Version 1.0a is working pretty well.

It would be nice if there was a percentage complete indicator if you've chosen to mine a set number of chunks.

 joebodo, on 22 February 2014 - 02:08 AM, said:

No, haven't tired of testing. As I've already said, I think this is very nearly the perfect mining script, so I'm more than happy to help squash any bugs.

I'll download the latest right now.

Version .90 has some issues. Unless this behavior is needed for the new concentric mining strategy when specifying a quarry size...

- On initial deployment, it only deploys a single spot loader. It also picks up the single spot loader when you quit, so maybe this is just new behavior.

- The turtles don't report their depth until they reach bedrock, then they start reporting on the way back up.

- When you select "Stop Mining", the mining boss doesn't park under the spot loaders as it did in previous versions. This is just a cosmetic issue, I'm just curious if it's intended. I suspect intended, because when the "Quit" command is issued, the mining boss does make its way back and picks up the single spot loader.

joebodo, on 17 February 2014 - 04:39 PM, said:

The Optifine mod allows you to turn off the weather.

joebodo, on 17 February 2014 - 10:14 AM, said:

Sounds great! Looking forward to trying it out.

Oh, and on the topic of rednet range, weather is never an issue with me. I think the rain in Minecraft is annoying, so I have weather disabled.

joebodo, on 14 February 2014 - 08:53 PM, said:

Well that's a pretty simple fix. I don't know why I didn't think of that...

Apemanzilla, on 12 February 2014 - 11:44 AM, said:

That's interesting. I wonder why that is? I didn't watch it long enough to see if it would pick up any rare drops. Maybe if I have some spare time, I'll try 1.58 again and see if I net any rare drops.

Link149, on 12 February 2014 - 04:59 PM, said:

My mining turtles don't have any issues picking up the blocks they break. It's only the melee turtles I'm having trouble with. The turtles inventory has plenty of space because I have an inventory dump routine that is called when the turtle isn't attacking. And yes, as I mentioned in my original post, adding a turtle.suck() does work, but that only picks up the items dropped directly in front of the turtle, and I'd prefer not to use a kludgey workaround when it shouldn't be necessary since the turtle should be grabbing the mob drops automatically.

judos, on 14 February 2014 - 07:23 AM, said:

The turtles do turn. Both on the trip down, and the trip up. Between the two, they get almost all of the ore. (There are a few ore blocks left along the chunk edges)

Joebodo, still having turtles abandoned on restart with v.07. No errors, just a turtle sitting there saying "mineWorker started..." I tried rebooting several times, (same result: mineWorker started...) but the mining boss wouldn't come and pick it up. I finally broke it and took it to the surface. This time it was picked up, which makes me think it could have been a range issue. Although I didn't think to check how deep the miner was, I'm guessing it was below layer 10 and the turtle was near the front of the chunk being mined, with the mining boss at the back. So it was easily over 64 blocks. I know the transmission range increases with height, but since the mining boss was only at layer 74, the range increase is probably not very much.

Edit: I just went back and checked the hole. The turtle was at layer 3. (I use thermal expansion and have it configured to flatten the bedrock layer, so there is only a single layer of bedrock at layer 1)

I don't know how to get around this issue without going to extreme lengths like placing a satellite at max world height or having the mining boss go up into the air to listen for miners... Seems like a lot of effort for a rare case. (if the issue was indeed range...)

With the latest version, turtles can still be left behind after a resume attempt. I had to locate the wayward turtle and found that it was at the command prompt after switching to the swarm directory. No error message. It's almost like this is a general ComputerCraft issue and nothing to do with your code. It's a bit like it started running the startup script, then just gave up without completing the startup directives. I would definitely expect some sort of error message instead of just sitting at the command prompt if it was a problem with your code...

Your latest version also relabels the turtles. This is a good idea, but would it be possible to use a shorter name? As it is now, when you check the status on the mining boss, you just see a list of: "mineWorker_", which isn't very descriptive. I'd like to see the number of the turtle as well. This of course may be due to the fact that I run Minecraft windowed, so perhaps my GUI scale is different than yours. (Does the GUI scale in ComputerCraft?)

I've now witnessed several resume cycles where mining turtles are left behind.

I've seen instances in which the turtle sits there at the bottom of its borehole, broadcasting the idle status message. The turtles that have been picked up continue mining, and eventually leave the idle turtle behind. You can terminate the script and either reboot or run the script to try again.

I've also seen instances where the turtle unpacks the script components, then exits the script, (no error message) leaving you at the command prompt.

In one odd instance, I located the stalled turtle and it was broadcasting the idle message, so I needed to terminate and restart. It took three tries before the turtle started broadcasting the alive status and the mining boss came to pick it up. However, before picking up the turtle, it broke both of the spot loaders, (dropping them to the ground, much like it does when encountering any obstacles while moving...) then picked up the miner and deployed it. I gathered up the spot loaders and put them back in the mining boss' inventory, and I'm currently monitoring this instance to see what happens next.

Edit: Woops, was typing this post when you posted your latest, joebodo. I'll abandon this test and start fresh with the new version.

Buho, on 11 February 2014 - 08:38 AM, said:

Thanks for your input, Buho.

However, If the movement of the turtles was the issue, I would expect it to be a consistant low framerate. However, the issue I was reporting was outside the norm. I had normal framerates as the turtles were working, but after an extended timeframe of running the script, all of a sudden the framerate dropped to unusability.

Restarting the client solved the framerate issues, but the script would no longer function. Breaking and replacing the old turtles did not help. (I've seen a script break all of the computers in a world more than once...) The only fix was starting a new world.

Edit: Removed nested quote.

Edit 2: I've had turtles disappear on two separate occaisions. I suspect that it happened during a resume, (I just saw that things appeared to be working fine and didn't check the mining boss status until later...) but it hasn't happened during any of the resumes that I've watched...

I also just had a failed resume using 10 mining turtles. The mining boss had called 8 out of 10 turtles up, when the script just stopped running. When this happened, the hourglass cursor icon popped up, and the framerate tanked and the client became unresponsibe. The miners were still sending updates, but the mining boss was frozen. No errors, and nothing odd showing up on the log file. Attempts to restart mining were unsuccesful. I'll start a new test world later.

joebodo, on 08 February 2014 - 01:12 PM, said:

No, you definitely don't want to bother with chasing down the drops. I'm not sure of the best solution.

I know that this script:
http://www.computerc...tle-ore-quarry/
Allows you to put a chest in one of the slots and uses that as a comparison block. If a chest is found, it sucks the items out before breaking the chest. I don't think this method will work for storage minecarts though.

This script:
http://www.computerc...ant-version-20/
Will optionally use the OpenPeripheral mod ( http://www.openblocks.info/ ) to recognize the chest as an inventory and will suck the items out. Again, the storage carts don't seem to work with this method and carts are simply broken, with some of the items being picked up by turtle.suck.

I'm thinking that if storage minecarts aren't capable of being detected like chests, it probably makes the most sense to simply break both of them and suck up what you can, rather than using a different method on both items.

joebodo, on 08 February 2014 - 01:12 PM, said:

Great! I'm currently trying the log to file option.

So far, I haven't had any issues resuming with the latest version.

joebodo, on 06 February 2014 - 08:50 PM, said:

Don't worry about it. With such a complex bit of code, there are bound to be hiccups.

I'll try out the new version later. I'm currently sending some turtles rampaging across a test world to see how stable things are for extended durations. They're currently almost 700 meters away from their starting point, and have been going for a little under 20 hours.

I only have 5 miners at the moment, because through some previous stress tests with 10 miners, it appears that the mining boss can get overwhelmed eventually. I've had two instances previously where my framerate absolutely tanked. 0-1fps, and my Java client was monopolizing my CPU, so it was tough to get anything to actually respond. I actually did get to the mining boss both times and it wasn't reporting anything odd, although the first time it happened, one of the spot loaders was missing. I have no idea what happened to it because it was nowhere along the trail the miners left. I have a feeling that it somehow disappeared due to the extremely low framerate. Perhaps getting broken by the mining boss, but never actually showing up in the turtles inventory or something...

Exiting the client and restarting improved the framerates, but the mining boss was stuck at the message that it was going to resume in 5 seconds. Any attempts to restart the mining met with the same results, so I'd just start testing in a new world.

So far only using 5 miners, the test has run much longer than either of the tests with 10 miners and I've had no issues with framerate.

Very nice job with this! As I said earlier, it's nearly the perfect mining script.

Edit: Corrected Typo. 10 hours should have read 20. We're nearing 24 hours now.

The suck command is working. One of the turtles has picked up some chest loot.

Buho, on 06 February 2014 - 08:22 AM, said:

Yeah, that's a tad overkill... I want all the coal as well, but if a turtle is only using what it actually needs, they find more than enough coal to fuel themselves as well as enough excess to power my base.

Cloudy, on 02 February 2014 - 02:14 PM, said:

As I understand it, Forgecraft often has developer versions of mods in use. Were you using Forge 9.11.1.965, or a newer developemental release?

I'm just curious because CometWolf also encountered the same issue, so is it possible that Forgecraft has something different than a normal user setup?

There are still some issues with resuming. I let the turtles mine a hole all the way to bedrock, then I let them get started on the next hole and exited minecraft.

Upon restarting, the mining boss went to rescue the first turtle and threw an error:
miningBoss:589: attempt to index ? (a nil value)

joebodo, on 02 February 2014 - 06:21 PM, said:

Thanks!

I'm just about to go to bed, so I'll try some resume tests tomorrow. Thanks again for sharing this script.

Just had an odd thing happen.

I wanted to test resuming after a restart. The boss went over and apparently called 4 of the 5 miners to come up out of their holes, then it came back to its place by the spot loaders and stopped. Since the turtles are just paused, I looked at the boss to see what it said.

It shows turtles 2,3, and 4 ready for pickup, and says it's releasing the miner, but then threw an error.

parallel:22: turtle:22: Expected number

The boss' inventory is completely full of the fourth turtle at the surface's inventory plus the initial garbage blocks. Is it possible the boss tried to pick up the turtle after taking its inventory, then not having any space to fit the turtle, the program errored? (I haven't tried this before, so I don't know the expected procedure of a resume)

Edit: I wanted to find out if this was due to a full inventory on the boss' part, so I reset everything and almost immediately restarted. The boss called three turtles up and picked one of them up. Now it says that it's releasing the miner, but it's trying to release it where one of the turtles at the surface is. So it's currently stuck in a loop trying to place the turtle where one is currently sitting. It apparently tries, path finds around a little bit, then tries again.

I did see the 25,000 value, but I assumed I was misunderstanding your code because I couldn't imagine that such a high number would be the fuel buffer. Currently my turtles are mining their fifth chunk and the most fuel any of them have mined is 12k. It's going to take them a while to hit 25,000. When I start running this outside of my testing world, I'll definitely change the buffer value.

Yes, circular mining would work well. It's also probably easier to code than serpentining because you'd only be turning one direction throughout the mining process.

Since I'm testing, out of curiosity I used WorldEdit to remove the garbage blocks from the three chunks I'd mined earlier and found that for some reason, there are a few valuable blocks left behind. Most of them are right along the chunk boundary, but there are a few instances where the blocks are a block away from the boundary, and in two instances, three blocks away. There are no leftover blocks at all passed three blocks from the boundary. I guess this is a side effect of your code keeping the turtles inside the chunk boundary? (Which I like, by the way. The turtles should definitely stay inside the chunk you've told them to mine.

Using WorldEdit to tell me the block distribution remaining in the three chunks after removing the garbage blocks, this is what was left behind:
2 - Certus Quartz. (Applied Energistics)
3 - Obsidian.
4 - Redstone Ore.
14 - Iron Ore.
14 - Various ore from Thermal Expansion. (World edit doesn't know what those are, so they're all lumped together)
22 - Coal.

Obviously, so few remaing isn't a huge deal, but I thought it was interesting that blocks were only missed near the chunk boundary. Luckily none of those were diamonds.

I'm still in the process of testing, but this appears to be nearly the perfect mining script. Very impressive! It's incredibly easy to use.

I really like the fact that the turtles attempt to backfill, so you end up with extremely few 'junk' blocks from the mining process. In 3 chunks, I have only had 1 piece of dirt and 1 piece of cobblestone returned.

I have a question though. I'm not very advanced with Lua yet, so I don't understand a lot of your code. I've been trying to determine what your script does when a turtle encounters a dungeon chest, or a storage minecart in a mineshaft. It appears that it just breaks them and doesn't attempt to suck up the loot?

Also, coal usage is excessive. After mining 3 chunks, I have zero coal returned, and some turtles strolling around with 7k+ fuel! (One with 10k ) A turtle can go a long way on 7k fuel... Perhaps allow them to carry another enderchest for fuel and they can just top off when they need to? Give them a buffer of 300 or something, then they can either use coal they've mined to hit the buffer, or in case they haven't found any, place the enderchest and grab a few pieces of coal.

I guess you can probably tell that my base depends on coal for fuel? (Liquifacted coal from Thermal Expansion to be precise...)

Another comment that I feel could improve the script would be to allow the user to set boundaries. I think it's great that you can start the mining process and basically just let it go until it hits the far lands, but I tend to like to mine certain areas. Like extreme hills biomes. So it would be great if you could tell it you wanted to mine a 4x4 chunk area, for example. In order to keep the chunks loaded, (using spot loaders) you could serpentine through the area. For example, mine the set number of chunks forward, then turn to the right at the boundary, and head back towards the chunk you started on. using that method you could always keep the current chunk loaded, as well as chunk that's not quite finished mining yet.

Anyway, great work on this!

CometWolf, on 31 January 2014 - 05:18 PM, said:

Try it with 1.57 or earlier versions...

CometWolf, on 31 January 2014 - 04:08 PM, said:

Yes they do. Or at least, yes, they used to do that...

CometWolf, on 31 January 2014 - 04:08 PM, said:

I'm aware that the release isn't exactly new. And yes, I'm aware that 1.6 is on the horizon. I didn't report the issue in hopes that it would be fixed in 1.58. I reported the issue so it could be fixed in 1.6.

Yesterday I noticed that there was a 1.58 release for ComputerCraft, so I updated.

The melee turtles aren't picking up the item drops from mobs they kill.

It's nothing script related, as a simple looping turtle.attack() will cause this behavior. Adding a turtle.suck() to the loop will pick up the items in front of the turtle, but anything falling outside that area is lost.

It's also not interference from another mod. In troubleshooting this issue, I used a test world with a pretty bare minimum of mods active.

The installed mods were:
Forge 9.11.1.965 - I believe this is the most current version for MC 1.6.4.
NotEnoughItems 1.6.1.8 - Along with the necessary CodeChickenCore 0.9.0.7
ComputerCraft 1.58

The turtle used was a basic melee turtle. I didn't think to test any other type of melee turtle because I only use the basic ones. All of the dropped items are left on the ground.

I guess it could be argued that somehow NEI is causing the issue because I didn't test without it, but that still wouldn't explain why CC1.57 and earlier versions work just fine.

I start my client with MagicLauncher if that is somehow relevent to the issue.

AlucaBR, on 29 January 2014 - 12:44 AM, said:

You'll need MiscPeripherals for a chunk loading module.
http://www.computerc...peripherals-33/

I haven't tried MiscPeripherals version for 1.6, but the chunk loader was completely broken in the previous version. If they're still broken in the 1.6 version, until RichardG starts working on MiscPeripherals again, I'd just use standalone chunk loaders from mods like ChickenChunks or Railcraft.

applesauce10189, on 09 January 2014 - 10:57 AM, said:

I would focus on taking other users advice on how to improve the script you have before delving into another project.

Why not make the mistakes only once instead of propagating them through every script you write? Learning to write efficient code will improve any script you write from here on out...