every time I see a new Minecraft programming mod (ComputerCraft, OpenComputers, Integrated Dynamics, Hex Casting, etc.) my thought process is always:

• oohh imagine all the cool things I could do with this!
• wait… what would I do with this?
• Minecraft isn’t really complex enough for me to need this level of automation, and I don’t think there are any mods that add enough complexity to warrant this

like every time I install ComputerCraft or Project Red I’m always like “ooh I can’t wait to use this to automate something” but then I never need to automate anything that’s more complex than like, one boolean logic operation

I think it would be amazing if certain mods added stuff to the game that was deliberately designed to need automating. for example a reactor that needs a control loop system to keep it from melting down or wasting reactant. or maybe computer-controlled omnidirectional conveyor belts as the only way to transport items between machines

but as it is I feel like ComputerCraft, OpenComputers, etc. are power tools without anything to use them on and that’s such a shame

to me the fun of a game that lets me do programming inside of it is that the game will extrinsically reward me for my automation, but I feel like Minecraft programming mods don’t really offer any extrinsic reward for doing the actual programming, except for very very simple cases that boil down to something like “take items from spot A and put them in spot B”

maybe I should learn how to make Minecraft mods just so that I can add more complex stuff to automate, like a nuclear reactor that needs to be constantly monitored by a computer

ooh, actually, maybe I could make the Minecraft equivalent of the Alkahistorian games, where the pipes between elements (and therefore the reaction rates) could be controlled via redstone

okay so thinking about this more: Alkahistorian (stage three) rewards the player by giving them upgrades that automate certain aspects of the map. so the reward is a decrease in cognitive load, letting them abstract away those complexities as “this just makes more of the element that I need over time”

but what if that didn’t happen? what if the player had to be the one to automate those parts? so later on as you unlock new, more efficient recipes for crafting certain elements, those recipes would actually be more difficult to automate. encourging the player to rewrite their existing automation code to incorporate the new recipes

does this post make sense to anybody except me? I’m ngl I’m actually really really tempted to make a prototype of this idea, though I don’t know anything about game dev and wouldn’t have any idea how lol. but this sounds like the kind of mod that I would fucking love to have exist in the world

@kasdeya there’s a mod called warp drive that uses computercraft or opencomputers computers to control various aspects of spaceships, including the highest-energy-producing reactor in the mod which explodes if not tuned right, but I don’t know if it’s on newer versions of Minecraft since 1.12.2

or you could play with friends and invent an email server and client, that’s something I always keep meaning to do

@kasdeya been wanting to look at minecraft modding for ages, maybe luanti(formerly minetest) would be easier but ive always been wanting to have a sort of multiplayer thing going on where everyone involved also makes mods and this seems incredibly interesting as a backdrop for this when everyone already knows programming

@kasdeya we know of a mod pack that adds this sort of thing, we could ask what it was

@kasdeya having booted up luanti and given it a shot... hmm... itd be a lot of work but i still need to see the minecraft mod part of the equation

@subG ooh omg Warp Drive sounds amazing - I’m going to look that up later. it sounds like exactly the kind of thing that I’d want

@desea omg interesting so the idea is that everyone playing on the server is also making mods for the server as part of playing?

@tempest ooh yes please! I’d love that if you don’t mind - I’m curious what it is and what it’s like

@kasdeya yeagh