Minecrack

eGoCeNTRoNiX · Post by **eGoCeNTRoNiX** » Fri Mar 11, 2011 11:25 am

Thanks FP.. I'll pass that on..

eGo

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Mar 11, 2011 10:59 pm

Can't keep from tweaking the Shuttle launch complex. I keep wanting to throw more details in there. This is the kind of crap that keeps you up all night playing this stupid game...

Mission Control room, American Flag and liquid oxygen fueling tank:

Blast pits (with lava at the bottom):

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 4:52 am

Checked it out tonight with Taz. Nice stuff. He said you need more in way of flame diversion though

Also, saw this & had to post it:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/colle ... =154H&link

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 7:46 pm

LOL!!!! I luv the fridge magnets!

You may think you're joking, but yeah, I was thinking of making the flame diverter more elaborate, like linking the pits to a tunnel that leads out somewhere nearby

Also need to add a hydrogen supply tank, but no easy way to make one in red wool except by hand...

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 4:34 am

Yeah, if they were a bit cheaper, I'd be all over them.

He said you probably would do more on the shuttle even though it looks finished. Red wool is almost the hardest to get a hold of. Can't find red flowers anywhere.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 10:59 am

I cheated. I didn't think you could change wool color using WorldEdit, but Taz discovered you can, so I cloned the LOX tank and made it red and labeled it as LH2 (Liquid Hydrogen for you non space nerds). Also added iron floor mounts to the tanks:

I just want to add some more machinery to make it look less sterile. The gantry needs a bit more work. I want to make it look a lot more like the real one shown here (there is more to the gantry than this, but this is the part that immediately connects to the shuttle:

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 5:21 pm

Well, then you're gonna be busy.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 10:49 am

And yet another obsession completed: A Mob Counter (mobs are what monsters are called in Minecraft).

I've had the mob trap for a while - built it weeks ago, and it had a pressure plate to detect mobs falling into it but all it did was flash a light. I fantasized about building a digital counter made from redstone circuits.

I actually started designing one and realized what a challenge it would be, and that it probably would be too large to fit. However, I found a design for a very compact 4 digit counter on the forums that someone posted a schematic file of, and I adapted that to work after much head scratching trying to reverse engineer it.

The guy made a masterpiece of compact design. It may seem big to you, but I'm amazed he got it that small. If any of you have ever taken a logic gate design course, or done any logic design work, you'll appreciate how complex a device this is. Keep in mind that on this scale, an OR gate is 2 blocks (and each block is 1 meter square). The 4 bit to 7 segment decoder in particular is a hideously complex series of hundreds of gates.

ANYWAY, a mob falls into the trap, triggers the pressure plate which plays a "DONG DONG" chime on a set of note blocks and then sends the pulse to the digital counter to increment it by one.

I can die content now....

Those of you who are fellow MineCrackers can see it by warping to PENGTRAP.

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Koo Koo Mouse · Post by **Koo Koo Mouse** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 12:42 pm

OMG A 7segment display.. Amazing. who woulda thought? NICE!

GuardianAsher · Post by **GuardianAsher** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 12:46 pm

...okay, it's pretty safe to say that is one of the most awesome things I think I've ever seen anyone do in Minecraft. I knew you could make circuits and things like that, but... wow...

Just wow.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 4:12 pm

You should see it, stupid complex.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 4:52 pm

Yeah, I have no idea how some people manage to build whole ALU's and CPUs because Minecraft redstone circuits are pretty flaky when you start building anything this big.

The counter I'm using has a minor bug in it: then tens digit will sometimes get hung or scrambled. That's why I placed a reset switch there. The original designer of the circuit had the same problem and fixed it by relocating the counter 2 blocks to the NE.

There's nothing wrong with the wiring, it's actually caused by propagation errors/delays across "Chunk" boundaries. The Minecraft world map is divided into Chunks and ideally you want a complex redstone circuit to sit inside of a chunk and not have parts of the circuit exist in more than one chunk. That's almost impossible with really large circuits. It's a real problem if you're in the corner of a chunk and the device exists in 4 separate chucks.

I may try to move mine around a bit to see if I can fix it, but I can actually live with it the way it is.

Taz is also attempting to reduce the spacing between digits from 10 to 3 blocks. He nearly got it working last. It adds a lot to the depth but we may be able to shorten it by 4 or 5 blocks.

Here's a photo of a copy of the counter on our "workbench" area with the new 7 segment module added to the front of it. The colored blocks are to indicate segment driver lines so we can keep them sorted out while working on it. The red brick box is just a shadow box to keep the front of the display dark so we can read the digits.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 10:39 pm

Yeah, the spacing was a bit annoying.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 10:02 am

Taz & I think we can improve the reliability of the counter by building our own 4-bit binary counter circuit. I was up until 4am last night taking an adhoc refresher course on T-FlipFlops (the basis of all counter circuits). We're building some test rigs on the big workbench area.

I haven't messed with logic gates since my 20s, but I'm finding it intriguing.

In essence we're building the redstone equivalent of the circuit below for starters (a simple binary counter from T-FlipFlops). Then we need an AND gate to reset the counter and output a carry signal when the circuit reaches 10 (or binary 1010). Normally a 4-bit counter would reset at 16 without the addition the AND gate.

My brain hurts...

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 10:46 am

I noticed you guys were on late when I checked the map before going to bed.

I haven't so much as made a redstone torch in the game as of yet. I know the theory on how they work but that stuff is way beyond my understanding. Never took any circuit design courses, but I do understand the basic concepts.