32 replies to this topic

[SilentPro]

With v1.41 turtles can place signs with text, but it would be even more uselful (at least for me),
if turtles could read placed signs as well.
It could be incorporated into the "turtle.dig...()" functions, which return the text of the sign after picking it up.

Advantages:
You could leave some messages for turtles in the field for them to find,
instead of building a rednet communication network or complex user interfaces.

For instance, you could:

• mark trees to be chopped
  
• mark dig outs (holes, tunnels) to be made with stated location and dimensions
  
• mark a path to follow the user with infos on changed direction
  
• mark intersections in "abandoned mineshafts" and let the turtle dig out the complex structure with your help
  
• give information on chest contents
  
• use them as blueprints for simple builds
  
• ...much more!

[Sebra]

If Turtle can write, why cannot it read signs?
Support it.

[Pharap]

mark trees to be chopped
-can be done with a co-ordinates system
mark dig outs (holes, tunnels) to be made with stated location and dimensions
-can be done with a co-ordinates system
mark a path to follow the user with infos on changed direction
-nearly impossible, and highly improbable, it's not a dog
mark intersections in "abandoned mineshafts" and let the turtle dig out the complex structure with your help
-again, with a co-ordinates system, this is possible.
give information on chest contents
-if you organise your chests, this can be done with co-ordinates
use them as blueprints for simple builds
-this can be done with the organised chests and telling the turtle what order to pick stuff up in

Pretty much all of that can be done with enough programming. Admittedly the gps system isn't very useful, but you can get a turtle to track it's co-ordinates by counting when it moves, depending on the direction it moves. As for getting a turtle to respond for signs, you can make it test for signs, so if you make it test for 5 different objects that it's not expecting to find in the tunnels (eg sandstone, wood, torches, signs, gates, fencing) you can get it to change direction accordingly.

As for why a turtle can't read signs. Do you know of any computers that read signs?
To put it a better way, do you know of any computers that can scan signs, then convert the text on the image into a text file?
Logically, it wouldn't make sense that turtles could read signs. Printing is one thing, text recognition is another, after all, they are only machines, they aren't humans.

[BigSHinyToys]

Pharap, on 12 August 2012 - 07:03 AM, said:

mark trees to be chopped
-can be done with a co-ordinates system
mark dig outs (holes, tunnels) to be made with stated location and dimensions
-can be done with a co-ordinates system
mark a path to follow the user with infos on changed direction
-nearly impossible, and highly improbable, it's not a dog
mark intersections in "abandoned mineshafts" and let the turtle dig out the complex structure with your help
-again, with a co-ordinates system, this is possible.
give information on chest contents
-if you organise your chests, this can be done with co-ordinates
use them as blueprints for simple builds
-this can be done with the organised chests and telling the turtle what order to pick stuff up in

Pretty much all of that can be done with enough programming. Admittedly the gps system isn't very useful, but you can get a turtle to track it's co-ordinates by counting when it moves, depending on the direction it moves. As for getting a turtle to respond for signs, you can make it test for signs, so if you make it test for 5 different objects that it's not expecting to find in the tunnels (eg sandstone, wood, torches, signs, gates, fencing) you can get it to change direction accordingly.

As for why a turtle can't read signs. Do you know of any computers that read signs?
To put it a better way, do you know of any computers that can scan signs, then convert the text on the image into a text file?
Logically, it wouldn't make sense that turtles could read signs. Printing is one thing, text recognition is another, after all, they are only machines, they aren't humans.

Here is me getting nit picky. The signs text is not hand writing it is a series of Black and Not back dots arranged in an order to look like letters. a turtle could compare this arrangement of dots to other examples of Letters like the ones it copied to paint / laser burn / ect into the sign. this pattern could be converted into a string and then used for what ever prosperous you had in mind. Yes coordinate based navigation systems could be used for all the thinks you mentioned. But coordinates cant tell you the name of the house owner (there is no public Coordinate / owner list) . You assume that all signs would be placed by the player as such the player could have equally just uploaded coordinates to a data base instead But this is not true turtles and other players make signs and the prosperous / reasons for them cant be determined based on coordinates.

Not that I think it would add much in terms of game play.

[Pharap]

BigSHinyToys, on 12 August 2012 - 07:16 AM, said:

Here is me getting nit picky. The signs text is not hand writing it is a series of Black and Not back dots arranged in an order to look like letters. a turtle could compare this arrangement of dots to other examples of Letters like the ones it copied to paint / laser burn / ect into the sign. this pattern could be converted into a string and then used for what ever prosperous you had in mind. Yes coordinate based navigation systems could be used for all the thinks you mentioned. But coordinates cant tell you the name of the house owner (there is no public Coordinate / owner list) . You assume that all signs would be placed by the player as such the player could have equally just uploaded coordinates to a data base instead But this is not true turtles and other players make signs and the prosperous / reasons for them cant be determined based on coordinates.

Not that I think it would add much in terms of game play.

While that is true, you have to assume that a turtle wrote the sign in the first place. Technically speaking if this were a real life situation, any player written sign would have different handwriting to printed signs and signs written by other players. Things would start getting complicated quickly. For one thing a turtle would have to log samples of a player's handwriting for every letter of the alphabet, as well as having to know who the sign was written by (which could induce an infinite recursion).

As for the co-ordinates thing, turtles can be taught to recognise houses providing the house has a door or is made of some non naturally occurring substance, like wooden planks or cobblestone. You could program a turtle to send it's location back to base once it detects a door. It's the same concept as turtle map building software.

And in short, the people in charge of the mod are highly unlikely to implement it anyway.

[BigSHinyToys]

all signs are written by Steve or a turtle Impersonating Steve using Steve hand writing (this ant real life). So it is as simple as reading them as a QR code.
with out a list of property bounders A turtle would not be able to tell hows houes it is. or hows bed this is or how 's chest this is. And how is going to create a data base for all that info signs are quicker.

[Sebra]

You can place sign "Glass" above chest with Glass. If Turtle detect a sign, it can read it(dig and replace) and know where to suck() Glass from.

[Pharap]

BigSHinyToys, on 12 August 2012 - 08:00 AM, said:

all signs are written by Steve or a turtle Impersonating Steve using Steve hand writing (this ant real life). So it is as simple as reading them as a QR code.
with out a list of property bounders A turtle would not be able to tell hows houes it is. or hows bed this is or how 's chest this is. And how is going to create a data base for all that info signs are quicker.

If the turtle detects a certain block, it can relay the block type and co-ordinates to the player, who can then and investigate who's house it is.
Besides which, no players I know actually put a sign at the front of their house saying 'derpy lives here, don't come in'.
The turtle doesn't need to log all the data, it can relay it back to base, thus it prints to screen. Besides, you'd be surprised how much data a table can contain. All the key constants are stored in a table, and there are 200 of those.

And 'steve' is just the basic avatar, not every player is steve, every player is an individual player, with different items and thus different handwriting. A turtle could be 'trained' (programmed) to imitate peoples handwriting, but ultimately if it encounters new handwriting, it's going to have to sample it.

[Pharap]

Sebra, on 12 August 2012 - 08:06 AM, said:

You can place sign "Glass" above chest with Glass. If Turtle detect a sign, it can read it(dig and replace) and know where to suck() Glass from.

Or alternatively you can tell it 'the chest for glass is at these co-ordinates' and the turtle can make itself go to those co-ordinates when it needs glass. It's still reading data, just data it stores internally. Besides, if someone swaps the signs for glass and wood, your house is going to look more like an ugly greenhouse. On top of which, you have to be able to tell the turtle where the sign is in the first place. I'm guessing you'd suggest using another sign, but then the turtle has to know where that sign is, and the sign that tells it to go to that sign, and so on in an infinite recursion of logic.

Compare to co-ordinates system: Turtle, you are at 5, 16, 23, you need to go to 10, 42, 20 and bring me the item that matches the item in your 4th slot. Turtle goes, comes back, no problem, simple computer logic. It makes more sense than signs.

[wilcomega]

totaly! support />

[Sebra]

Pharap, as you say yourself, it is alternative. And as alternative it has good use and bad use.
Coordinate system has it's own little problems.
Imagine a Turtle goes from mine, searches for a chest for some resource, place new chest for new resource, add a sign above it for a player.
I would not ask for reading if writing was not provided.

[Pharap]

Sebra, on 12 August 2012 - 08:33 AM, said:

Pharap, as you say yourself, it is alternative. And as alternative it has good use and bad use.
Coordinate system has it's own little problems.
Imagine a Turtle goes from mine, searches for a chest for some resource, place new chest for new resource, add a sign above it for a player.
I would not ask for reading if writing was not provided.

You mean aside from signs being very easy to destroy?
What problems does a co-ordinate system have?
Does your computer at home read text? And yet it can still print it, funny how that works. And before you ask if my computer can mine around and dig, the answer is no, but it would be easier for most robotics experts to make a remote control robot that digs than it would be for them to make a scanner that could read printed text.

[Sebra]

To read printed scanned text is surprisingly easier than to make such Turtle engine.
But we are in Minecraft theme so reality should be in association, not in demand.
You can give coords to one Turtle, to several, make them share that knowledge... But you need to calculate all those coords yourself, distribute them, correct them on any change. If you do not want such alternative, it do not means it bad.

[Pharap]

Sebra, on 12 August 2012 - 10:07 AM, said:

To read printed scanned text is surprisingly easier than to make such Turtle engine.
But we are in Minecraft theme so reality should be in association, not in demand.
You can give coords to one Turtle, to several, make them share that knowledge... But you need to calculate all those coords yourself, distribute them, correct them on any change. If you do not want such alternative, it do not means it bad.

They sell kits to make a robot that moves via remote control, they do not sell kits to build your own text scanner, if it was that simple they would sell them.
Tell that to the people in charge of the mod, they tend to disagree.
It's easy, first, line them all up, designate them all the correct co-ordinates, then edit their code so that when they move, they adjust their co-ordinates accordingly. Calculating the co-ordinates is as simple as counting the number of turtles there are in a line. As long as the turtles are monitoring their own movements, you don't have to worry about a thing, just bring a turtle with you and you will always be able to know where you are. And if you set up a computer to track the other turtles via rednet using their co-ordinates, everything will be just fine.
On top of which, it's easier to remember one set of co-ordinates for where your home is than to have to post a load of signs pointing your way home.

[D3matt]

You can download open-source software that can read text and more out of an image. I'm pretty sure my computer at home can't tell me if the material its sitting on matches the material in its inventory. What's your point?

[xuma202]

Look what I made!!

http://www.computerc...-reading-signs/

[Pharap]

D3matt, on 12 August 2012 - 02:37 PM, said:

You can download open-source software that can read text and more out of an image. I'm pretty sure my computer at home can't tell me if the material its sitting on matches the material in its inventory. What's your point?

And yet Capcha and ReCapcha remain one of the main methods of telling bots apart from humans.
I'm pretty sure your computer doesn't have an inventory.
My point is, the creators won't implement it, and so far, most of the suggested ideas can already be achieved through other means.

[Sebra]

xuma202, on 12 August 2012 - 02:55 PM, said:

Look what I made!!

Cool, but why ARP incompatible?

[Xfel]

I'm looking into it.

[xuma202]

Sebra, on 12 August 2012 - 06:21 PM, said:

xuma202, on 12 August 2012 - 02:55 PM, said:

Look what I made!!

Cool, but why ARP incompatible?

I missed checking if the id I'm using for the Turtle upgrade is already in use. I've already reserved the id I will use and I'll put up a fixed version tomorrow or later this day. I'm very sorry for this.