ComputerCraft and Unloaded Chunks problem

Hi!
I am currently starting a project in computercraft where I will recreate Internet (Not World Wide Web) in Minecraft. Internet, in real life, is made out of nodes, where if you want to send data from node A to node B it will send the data by taking the shortest way between the nodes. But if 1 node break, it will try to find another way. This is the think I want to recreate. I know it sounds very hard (Because computercraft computers has a range of a limited amount of blocks), but I already have the idea in my head on how to do this. There is 1 problem though. Chunks. Minecraft is built up using Chunks. 1 Chunk is 16x16x256, and contains blocks about the world. Chunks are also used for saving and loading. While game is loaded and the player is in the world, it has a number of chunks loaded around the player. When blocks and chunks are outside that area around the player, they are no longer loaded into the game, though, if you run redstone out in unloaded chunks the chunks will load when the redstone gets a redstone power. Now to computers, computers in ComputerCraft are also blocks. and when the computer blocks gets in unloaded chunks, they shutdown and stops working. There's a problem. Because for Internet to work, the computers at the node has to be loaded all the time. This doesn't happen in real life, because in real life there is no chunks, nor loading and saving. So you could say that in real life, all the chunks are loaded at the same time, and all computers and nodes are always running. Back inside Minecraft, if you want to send a message via rednet to a computer in unloaded chunks, you could use redstone to load the chunk, and then run the computer, put there's no point in doing that because then there's no point of using wireless modems, which I want (and which also is best in my case).

So now comes the problem. if you can't use redstone to send pulses to the chunk, to keep it loaded, how do you make computers in unloaded chunks stay loaded even if the player exit the chunk?

Using mods, you could use chunk loaders from many different mods, or CC based solutions like the Chunk Loader Module in MiscPeripherals.
I'm not sure about reliable vanilla solutions, but I think there is a way to do it with hoppers. A quick Google search brings up a video like this one. Good luck with your project, if you choose to persue it.

Edit: it might not be useful to you, but I've also been informed that you might be able to load a chunk using a Command Computer and commands.getBlockInfo, however it may be immediately unloaded.

LemonLake, on 24 February 2015 - 03:49 PM said:

Using mods, you could use chunk loaders from many different mods, or CC based solutions like the Chunk Loader Module in MiscPeripherals.
I'm not sure about reliable vanilla solutions, but I think there is a way to do it with hoppers. A quick Google search brings up a video like this one. Good luck with your project, if you choose to persue it.

Edit: it might not be useful to you, but I've also been informed that you might be able to load a chunk using a Command Computer and commands.getBlockInfo, however it may be immediately unloaded.

Thanks for the help. When you said MiscPeripherals, I started looking it up, and found out that it was outdated, so I started looking into what peripherals was, because I've mostly haven't used it very much. So when I found out what it was I looked at the forum and found a peripheral that was a continuation of MiscPeripherals, but It didn't really have what I wanted. Then I started looking furter down the forum in the Peripherals and Turtle Upgrades. And then I found this thread which added some turtles and other stuff. The one that was best was the Waking Chunks one. It adds 3 blocks, 1 that makes 1x1 chunks to be loaded. one that makex 3x3 and one that makes 5x5 get loaded. I tried that one and now it works find. Thanks again :)/>