What are you planning to do with the new Computercraft 1.64 features?

If you enter the main page, you will see that a new Computercraft version has been released, and one of the features added is the ability of turtles to get information about their sorroundings with turtle.inspect(), turtle.inspectUp(), turtle.inspectDown(), turtle.getItemDetail().
The question is simple, what are you planning to do with them? I will start working in a turtle that creates a map of the enviorment and saves it as a 3d map

Maybe a self populating turtle army which would be able to build a castle and destroy the whole world :D/>. Honestly, probably nothing. But the map scanning idea sounds very attractive.

I'm going to make an advanced mining program at some point in the distant future, after I put the features through countless tests.

I'm also working on a crafting API.

MKlegoman357, on 28 September 2014 - 01:17 AM said:

Maybe a self populating turtle army which would be able to build a castle and destroy the whole world :D/>. Honestly, probably nothing. But the map scanning idea sounds very attractive.

Crafty Turtles are the answer! Have a hive of turtles (Mining, Lumber, etc.) gather materials, then transport them to the crafty turtle that then create turtles and place them to go get resources to make more turtles. It's a plan that cannot fail!

I've always wanted to make a colour GPS minimap thingy. Not saying it's definitely gona happen. But if I get bored…

First thing i'm going to do is check for a config option to turn off the new functions, and if there isn't one, I will make an ASM patch to get one. I do not approve of the new functions, what so ever…
It's one of the things I loved about turtle's design, the fact that they were so simple. Having to compare Blocks/items and use refuel(0) and craft(0) to figure out what stuff is.

Cruor, on 29 September 2014 - 08:39 AM said:

First thing i'm going to do is check for a config option to turn off the new functions, and if there isn't one, I will make an ASM patch to get one. I do not approve of the new functions, what so ever…
It's one of the things I loved about turtle's design, the fact that they were so simple. Having to compare Blocks/items and use refuel(0) and craft(0) to figure out what stuff is.

I see what you mean. Although if you ask me this actually makes it easier. Think about those selective mining programs, you had to put a chest in this slot and put blocks you didn't want in the first two slots. Then if you accidentally put saplings in one slot it would accidentally suck them up as fuel. With luck, these shouldn't be an issue anymore.

I just found turtles so frustrating so I never really made anything for them. I might actually make something for them now with these.

While my sentiment about this is less then Cruor, I do agree with him that the inspect/getItemDetail feature is one which would be very nice to be able enable/disable in the config.

Other than that I am very happy about the update, good show! :)/>

Yes it makes it easier, and it breaks the forth wall. In my honest opinion these are borderline overpowered functions and should at the very least be posible to turn off(and as far as I know there is no config option).
Not to mention that it makes clever setups and use of compare and compareTo redundant.

Cruor, on 29 September 2014 - 08:39 AM said:

First thing i'm going to do is check for a config option to turn off the new functions, and if there isn't one, I will make an ASM patch to get one. I do not approve of the new functions, what so ever…
It's one of the things I loved about turtle's design, the fact that they were so simple. Having to compare Blocks/items and use refuel(0) and craft(0) to figure out what stuff is.

The simplest way to remove the function is setting them to nil in bios.lua, no need to asm hack!
btw: I haven't changed my policy on "fourth wall" breaking functions. I did, and still do, consider ID numbers as an internal implementation detail of the game not to be exposed to the game (not to mention the variability between installs/servers). However, the new block names are much friendlier, and *are* already exposed to the user in vanilla minecraft via command blocks.

Cruor, on 29 September 2014 - 11:11 AM said:

Yes it makes it easier, and it breaks the forth wall. In my honest opinion these are borderline overpowered functions and should at the very least be posible to turn off(and as far as I know there is no config option).

Out of curiosity what exactly makes them overpowered? You can create the exact same effect by having a bunch of compareTo's as you say, but the difference is this is substantially easier to set up. I'm not sure "easy" and "powerful" are necessarily equivalent…

Not that I'm saying I disagre with you, I'm still not sure what to make of the changes. But I'd like to use these to update my butler, make him a bit more efficient and provide more feedback to the user over what's happening.

oeed, on 29 September 2014 - 07:45 AM said:

I've always wanted to make a colour GPS minimap thingy. Not saying it's definitely gona happen. But if I get bored…

Beated you xD, I will probably release an api so your program can be simpler

dan200, on 29 September 2014 - 11:32 AM said:

… and *are* already exposed to the user in vanilla minecraft via command blocks.

Is this some sort of block-scanning feature? :blink:/> How's it done?

nitrogenfingers, on 29 September 2014 - 02:02 PM said:

I'm not sure "easy" and "powerful" are necessarily equivalent…

turtle.inspect() is "easier" than using turtle.compareTo() precisely because it's more "powerful" than the older function.

It opens up more options, and options are always a good thing. Its addition is quite surprising, though.

Personally, I can't think of a use for it in any of my projects. The main uses which come to mind are in mining or mapping. I suppose it'd have definite value in multi-turtle situations: it'd make it dead easy to know if that block you just ran into is another turtle! :)/>

Bomb Bloke, on 29 September 2014 - 04:44 PM said:

turtle.inspect() is "easier" than using turtle.compareTo() precisely because it's more "powerful" than the older function.

In terms of what they can achieve certainly, but when we talk about overpowered we're talking about how it impacts the balance of challenge in minecraft. I'm not certain this changes that radically. But I understand.

nitrogenfingers, on 29 September 2014 - 02:02 PM said:

Cruor, on 29 September 2014 - 11:11 AM said:

Yes it makes it easier, and it breaks the forth wall. In my honest opinion these are borderline overpowered functions and should at the very least be posible to turn off(and as far as I know there is no config option).

Out of curiosity what exactly makes them overpowered? You can create the exact same effect by having a bunch of compareTo's as you say, but the difference is this is substantially easier to set up. I'm not sure "easy" and "powerful" are necessarily equivalent…

Not that I'm saying I disagre with you, I'm still not sure what to make of the changes. But I'd like to use these to update my butler, make him a bit more efficient and provide more feedback to the user over what's happening.

I mean it simplifies stuff way to much. Writing stuff to interact with blocks and items is way to simple now.

For example, here is some pictures of my proof of concept sorting system: http://imgur.com/a/56tlB
Code is 90 lines, nothing is hardcoded, turtles are configured by putting items in various slots.
The amount of time used to set up the system is around two minutes, it has NONE of the limitations of a pre 1.64 sorting system.
I can put down as many turtles as I want, support as many items as I want per turtle side, and even supports items with different damage values.

Way to powerful and easy to use in my honest opinion.

I think it's kind of a cool feature. I didn't think I'd like it at first, but the concept is certainly growing on me. I haven't played with it much yet, but an early-game self-expanding storage system is definitely a real possibility now, whereas it would have been extremely complex and require constant babysitting by the player before. I think the feature opens up a lot of new possibilities. Yes, it does trivialize some operations, but if you want the extra challenge, you can always nil it out. Also, those who play with OpenPeripheral (which I have a feeling is a majority group) have had a variation of this feature for quite a while, in the form of narcissistic turtles. It hasn't proven to have a huge impact on the way people use ComputerCraft that I've noticed.

To be honest, I don't see the problem. As Lyqyd stated, OpenPeripheral has had this feature for some time now, so for me, it doesn't change the way I play at all. It's not like I'm constantly trying to develop an incredibly complex and involved turtle mining or storage systems, nor do I have any real use for them. To be honest, there's way more "OP" mods out there than ComputerCraft.

Take for instance MFR's lasers, ExtraUtilities' Ender Quarries, Buildcraft's Quarries, or Mekanism's Digital Miners. All of those can mine ores in ridiculously OP ways, and once set up, require very little to maintain. Heck, the MFR lasers actually pull ores out of thin air, and across dimensions! And for item detection, what about Applied Energistics? Pretty much any filter pipe from other mods! I'm just saying that the turtle.inspect() function isn't nearly as overpowered as some are making it out to be.

I think the most I'm going to do with this new function is set up a more efficient single tree farming system.

I'm really surprised by these new features! I can easily imagine this being suggested and shot down. Maybe it already was!

That said, I'm glad they were included! :)/>

Turtle AI to act as another player that mines crafts and creates other turtles at demand.


SKYNET IT RITE NOW M8

Rewriting my Swarm mining program to use this stuff. Again… Damn i think this is all i do with computercraft those days. :)/>

turtle.getItemDetail() is great for making mining reports. Know exactly what you mined up.