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Opinion on OpenComputers?


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#21 Alice

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Posted 20 December 2013 - 11:55 PM

Lol hey Sangar, nice to see you on.

Yeah, I have a clean Forge 1.6.4, OC, and the latest BuildCraft.
I crash occasionally with recipies in NEI, but that's it.

#22 Lyqyd

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Posted 21 December 2013 - 01:10 AM

View PostSangar, on 20 December 2013 - 04:51 PM, said:

View PostLyqyd, on 19 December 2013 - 10:59 AM, said:

That said, a word about OC and Ask a Pro: these are the ComputerCraft forums, so questions in Ask a Pro should be ComputerCraft-specific.
Should this ever become an actual problem let me know and I'll gladly add a note in my posts.

I appreciate the offer and hope it never becomes a problem, especially not a drastic enough one to ask for a specific note! We're pretty welcoming here, so it would take quite a few people persistently causing problems before I feel this would be a necessary step.

The project looks good, and while it's not really up my alley personally, I'm excited to see a little friendly competition pushing both mods to be better than they would be otherwise! :)

#23 ardera

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Posted 21 December 2013 - 02:56 AM

View PostBomb Bloke, on 19 December 2013 - 06:46 PM, said:

The problem with the mod handing you all those systems on a plate is that then there's nothing left for the players to do.
I don't agree too. Instead, like if they were adding computers with controllable pixels, you had much more to do. You had to write a custom font system (isn't that hard, I think), you had to write render engines for this, you had to find a solution that the screen doesn't lag, etc. And if they would add a mouse.isOver or mouse_over event, you had to write code that updates your buttons etc (isn't that hard, too).

In the end, you have to code more, but the output becomes much better for the user.

View Postawsmazinggenius, on 19 December 2013 - 09:28 PM, said:

I would also like some support for parsing JSON returned by websites, because right now I have been writing my own handlers.
http://files.luaforg...son/json/0.9.50
just a bit of fixing CClua - lua compatibility problems, and then you have your json translator. Got it working some time ago in gh-dl, you could use the functions there too, if you're tired of fixing issues :)

Edited by ardera, 21 December 2013 - 03:08 AM.


#24 Bomb Bloke

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Posted 21 December 2013 - 04:01 AM

Er, looks like a bit of confusion there. I have nothing against adding APIs that implement functions that can't already be achieved in ComputerCraft as it is now (within reason - some ideas are bad regardless). We were talking about the somewhat frequent requests for APIs to be added to the official ComputerCraft package, that users can already write themselves - distantcam felt that some would be beneficial in that players wouldn't need to all "waste time" writing their own lower-level functions to do simple stuff (... something that happens to result in a lot of rather similar APIs being posted to these forums), whereas I felt that that very need is a good thing because it forces them to learn how things work at those lower levels.

It does strike me, though, that a large monitor with minimum text scale can indeed run a custom font, if you want it too. I assume that's already been done.

#25 awsmazinggenius

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Posted 22 December 2013 - 04:56 PM

View Postardera, on 21 December 2013 - 02:56 AM, said:

View PostBomb Bloke, on 19 December 2013 - 06:46 PM, said:

The problem with the mod handing you all those systems on a plate is that then there's nothing left for the players to do.
I don't agree too. Instead, like if they were adding computers with controllable pixels, you had much more to do. You had to write a custom font system (isn't that hard, I think), you had to write render engines for this, you had to find a solution that the screen doesn't lag, etc. And if they would add a mouse.isOver or mouse_over event, you had to write code that updates your buttons etc (isn't that hard, too).

Thanks for that JSON parser - +1 for you :). I thought of this before, thinking it would be great for tooltips and the like, but then thought to myself (without having great knowledge of Java, or even seeing either Minecraft's or ComputerCraft's source code) that the server probably has no way of knowing where the client's cursor is. (I could be wrong on all of this :)) Also, what if 2 players are accessing the same computer? And what is somebody has slow internet, so the stream of "mouse position" packets was slower to the server, making it confusing, with laggy tooltips/whatever? While it would be awesome, it probably isn't feasible.

Edited by awsmazinggenius, 22 December 2013 - 05:05 PM.


#26 distantcam

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Posted 22 December 2013 - 08:31 PM

View PostBomb Bloke, on 21 December 2013 - 04:01 AM, said:

whereas I felt that that very need is a good thing because it forces them to learn how things work at those lower levels.
That's great in theory, but the practice is that beginners either ignore that part of the system saying "that feature will be added later" or they do a really poor implementation with global variables, etc etc that no one wants to use.

Bottom line, you can't force programmers to do anything. It's like herding cats.

#27 lieudusty

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Posted 22 December 2013 - 09:18 PM

To be honest, if I had to choose, I'd pick OpenComputers over ComputerCraft. I like the feeling of it being more "realistic" in a way because it has a RAM limit and it requires power. I like playing with a limit on things, rather than having everything. Just my personal preference.

#28 Kingdaro

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Posted 22 December 2013 - 09:27 PM

I don't really like the point that forcing lower-level work is actually a good thing. From my experience in working with C/C++ and from "reinventing the wheel" multiple times during game and CC development, it's honestly a waste of time when I'm actually trying to get something done.

As an example, let's say you're a new player who recently found this mod, looking to create awesome automated contraptions using computers and turtles. Then you find that you have to learn an entire programming language, which includes but is not limited to: the difference between globals and locals, why globals are bad, the difference between dot and colon notation, how tables work and the many caveats that come with using them, how to read and write files, and so on.

Obviously to do anything you'll have to do some bit of learning, but the amount of "learning" that CC specifically promotes is pretty much the repetition of many processes that are trivial to do on their own, but build up in terms of time and effort spent in making the systems you want. It's redundant and you become annoyed more than you actually learn anything. Some examples being you need three lines of verbose code to read and write files, that 9 times out of 10, the read() function needs to be rewritten to implement a length limit among other things, the colors table doesn't have any backward references, and looping is almost always needed to find a specific connected peripheral. Some of these examples are more "valid" than others, but for getting things done in your minecraft world, reinventing the wheel shouldn't be encouraged.

And of course, there are people (many here reading this I'm sure) that actually do pick up mods like this to learn a bit of programming, and that's fine. For people who are actually curious and want to learn, they can look at the source code. People who look up how to create coroutine management systems are always pointed towards the parallel API, which is an almost perfect example of how to use coroutines. Forcing people to learn before letting them create their desired output discourages learning. It's curiosity that creates learning. As a (kind of bad) example, if a function like "fs.read(filename, mode)" were implemented, I would probably be more inclined to look behind and see what allows me to read files so easily, then continue to use this wonderful easy method. As opposed to using the method we have have now, I would learn how files are read, but I would just give up because it's annoying typing three lines of code every time.

In short, I personally believe in mods that don't "get in your way" and allow self-induced learning, rather than only giving the bare minimum and expecting the user to work low level for whatever they need. It may seem like I'm indirectly making suggestions in this post, but I know they probably won't be considered, and that's fine. CC is a nice mod, and until OpenComputers actually has less convoluted vomit-inducing recipes, CC is probably one of the best Lua development environments out there in my opinion. Even then, I feel as though OCS tries to be too much like a real computer, and goes against the policy of curiosity-induced learning I explained prior, but I suppose the only thing we can do is look toward the future and see how things turn out.

#29 oeed

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Posted 22 December 2013 - 10:12 PM

Yea, one of the things I love about CC is the simplicity of it. The recipes are very simple and easy to make. Compare that with many of the machine mods which require you to craft dozens of different items to make one block. Requiring power seems like a rather annoying and pointless addition, but that's my 'oversimplified' point of view.

#30 Kingdaro

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Posted 22 December 2013 - 11:02 PM

View Postoeed, on 22 December 2013 - 10:12 PM, said:

Yea, one of the things I love about CC is the simplicity of it. The recipes are very simple and easy to make. Compare that with many of the machine mods which require you to craft dozens of different items to make one block. Requiring power seems like a rather annoying and pointless addition, but that's my 'oversimplified' point of view.
I agree completely. I'm fine with machines requiring power as long as it's reasonable and aligns well with my current state in-game (e.g. at the point I probably have a coal generator, I should have machines requiring monumental amounts of power). A long clusterf*** of recipes is completely unreasonable in any situation. It's just pointless effort.

#31 Alice

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Posted 22 December 2013 - 11:22 PM

It's not reasonable. The power that is drawn from the simple system I had was pulling from three stirling engines and still was not enough.

#32 awsmazinggenius

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Posted 22 December 2013 - 11:24 PM

How much power did the system need? (Also does it use MJ or EU, or both?) I haven't downloaded OC yet.

#33 Alice

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Posted 22 December 2013 - 11:30 PM

I think it takes MJ, EU, and RF.

I don't know, but it's over 3 stirling engines.
I'll try HV solar right next to an MFSU later.

#34 Farrk

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Posted 23 December 2013 - 05:39 AM

In my opinion making a computer a multiblock of more than 2 blocks is pretty lame. It would make more sense if they actually added several types of computer cases with different amount of slots for peripherals, so you would still need to make parts for it, but at least it would stay compact... Computercraft for most of users is pretty much a cheap mining solution which only require some iron and diamond pick(or even gem pick with project red), splitting a computer into 10 blocks won't suddenly make people start learning lua, that is not the way to go. I would still pick CC over OC, at least for now. Computers needing power to run ? Fine by me, but computers that require half of room is no-go. Also installation of OC is slightly more complicated.

Edited by Farrk, 23 December 2013 - 06:05 AM.


#35 Bomb Bloke

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Posted 24 December 2013 - 02:58 AM

While I quite like the idea of having a server room where the server pretty much IS the room, I can see that there are times when the ability to compact things down is important. Perhaps you could use "larger" computers to work machines which generate parts for "smaller" computers? Treat an attached machine block as multiple peripherals, to which you must send commands according to various different patterns in order to have it make the various different parts for the more "advanced" machines. You'd literally have to write a program in order to generate the next branch of the tech tree, so to speak.

Ah, now you've got me started with the silly suggestions. :D

View PostKingdaro, on 22 December 2013 - 09:27 PM, said:

As a (kind of bad) example, if a function like "fs.read(filename, mode)" were implemented, I would probably be more inclined to look behind and see what allows me to read files so easily, then continue to use this wonderful easy method.
A recent burst of people asking how to twist the rednet API to send/receive on custom ports makes me think you'd be one of few. Most of 'em seem intent on tricking their computers into thinking they have different IDs rather then altering the rednet API or interfacing with the modems directly.

I assume they don't even realise that the latter two are options, and so never look into them - without the foreknowledge that there is a lower level, it's a bit of a "mental leap" for them to make.

#36 ETHANATOR360

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Posted 24 December 2013 - 12:48 PM

CC is more of an educational mod with cheap easily obtained computers while OC is more for realistic survival with much more expensive computers that require power to operate.

#37 robhol

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Posted 29 December 2013 - 03:58 PM

If someone made a "competing" mod, they could've taken a LOT of hints from the 99% denied suggestions here. Instead, they took the same language, made it more complicated, clunkier in both installation and usage, theory and practice. Not impressed, truth be told.

#38 zorn

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Posted 31 December 2013 - 02:19 PM

View Postrobhol, on 29 December 2013 - 03:58 PM, said:

If someone made a "competing" mod, they could've taken a LOT of hints from the 99% denied suggestions here. Instead, they took the same language, made it more complicated, clunkier in both installation and usage, theory and practice. Not impressed, truth be told.

Im curious to go check them out, because the two options I wanted when I looked into the CC config file was 'harder recipes' and 'increase power use'. I didn't find them, unless its in 1.6 maybe.

I'd argue that 9 out of 10 turtle users are usign them for automated resource gathering. In that respect, turtles are THE strongest option there is. They speed up game progression a lot, and for people who don't enjoy the game when it gets to pseudo creative mode ("end game") turtles just bring that point to the game faster.

Personally im looking into opencomputers. Id happily stick with CC, but why wouldn't the author let people config the mod to be harder? Even gregtech lets you make his mod easier, IMO opencomputers is the result of CC being less tolerant of other playstyles than... gregtech. Think about that for a minute.

#39 oeed

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Posted 01 January 2014 - 09:35 PM

View Postrobhol, on 29 December 2013 - 03:58 PM, said:

If someone made a "competing" mod, they could've taken a LOT of hints from the 99% denied suggestions here. Instead, they took the same language, made it more complicated, clunkier in both installation and usage, theory and practice. Not impressed, truth be told.

Agreed, but many of the suggestions aren't great. There is a reason for their rejection, but yes, there are a few gems in there.

#40 mrpoopy345

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Posted 05 January 2014 - 11:19 AM

I think Computercraft is better for making cool programs to share with the world and have a lot of fun doing it.
OpenComputers is more for making a program for your survival world to control everything.
OpenComputers is specifically focused towards:
Make a lot of machines, work to get your computer, make a quick program, be able to control those machines.
Computercraft is focused on:
Have fun, be free, make cool programs, show them to the world.
I myself prefer Computercraft.





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