff.

Quests should provide some incentive other than seeing your place too.

This post has been edited by cerveza_fiesta: 09 May 2011 - 12:16 PM

[Kanubis]

I've moved my base of operations to a point about halfway between Apt's sea dome thing and D'rek's area if you follow the sky bridge.

I'm slowly transporting ALL my extensive materials etc. to the new area.

Therefore, with the exception of nuking the storage area, feel free to make any changes you want to my old area in order to make it 'quest-worthy.'

At some point I'm going to make a whole bunch of ladders and fill in the gaps on all the pillars supporting the sky tower. A lot of them are unusable now since Notch fixed the ladder-spac-ladder glitch.

I am currently flooding an island. For science.

[cerveza_fiesta]

cool man.

It's fun to completely abandon your area and build a new one. I've done it twice now. Joy!

Sorry about the brief outage this morning. Went down for a reboot. Everything is working again.

Kanubis, if you don't mind filling in ladders, that would be awesome. You could also get a bunch of TNT and blow the hell out of it all to make a ruin. That would rule.

[Kanubis]

Do we have surplus explosives? I could use a few, but didn't contribute much to the Azath project so don't want to be to grabby!

[cerveza_fiesta]

There is some gunpowder down there.

But if you park your toon in the collection bin for a few hours with an empty inventory while afk, you'll get lots before too long.

Not sure I should have planted this idea...haha.



Probably not best to get in the habit of it. We can turn your fort into an arena if we ever get around to the PVP thing.

[D'rek]

I had 8 wolves following me the other day... now 3 of them have drowned themslelves and the 4th went exploring the lava wall 50 blocks away...


Quests sounds fun, and I've got one in mind. The harder ones will have to be riddle-tacular, though!

[Kanubis]

D'rek, I filled in the missing strips of cobblestone in the skyways leading to your area.

I then noticed to my horror that in certain areas far away a simple strip of cobblestone was being used instead of the approved skyway template. I will try and fix this when I find the strength...

[Aptorian]

Can wolves swim?

Pro-tip for gathering material from the Azath Mob spawner. If you mainly want to pick up, say arrows and TNT. Then put one arrow or one piece of TNT in each slot in you inventory untill all you have is a single arrow or TNT filling out everything. This way you wont be able to pick up anything else but the items you have spread out over your inventory.

The Azath is public property feel free to gather what ever you want from the trap.

By the way, we should get on with that idea of building a portal somewhere in there.

More so, we could convert Slippery Jims old mountain/The spawn point, into a central hub for portals. For when ever the portals start working during the next patch.

This post has been edited by Battle Plaptypus: 09 May 2011 - 07:58 PM

[Darkwatch]

Portal Minecraft

You can download the mod.

Anyway I found a project idea, which was sorely lacking before.

[cerveza_fiesta]

@Apt,

I like the idea of a portal hub chez Jim's. A lot. Have that transfer you to the nether, with a clone of Jim's fort, but instead of skybridge connections, we have railways leading to other satelite portals that spit you out at, say, Moon Spawn, or D'reks. Funnest part will be trying to actually build safe nether passageways between the satelite portals (like one at D'reks) back to the portal hub.

@Traveller,

Went to see your dockside village the other day. Wow man. That place looks awesome. It needs furniture, but outwardly that place looks hella cool.

I was doing some furniture the other day. Wood stair couches, a coffee table, bookshelves, etc... Castle CF is really shaping up.

[Traveller]

Cheers.
I filled a couple of the buildings, but was left with a lot of space to fill. I'll finish it up at some point, and stick another mast on the ship while I'm at it.

Mass Effect is keeping me away at the moment though.