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Suggestion Dispensers disabled?

Paul_Bakken

Obsidian
Joined
Dec 3, 2012
Hi all,

After leveling up Engineer, I tried to build a contraption that uses dispensers... Only to find that dispensers are restricted to admin only.

What was the reason dispensers were disabled? Not having access to them makes a lot of the more useful machines impossible to build. Is there anyway to get them back, please?

Moreover, I know that hoppers were disabled due to causing lag, but would it be possible to enable the "item collector" IC in their place?

Thanks!
 

iAlchemist

Legacy Supporter 3
Joined
May 29, 2015
Hi all,

After leveling up Engineer, I tried to build a contraption that uses dispensers... Only to find that dispensers are restricted to admin only.

What was the reason dispensers were disabled? Not having access to them makes a lot of the more useful machines impossible to build. Is there anyway to get them back, please?

Moreover, I know that hoppers were disabled due to causing lag, but would it be possible to enable the "item collector" IC in their place?

Thanks!
I made a post about the item Collecter IC a while ago and unfortunately the IC will not be finding its way into the game. The reasoning that Xexorian provided was that it would be too easy to abuse for automatic farming systems. While I agree somewhat, I don't think that they have any real difference from Hoppers, but he did state that all IC's have a reason for being removed/present. That being said, I trust his judgement.

As for dispensers, I'm unsure why they're banned. I'd like to see them granted to players, but I doubt they'll ever be added to the engineer's tools.

Although the item collector IC was removed, I believe one or two other IC's were added, one of which was the item sorter. It's uses are limited without the item Collecter, but it still has uses.
 

Danda

Dungeon Master Extremist
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Jan 21, 2011
he did state that all IC's have a reason for being removed/present.
I'd have to disagree with that statement tbh. There are ICs that aren't in and there isn't a good reason for them not to be.
Example being MC1422 - Mono-stable circuit. It serves a similar function to MC2500 - Pulser only it would likely be less server intensive as fewer checks would need to be made as it has more limited functionality.
 

Paul_Bakken

Obsidian
Joined
Dec 3, 2012
So, I got a response from Kainzo in chat yesterday. The reason given for taking out dispensers was "lag/item duplication." I did not know that dispensers caused either of these problems. I knew that was an issue with hoppers, but apparently with dispensers, too. Oh, well.
 

Danda

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Jan 21, 2011
So, I got a response from Kainzo in chat yesterday. The reason given for taking out dispensers was "lag/item duplication." I did not know that dispensers caused either of these problems. I knew that was an issue with hoppers, but apparently with dispensers, too. Oh, well.
Tbh those are usually the reasons that redstone stuff is disabled. lol
 

Jonsoon

Legacy Supporter 8
Joined
Mar 25, 2011
Location
Essos
Tbh those are usually the reasons that redstone stuff is disabled. lol
Is not the whole point of ICs to simplify redstone circuits and make it easier for the user and server? I really would love more of them...
 

Danda

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Is not the whole point of ICs to simplify redstone circuits and make it easier for the user and server? I really would love more of them...
Yes but that doesn't mean they're all lag free :p
Just less so than the vanilla equivalent in most cases
 

Paul_Bakken

Obsidian
Joined
Dec 3, 2012
I am by no means a Java coding expert or MineCraft code expert, so I just have to ask: How are dispensers worse for lag than the town farms with billions of animals in them?
 

iAlchemist

Legacy Supporter 3
Joined
May 29, 2015
I am by no means a Java coding expert or MineCraft code expert, so I just have to ask: How are dispensers worse for lag than the town farms with billions of animals in them?
While I understand the merit of your point it's entirely misguided.

Whilst towns produce farmed resources to sell, dispensers serve the niche purpose of making machines. Although I love redstone and find the nuances of it fascinating, machinery has little to no effect on the server economy. Furthermore, leather is an extremely important resource required for any sort of caster class, and the other farmed resources have multiple economical purposes.

Dispensers have the purpose of serving only the machine design in which you create them, and often have little effect on the average player's quality of life. That's where your logic is simply misguided.

To further my point, think of it like this. Chests also have storage tiles like dispensers and hoppers, which likely generates lag due to information storage. It's even more likely that chest information may outweigh the lag of hoppers. With that said, chests are a nearly essential part of minecraft and simply cannot be removed, whereas Redstone engineers got by without hoppers before and they can still do it now. (Sucks, I know.). The same applies to your argument about mob farms. Mob farms are necessary to player economy and armor creation whereas dispensers are not.
(My opinion on hoppers and their ban I believe stems from a problem that occurs above a hopper, similar to an item detector or entity detector. I think that the hopper tested for items above it and if positive collected the item. Furthermore, each server tick the hopper would transfer items to another hopper/chest. This would obviously produce lag when large quantities of items are being moved whilst the hopper is doing a detection test ever few ticks. While the lag is usually manageable on normal servers, I believe a combination of the server hardware that Kain has access too, followed by the intensity of Herocraft plugin on the server, creates a strain where the hoppers are simply the last straw that broke the camel's back. This is all theory, though, based on my limited understanding of minecraft logic.)

I'd have to disagree with that statement tbh. There are ICs that aren't in and there isn't a good reason for them not to be.
Example being MC1422 - Mono-stable circuit. It serves a similar function to MC2500 - Pulser only it would likely be less server intensive as fewer checks would need to be made as it has more limited functionality.
I was simply paraphrasing what Xexorian had said about the situation. I'm not on grounds to argue with him about it because I don't have the information on IC abuse because I didn't experiment enough with Craftbook on my personal server to ever know enough about it. Honestly, I would not be surprised if the item Collecter IC causes severe lag due to item check systems (the IC checks for an item, if negative, checks again. If positive, it begins the action. This cycle occurs each tick for the automatic version, and whatever the clock is calculated to on the manual version.)

While there are IC's that I believe have no real reason to be missing from the engineer's repitoiire of tools, I'm not going to debate that topic simply because I don't have any evidence to back my statements.
 

Danda

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Chests also have storage tiles like dispensers and hoppers, which likely generates lag due to information storage. It's even more likely that chest information may outweigh the lag of hoppers. With that said, chests are a nearly essential part of minecraft and simply cannot be removed, whereas Redstone engineers got by without hoppers before and they can still do it now. (Sucks, I know.). The same applies to your argument about mob farms. Mob farms are necessary to player economy and armor creation whereas dispensers are not.
(My opinion on hoppers and their ban I believe stems from a problem that occurs above a hopper, similar to an item detector or entity detector. I think that the hopper tested for items above it and if positive collected the item. Furthermore, each server tick the hopper would transfer items to another hopper/chest. This would obviously produce lag when large quantities of items are being moved whilst the hopper is doing a detection test ever few ticks. While the lag is usually manageable on normal servers, I believe a combination of the server hardware that Kain has access too, followed by the intensity of Herocraft plugin on the server, creates a strain where the hoppers are simply the last straw that broke the camel's back. This is all theory, though, based on my limited understanding of minecraft logic.)
It's not the storage of the items because that requires no active processing it's the movement of items which is why hoppers lag and chests don't.
It's a similar reason why pistons have limited functionality in minecraft. Block movement and updates are laggy as fuck. Dispensers need to be updated each time they're triggered and due to the nature of how people tend to use dispensers and hoppers that usually creates a lot more lag comparatively to someone adding and removing items from a chest. @Paul_Bakken

It's also not so much the server hardware it's that Minecraft still doesn't use multi-threading properly so for the most part it will only utilise one processor core at any given time. This was somewhat improved through bukkit and now spigot but not nearly enough as is required for larger servers.
 
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