I implemented the easier of the two drill options.
Allow me to present: The Steam Track
The Steam Track is made by combining a steam pipe with a steel frame. The steam drill will automatically follow the track when it hits the limit of its drillbit (i.e. hits bedrock or extends out 64 blocks). When the drill moves, it places a steam pipe behind it and covers the hole with a steel frame block to prevent you from accidentally falling in. You can pick-up the steel frame and steam pipe to recraft the steam track, so using the track does not cost you any resources (beyond the initial investment).
Pro tip: put a line of item conveyors above your steam track to automatically collect the drill's inventory as it mines. If the drill inventory fills up, it stops drilling.
To the best of my knowledge, all machines emit a redstone comparator signal. However, I think the boiler emits a signal proportional to its stored steam, which means it will only output when there are no connected machines consuming steam power. I could change that you be proportional to the number of fuel items in the inventory.
Hmmm... Sorry to hear that Erasmus was not able to sufficiently monitize his Ex Nihilo mod to make it a stable source of income.
Though reading his post it sounds like Forge has working fluids. Is that true? I've been waiting to add crude oil to Power Advantage.
@Zohar: Thanks a bunch for getting the wiki started! You're free to copy-paste the info from the forum pages. I'm working on a logo right now. Let me know if you see any catchy CSS themes to try.
Man, I'm making too many tiny updates in a short time. That's 3 updates in about 24 hours, 4 if you include the Steam Advantage update. I've just been unusually ADD this past 2 days.
You could try treating the crack hammer as a pickaxe, but the author of Vein Miner probably needs to add specific support for the crack hammer. Send them a feature request and maybe that will happen.
@Nightlone: No offense taken. I appreciate the feedback! It's no secret that I'm a terrible artist and I welcome any help with textures and models. There will be more uses for metals (and there are a lot of other mods with uses for copper and silver), though I had originally intended to add potions using the powdered metals until I looked at how convoluted the brewing system is in Minecraft (anyone know of a Brewing API for Minecraft 1.8?).
So a better drill has got everyone excited. Here's the two proposals so far:
1. Bigger drill bits. In this case, there'd be a drill bit slot to put your drill bit item. It'll probably be a steel, invar, and diamond progression. I won't make it go any bigger than 5x5 digging area because a drill bit that fat coming out of a tiny machine would just look ridiculous (and be very dangerous).
2. Self-propelled drill. The idea is that there would be a "steam drill track" block that you could place to specify the path that the drill moves. Every time the drill hits its range limit (or hits bedrock), it moves into an adjacent track block and places a steam pipe in its former position to keep it powered. You'd still need to empty the inventory periodically or place a row of conveyors parallel to the track.
Yeah, the /help command has had issues in my modpacks recently. I never tracked down which mods cause it or why. Lootable bodies only adds a new entity, a new renderer, and an event handler.
A wiki would be nice. I know nothing about wikis but I really do need to create a website to cater all of my mods independently of a forum (forums weren't designed to hold onto posts for more than a year or so). Where do I go to start a wiki page (either free or less than $15 per year) and how do I allow you and other people edit the content?
I fixed a few pugs and can now confirm that the RF interface is now working. You can now power your Neotech Electric Furnace with steam power. Get the new version here: Power Advantage v1.2.2
@Zohar: I'm not switching over to RF. Instead, I've made an automated wrapper generator to trick Power Advantage into treating RF machine blocks as power conduits (with a performance hit because it has to frequently check the tile entity).
When you enable the RF interface in the config file ( attempt_automatic_RF_compatibility=true ), Power Advantage will scan the game registry for ALLblocks that have tile entities (implement the ITileEntityProvider interface) and register them as external mod power blocks (using the same API I developed for the authors of OpenComputers). This means that Power Advantage thinks that all tile entities are powered blocks (including vanilla hoppers and furnaces), but only those blocks whose tile entity implements the RF API will accept the power types listed in the config file ( RF_conversions=steam=16;electricity=24 ) and the rest refuse all offered power types.
To be clear, it is much better for the authors of other mods to use my Light-Weight Power Acceptor API than rely on the automatic RF interface, but now I have a work-around for you guys to use existing mods.
And it turns out that it's an issue of difficulty porting that old stuff to 1.8 being super buggy and hard and if written from scratch and changed, instead of straight up port, like with RF, it's quote doable.
I created the Power Advantage API to make it easier for people who want to make new power mods in Minecraft 1.8 without the hassle of imitating old code from previous editions. I don't think that many people are aware of Power Advantage, though. I need a publicist to spread the word
1
I implemented the easier of the two drill options.
Allow me to present: The Steam Track
The Steam Track is made by combining a steam pipe with a steel frame. The steam drill will automatically follow the track when it hits the limit of its drillbit (i.e. hits bedrock or extends out 64 blocks). When the drill moves, it places a steam pipe behind it and covers the hole with a steel frame block to prevent you from accidentally falling in. You can pick-up the steel frame and steam pipe to recraft the steam track, so using the track does not cost you any resources (beyond the initial investment).
Pro tip: put a line of item conveyors above your steam track to automatically collect the drill's inventory as it mines. If the drill inventory fills up, it stops drilling.
0
To the best of my knowledge, all machines emit a redstone comparator signal. However, I think the boiler emits a signal proportional to its stored steam, which means it will only output when there are no connected machines consuming steam power. I could change that you be proportional to the number of fuel items in the inventory.
0
I messed with the theme a bit. Nothing fancy, but at least it has a slash of color now. I'll do some work on the mod pages too.
0
Hmmm... Sorry to hear that Erasmus was not able to sufficiently monitize his Ex Nihilo mod to make it a stable source of income.
Though reading his post it sounds like Forge has working fluids. Is that true? I've been waiting to add crude oil to Power Advantage.
@Zohar: Thanks a bunch for getting the wiki started! You're free to copy-paste the info from the forum pages. I'm working on a logo right now. Let me know if you see any catchy CSS themes to try.
0
Thank you!
0
I made a wiki account at wikidot (nothing has been added yet): http://drcyano.wikidot.com
Any help setting it up would be greatly appreciated!
0
I've made a few bug fixes in Power Advantage and Steam Advantage, so I've updated the modpack .zip file to have the newer versions.
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Oh sorry, I forgot to fix that bug. Now fixed in Power Advantage version 1.2.4
Man, I'm making too many tiny updates in a short time. That's 3 updates in about 24 hours, 4 if you include the Steam Advantage update. I've just been unusually ADD this past 2 days.
0
I fixed the item conveyor issues.
Power Advantage v1.2.3
Steam Advantage v1.2.1
No wiki account yet
0
You could try treating the crack hammer as a pickaxe, but the author of Vein Miner probably needs to add specific support for the crack hammer. Send them a feature request and maybe that will happen.
0
@Nightlone: No offense taken. I appreciate the feedback! It's no secret that I'm a terrible artist and I welcome any help with textures and models. There will be more uses for metals (and there are a lot of other mods with uses for copper and silver), though I had originally intended to add potions using the powdered metals until I looked at how convoluted the brewing system is in Minecraft (anyone know of a Brewing API for Minecraft 1.8?).
So a better drill has got everyone excited. Here's the two proposals so far:
1. Bigger drill bits. In this case, there'd be a drill bit slot to put your drill bit item. It'll probably be a steel, invar, and diamond progression. I won't make it go any bigger than 5x5 digging area because a drill bit that fat coming out of a tiny machine would just look ridiculous (and be very dangerous).
2. Self-propelled drill. The idea is that there would be a "steam drill track" block that you could place to specify the path that the drill moves. Every time the drill hits its range limit (or hits bedrock), it moves into an adjacent track block and places a steam pipe in its former position to keep it powered. You'd still need to empty the inventory periodically or place a row of conveyors parallel to the track.
Which option would be more fun?
0
Yeah, the /help command has had issues in my modpacks recently. I never tracked down which mods cause it or why. Lootable bodies only adds a new entity, a new renderer, and an event handler.
0
A wiki would be nice. I know nothing about wikis but I really do need to create a website to cater all of my mods independently of a forum (forums weren't designed to hold onto posts for more than a year or so). Where do I go to start a wiki page (either free or less than $15 per year) and how do I allow you and other people edit the content?
0
I'll work on the Steam Advantage bugs tomorrow.
EDIT: I meant I'll work on the other bugs in both Power Advantage and Steam Advantage tomorrow.
0
I fixed a few pugs and can now confirm that the RF interface is now working. You can now power your Neotech Electric Furnace with steam power. Get the new version here: Power Advantage v1.2.2
@Zohar: I'm not switching over to RF. Instead, I've made an automated wrapper generator to trick Power Advantage into treating RF machine blocks as power conduits (with a performance hit because it has to frequently check the tile entity).
When you enable the RF interface in the config file ( attempt_automatic_RF_compatibility=true ), Power Advantage will scan the game registry for ALL blocks that have tile entities (implement the ITileEntityProvider interface) and register them as external mod power blocks (using the same API I developed for the authors of OpenComputers). This means that Power Advantage thinks that all tile entities are powered blocks (including vanilla hoppers and furnaces), but only those blocks whose tile entity implements the RF API will accept the power types listed in the config file ( RF_conversions=steam=16;electricity=24 ) and the rest refuse all offered power types.
To be clear, it is much better for the authors of other mods to use my Light-Weight Power Acceptor API than rely on the automatic RF interface, but now I have a work-around for you guys to use existing mods.
I created the Power Advantage API to make it easier for people who want to make new power mods in Minecraft 1.8 without the hassle of imitating old code from previous editions. I don't think that many people are aware of Power Advantage, though. I need a publicist to spread the word