tModLoader MechTransfer - Item translocation and more...

[MoldenAtorn]

Ok, tested with full restart. I didn't know it made any difference.
It deffinitely was Spirit. 1.3.1.01 version. I checked the changelog and the latest (1.3.3.1) update indicates that...

• Fixed Mech Transfer compatibility issues with Spirit

Now I remember that downloading that version through tModLoader's browser failed so I went through the forum.
Issue is that the latest available version through the forums is only 1.3.1.01 which is why it wasn't fully updated.

But this time it worked! I have my ty internet connection to blame for that whole mess. Tested it, no more issues!

Thanks a lot for your help. I would really have hated having to move to a new world again or go destroy unloaded blocks with a cheat character.

 

[MoldenAtorn]

Two things.
First, i'd like to show a bit of a pre-hardmode setup for the extractinator factory and a simple bomb collector that feed from and into my magic storage "vault".
There is no coin compactor factory as shown as in the gif since that requires the steampunker.
The big button on top activates the extractor that will query one item from the MS interface. Four whitelists ensure that only extractable blocks (silt, slush, sturdy fossil) and Thorium's "bag of potential" are sent.
It feeds the extractinator and the wire connected to the injector send the next item.
The items are connected by the inlet. Here the extractor and chest could just be replaced by a pipe.
Finally, a pipe goes back up. The relay prioritizes the network but a blacklist with the coin filter sends them to the other line.
For now this line only feeds into a chest but that would be replaced by a coin compactor asap. It has to be emptied by hand because if fills up with copper pretty fast.
The pipes cannot be connected to the piggy bank (I did try once to set my money trough as a way to send items to the MS network from anywhere ).
The bomb collector is very simple. 5 second timer on bomb statue. Sends a bomb into the vault every 10s (that way I always have a bunch lying around).
Next i'd like to add a bird-engine-powered mob statue farm to feed into that main line but that will require a good bunch of filters to be set if i don't want to fill my vault with crap.

Second, while building this I noticed that the whitelist/blacklist items suffer the same glitch as the item frames (on which they are based?).
Any modded item loaded into them will be reset to something else seemingly at random on reload. So here the whitelist with the bag of potential and the blacklist with the coin filter have to be reset manually on every reload.

Edit: Do I even need the whitelist or does the extractinator interface sort by itself?

 

[DRKV]

Second, while building this I noticed that the whitelist/blacklist items suffer the same glitch as the item frames (on which they are based?).
Any modded item loaded into them will be reset to something else seemingly at random on reload. So here the whitelist with the bag of potential and the blacklist with the coin filter have to be reset manually on every reload.

The change probably happens when you enable/disable or update mods. I store the item by it's id, which is actually a really bad idea... The item ids are assigned at load, in alphabetical order (I think) and they can change if items get added or removed. I kinda did base the filters on how item frames work, and yeah, now it's pretty apparent that they are bugged too.

Edit: Do I even need the whitelist or does the extractinator interface sort by itself?

You shouldn't need the filters, the extractinator will only except stuff that it can actually extract.

The pipes cannot be connected to the piggy bank (I did try once to set my money trough as a way to send items to the MS network from anywhere ).

Piggy banks would be kinda impossible to adapt, especially in multiplayer. You could, however, check out the Quantum Entangled Chest from Portable Storage.

For the time being, you could just drop the coins on your player's head. That'll get them compressed.

 

[MoldenAtorn]

For now I just "loot all" the chest. Except for the initial run with all the backed up stuff, the factory only processes a few items every time.
This setup is mostly to test the mod and have fun with it in general. This is just a preparation for what I would intend to do with statue farms, afk mob farms, separate MS networks for sellable loot, etc. Building contraptions is part of the fun and this is the sort of mod that extends that fun.

I'll look into portable storage. I thought it would just be redundant with MS but it might have some stuff that's missing from other mods. As far as the quantum entangled stuff, I hope it's pretty endgame. I'd like to keep with the balance of MS which is already pretty powerful.

For the piggy bank (and safe, and defender's forge) stuff, I expected it to not work. It would be pretty broken. You would just need the mechanic to be able to send anything home. But I had to try it.

While i'm at it, people may already have suggested that but you could extend the mods capabilities a lot with a simple item: the "item user". Or two if you want to separate between a tool user and a consumable user (different storage management I would think).
The idea is. It's a single block, with an inventory of one (or more see below) item, can be loaded from a pipe or injector. Orient its "face" with a hammer. When receiving a wire signal, uses the (first) item in its inventory on the tile in front of its face. Example uses:

- Load a pick and auto-mine obsidian/honey/crispy honey from a liquid generator.
- Same idea for crystals.
- Put one on each side of a planter box, put an inlet under the planter box (not sure if it would get the items, feed seeds to one of them to auto-plant, put a staff of regrowth on the other one. Send the seeds back to its Set both of them on a timer: auto-farm a single plant.
- Put one next to an extractinator and feed it silt, etc.... for a hard solution to an easier to solve problem.
- Put one with nothing in it to "left-click" furniture? Auto furniture buff refresher? Should have a limited range though.
- Empty to click a button. It's useless, but you'll try it.
- Put blocks in to place them. Put a pickaxe to remove a block. Could have uses. Although actuators would pretty much cover them.
- Actually, the above could be used to farm chrlorophyte!
- Put a wire wench on one side and a wire cutter on the other to actually "cut" a circuit. This could open up things that regular signals can't do. Although this would also need storage for the wire...
- Put one with a hammer to toggle a waterfall? That would be hard to control and not worth it since... actuators are a thing.
- Put one with a hammer next to a MT turret. Spinning turret!
- Something something tree farm. That would be a bit complicated to put contraptions around an acorn spot because of the tree growth restrictions.
- Put a weapon in one to "swing" it... This shouldn't be allowed. It would be pretty broken/impossible (what with modifiers, mana and ammo...). Naaaaaah.

That's probably some "steampunker" level stuff. Automate all the things!

 

[DRKV]

For now I just "loot all" the chest. Except for the initial run with all the backed up stuff, the factory only processes a few items every time.
This setup is mostly to test the mod and have fun with it in general. This is just a preparation for what I would intend to do with statue farms, afk mob farms, separate MS networks for sellable loot, etc. Building contraptions is part of the fun and this is the sort of mod that extends that fun.

I'll look into portable storage. I thought it would just be redundant with MS but it might have some stuff that's missing from other mods. As far as the quantum entangled stuff, I hope it's pretty endgame. I'd like to keep with the balance of MS which is already pretty powerful.

For the piggy bank (and safe, and defender's forge) stuff, I expected it to not work. It would be pretty broken. You would just need the mechanic to be able to send anything home. But I had to try it.

While i'm at it, people may already have suggested that but you could extend the mods capabilities a lot with a simple item: the "item user". Or two if you want to separate between a tool user and a consumable user (different storage management I would think).
The idea is. It's a single block, with an inventory of one (or more see below) item, can be loaded from a pipe or injector. Orient its "face" with a hammer. When receiving a wire signal, uses the (first) item in its inventory on the tile in front of its face. Example uses:

- Load a pick and auto-mine obsidian/honey/crispy honey from a liquid generator.
- Same idea for crystals.
- Put one on each side of a planter box, put an inlet under the planter box (not sure if it would get the items, feed seeds to one of them to auto-plant, put a staff of regrowth on the other one. Send the seeds back to its Set both of them on a timer: auto-farm a single plant.
- Put one next to an extractinator and feed it silt, etc.... for a hard solution to an easier to solve problem.
- Put one with nothing in it to "left-click" furniture? Auto furniture buff refresher? Should have a limited range though.
- Empty to click a button. It's useless, but you'll try it.
- Put blocks in to place them. Put a pickaxe to remove a block. Could have uses. Although actuators would pretty much cover them.
- Actually, the above could be used to farm chrlorophyte!
- Put a wire wench on one side and a wire cutter on the other to actually "cut" a circuit. This could open up things that regular signals can't do. Although this would also need storage for the wire...
- Put one with a hammer to toggle a waterfall? That would be hard to control and not worth it since... actuators are a thing.
- Put one with a hammer next to a MT turret. Spinning turret!
- Something something tree farm. That would be a bit complicated to put contraptions around an acorn spot because of the tree growth restrictions.
- Put a weapon in one to "swing" it... This shouldn't be allowed. It would be pretty broken/impossible (what with modifiers, mana and ammo...). Naaaaaah.

That's probably some "steampunker" level stuff. Automate all the things!

Unfortunately terraria handles all of those seemingly similar things quite differently, so technically you would have to consider each of them as a special case. Most of them also require an actual player object. I could of course just reimplement all of them without the need for a player, but that's a lot of work, and does not consider stuff added from other mods.

- Put blocks in to place them. Put a pickaxe to remove a block. Could have uses. Although actuators would pretty much cover them.
- Actually, the above could be used to farm chrlorophyte!

I am thinking about tile placement/breaking, but that will also require some trickery.

- Put one with a hammer next to a MT turret. Spinning turret!

You can actually do that with just wires, just like with vanilla cannons.

 

[Larvitar22]

Alot of the suggestions on that farming stuff can be done via simple chests which has great interaction with this mod.

 

[MoldenAtorn]

Alot of the suggestions on that farming stuff can be done via simple chests which has great interaction with this mod.

Simple chest takes the terraria mechanics out of farming. This mod adds to them. I'm looking for stuff which will open the way for interesting contraptions, not make them all irrelevant. It was also just a sugestion in the spirit of the mod. Not a request of something I must have in my game.

 

[Larvitar22]

True, it does. Question about your set up, is that a mini system which feeds into a bigger one or just it's own thing?

In regards to the item reset for the filters, that might be an incompatibility with another mod. Cause I used a lot in my thorium world and nothing broke like that.

Quantum entangled stuff is obtainable from the start. It just needs gems, obsidian and in some cases leather iirc.

 

[MoldenAtorn]

Ok to answer your question and show off more possibilities and mod interactions, this is my updated setup. It is a mix of MechTransfer (MT) and Magic Storage (MS) with a tiny bit of Project__Logic (PL).

At the very top-left we have the MS network that I call the "Vault" (core painted black). Basically my chest room with all my stuff. A bit of MS pipe (painted black) goes down from that room to a MS-MT interface. There are two MT pipes connecting to that interface (The MS-MT interface can be seen as a chest so yes the two pipes from it are separate):
On the left the pipe takes extractable items from the vault and sends them to the extractinator when I push one of the two buttons connected to it by red wire. That wire goes through the extractinator's injector which makes it repeat until there's no more items to extract.
On the right, the black painted MT pipe is what I call the "Main" pipeline, where everything that is collected is fed through it to end up either in the vault or in other systems depending on filters. The throughput in that pipe is from the bottom up:
On the bottom-left, we have statue farms, simply statues powered by a bird engine in lava with an Inlet to collect the loots and send them to the black pipeline.
Then branching from the right we have the lime pipeline with a relay that prioritize stuff to go to that pipeline if possible. This pipeline takes the items from the categories you see on the column of whitelists and sends them to the lime-painted MS network. Note that there is a money blacklist to the entry of that line because the weapons filter considers (some?) coins as ammo and lets them through. Because there are some weapons that do that.
This is a separate MS network as you can see by the core being here. I call it the "Loot" network. This lime pipe has itself a red branch for the stuff i want to trash into lava with room for more whitelists. For now it's just the javelins from the Hoplite statue (they have no gold value).
Just to the right of the vault there is a MS Remote Storage access to get the stuff from the loot network and an extractor+outlet connected to a 1s timer to "shower me" with items while I sell them to the merchant who lives right there.
Now there is a bit of stuff I skipped and that is the purple pipe extracting from the purple MS network. That is for future projects. It will be the receiver for farms i'll build all over the world. The extractor is connected to a PL radio link that'll get activated when items are picked up by the farms into a remote access to that purple MS network. The two PL delayers triplicate that signal with a delay because I want to be sure that stuff gets extracted from that network as fast as possible. For now I just used it to test the filters.
Right next to the extractor is also a bomb statue connected to a 5s timer. It makes a bomb every 10s into my vault. It ends up making a lot of them but that's cool because that'll make clearing areas and digging hellevators simpler.Then the last branch taking stuff from that black pipeline is for the coins. For now they just go into a chest but I intend to plug a money compactor to it and maybe setup a separate MS network similar item shower to shower me in gold when I come back to base.
And that's it.
Basically, the black pipe sends stuff through to the vault unless they are first picked up by the loot (lime) and gold (yellow) networks. Everything else sends stuff into that pipe. Only the extractinator and bomb generator get to go after the loot network because they only make stuff I want into my vault or gold.

Later I may also want to setup another room with autocraft factories for potions and stuff like that. I'll have to check if the autocrafters are able to take stuff from the MS-MT itrerfaces.

All of this is still only pre-hardmode. I'll hook up biome monster farms and various plant farms (probably big stripes of blocks to randomly spanwn stuff because planting is not automatable) to the purple receiver network later. There's also a blue mushroom farm on the right of that setup waiting that I get belts to get the stuff to an inlet. PL will also allow me to periodically (like with a daylight sensor) pop on and off the actuators from plant farms to collect stuff using delayers.

Edit: Wrong color text for the javelins. It's a whitelist. The red wire going to the PL radio link and delayers should be moved to avoid the MS relay because it creates a signal loop.... Which I think is actually preferable to the delayers! This bit got much simpler:

 

[DRKV]

Updated to version 1.6.1

• Added Bag filter item
• Fixed filterable tile save/load with modded items
• Fixed buttons in multiplayer
• New net packet handling system
• Added player interface

I started work on the player interface before the last release, but then it started taking a long time. It's pretty cool though! It gives you direct access to a players inventory. You can take items from their inventory, give them stuff or even swap their equipment. I don't really think it would be an issue in multiplayer either, since you have to stand right inside of it to work.

 

[MoldenAtorn]

If you managed to build a player interface does that mean that piggybank/safe interface is also possible? Since those basically give access to player inventories (stored on the character)?

 

[DRKV]

If you managed to build a player interface does that mean that piggybank/safe interface is also possible? Since those basically give access to player inventories (stored on the character)?

Possibly. I could make a similar machine that you stand in, that would access your piggyback or safe or defenders forge instead of your inventory. Also, I've been thinking about this a bit, I might just make these things work with just a simple adapter (so you could just inject/extract from the actual piggybank), but only in single player. That would mean that some machines might break, if you just host your single player world for multiplayer. Still, this would be a neat feature in SP.

 

[MoldenAtorn]

Possibly. I could make a similar machine that you stand in, that would access your piggyback or safe or defenders forge instead of your inventory. Also, I've been thinking about this a bit, I might just make these things work with just a simple adapter (so you could just inject/extract from the actual piggybank), but only in single player. That would mean that some machines might break, if you just host your single player world for multiplayer. Still, this would be a neat feature in SP.

Yeah, an in/output connected to a piggy wouldn't know which character's piggy to access... unless it is a special in/ouput block that is toggled by left click. Instead of saving an item's id on left click, it would save which character toggled it last and would only work with that character's piggy inventory. I would imagine these blocks to be called something like "combination lock injector/extractor" to keep up with the whole banking theme and they could have a small visual (red/green point of light) to indicate if they have been toggled at all. They would do nothing until they are. Of course, nothing would stop a character from re-configuring other character's combo locks but that's just up to the players to manage these things. It would also show as off (maybe a 3rd color) and do nothing when the configured character is offline but it would keep that character's id and reconnect when the character comes back online.
Overall, I think piggy/safe access to the network opens up some cheese and should maybe become available after some point in the game, i.e with the steampunker/cyborg.

 

[MoldenAtorn]

Hey there.
Me again with a neat discovery. I went back to experimenting with your mod when something obvious hit me.

It is possible to craft a very simple and pretty fast wire engine using the extraction/injection loop:

Recipe:
- Two blocks / platforms
- 1 chest (doesn't work with item frames).
- 1 button (or any signal input)
- 3 wire (for the most compact design)
- 1 transfer extractor
- 1 transfer injector
- 1 of any item you want

Put down a chest on two blocks/platforms. Put your random 1-stack item in it. Put an injector and an extractor next to the chest connected together. Put a button somewhere. Connect those three with any color wire.

Get the output with some more wire of the same color or with a different color wire at the injector.

I dub it the "Transfer Engine".

I also discovered that you can setup 3 of these engines on the same chest with the same single item. EDIT: this useless. One engine outputs a signal per tick anyway.

Only drawback is... it's unstoppable! Not with a signal at least. You can still stop it manually by removing the token item from the chest. I tried setting up a second inventory with one or two unlooped transfer pairs, using dart trap diodes or project__logic delayers. I can only make an unstartable or an unstoppable system.

EDIT: Removing any assesment on the speed of these engines. A blinking torch is not a reliable way to measure it. I would have to build a signal counter. Something i've never done and requires logic gates (therefore hardmode).

I'll have more news when I finally decide to go into hardmode but I'm taking it slow with that modpack to avoid skipping content.

Using a token item travelling through a MT network to emit a signal makes me wonder. Is it just another signal-based system or is there a way to make a state-based system kinda like hoiktronics?

On other notes. I found a couple vanilla "container" items that do not work with mechTransfer:
- The manequin/womanequin: Could be paired up nicely with the player interface for an armor switcher that displays what it has in store. Although that could be doable with item frames? This might be a hassle to make and be glitchy what with modded armors disappearing.
- The gem locks. You know,, these pvp things. They're like item frames that can receive a single type of item. The interesting thing is that they emit a signal when they receive. Wonder what this could be used for. Except emit a signal when their specific gem comes through. But that could be done with whitelists.

 

[DRKV]

I dub it the "Transfer Engine". I haven't thoroughly tested it but it seems to lie between a crab engine and a bird engine in terms of speed. Nothing game-breaking as there still are better vanilla engines but very cheap to build.

Actually, it should be on par with dummy hoik engines. One activation per frame.

I also discovered that you can setup 3 of these engines on the same chest with the same single item. But the speed when combining the signals seem to be the same as a single engine. Guess they have to share it.

Yeah, that makes sense. The item transfer happens instantly after the extractor gets hit by the wire. Wire operations happen one after the other. So by the time the second loop gets triggered, the first one has already done it's thing.

Only drawback is... it's unstoppable! Not with a signal at least. You can still stop it manually by removing the token item from the chest. I tried setting up a second inventory with one or two unlooped transfer pairs, using project__logic delayers. I can only make an unstartable or an unstoppable system. Maybe with gates, but that would have to be tested when I finally go into hardmode. Well, unstoppable engines are still cool.

You should be able to stop it with a gate like this.

Using a token item travelling through a MT network to emit a signal makes me wonder. Is it just another signal-based system or is there a way to make a state-based system kinda like hoiktronics?

I kinda designed the transfer things to "embrace" the whole signal based wiring. I think it's pretty cool. I am planning on adding some form of logic gate type device to somehow detect items in a container. Haven't exactly decided how I want to do that, but it could potentially be used to simulate Boolean logic.

On other notes. I found a couple vanilla "container" items that do not work with mechTransfer:
- The manequin/womanequin: Could be paired up nicely with the player interface for an armor switcher that displays what it has in store. Although that could be doable with item frames? This might be a hassle to make and be glitchy what with modded armors disappearing.
- The gem locks. You know,, these pvp things. They're like item frames that can receive a single type of item. The interesting thing is that they emit a signal when they receive. Wonder what this could be used for. Except emit a signal when their specific gem comes through. But that could be done with whitelists.

Apparently mannequins will be changed significantly in the next update, so I don't really want to make more adapters for vanilla stuff until then. Also, currently they would be a bit of a pain in the neck...

 

[MoldenAtorn]

You should be able to stop it with a gate like this.

Godamn it. I completely looked over the fact that your system had its own gate! I was thinking vanilla logic gate.
Well, to make amends on this oversight. Here's the transfer engine 2.0 working with a single button using a project__logic delayer:

The PL item used is the 2 ticks delayer (lowest possible except 0). The point of the delayer is that the engine activation happens after the gate activation.
Pushing the button switches the gate (if gate turns off, engine stops) and then signals the engine (if gate is on, engine starts).

Output is blue. Input is red/yellow. It is reducible to a single color by forking the signal using a vanilla gate or a PL 0 tick delayer.

If you're wondering, a delayer works like this:

After being hit by a wire, it will count down. Once it hits zero, it activates all wires surrounding it except for the direction opposite of where it's pointing.

But actually, it will only activate wires connected to the wires it is said to activate (As shown by the arrow i put on the picture). So I couldn't just stick the delayer right under the extractor.

Actually, it should be on par with dummy hoik engines. One activation per frame.

Guess i'll be replacing that bird engine. Because the above engine is faster, requires only 1 button push to start, takes less room and isn't noisy.

PS: You may be thinking that the delayer allows you to make an infinite speed engine just by having a wire come out of it from any side but the arrow. Well yeah, it kinda does, for a few ticks and then the mod floods your chat with error messages.

PPS: Actuate that delayer. For convenience.

PPPS: PL Delayer isn't mandatory. Could be replaced with a vanilla "delayer" (diode: https://terraria.wiki.gg/Guide:Wiring#Diodes)

 

[MoldenAtorn]

Quick question. Do any of you know of a mod that adds a trash chest? Basically a container like a chest but which would delete the items you put in it. Kinda like the inventory trash slot in chest form. Lava is kinda unreliable for this job.

 

[benkai3]

Just found out about this mod by scrolling through the mod browser, seems like I can relive my tekkit dreams in Terraria! Will you ever add something similar to your Teleporter Unchained, but for this mod? I wish to transfer items across large areas without pipes and seeing something like this exists in magic storage, I was wondering if this is a planned feature .

 

[♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ]

PRAISE THE GREAT FACTORY

 

[DRKV]

Just found out about this mod by scrolling through the mod browser, seems like I can relive my tekkit dreams in Terraria! Will you ever add something similar to your Teleporter Unchained, but for this mod? I wish to transfer items across large areas without pipes and seeing something like this exists in magic storage, I was wondering if this is a planned feature .

Well, I am thinking about adding a sort of long range item cannon. I think that would be a fun way to do it.