A.C.E.S: Better Circuits

Better Circuits

A.C.E.S: Better Circuits

A NeoForge 1.21 mod (more versions will be released if there's enough interest) focused entirely on redstone. Better Circuits adds a full toolkit of logic gates, wiring, and utility blocks designed to slot straight into vanilla redstone builds — no new progression tree, just more powerful tools.

Features

Logic Gates

A complete family of logic gates, built on the same base as vanilla's Repeater and Comparator:

• AND Gate — outputs 15 only when both side inputs are powered.
• XOR Gate — outputs 15 when exactly one side input is powered.
• Redstone Inverter — a "horizontal redstone torch".
• Redstone RS Latch — has two inputs and two outputs, receiving input from one side disables it, and flips the output direction. Receiving output from the otherside flips it back.
• Redstone Capacitor — counts redstone pulses and outputs a signal based on the number of inputs
• Redstone Threshold — a right-click GUI lets you set Less Than / Equals / Greater Than against a 1–15 value; output passes a valid signal through while blocking the rest.
• Timer — a right-click GUI lets you set tick/second value; sends an output after the set time has elapsed.
• Randomizer — randomly routes a signal to one of three outputs.
• Rain Detector — Reads rain exposure (similar to Daylight Detector).
• Heat Detector — Scans outward for hot blocks (lava, fire, lit furnaces, torches, etc); invert it to scan for cold blocks (ice, snow) instead. Ambient climate matters — the Nether/hot biomes and the End/cold biomes emit a signal even with nothing directly nearby.

AND Gate, XOR Gate, Inverter, Capacitor, Threshold, and Timer, can be locked (similar to a repeater) — a locked gate's GUI can't be opened and its output remains constant regardless of input change.

Lightweight Redstone Gate Family

Every gate above (plus vanilla's own Repeater and Comparator) gets an any-surface "lightweight" counterpart — mountable on any of a block's 6 faces instead of just the floor, crafted from Redstone Cable (instead of Redstone Dust) & Aluminum Ingot (instead of Stone).

Redstone Wiring

• Redstone Cable — a wire that mounts independently on any of a block's 6 faces. Connects to same-face cables, other cables in its block space, and reachable diagonal neighbors. Decreases signal strength over distance like Redstone Dust.
• Insulated Redstone Cable — Available in all 16 Dye-colors; a Redstone Cable variant that never cross-connects with a differently-colored cable, letting several signals share a single block space without interferrence. Never decreases signal strength.
• Bundled Redstone Cable — relays all 16 Insulated colors through a single physical wire.
• Aluminum Cable Frame — a structural frame that shares a block position with up to 6 cable faces, which adds a 7th "center" slot for a Bundled or Insulated Cable.

Other Machines & Utility

• Comparator Rail — reads a passing chest/hopper minecart's inventory like a comparator reads a container.
• Gold Button — a button with a 10 tick pulse (shorter than wood or stone).
• Iron Button — a button with a 40 tick pulse (longer than wood or stone).
• Filtered Hopper / Filtered Hopper Minecart — allow you to set a specific filter item by right-clicking with the item; the hopper only picks up matching items from then on.
• Blower / Vacuum — push or pull entities within in an 8-block range while powered.
• Screwdriver — Rotates the orientation of gates, rails, and most redstone-related blocks.

Materials

A full Aluminum ore set (Ore, Raw Aluminum, Ingot, Nugget, Block) plus a set of Aluminum fixtures (Lantern, Torch, Chain, Bars, Door, Trapdoor, Grate) mirroring vanilla's Copper equivalents.

Vanilla Tweaks

• Dispensers can fill/empty cauldrons with buckets, fill bottles from a water cauldron, and use water bottles to fill a cauldron — matching what a player can already do by hand.
• Dispensers facing a Filtered Hopper load its filter slot instead of its main inventory. Use shears to empty the filter slot.
• Dispensers can plant vanilla seeds directly onto farmland, and Nether Wart onto Soul Sand.

Installation

Requires NeoForge for Minecraft 1.21.1. Drop the jar into your mods folder like any other NeoForge mod — no other dependencies.

License

Released under the LGPL-3.0 license.

Issues & Source

Found a bug or have a suggestion? Open an issue on the GitHub repository.