Posts by Kentington

Unfortunate news - an important piece of lab equipment just failed in a serious way, and so I'm probably not going to have any free time for bugfixes or SMP until next week. Will keep you posted.

Hmm, so apparently ModLoader doesn't report item collisions? That's really odd... I'll see about writing my own error-handling code to make installation a little easier.

I checked the BatPack bug, apparently my code isn't overriding the IC2 classes properly. Will try to fix that after work today.

v0.6 has been posted; it fixes the NullPointerExceptions caused by missiles, the isotopic separator's 64-cell glitch, and a couple of other things. I've also added the wet/dry vac, a crystal batpack, and a lapotron batpack.

Next coding objective is SMP support.

moop: What other mods are you running?

Sukasa: Passenger rockets lose their boosters when they land, and are dropped as items. If you want to transfer large quantities of rockets between ports, it'd be better just to use your inventory.

DarkClown: Does it crash the game (if so, please post your ModLoader.txt) or does the content simply not appear?

Deathbyfire: The most likely culprit looks to be TMI, but I would need a full list of all mods, including the ones in the actual JAR, to be sure.

Tibbs: Depends on my schedule. I'm in grad school and so don't have much free time - I was only able to release it this weekend because I was home sick from the lab. Next release should be before the full version of Minecraft, though.

DarkClown: Extract the JAR file from the attached ZIP. This forum doesn't allow the naked JAR to be uploaded, only zips.

Riffy: SMP support is coming in version 1.0. If there's enough interest, I suppose I could make it SMP-compatible before I finish the moon dimension.

Mensrea: Vanilla IC2's tesla coil can already target players - I don't think my missile defense lasers need to repeat this functionality. (But yes, solar panels will work better on the moon)

darkcamo12: Could you post a screenshot of your fusion reactor setup?

FourFire: I wasn't aware that moon mods already existed. I checked out the one you linked and found it pretty lacking (there's no real point to going to the moon in his mod), so I believe it's still worth my time to add the moon to Rocket Science. Particularly once I have time to add the Greys and all their wonderful, lootable technology...

IDN: Damnit, I must've forgotten to check if the rider is null. Delete the passenger missile entity in MCEdit and your world will be fine - I'll disable redstone launching of passenger rockets in the next release.

Deathbyfire: That's really odd, if it shows up in the recipe book it means that ModLoader has loaded the recipe. What other mods are you running? It's likely that the culprit is a conflict with one of them.

Quote from gecomol

for the passenger rocket can we just have landing pads like, set this rocket to pad 5 or whatever.To get the exact coords down is kind of trial and error sometimes though i guess this longer distance fix would cause the tele to be obsolete.

Yeah, I don't want my passenger rockets to render the teleporter obsolete - I intended them to be used for either short-range transport in conjunction with the laser rangefinder ("Hmm, it's 200 blocks across the ocean to the top of that mountain, where I'd like to build a house.") or for long journeys into the unknown ("I'm going to go five hundred blocks thataway. For adventure!")

...I guess I could implement sending rockets to fixed global coordinates after some infrastructure is developed. Maybe let you launch GPS satellites to enable this feature. I'll think about it after the Moon update.

Quote from SpeedDaemon

Moon dust? Please pardon my pendantry, but how exactly is a vacuum supposed to work in a... vacuum. ;)!

I'm adding oxygen mechanics to the moon - essentially, I'm adding a new blocktype that acts like empty space but replaces id=0 for oxygenated areas. (These appear around your rocket or within nine blocks of an Oxygen Generator machine and revert to empty space if it's removed) If you're on the moon but not in an oxygenated block you'll begin to suffocate and your vacuum won't work. Spacesuits will solve the suffocation issue but will need to be refilled at oxygen generators periodically, or via spare oxygen tanks. Hopefully this'll add some difficulty to lunar exploration and encourage players to build multiple "bases."

...which the highly camouflaged Moon Creepers will take great joy in demolishing.

Tibbs: The cross-section for neutron absorption by deuterium is pretty small - you'd have better luck hitting lithium-6 with a neutron and causing fission (one of the products is tritium). And you might just be able to find lithium in a future release...

I've coded a (somewhat simplified) fusion reactor as part of my Rocket Science addon - you might want to check that out. Tritium breeding and plasma-wall interaction damage are slated to appear in the next release.

(Irontygre, you worked in plasma physics? What're the odds that there would be two of us on this board?)

Shindou: Just released v0.51, which can just be dropped into the mods folder. I did code a thermonuclear missile, but there's no way to craft it until I add tritium and helium-3. (Hack one into the game to see just how overpowered it is - the metadata is 13)

daedroug: Laying blocks to produce the proper toroidal and poloidal fields in a fusion reactor is an interesting idea, but unfortunately the subtleties of real-life plasma confinement are impossible to capture in a world of cubes. Besides, coming up with a Minecraft-ized version of Maxwell's equations (with space quantized in one-block increments!), then adjusting the behavior of plasmas in response to this, would be an interesting intellectual exercise but would lay waste to your CPU and be difficult for players without physics experience to use. Same goes for turbine design - the fission reactor block can be assumed to have an internal turbine, so there's no reason the fusion block has to be any different. (Also, multi-block structures are beastly difficult to code because you have to take into account every stupid thing the player can do to mess up your code)

Wall shielding is an idea I considered when implementing the fusion reactor, maybe with periodic replacements of plasma-facing components, but in the end there's just no room in the GUI for it. I rejected neutron exposure issues for the same reason - implementing radiation effects on the player and other entities would be a lot of work for little gain. As much as I enjoy realistic physics, this is a game and some serious simplifications need to be made.

Graphene and diamond are different allotropes of carbon. I chose graphene (which I assume is the allotrope in IC2's carbon plates) for use in this mod because its lattice is a flat sheet and many real-life Type II superconductors (which tend to operate at higher temperatures than Type I) are made by layering different conductive materials.

Less scientific answer: Remember that the recipe is for a single superconducting cable - in vanilla IC2 a single diamond gets you twelve glass fiber cables, which only lose 1EU every 20 blocks. Superconductor isn't that much of an improvement.

Sorry for the late reply, everyone - I've been focusing my coding efforts on Rocket Science. Hopefully I can add SMP support and fix a few bugs this coming week.

Quote from nallar

Will you provide SMP support in the future/does it already have SMP support?

I haven't tested it with SMP yet, but that's a planned feature for 1.0 - after all, missiles are more fun if you have someone to use them on.

(The SMP version will allow server owners to disable missiles if desired)

Rocket Science adds several high-tier devices to IndustrialCraft - everything from missiles to superconductors to a fusion reactor!

Version History
v0.89: Added missile defense lasers, radar, and offense/defense coordinator blocks. No SMP support (yet).
v0.84b: Multiple bugfixes. Thermonuclear missiles are now craftable.
v0.84: Compatibility with IC2 v1.71. Partial SMP support.
v0.82: Fixed v0.81's bugs.
v0.81: Quick and dirty compatibility patch for IC2 v1.64.
v0.8: New fusion fuel, made autominers easier to locate, added ModLoader logs when ID conflicts occur.
v0.71: Compatibility patch for IC2 v1.43.
v0.7: Added mobile autominer and reusable passenger rockets. Removed new batpacks. Changed booster recipe. Bugfixes.
v0.65: Bugfixes, added hand pump.
v0.6: Added the wet/dry vac, new BatPacks.
v0.51: Changed install method.
v0.5: Initial release.

Installation
Drag-and-drop the jar in the attached zip into your .minecraft/mods folder. You'll also notice an ic2 folder in the zip; you need to open your IC2 jar and replace its EnergyNet class with the new class files.

Recipes

Booster Module

This marvelous rocket engine is capable of propelling payloads into low-earth orbit and returning them to the ground within a one-meter radius of the specified position! Though it was originally designed for personnel transport (see Passenger Module, below), some unscrupulous miners have used these modules to deliver TNT, lava, or even nuclear weapons...

(Note that this recipe also works with biofuel cells)

Parachute

Worried about falling and can't afford quantum boots? Worry no more, because our leather parachutes are cheap and durable! When packed as shown and worn as chest armor, the parachute will automatically deploy if the user falls more than three blocks.

Passenger Module

By attaching one of our parachutes to any standard minecart, a module capable of safely transporting a single occupant to an arbitrary location can be created. Attach it to a booster module (see below) and you'll be traveling in style in no time!

Warheads

We don't advertise this fact, but our booster modules can be used to deliver explosives and incendiaries from great distances. Perhaps you've finally located your archrival's fortress; perhaps you simply want to wipe an unsightly NPC village off the map. Whatever the case, your weapon of choice will need to be coated in a protective layer to survive re-entry.

Missiles

Placing a passenger module or a warhead of any sort on top of our booster module creates a rocket that can be placed like any other block. To set the missile's target, simply tap it with a left click; its target square will advance by five in the direction you tap it. Launching a missile is as simple as providing a redstone current - passenger rockets can be simply right-clicked, and you'll climb in. Missiles can be picked up with a wrench like machines.

Please be advised that due to federal regulations, once you've hopped into a passenger missile its safety belts will prevent you from leaving until it has touched down. Once it has landed, the passenger module can be picked up and reused. Due to the presence of rocket fuel, TNT missiles deliver twice the explosive force of TNT alone. Incendiary missiles spread a fine mist of lava over a wide area, igniting all flammable materials. Nuclear missiles use an entirely new nuclear explosion code resulting in a blast crater and an airburst.

Laser Rangefinder

This handy piece of technology lets you gauge the exact distance to the block under your crosshairs, giving you an X- and a Z- value that can then be input into a missile with a right-click. Due to its extremely low power consumption, the redstone incorporated into its circuitry can power the rangefinder for its entire operational lifetime without ever requiring a recharge!

Superconductor

Superconductors are materials capable of carrying an electric current with zero resistance - meaning no energy is lost in a superconducting cable, regardless of distance! Most superconductors need to be operated near absolute zero temperature, but we at Rocket Science are proud to announce that recent breakthroughs in redstone chemistry have allowed us to produce a gold-graphene-redstone lattice capable of functioning as a superconductor even at room temperature and above. Creating this material does require the use of a compressor, but once compressed it can be used as any other cable.

Fusion Reactor

This is it - the apex of energy production technology. Capable of operating indefinitely on the deuterium (hydrogen isotope 2) found in ordinary water, our ultra-miniaturized tokamak fusion reactor is safer than fission and greener than fossil fuels. Of course, this kind of technology requires a significant capital investment...

Your fusion reactor reactor requires a few additional components. Most important are the coils which generate the magnetic field that confines the plasma. Coils can be crafted either from copper or superconductor, and require a full stack (64) of the material to craft. The advantage of superconducting coils is that plasma confinement requires an extremely high coil current - hence copper coils waste 10EU/tick of the reactor's output power.

Fusion reactors also require a means of heating the plasma to ignition (when energy released by fusion reactions keeps the plasma hot enough for further fusion). Three devices are available - an ohmic heater, a neutral-beam injector, and an RF cyclotron resonance heater. The ohmic heater is the most energy-efficient since it directly drives current through the plasma, but it becomes useless when the plasma gets hot enough. RF and neutral-beam heaters are less efficient but work independent of temperature. The heating elements can be powered by a standard RE battery.

Fuel for your fusion reactor is easy to come by - just use one of our isotopic separators to harvest deuterium from ordinary water! Two deuterium cells can power a fusion reactor for 10,000 ticks, providing a total of 220,000 or 320,000EU depending on your coil setup.

Isotopic Separator

This upgraded extractor separates different isotopes of the same element. In practice, this means that deuterium can be extracted from the hydrogen in water cells. It takes ten water cells to produce one deuterium cell, but you will get back the empty cells. Note that a separator that is currently processing deuterium won't accept lithium cells, or vice-versa.

Of course, D-D reactions are quite difficult to perform and don't give much of a net energy gain. What if you could fuse the deuterium with tritium? Why, the fusion reactor's output could be boosted to 128 EU/tick! (Better protect your sensitive equipment) This third isotope of hydrogen is highly radioactive and not found in nature, but certain nuclear reactions can produce it - most notably the fission of lithium-6 by neutron capture. Unfortunately, federal regulations prohibit performing this reaction in IC2's standard reactor, but if you could somehow obtain a lithium-6 cell, your fusion reactor does have a slot for it. Current research suggests that a substance from vanilla Minecraft contains trace amounts of lithium...

More recipes and an FAQ in the second post!

Multiplayer support will (hopefully) be added this weekend, along with a few minor bugfixes.

Quote from Alblaka

So you turn a few advCircuits, Diamonds and minerals into a stick with wool? :3

When you put it that way, it does seem kind of silly. I wanted to make the converter as general as possible and require little effort on the user's part; at first, I planned to have it dismantle items that no longer exist (like turning the obscurator into a stack of diamonds and advanced circuits), but suppose the user's world placed the obscurator in a full chest? I suppose it could be replaced with just the diamonds or just the circuits, but in the end, it was easier to give an analogous item.

Would you mind updating the FAQ to mention the existence of a converter?

Glad to see others find my converter useful.

Timmie3054 and VariousArtist:
The converter will not work on SMP worlds due to differences in the way the game stores player data (in level.dat for SSP, in a players folder for SMP). An updated version supporting multiplayer will be released when IC2 supports it.

SomebodyThe5th:
Cable obscurators and crystal chargers no longer exist in IC2, so the latter is simply deleted by my converter, while the former is converted into IC2's somewhat analogous painter. Also, you don't need to move your save files to use the converter - just include the full path to the folder in quotes (ex. "C:\Users\Kent\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves\World1").

IndustrialUpgrade v1.0

===Overview===

IndustrialUpgrade is a utility for converting IndustrialCraft worlds to IC2. Blocks and items that exist in IC2 are converted to their new versions while preserving as much data as possible; blocks that no longer exist are deleted. Currently only SSP worlds are supported.

===Usage===

The program takes one command-line argument, the path to your world's folder. If sufficient interest exists, a GUI may be added in the future. Please, please, please make a backup of your world before using this utility; it has been tested on several IC worlds, but it is possible that unforeseen glitches may still exist. Be aware that updating very large worlds may take several minutes.

Once the utility has been run, obtain a fresh minecraft.jar and install IC2 and any other mods that the original world was running. You should now be able to open and play your world!

===Update Mechanics===

Blocks and items are converted to their new ID/data pairs. Most machine data is preserved by the upgrade; machines keep their inventory (with updated item ID's, of course), energy, and progress. Items in chests and the player's inventory are also updated. Please note that containers from mods other than IndustrialCraft cannot have their contents updated; remove IC items from third-party containers prior to running this utility.

Unfortunately, all cable blocks are removed from the world upon running this utility; due to the new wiring rules, updating a world with complex wiring leads to severe lag and crashes if the cables are not removed. However, if you have enough free space in your inventory, you will receive all of the removed cables and can manually rebuild your wiring.

===Credits===

IndustrialUpgrade was created by Kent Haeger, with special thanks to J. Aquadro for use of his Substrate library.

===Download===

IndustrialUpgrade v1.0