Miner Program

civilwargeeky, on 09 September 2014 - 04:38 AM said:

Hi! I tried out your program and it worked very well. Did exactly what I expected. Good job :)/>/> A little bit of polish and a suggestion though. I think it would be faster if instead of turning around to place torches, you just use turtle.placeUp(). This way it is about a second quicker anytime it wants to place a torch. Also, if you take the time to learn how they work, it is much better to use local variables so you don't "pollute the global namespace", but that is a bit advanced so probably don't worry about it yet. Finally maybe prompt the user for a distance if they didn't input one instead of just using a default. Or maybe just print the help if you have no arguments. Also a suggestion, you mentioned you would work on the fueling section of your program. If you wanted to take a tip (or use it verbatim, I don't care), you could look at a simplified and commented writing of how I handle getting fuel That's about it. If you have any questions or need help you can feel free to ask me. Also I love the quote in your signature :)/>/>

Lemur, on 09 September 2014 - 07:39 AM said:

I probably just forgot to tag variables with local more than anything else. Any quick rules of thumb on that?

while not t.forward() do
  turtle.dig()
  turtle.attack()
  sleep(0.8)  -- The time it takes for sand/gravel to fall.
end

Bomb Bloke, on 09 September 2014 - 11:45 AM said:

Lemur, on 09 September 2014 - 07:39 AM said:

I probably just forgot to tag variables with local more than anything else. Any quick rules of thumb on that?

The "quick rule of thumb" is "localise everything". If you don't need it to remain loaded in RAM once your script ends, then it at the very least it should be declared as local to that script. Personally I like to pre-declare all variables at the beginning of the scope in which I wish to use them.

It's worth noting that turtle.detect() doesn't pick up on mobs, and turtle.dig() doesn't harm them, either. A turtle with a tool has access to turtle.attack(), though, meaning you can use code along these lines:

while not t.forward() do
  turtle.dig()
  turtle.attack()
  sleep(0.8)  -- The time it takes for sand/gravel to fall.
end

Generally, it's a good idea to pay attention to whether a given movement was successful or not, rather than trying to rig up a circumstance where it "should" work then not bothering to check whether it did. Turns are relatively reliable, but even those can fail under certain obscure circumstances.