SAM (unfinished)

[immibis]

Oh heck yes. I've felt the need for that exact thing many times. Thank you.

In Buildcraft you can do something similar using an iron pipe.

I just now realized how cool it is that you have unified item and power transport lines.

I should reiterate that I don't think this is a good power transfer system. But if someone wants to do it (maybe they don't have space for a cable) then they can. You could fabricate lava, fill it into buckets and send the buckets down a pipe into a combustion engine, if you wanted, but nobody does that.

[TheBytemaster]

In Buildcraft you can do something similar using an iron pipe.

I know, but it was always a pain to set up and took up valuable room in my cramped machine rooms. This is much nicer.

I should reiterate that I don't think this is a good power transfer system. But if someone wants to do it (maybe they don't have space for a cable) then they can. You could fabricate lava, fill it into buckets and send the buckets down a pipe into a combustion engine, if you wanted, but nobody does that.

Eh, to each his own I suppose. I don't know, I've never gotten to try it, so it might be a terrible idea that just sounds cool to me. You're the developer though, I'm just here to give ideas because you said you wanted them.

[immibis]

I know, but it was always a pain to set up and took up valuable room in my cramped machine rooms. This is much nicer.

It should be about the same size...

[TheBytemaster]

It should be about the same size...

Really? I was probably doing it wrong then when I tried.

[immibis]

Really? I was probably doing it wrong then when I tried.

With an iron pipe you need something like this:

  R

 -+-

  W

 

R = redstone signal

W = wooden pipe (input)

- = any pipe (output)

+ = iron pipe

 

With a redstone control module you need something like this:

R

X+-

 |

 

R = redstone signal

X = pipe with redstone control module

+ = pipe

| = pipe (output)

- = pipe (input)

[TheBytemaster]

With an iron pipe you need something like this:

  R

 -+-

  W

 

R = redstone signal

W = wooden pipe (input)

- = any pipe (output)

+ = iron pipe

 

With a redstone control module you need something like this:

R

X+-

 |

 

R = redstone signal

X = pipe with redstone control module

+ = pipe

| = pipe (output)

- = pipe (input)

Yeah. I was doing it wrong. Very wrong. *facepalm* Don't ask.

Yours works on non-iron pipes though.

[immibis]

Yeah. I was doing it wrong. Very wrong. *facepalm* Don't ask.

Yours works on non-iron pipes though.

Well yes, but only because the fact that a pipe is made of iron means something completely different.

[TheBytemaster]

Well yes, but only because the fact that a pipe is made of iron means something completely different.

Okay... I'm confused. What are you arguing here?

[immibis]

Okay... I'm confused. What are you arguing here?

Saying "it works with pipes other than iron" (from a BC perspective) is equivalent to saying "it works with modules other than redstone control modules"... and neither is a particularly useful thing to say.

[immibis]

The OP has been updated to link to the newest version of the mod.

Added module recipes. There are no obvious recipes to use for these, so I made them similar to the BC pipe recipes, but with stone instead of

glass:

Vacuum module:

Extractor module:

Directional module:

Item filter module:

Tag filter module:

Colour filter module - any vanilla dye works:

Tagging module - any vanilla dyes work:

FORTH module:

Insertion module:

Redstone control module:

Redstone detector module:

Acceleration module:

Deceleration module:

Note: FORTH modules and insertion modules are likely to be removed at some point. There will be a replacement for FORTH modules; insertion modules can already be constructed (less compactly) out of pipes.

Deceleration pipes are redundant - items cannot be accelerated through cobble pipes, so a single piece of cobble pipe acts as a decelarator. If I decide to not make them produce power, they will be removed later.

By the way, SAM stands for "Simple Automations Mod". Yes, "automations" with an "s".

[Hammerson]

It would seem weird to have a crafting room with a macerator running on hydraulic power.

AFAIK, the Amish have lots of machines that run on hydraulics to circumvent the ban on electricity. So not weird, just Amish.

On second thought, still weird.

[immibis]

AFAIK, the Amish have lots of machines that run on hydraulics to circumvent the ban on electricity. So not weird, just Amish.

On second thought, still weird.

It wouldn't be weird because it's outdated technology, it would be weird because you'd have to use two sides for power.

You could have a hydraulic turbine connected to two hydraulic pipes and an axle, then connect the axle to the macerator - then the macerator wouldn't have to have two sides for power...

[Neowulf]

I like the idea of having to form a hydraulic power loop with the pump and turbine blocks.

Chance for some fun too. If the loop is broken while powered up the pipe could spew the hydraulic oil out the end as a particle emitter, taking buckets of oil from the system's reserve and placing them in the world as source blocks. If the pressure is high enough it could even cause damage to entities in the spray line and break through soft blocks like dirt, wood, and glass.

[immibis]

Necrobump. I'm around again! Current thoughts:

 

• Having multiple tiers of pipes is probably a bad thing, since it adds complexity. Compare to BuildCraft where there is mostly only one tier of pipe, and so the things you place are like pipes with modules pre-applied. It reduces inventory clutter compared to having to carry around pipes + modules separately.  
• Should pipe intersections send items in random directions? I don't know. Currently items try to continue in a straight line.  
• Liquid pipes should be connectable to machines. I don't remember whether liquid pipes are in any released version. The details might be tricky to figure out since SAM liquid pipes work differently from every other type of liquid pipe - they are based around velocity, rather than volume.  
• Autocrafting tables should pull from adjacent chests, like in BuildCraft. This shouldn't be a problem to add.  
• Pipe items shouldn't be entities, because nothing should be entities, because entities are based around Mojang code which isn't as reusable as it seems, and pipe items are too dissimiliar to anything Mojang's tried to do. This is an internal thing.  
• How can I make this useful? There's not very much you can do with pipes by themselves, so they are not fun by themselves.   BuildCraft had mining wells and quarries for a long time, so that you could use the mod, by itself, to automatically get ingots for you. It also had pumps and oil for not quite as long, which didn't really let you do anything you couldn't do before - the introduction of engines was basically a nerf to most things - but added more stuff to play with before you could set up your automatic ingot system.   Forestry (the really old version, in Beta 1.8) added a lot of stuff that was tricky to automate. Once you did it, though, free wood forever! This was good - it was a significant challenge (that therefore took a lot of time and was fun to solve), with a useful end result. Even better, you could stop at any point and have a farm that required a varying amount of manual intervention. And successive parts got harder and harder to automate, so it took a long time to get a fully automated system (at which point you run out of stuff to do with Forestry, which is a bad thing).   Forestry is not special in this - there always have been and always will be mods with the same property. Around Beta 1.7-1.8, there was also Equivalent Exchange (other imbalances notwithstanding), IndustrialCraft 1 and 2. Currently there's MineChem, Factorization, Mekanism, AE2, Liquid XP, MFR, and so on, to varying extents. None of those seem to be as large as old Forestry by themselves. Mekanism and AE2 have their own transport methods. From the above list, MineChem probably has the most automation challenge potential, but it has major balance issues when used with most other tech mods.  
• There should not be power transfer as long as this mod doesn't have any use for power. Decelerators creating power is a gimmick.  

[dwwojcik]

What's the scope you are aiming for with this mod?  Currently it's just pipes, right?  Like you said, pipes aren't fun on their own, but since these bring something new to the table they could be very fun when combined with other mods.  Or, do you want to turn this into a mod that's fun when it's standing alone in vanilla?  If so, you're going to need additional content in the same sense that quarries add to Buildcraft, pipes alone won't cut it.