Bukkit

All right, I now have the teleportation and static movement signs Jaiph requested working in the latest alpha build. In order to use them you need to add the corresponding line to your .craft file:

canTeleport: true

canStaticMove: true

and put a sign on the craft which reads (without the bullets):

• Teleport:
• x,y,z

or

• Move:
• x,y,z

This is a very powerful ability, and I feel you should think long and hard before giving your users easy access to this. By making movement trivially easy, it basically bypasses 1/3 of the game. It should either be extraordinarily expensive, or restricted to few users, or both. That being said, some good points were made where this can be very helpful in providing Minecraft functionality it currently lacks. This lets you make elevators to bring aircraft up to a flight deck, or simple conveyors within a building.

@Mriya

From what I can read about that plugin, I don't see why it wouldn't be compatible. Give it a try and let me know.

Fixed a "comodification" bug that would trigger if a craft moved while the entity list updated, and another bug in the sinking code that would leave blocks behind.

Also, I uploaded a video to youtube we made showcasing the plugin with some airship combat. Towards the end you can see the big airship crashing into a mountainside so you can see that code at work. It's a little laggy, since this was made on my laptop while it was running the server, the video capture software, AND 2 minecraft clients. On a real server without all that junk running it would probably be smoother.

YouTube Video: Minecraft Epic Airship Combat

Take a look at the video, it also has some of my favorite airship designs, showing you what is possible with the plugin.

Ok, craft crashing/sinking is in the newest Alpha build. If you specify a "sinkPercent" value, then it will check every 5 seconds to see if your craft has less than that percentage of its flyblock minimums. In my server, this is usually because someone set your ship/airship on fire, but it could be anything. If so, it starts to sink. They sink through both air and water. It's not perfect yet, big airships leave a few blocks in the air, and big water ships leave some air in the water.

But it is still awesome. On a small airship or a boat its not so bad. If you can put out the fire, you can ride it down and probably be OK. (Assuming whoever shot you down doesn't come in and finish you off with a burst of fireballs). But you do not want to be on a big airship when its coming down.

There is no way you can put out the fire. There's just too much stuff burning. So you have to try to find a part of the ship that is safe and wait the flames out. Maybe you survive the flames. But soon the ship is going to hit ground, and the structure will collapse. So the roof caves in, crushing and killing you. Ok, so you jump when it gets close to the ground, right? Except now the giant airship comes down on top of you, crushing and killing you. Yeah, being on a big ship coming down is bad news. I guess that's the price for the big guns and armor it buys you...

Fuel consumption is also in, you specify a "fuelBurnRate" in the .craft file and it burns that much fuel from any furnace on the ship. Its based off of the typical furnace smelting ratios. So a fuelBurnRate of 1.0 means a piece of coal or charcoal lets your ship move 8 times, and a block of coal lets it move 80. Higher or lower percentages affect the number correspondingly.

EDIT: IMPORTANT NOTE: This new alpha build requires new localization files, because it adds new language to the system to let you know when you run out of fuel or your ship is crashing. You either need to delete the movecraft plugin directory and re-install it (backing up craft files, of course). Or you need to extract the localization file for your language from the movecraft.jar file into your localization directory.

@Wurlshkins

Hello Wurishkins. I'm not sure I understand the question, but if you are asking how many resources the plugin consumes, it depends highly on usage. If your server is not very beefy, you can limit craft size and speed, and disable some of the more advanced features. If you're server is a nicer one, you can operate larger craft. On my server (which is my laptop, a core-2 duo machine), we routinely operate 6000+ block crafts. Often more than one simultaneously. I have limited their update speed to 0.5, which means they update once every 2 seconds. And I gave them a cruise block skipping of 4, so they basicaly can travel 5 blocks at a time straight forward. The end result is they are a little slow, but still manageable.

One weakness of the plugin right now is a lack of documentation showing you how to do all of this. Right now I'm finishing the last of the new features I will be adding, which is crashing/sinking crafts (its awesome!) and the static movement and teleport signs requested by Jaiph. Once those are done, I will start working on making some decent tutorials showing you guys how to use all this stuff. Plus the inevitable bug stomping. I'm sure there will be plenty of problems from introducing this many new features this rapidly.

@CHICKENS_BURNING Interesting. Looks like it may not be using the new classes. Still, I'm 99% sure this will fix it, assuming you have the new version

In the plugin's config.yml, add a line that reads:

CompatibilityMode: true

Many thanks to those who have been assisting with alpha testing, several of you found a bug related to the new code to the last alpha version to smooth out player movement. It was making Spigot servers crash consistently, and CraftBukkit servers crash randomly if they had several crafts moving at once.

To fix it I had to move the player/entity movement code inside the map updater. The upside is it should work fine now. The downside is players walking around inside a craft which is moving is more jerky than it was. I may return to this in the future to smooth it out, but I'm moving on to more pressing things for now.

There is a new alpha test version. If anyone wants to help out with testing the newest features, PM me and I'll get it to you.

@WeRoEDV

Hey WeRoEDV, I'll make sure you get an update one way or the other by Tuesday. Sorry for the wait.

Ok, Cruise Control is now working. Basically you right click a sign to turn it on, then it keeps moving until you right click again to turn it off. Next feature is going to be optional fuel consumption.

Also the bugstomping march goes on. I fixed a bug where the rotation system was ignoring the Z coordinate for players, and another one where levers were not rotating correctly. It also now places a block under your feet if a movement will result in you standing on air. The effect is that it is now virtually impossible to get kicked out of your craft, and no more of that annoying falling down and bouncing back up as you move.

@Jaiph

Cool video. Ok, I'm sold. I'm working on a "cruise control" right now that will allow it to skip a specified number of blocks and keep moving as long as certain conditions are met. That may help with some of what you are trying to do. In the sense that you could make a specialized craft that goes very quickly over long distances.

However you couldn't use that for an elevator (because it only does horizontal movement), and it is defined per craft file so it's only one speed per .craft type. So I'll get your use case working some other way.

One caveat: vertical movement through water will have unexpected results if you skip blocks. Thats because of the way the code works that handles watercraft. I'm afraid I don't think that is changing anytime soon, it was a bear to get that code working right.

EDIT: I just thought of a complication. I'll PM you and we can hash out the details.

@Jaiph

Hello Jaiph, could you explain what advantage you would see in the move command as opposed to the current method? What functionality would it offer that is not currently covered?

Personally, I dislike typed commands being used by users, and avoid them where possible. But if there was a need for them I could see it. As far as large craft, one of my favorite airships is this one that I made:

http://www.minecraft-schematics.com/schematic/1314/

which has about 6000 blocks, and works great on my latest alpha build. (not so much on the current release build I'm afraid)