Have you ever wanted a hopper (or dropper) that would accept an item as input and reject other items? For example, say you have a minecart system where you bring materials, and you want coal in one specific chest, and iron in another, etc. This way you can then hop them into furnaces, and separate them into chests with just one chest in a minecart.
Item filters/Item sorters already exist as buildable redstone contraptions.
While compressing the functionality to a single block (the Item Filter Hopper [IFH] ) would make for more compact builds, it would also (largely) remove the building of such devices from minecraft.
[Something of a reductio ad absurdum, but serving to demonstrate the point:
Various ores are difficult to acquire, therefore MC should have special picks that – when throw on the ground – mine any of the relevant ore in that chunk and place it into the player's inventory. ]
The obvious rejoinder to the above is the addition of the observer which (roughly speaking) is a compression of a BUD into a single block.
However, neither BUDs nor observers accomplish anything alone; each functions as a part of a wide range of larger builds.
Compressing this sort of low-level functionality ('reading' a change to a sigle block in the game environment) thus extends the range of player activity rather than simply simplifying a specific task.
Adding a block that enabled the construction of filters/sorters based on the NBT values associated with an item would be a similar addition for which one may hope....
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"Why does everything have to be so stoopid?" Harvey Pekar (from American Splendor)
WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.
The obvious rejoinder to the above is the addition of the observer which (roughly speaking) is a compression of a BUD into a single block.
The BUD was based on a bug, I think, that was never actually fixed but just quietly made more useful. It was way, way before my time, but I think a better example would be the daylight sensor. Before we got the daylight sensor block, you could make a circuit that detected the same information (BdoubleO100 has an example of this featured very early in his Building with BdoubleO100 youtube series). Redstone was massively changed when the daylight sensor block got added and this construct broke as a result, but it demonstrates how a useful circuit/mechanism can be officially encapsulated.
Actually there are ways to sort through Stackable & non-stackable items..
One way is to have all non-stackable go into a chest on the end of filter systems although I'm sure I've seen a method that can sort multi non-stackable items .
Edit found one :
I partially agree though to a 'filter' block of sorts.. perhaps a type of block/halfslab that goes above a standard hopper with a GUI slot for 1 item
- If the item passes over the block matches the one in the item slot - then it gets 'sucked down' into the hopper below
Actually there are ways to sort through Stackable & non-stackable items..
One way is to have all non-stackable go into a chest on the end of filter systems although I'm sure I've seen a method that can sort multi non-stackable items .
Edit found one :
I partially agree though to a 'filter' block of sorts.. perhaps a type of block/halfslab that goes above a standard hopper with a GUI slot for 1 item
- If the item passes over the block matches the one in the item slot - then it gets 'sucked down' into the hopper below
There's no way to sort non-stackable items. There are complicated sorters for armor and weapons using zombies, but that's only for armor and is very unreliable and low throughput.
Other than that, if you know of any ways to sort boats from music disks, for example, I'm all ears.
Have you ever wanted a hopper (or dropper) that would accept an item as input and reject other items? For example, say you have a minecart system where you bring materials, and you want coal in one specific chest, and iron in another, etc. This way you can then hop them into furnaces, and separate them into chests with just one chest in a minecart.
Item filters/Item sorters already exist as buildable redstone contraptions.
While compressing the functionality to a single block (the Item Filter Hopper [IFH] ) would make for more compact builds, it would also (largely) remove the building of such devices from minecraft.
[Something of a reductio ad absurdum, but serving to demonstrate the point:
Various ores are difficult to acquire, therefore MC should have special picks that – when throw on the ground – mine any of the relevant ore in that chunk and place it into the player's inventory. ]
The obvious rejoinder to the above is the addition of the observer which (roughly speaking) is a compression of a BUD into a single block.
However, neither BUDs nor observers accomplish anything alone; each functions as a part of a wide range of larger builds.
Compressing this sort of low-level functionality ('reading' a change to a sigle block in the game environment) thus extends the range of player activity rather than simply simplifying a specific task.
Adding a block that enabled the construction of filters/sorters based on the NBT values associated with an item would be a similar addition for which one may hope....
The BUD was based on a bug, I think, that was never actually fixed but just quietly made more useful. It was way, way before my time, but I think a better example would be the daylight sensor. Before we got the daylight sensor block, you could make a circuit that detected the same information (BdoubleO100 has an example of this featured very early in his Building with BdoubleO100 youtube series). Redstone was massively changed when the daylight sensor block got added and this construct broke as a result, but it demonstrates how a useful circuit/mechanism can be officially encapsulated.
But you can only sort stackable items. It'd be nice to have a hopper with a filter so that we could sort non-stackable items as well.
Actually there are ways to sort through Stackable & non-stackable items..
One way is to have all non-stackable go into a chest on the end of filter systems although I'm sure I've seen a method that can sort multi non-stackable items .
Edit found one :
I partially agree though to a 'filter' block of sorts.. perhaps a type of block/halfslab that goes above a standard hopper with a GUI slot for 1 item
- If the item passes over the block matches the one in the item slot - then it gets 'sucked down' into the hopper below
Ya that's pretty much what I was thinking too, CannonFoddr.
There's no way to sort non-stackable items. There are complicated sorters for armor and weapons using zombies, but that's only for armor and is very unreliable and low throughput.
Other than that, if you know of any ways to sort boats from music disks, for example, I'm all ears.