GopherAtl's misc. videos - Charcoal factory, Elevator

:edit: rather than start a new thread, repurposing this one to share another video, this one gives a general tour of the server where I built the charcoal factory, mainly showing the tower with it's elevator, which is built using CC computers, railcraft's elevator rails, and the lan cables from CCLan.

Elevator + general tour
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLgphIJV5dg&feature=vmdshb[/media]
code+design by me, with some debugging assistance from Lyqyd

The automated tree farm:
Code by me, design by me & Lyqyd. Credit for pushing me not to be lazy and to run with the silent movie idea goes to Cruor.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmDSBFj0qrQ
[/media]

Really good concept, I like the silent movie style a lot, probably better than voice.

Well, the format did force me to be brief, which doesn't come naturally to me XD

Cool :unsure:/>/> Love the way you put the text in there ^_^/>/>

:unsure:/>/> i love it <3

That's awesome. I normally just skip silent movies, especially for complex things like this. But this is far better than most videos I watch (I bet Direwolf can't get that much content into 2 minutes 40).

heh. To be fair to dire, if you watch most of my normal, non-silent, videos, brevity isn't really my strong suit either. Fitting to the length of the song and typing the explanations on cards was probably a good exercise for me, I had no choice but to be brief and not ramble, heheh

Awesome! I want to make something like this from scratch just, for the fun and knowing I can enjoy it because I made it, but this idea. I love it!

Very nice!

Nice!
Source code :3 ?

source is linked in the video description on youtube, which you can view under "more info" in the embedded video. Pastebin here

Very nice setup!

I wanted to share a Pro Tip

You mention using Burch to avoid "branchy" trees. It's possible to control normal trees to keep them from doing that too.
Put a floating block up 7-8 spaces above where the tree will grow. It will prevent the tree top from going above that point.
This is measuring up to the top leaf block(s), not the top of the trunk.

When using this method and bonemeal, I've noticed every once in awhile right-clicking with the bone meal will do nothing. This is when the tree normally would have been a huge brancy one, but it didn't have room to grow. In survival it's not a problem, and doesn't use up a bone meal either, but for automations it might need taken into account.

Thanks; I was actually aware of the height blocking method, but using birch eliminates the need for it while avoiding the sometimes-growth-fails issue, which occurrs with natural growth as well as forced growth with bonemeal and which would, however marginally, reduce the speed of regrowth. Birch trees also seem to just grow faster than other trees, and since it's just being cooked to charcoal, the type of wood is irrelevant. If I were to set up more tree farms to yield the wood itself, I would certainly use the blocking method you suggest to simplify automated harvesting, though!

I wonder if, if you gave him a furnace block, he could compare the furnace to his furnace block on resuming from a chunk unload to see whether the furnace was burning or not, since I believe lit and unlit furnaces are different block IDs. This might better inform him as to which stage of the process he was in without needing to save data during the countdown timer.

hmm. An interesting thought, tho I wasn't really planning on worrying about the timer at all. When I make him resume on startup, it will mainly be concerned with identifying if he was interrupted while harvesting, and at what point, so he can continue harvesting and make it back to the starting position. If he resumes in the cave, I figured he would just wait half the usual time and then go, or possibly go immediately without waiting at all. He's providing plenty of charcoal for himself, and I've already tweaked him to burn excess saplings rather than store them to the chest as well, so the "waste" of fuel involved isn't really a big concern.

Hmm. On further thought, I guess running immediately could result in him running a lot if the players are moving around at the limit of chunkloading range, so he gets unloaded and reloaded a lot. Don't see any problem with just using half the timer, or possibly saving the timer count just once per minute or something like that. Given the variable amount of wood being cooked each time, the furnace doesn't seem like too reliable an indicator anyway; if I include a furnace, it'll more likely be to compare and confirm he has returned to the right starting spot!

I would say that's an equally valid reason for adding the furnace to the inventory. Half of the usual timer is probably a reasonable compromise.

I can tell you 'love' (sarcastically) talking xD

my friend insists on crappy steves carts for automating tree farming, mostly because i am way better at cc than him so he avoids it