Anyway we recently tooks everyones advice and tried to improve the Station on my server. We also completely redid all of the electronics, colour coded tracks and different things and made it a whole lot better.
Basically it's totally kick ass now and I'm really proud of it.
Here is a couple of screenshots!
Let me know what you think and if there is any additions you can think of to improve it even further!
That's happening on my server right now. Used to be able to handle 6-8 people at a time no problem. Which is all we needed as we're just a group of friends. Now whenever more than 2 people log on there is some insane lag. 30 seconds for chatting and worse.
I havn't actually tried any of the water style boosters or dispensers due to the slowness that you stated. But 100% reliability does sound nice. Havn't had any problems with the door boosters yet though if they start messing up might have to give them a try.
lol @ people getting stuck. That's why there is so many safety measures in our station. More than once someone fell into the original pez dispenser or got stuck behind the scenes and because it is in the spawn area they had to wait for an admin to log in. Because they couldn't bust their way out... which was probably a good thing though as they probably wouldnt have done more damage
Looks great, but in my experience vertical door boosters are way too unreliable in SMP.
I'm surprised you say this. What method of boosters do you use? We have tried a number of different types, the constant movement ones and the ones that boost, then come to a halt, then boost again repeatedly but all of these systems bug out over time. The door booster is the only one we've found that can stand on its own for a long period of time and work np every time.
I can post the save if there is interest for it. We have explored quite a lot of world though so it's pretty big.
Also thanks for all the ideas. I'm thinking about routing the overflow carts into a seperate area together. This will remove the cool 2 stage alarm but perhaps I can still set it off to let me know that there is now carts in the overflow area.
Looks nice I always like seeing many of those minecart tricks in one place to form a complete station. Anyway, there are some things I wonder why you didn't automate those as well. For example the arrival waiting area, instead of making someone push a button when the light turns on, why not make it so the door booster automatically goes "on" when the arrival area is available? I mean half the wiring for that is already in place and would take out even more user error. Also the alarms for the minecart magazine (or PEZ dispenser as you call it) overflow protection, why make them? You can also just eject the carts out of the station somewhere or even send them to other stations if your track supports empty carts. That would eliminate the need to go down there and make it more fool proof.
There is actually some really good ideas there. I never thought about ejecting the carts into an overflow area, or even back to other stations I just figured an alarm would be cool. I mean it hasn't ever actually triggered normally as the PEZ has a big enough capacity that there isn't usually enough carts coming back to overfill it anyway, but it would be easier than having to "fix" it if it ever did.
As for the holding area and automatically sending you back. That's also a great idea. When it was originally made it didn't have an indicator light, nor did it have even protection against button pressing when the light was off (indicating not ready yet). These were retrofitted afterwards. But I guess it wouldn't be that hard to make it automatically send you and with a delayer block and some simple redstone we could use that signal to trigger the booster directly.
Great! This is exactly why I made this thread to get some input like that.
I do have a question though, how are you getting the PEZ dispenser to perform perfectly like that? Whenever I've attempted to use them in SMP the carts' collision glitch makes them fall into each other and act as one cart at the bottom.
Other than that, my only criticism might be that some of the booster tracks are a little exposed at the stations, perhaps leaving room for griefers? Unless you've protected the area of course. But otherwise, you certainly earned a:
We've been using the PEZ dispenser like that for months now, it's the only part that never has been modified really except made taller to fit more minecarts in it. I see what you're talking about when the minecarts appear to fall into one another, however the booster back there has only ever shot a single cart out and left the remaining there. Maybe because the booster goes straight past instead of the normal boosting on a corner or on a higher/lower level?
Maybe another thing is the refiller has blocks all around it so the carts fall exactly on top of the one below it. I guess if they are a little off center they might cause some issues too? Maybe the server you're playing on has mods or something installed? Ours is all vanilla.
Which brings me to the next point. The server is by invite only and is whitelisted so there is no griefer problems and I encouraged everyone who built a link to the station to build their own stations at the other end. I like the variety and it promotes new ideas that I can learn from.
yay, my first diamond!
@Bukky Yeah the binary selector was in long before that bug reared its ugly head. However knowing it will be fixed at some point, and knowing it is a simple graphical error (the switches do still work as normal) we left it as is. Will be nice when they fix that one.
A friend and I have been working on advanced and compact forms of minecart stations and so far this is the end result:
It has quite a bit of tech built in. It used vertical door boosters as I've found them to be FAR more reliable than the standard always moving boosters. PEZ type cart dispenser. Multiple ways of refilling. Alarms that go off when the dispenser is overloaded in 2 different areas. Chimes when leaving and arriving in the cart as well as other tech.
I'm looking for compact, and simple/easy to use. I don't like the push button design for destinations it results in a complete mess of redstone and completely covers a wall when there is so many exits.
I wanted to share it with the community and see if there are any ways this could be improved.
Here is the MCedit schematic: http://www.mediafire.com/?wonffy1nif3vq8d
Obviously the new delayer block will be AWESOME and when it comes out we'll probably redo all the electronics when it does. Any other ideas?
I was lucky enough to have 2 spider dungeons within 20~ blocks of each other, i set up 2 cactus traps and water currents collect from both and deposits them into my waiting hands.
I don't recommend trying to drown spiders as previously mentioned they usually climb out or hang out on the walls. Cactus is the way to go.
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Discussion thread here: viewtopic.php?f=1020&t=198057
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viewtopic.php?f=1020&t=183006
Anyway we recently tooks everyones advice and tried to improve the Station on my server. We also completely redid all of the electronics, colour coded tracks and different things and made it a whole lot better.
Basically it's totally kick ass now and I'm really proud of it.
Here is a couple of screenshots!
Let me know what you think and if there is any additions you can think of to improve it even further!
Tutorial playlist here: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... 9B96C442D0
World save:http://www.mediafire.com/?3s4mlcg2tabjmca
MCEDIT Schematic: http://www.mediafire.com/?r4qiq3hkn6gn7t1
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The redstone repeater is friggen awesome.
Before and After shots of the same circuit.
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lol @ people getting stuck. That's why there is so many safety measures in our station. More than once someone fell into the original pez dispenser or got stuck behind the scenes and because it is in the spawn area they had to wait for an admin to log in. Because they couldn't bust their way out... which was probably a good thing though as they probably wouldnt have done more damage
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I'm surprised you say this. What method of boosters do you use? We have tried a number of different types, the constant movement ones and the ones that boost, then come to a halt, then boost again repeatedly but all of these systems bug out over time. The door booster is the only one we've found that can stand on its own for a long period of time and work np every time.
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Also thanks for all the ideas. I'm thinking about routing the overflow carts into a seperate area together. This will remove the cool 2 stage alarm but perhaps I can still set it off to let me know that there is now carts in the overflow area.
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Sorry it's a private one :sad.gif:
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There is actually some really good ideas there. I never thought about ejecting the carts into an overflow area, or even back to other stations I just figured an alarm would be cool. I mean it hasn't ever actually triggered normally as the PEZ has a big enough capacity that there isn't usually enough carts coming back to overfill it anyway, but it would be easier than having to "fix" it if it ever did.
As for the holding area and automatically sending you back. That's also a great idea. When it was originally made it didn't have an indicator light, nor did it have even protection against button pressing when the light was off (indicating not ready yet). These were retrofitted afterwards. But I guess it wouldn't be that hard to make it automatically send you and with a delayer block and some simple redstone we could use that signal to trigger the booster directly.
Great! This is exactly why I made this thread to get some input like that.
Any other ideas?
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We've been using the PEZ dispenser like that for months now, it's the only part that never has been modified really except made taller to fit more minecarts in it. I see what you're talking about when the minecarts appear to fall into one another, however the booster back there has only ever shot a single cart out and left the remaining there. Maybe because the booster goes straight past instead of the normal boosting on a corner or on a higher/lower level?
Maybe another thing is the refiller has blocks all around it so the carts fall exactly on top of the one below it. I guess if they are a little off center they might cause some issues too? Maybe the server you're playing on has mods or something installed? Ours is all vanilla.
Which brings me to the next point. The server is by invite only and is whitelisted so there is no griefer problems and I encouraged everyone who built a link to the station to build their own stations at the other end. I like the variety and it promotes new ideas that I can learn from.
yay, my first diamond!
@Bukky Yeah the binary selector was in long before that bug reared its ugly head. However knowing it will be fixed at some point, and knowing it is a simple graphical error (the switches do still work as normal) we left it as is. Will be nice when they fix that one.
0
A friend and I have been working on advanced and compact forms of minecart stations and so far this is the end result:
It has quite a bit of tech built in. It used vertical door boosters as I've found them to be FAR more reliable than the standard always moving boosters. PEZ type cart dispenser. Multiple ways of refilling. Alarms that go off when the dispenser is overloaded in 2 different areas. Chimes when leaving and arriving in the cart as well as other tech.
I'm looking for compact, and simple/easy to use. I don't like the push button design for destinations it results in a complete mess of redstone and completely covers a wall when there is so many exits.
I wanted to share it with the community and see if there are any ways this could be improved.
Here is the MCedit schematic:
http://www.mediafire.com/?wonffy1nif3vq8d
Obviously the new delayer block will be AWESOME and when it comes out we'll probably redo all the electronics when it does. Any other ideas?
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I don't recommend trying to drown spiders as previously mentioned they usually climb out or hang out on the walls. Cactus is the way to go.
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This is what I believe Griefers to be like. I present to you:
A Day in the Life of a Griefer!
Of course this was my own server and there were backups made to prevent a raging mob. But it was still fun.
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Ps: sucks you can't attach HD vids here.