[Mod] Modular tunnel boring/building machine [digtron][0.8]

[FaceDeer]

I down loaded your new version and ran into a bug. I was boring a tunnel and when the machine came to the end of the cycle I was short of my goal. Went to restart the machine and the game crashed.

Fixed. The problem lay in a bit of code that's used to move the player when the player is inside or adjacent to the digtron, so running the digtron from afar was fine but if it tried to move when the player was touching it the crash triggered. The bug was introduced a couple days ago as part of some code cleanup I was doing (I moved the should-I-move-the-player test into a separate method, leaving the okay-move-the-player-now code without the player's actual position to work with).

But now the green of the pusher is so weak,
there is very little difference to the color of the controllers.

I just moved the tints from being hard-coded in the node definition to being .png overlays, you can edit them with a paint program now too (make sure to keep them semi-transparent). If that's still inconvenient I could move the tint colour codes into init.lua to make them configurable there.

The textures shouldn't be changed, they are very nice.

They should still look basically the same in the master repository, I just changed how the textures were generated so that other users could fiddle with them more easily. I did have to recreate some of them since I didn't save source files for all of them (some of them were thrown together as "temp" textures that turned out nice enough to just keep for now) so there might be a few pixels off here and there, let me know if any are noticeably worse off and I'll take another run at redoing them.

[DS-minetest]

The textures shouldn't be changed, they are very nice.

They should still look basically the same in the master repository, I just changed how the textures were generated so that other users could fiddle with them more easily. I did have to recreate some of them since I didn't save source files for all of them (some of them were thrown together as "temp" textures that turned out nice enough to just keep for now) so there might be a few pixels off here and there, let me know if any are noticeably worse off and I'll take another run at redoing them.

I just wanted to stop you from changing the textures at look.

[hajo]

While updating the screenshots of the lawnmower on the wiki
(now with an example of the blue-shifted texture),
I had an idea about the 'moving up/down - problem':
would it make sense to check for slabs and stairs,
and use them to follow the height of the landscape ?

Also, I added a lamp, but couldn't adjust its facing with the screwdriver.

And I got a 'new' message "Digtron is obstructed" from the pusher,
before and after succesful pushing, and nothing is in the way,

Finally, I can confirm that the diggers damage a player standing in front
(even when standing above the level of the diggers),
but there is no particle-effect from the diggers.

Also, the logfile-message about this event doesn't mention the digtron:

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

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ACTION[Server]: Player singleplayer punched by player singleplayer, damage 4 HP

[Cage]

FaceDeer that fixed it. Back to boring holes again :). Thank you very much for this mod and all your hard work.

[FaceDeer]

While updating the screenshots of the lawnmower on the wiki
(now with an example of the blue-shifted texture),
I had an idea about the 'moving up/down - problem':
would it make sense to check for slabs and stairs,
and use them to follow the height of the landscape ?

My first implementation goal is just to have the thing be able to move diagonally at all. :) I'll worry about sensing the environment later. Especially given that part of the purpose of a Digtron is to smash its way through the existing environment...

Also, I added a lamp, but couldn't adjust its facing with the screwdriver.

Lamps are a "wallmounted" node type rather than a "facedir" node type. They're like torches in that regard, and I don't think you can screwdriver torches into new orientations. To place a lamp in a different orientation dig it out and re-place it while aimed at the surface that you'd like the lamp to be attached to.

Finally, I can confirm that the diggers damage a player standing in front
(even when standing above the level of the diggers),
but there is no particle-effect from the diggers.

Also, the logfile-message about this event doesn't mention the digtron:

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

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ACTION[Server]: Player singleplayer punched by player singleplayer, damage 4 HP

[/quote]

Yeah, the hitpoint damage API was not super flexible. At the moment the code just gets a list of every entity whose collision volume is within 0.5 units of the center of the node being dug and delivers a "punch" on behalf of the player who triggered the Digtron (8 hitpoints for a regular dig head, 4 hit points for a soft material digger). Only entities are allowed to deliver punches, not nodes - technically the Digtron is just an inert part of the landscape as far as the combat code is concerned. And I figured it made sense to place the responsibility for the damage on the player that pushed the Digtron button anyway, in case there are mods that keep track of who's attacking whom that depend on that.

There also wasn't an obvious way I could see to get the results of the attack. I had wanted to have the Digtron suck meat and wool into its inventory as it runs over flocks of sheep. Ah well. I might revisit this stuff later once the more engineering-oriented todo items have been cleared. I'll take another look at the volume the punch is being aimed at to make sure I didn't center it at the boundary of a node instead of the midpoint, though, that might be something I've overlooked.

For now, I just wanted to make it dangerous to stand in front of one of these things. :)

[hajo]

I added a lamp, but couldn't adjust its facing with the screwdriver.

Lamps are a "wallmounted" node type .. like torches

Ok - I wanted the lamp to face forward, so that might need a panel for mounting.

New example-machine on the wiki: a Digger/Drill, for digging down a shaft/staircase.
The layout is quite simple, but the setup is a chore :-)

So, designing/changing /testing the pattern on the shaft-walls would probably
be a good candidate for testing a controller with programmable dig/build-logic...

Also, while 'flying' underground, I noticed that the inventory-modules of a digtron
don't show up - that looks pretty weird.

[texmex]

This is so cool! So intuitive and modular <3 I love that digtron depends only on default. I like these type of movable machines much more than technic's unintuitive machines.

I only managed to bug digtron out when setting the Automatic Control Module too a 100 cycles. It roamed away out of sight and when it reached an unloaded area the game crashed.

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

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2017-01-12 20:13:15: ERROR[Main]: ServerError: Runtime error from mod 'digtron' in callback environment_Step(): ...ion Support/minetest/mods/digtron/util_execute_cycle.lua:44: attempt to index local 'layout' (a nil value)
2017-01-12 20:13:15: ERROR[Main]: stack traceback:
2017-01-12 20:13:15: ERROR[Main]:    ...ion Support/minetest/mods/digtron/util_execute_cycle.lua:44: in function 'neighbour_test'
2017-01-12 20:13:15: ERROR[Main]:    ...ion Support/minetest/mods/digtron/util_execute_cycle.lua:95: in function 'execute_dig_cycle'
2017-01-12 20:13:15: ERROR[Main]:    ...ation Support/minetest/mods/digtron/node_controllers.lua:93: in function 'func'
2017-01-12 20:13:15: ERROR[Main]:    ...15/minetest.app/Contents/Resources/builtin/game/misc.lua:34: in function <...15/minetest.app/Contents/Resources/builtin/game/misc.lua:11>
2017-01-12 20:13:15: ERROR[Main]:    ...inetest.app/Contents/Resources/builtin/game/register.lua:412: in function <...inetest.app/Contents/Resources/builtin/game/register.lua:392>

Any solution in sight?

Also a small idea! Could the inventory and fuel hopper be made to support "regular" hoppers?

[FaceDeer]

I only managed to bug digtron out when setting the Automatic Control Module too a 100 cycles. It roamed away out of sight and when it reached an unloaded area the game crashed.

Any solution in sight?

Argh. Sorry about that, I checked in a big refactoring of the code last night and I guess that test case slipped by me. I really should make a checklist for doing QA on this thing. On the plus side there are now fewer places in the code where bugs like this could happen in the future. On the downside, a bug like this happened. :)

A fix has just been checked in. When an auto-controller Digtron reaches an unloaded area it should now suspend operation, sound an angry buzzer, and keep re-testing whether the adjacent area is still unloaded every cycle, just like it did before.

In theory I think I could make the Digtron force-load the region around it, but I kind of think that might be a bad idea for multiplayer servers. A griefer could set a hundred Digtrons running and they'd consume a lot of server resources until they ran out of fuel. Maybe an off-by-default option to add someday. :)

Also a small idea! Could the inventory and fuel hopper be made to support "regular" hoppers?

Nice idea! I remember coming across this mod once upon a time but it slipped my mind until now. I'll look into adding compatibility with it when I get home tonight.

Digtron is already compatible with Pipeworks, so until I get Hoppers hooked up you could perhaps use that for your automated loading and unloading needs.

[FaceDeer]

The layout is quite simple, but the setup is a chore :-)

A price of doing fancy things, I guess. :)

I recently built a test Digtron that dug a 3x3 shaft downward and then as it descended it built a spiral ramp with powered and unpowered rails on top of it so that minecarts could ascend and descend automatically. It was a bit fancy but a trick I found useful when assembling it was to set up the builders in "layers" and then once each layer was working correctly I moved it down the shaft to merge it with the digger heads waiting at the bottom. I'll draw up a diagram explaining it, I suspect it'll solve a lot of the non-obvious gotchas.

Also, while 'flying' underground, I noticed that the inventory-modules of a digtron
don't show up - that looks pretty weird.

That's because those particular nodes are just default cubes (rather than nodebox models) so they are treated as a seamless part of the ground, like an ore deposit or seam of sand. I could probably force them to be visible by making a nodebox model that's a single cube, but I'm not sure it's really all that important given it's only visible when you're no-clipping through the ground. :)

[FaceDeer]

Bad news on the Hopper front, it looks like the source and destination node types that the hopper mod supports are hard-coded into the Hopper mod itself. I'll see if I can get in contact with the Hopper mod's maintainer, I can see ways in which this code could be written to make it extensible by other mods (like Digtron). Failing that I'll fork Hopper myself. Shouldn't be too difficult to swing this but it's not something I can just toss into Digtron in a few minutes like I'd been hoping before I cracked this code open.

[FaceDeer]

Okay, I got a bit carried away and I rewrote the Hoppers mod to have an API that allows other mods to hook themselves up to it. :) My fork of the Hoppers mod is here:

https://github.com/FaceDeer/hopper/

I've contacted jordan4ibanez to see if he'd like to merge that into his main repository. I added support for my modded Hoppers in the meantime, so if you install my fork of Hoppers alongside Digtron it should work. But it won't do anything with mainline hoppers, so I'm not going to update the readme and stuff just yet. I'll see if my changes are accepted first.

[FaceDeer]

In preparation for working on diagonal movement this weekend I've added "dual" digger head modules that dig in two directions simultaneously (they come in standard digger and soft-material digger versions). They're still a bit prototypical in how they function, I'll have to see how they work in some actual diagonal movement test cases, but they seem to test out okay so I figured I'd release them as they are in case anyone wants to play with them.

They're crafted by combining two single dig heads in the crafting grid, and can be split back apart again losslessly.

[hajo]

working on diagonal movement this weekend

"diagonal movement" also means digging stairs up and down ?
I haven't come up with a working stair-digtron yet...

I've added "dual" digger head modules that dig in two directions simultaneously

Nice !

[FaceDeer]

working on diagonal movement this weekend

"diagonal movement" also means digging stairs up and down ?
I haven't come up with a working stair-digtron yet..

Yup. The dual diggers I just added are basically necessary to get a Digtron to be able to move diagonally through the ground. In theory you can now build a diagonal digger by using those and adding two control nodes that you trigger manually in an alternating pattern (forward, down, forward, down). Today I'll work on setting up the auto-controller to be able to do patterns like that automatically. I'll also need to do some changes to how the builders work in situations like that, and possibly fiddle a bit with traction.

[hajo]

and possibly fiddle a bit with traction.

That reminds me: when my 2x2x4-digger broke thru the ceiling of some cave,
I got that message again 'not enough traction'.
I had to fill up dirt from the bottom of the cave to the base of the digger,
plus an extra block to the side.

Perhaps gravity should count for a bit more in regard to traction,
when moving downward...

Also, I had one case with -1 heat remaining in the controler-furnace.

[FaceDeer]

Perhaps gravity should count for a bit more in regard to traction,
when moving downward...

Added to the to-do list.

Also, I had one case with -1 heat remaining in the controler-furnace.

Yeah, I've seen that now and then myself. I suspected it was a rounding error since the furnace heat is stored as a float, but I saw a -5 during my testing today. So definitely something I'll need to look into when I've got a bit more brain juice available.

Speaking of which, I just spent today's supply of brain juice. :) I've added lateral movement settings to the auto-controller. I'll document it up in more detail soon, but in summary:

• A non-zero "slope" setting on the auto-controller will make it move one step laterally for every X steps it moves forward (so a setting of 1 gives 45 degree movement).
• Builders and intermittent dig heads do not trigger during this lateral movement, nor does it deduct from the cycle count.
• Lateral movement direction is indicated by the orange arrows I stuck on the sides of the auto-controller. By default they're aimed downward, use the screwdriver to reorient them if you want to angle the digtron to the side or upward instead.
• Make use of the dual dig heads to ensure your digtron is not obstructed. I was able to build a nice little staircase-digger that laid out stair nodes and punched intermittent holes in the side of the stairwell to put torches into, so the present functionality should be sufficient for reasonably nice diggery-pokery.

I think I re-tested all of the mod's parts and features that I touched, but I didn't run through my entire checklist due to the aforementioned brain-juice shortage. So let me know if something explodes (when it's not supposed to explode).

[mr_dean]

Did anyone know that this can dig through cloud block?

PS it's the only way to remove it

[FaceDeer]

Did anyone know that this can dig through cloud block?

PS it's the only way to remove it

I had not tried taking a Digtron through clouds before. Neat. :)

I think I added the last major new component type for Digtrons today. I added a "crate" item. Place it next to a Digtron and right-click it, and it will pack the Digtron away inside the crate. You can then dig the crate, carry it somewhere else, put it down, and unpack the Digtron again. You can also give a packed Digtron a title so that you can remember what sort of thing is packed away in there.

Important note: I tested this a fair bit locally and it seems to work, but it's doing some fancy things under the hood to convert an in-game set of nodes (and their inventories and metadata) into a string that can be saved with the inventory item. It's possible that there's some hidden crashy hijinks still to be discovered in here. Use crates with caution until they've had a while to receive further testing.

Next thing I need to do is catch up on documentation, I'm a few versions behind now. Then lots of tweaking and testing and smaller things like improving traction.

[hajo]

[0.7.3] new component type for Digtrons .. "crate" item. ..
it will pack the Digtron away inside ..
Important note: ..(betatest).. Use crates with caution

Nice to hear, but
Incompatibility-warning: all digtron parts built with versions upto v0.7.2
will show up as "unknown node" under v0.7.3

So, finish current digging/building-projects before upgrading.

[FaceDeer]

[0.7.3] new component type for Digtrons .. "crate" item. ..
it will pack the Digtron away inside ..
Important note: ..(betatest).. Use crates with caution

Nice to hear, but
Incompatibility-warning: all digtron parts built with versions upto v0.7.2
will show up as "unknown node" under v0.7.3

So, finish current digging/building-projects before upgrading.

That's weird, I didn't see anything like that locally. There was a node upgrade for auto-controllers when I added lateral movement (in 0.7.2) but even then the node itself didn't change its identity, it was just to update the formspec. The only thing that happened in 0.7.3 were new nodes being *added*, no existing nodes were changed or removed.

I'll see if I can reproduce it.

Edit:

I tried going back to this version from three days ago, before I did the hopper work and added dual-diggers and diagonal movement. Started a fresh default game, plunked down one copy of each of the Digtron nodes, then exited the game and swapped out the digtron mod folder for the current one. No dice, everything worked fine. I have no idea why you got "unknown node"s appearing.

Anyone else see this happen?

[hajo]

digtron parts built with versions upto v0.7.2 will show up as "unknown node" under v0.7.3

That's weird, I didn't see anything like that locally.

Well, it looks like the problem was with the mod-selection,
which resulted in no digtron-mod active, so all textures were unknown.
From debug.txt:

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

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2017-01-16 01:12:20: WARNING[Main]: Mod name conflict detected: "digtron"
2017-01-16 01:12:20: WARNING[Main]: Will not load: E:\temp\minetest-0.4.15\bin\..\mods\digtron
2017-01-16 01:12:20: WARNING[Main]: Will not load: E:\temp\minetest-0.4.15\bin\..\mods\digtron_072
2017-01-16 01:12:20: ERROR[Main]: ModError: Unresolved name conflicts for mods "digtron".

Where the current version 0.7.3 is in \digtron
and the previous version is in \digtron_072.

Moving the older versions away cleared things up, all back to normal now.
I didn't have such a name conflict before...

[FaceDeer]

Moving the older versions away cleared things up, all back to normal now.
I didn't have such a name conflict before...

I'm relieved that it wasn't something in the mod itself, I suppose. I hope you didn't lose too many Digtrons in the process of figuring that out.

Speaking of things exploding, I just discovered that a Digtron builder head is capable of laying a trail of gunpowder. Made a nice big ragged tunnel with a small Digtron and some TNT. :)

I think the next thing on my to-do will be letting loaded crates show some kind of "image" of the region of space the Digtron inside them will appear in, I've only got a few in inventory and I'm already forgetting which ones need what room to unpack. Probably more of those marker entities I've been using to show offsets.

[texmex]

Thanks for doing a take on hopper mod! I've tested it, but it have some strange behavior:

• First, there's a small odd thing in inventory. I don't think those two should be there…

+ Spoiler

• Then there's some things not working. In the images below I've marked the non-working connections with an X. Main problem is that it doesn't work with inventory hopper at all, it seems.

+ Spoiler

I noticed there's only side hoppers. That still works for chests, but for furnaces side hoppers only put in fuel. In the original mod you may craft a side hopper from a regular hopper and vice versa. Perhaps something to look into. Anyway, cheers!

[FaceDeer]

Thanks for doing a take on hopper mod! I've tested it, but it have some strange behavior:

• First, there's a small odd thing in inventory. I don't think those two should be there…

+ Spoiler

Yeah, those should be excluded from the creative inventory. I just updated my fork of the Hopper mod to do that. Those nodes get generated by using the hopper item on a target, at which point the code decides which of the two node types to generate. Click on the side of a node and the hopper placed in-world will be a side hopper connected to it, click on the top or bottom of a node and the hopper placed in-world will be a vertical hopper. That's why those two nodes have "I think you broke something" as their names, they should never actually be possible to have in player inventory. The player only gets the generic hopper item so that there's no need to manually interconvert them.

• Then there's some things not working. In the images below I've marked the non-working connections with an X. Main problem is that it doesn't work with inventory hopper at all, it seems.

+ Spoiler

I noticed there's only side hoppers. That still works for chests, but for furnaces side hoppers only put in fuel. In the original mod you may craft a side hopper from a regular hopper and vice versa. Perhaps something to look into. Anyway, cheers!

If you click on the wood node behind those things when placing hoppers it'll try to hook the hopper up to the wood surface. I just tried building this setup myself and I get vertical hoppers when I click on the underside of the upper chest and the underside of the furnace when adding them (use shift-click to avoid opening their inventories instead), and I was able to make a glass-manufacturing pipeline putting sand in the top chest and fuel in the side hopper. Glass came out the bottom.

I'll look into the possibility of making the hopper placement code a bit "smarter". If you're placing a hopper directly between exactly two hopper-compatible nodes then it should be able to recognize that and place a hopper that connects the two even if you didn't click on the correct node facing.

I'm not sure why your setup with the Digtron inventory, side hopper, and chest didn't work for you, I just tested it and it worked for me. I put cobble into the Digtron inventory and it transferred into the chest. Are you using the latest version of Digtron? I only added hopper compatibility to it 3 days ago, if you've got a version from before then it won't recognize Digtron inventory modules.

[FaceDeer]

I just added pack/unpack sounds for the crates, and also marker entities to show you the volume that will be occupied by Digtron nodes when a crate is unpacked. Makes it much easier to see what might be obstructing a packed Digtron from unpacking.

I also changed the node type for the three storage nodes to "nodebox", to improve how their lighting works when the crate marker entities are enclosing them. As a result, all existing storage nodes (fuel, inventory, and combined) that are already placed in world will look like they're in total darkness when you enter the game with the new version of this mod installed. I didn't bother writing an upgrader to fix this because it will correct itself the moment a Digtron moves for the first time (lighting will be recalculated for the nodes then).

[texmex]

I see what you are trying to do there, with the hopper placing functionality. I just expected it worked the same way as the old one. Your approach is fine as well, simplifying it. There are cases however where players may not know about shift+righclick. But I like your approach. I'll try it again and make sure I got the latest Digtron version.

[FaceDeer]

I see what you are trying to do there, with the hopper placing functionality. I just expected it worked the same way as the old one. Your approach is fine as well, simplifying it. There are cases however where players may not know about shift+righclick. But I like your approach. I'll try it again and make sure I got the latest Digtron version.

It's how the original version of the mod by jordan4ibanez worked. Unfortunately I didn't notice that TenPlus1 did a major revamp of the hoppers mod later in the thread, I assumed the latest version would be from the first post.

I'll see if I can make the mod support both approaches depending on a configuration setting, I can see merits to both of them. Once I've got Digtron more fully squared away, anyway. Still have lots of polish to work on even though the main features seem fairly well nailed down now.

[texmex]

It's how the original version of the mod by jordan4ibanez worked. Unfortunately I didn't notice that TenPlus1 did a major revamp of the hoppers mod later in the thread, I assumed the latest version would be from the first post.

I'll see if I can make the mod support both approaches depending on a configuration setting, I can see merits to both of them. Once I've got Digtron more fully squared away, anyway. Still have lots of polish to work on even though the main features seem fairly well nailed down now.

Yes, I'm sure you do great with hopper but focus on the amazing noisy monster digtron first and foremost! :D

[texmex]

I had a thought regarding digtrons furnace. I think it would look great if the fuel hopper reminds of MTs regular furnace. After all fuel is burnt in the same dirty steamenginey way, I imagine. A bit more low-tech then, with a hint of burning fire inside.

A similiar MT look could be applied to the inventory hopper, making it remind of the MT chest a bit. Just a thought!

[hajo]

amazing noisy monster digtron

BTW: I wanted to compare the effects of particles on/off,
but after I un-checked "Particles" in the game-settings,
the digtron still produces smoke etc. when activating the controller.

How is that supposed to work ?

Also, I see no effects when the diggers are digging,
it doesn't matter if particles are turned on or off.