Vintage Engineering

A mod for late-game automation.  RTFM below.

A Tech-based progression mod that is roughly inspired from Immersive Engineering.

Basic Progression can currently be in whatever way you want. If you are stuck then try:

0) Smith some LV Wire, Make some LV Relays and a wire cutter
1) LV Generator is a good first machine goal
2) Metal Press (don't forget the press molds) is a good first machine
3) Extruder (don't forget the Die Casts) is a great goal to push towards
4) Profit

Instead of an LV Generator, you could go green with the Alternator for wind-power.

The pentulimate goal for LV tier is the _Blast Furnace_ with 2 Blowers (powered), one on each side. A somewhat automatable way to process nuggets into ingots and alloys.
It's not fully automatable as that would leave out cool feature opportunities for future machines and Tiers.
You WILL need to craft a couple batches of Steel using the base-game Cementation Furnace process in order to get the Blast Furnace. This is by design.

 

Version 0.5.5 

Distillation Tower Help:

First build the Distillation Tower Base, this can be used to get some diesel as the only fuel output. Base power cost of 2000 PPS.
The new MV Fluid Generator can burn any liquid with the liquidfuel JSON attribute tag, check the mods liquid fuel item JSONs for details.
Diesel will give 1000 PPS.
To increase the outputs of the distillation tower, build Extensions ontop of the tower. Up to 6 extensions can be built. This is how the recipe is decided.
There are recipes for spirits and alcohol, open to balance and feedback on these. No extensions needed for these recipes.

Use fluid tanks to haul crude long distances, these do not drop the fluid when you break them. One steel tank of crude will last a very long time.

Craft time for all crude oil distillation recipes is 5 minutes, but a net-gain of power is guaranteed. The more extensions you have, the larger the gain.

Version 0.5.0 introduces the new Multiblock (MB) system.

I cover the new MB Creosote Oven at the start of this dev stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOCB1RouO6A

Basically,
1) Place Core
2) Right click Core with wrench
3) Place blocks according to color-code (This will hopefully be better in the future)
4) Once layer is done, right click Core again to validate and progress layers
5) If Core is covered, then right click the INTERACTION block with wrench to validate and progress layers
6) Once last layer is built, right click the Interaction block again to validate and trigger the swap to the final form

Breaking any block will UNMAKE the Multiblock and drop it's contents if it had any at your feet.
Color codes outlined in the Handbook, check the entry for the core of what you are building for the guide.

Creosote Oven access ports are sided, connect with pipes. Machine does not 'auto output' right now.
Top : Insert Fuel
Back : Output Fluid
Front : Output Item
Sides : Insert Input

Version 0.4.5 introduces MV networks, LV-MV Transformers, and MV Batteries.

The MV tier is the next stage in the mods progression and development! If you wish to contribute shapes for machines then please reach out to me and we can talk!

Also note, MV Batteries may not fill to 100% right now as the network tries to load-balance a storage only network (aka, a network with only batteries and/or transformers on it). I could explain the technical details, but like 2 people would actually care.

Important:

In an effort to protect server and client performance, the machines, networks, and general processing of the system does not update clients constantly but on delayed steps. So you may see power and crafting levels change in ways that may seem like it's not working properly, but it's because the server is NOT pushing a constant stream of block-update data to all clients. At the end of the day, I sacrificed up-to-the-millisecond updates for protecting performance and network traffic spam. 

An example is a machine that is crafting ticks 10 times per second on the server, but clients are updated 2 times a second.
Similarly, Electric Networks tick 4 times per second on the server and changes to machine power are only sent to clients when the aforementioned update triggers.

Exceptions to this are any time item slots are changed due to client interaction or automation as this data is vital to ensure everyone is synced with the server.

Sleeping machines tick every 2 seconds.
If you have an Electrical Network that has no machine nodes (it's new and has no machines on it yet, just relays) it's delay to wake up is 5 seconds. After it finds stuff to do, it shouldn't sleep again.

 

MISC helpful information:

• Blast furnace Blowers can be toggled on and off by sneak-right-clicking them with an empty hand.
• A Blast furnace can smelt Iron nuggets into Iron Bloom; with two active blowers however, it will smelt regular iron ingots!
• Smelt Blister Steel with a Blast Furnace, requires both active blowers with INPUT of Iron Ingot and Coal Coke + charcoal fuel (or better, for temperature)
• VE Kiln can process Iron Bloom as well as Blister Steel and can now craft QuickLime. (And fire clay...)
• Blast Furnace is only semi-automatable by design. Leaving room for more advanced fully automatable options in higher tiers of tech.
• Coal-Tar Creosote currently has no use but it will eventually.

 

All machines can be fed and emptied via vanilla CHUTES and with PIPES!!!, even the Electric Forge.

For more frequent updates check my discord server #vintage_engineering channel. ("Homepage" link)

Help is welcome for the following areas if you want to contribute:

1. Sound effects - must be royalty free so streamers can use the mod without issues.
2. Shapes, textures, animations - Making things pretty is not my forte. Quentin from QPTech has gratiously given permission to use his shapes and textures so I can focus on the back-end code more. If you would like to contribute then hit me up on Discord.
3. Eventually Large Multiblock machines shapes, textures, sounds, and animations. But will not need this for awhile.
4. Localization - Hold off on this as I'm always adding new strings as I add machines and features. Unless you don't mind managing the new language file as I add strings.
5. Advanced Handbook entries, "Quest" book? Vies? Is Vies out there?

 

I do not need feature ideas/requests. I have a near endless wishlist of things I want to implement, so please wait until the mod is much further along before telling me it's missing something. 

For Bugs, use the ISSUE TRACKER link at the top of the mod page!!

Do NOT post them in the comments please!

DEBUG COMMANDS

Commands to validate various network systems:
The [] show an optional flag, use delete with extreme caution. An example is /vedebug vpn delete
You will need full server access privileges to use any of these.

• /vedebug validatepowernetworks [delete]
• /vedebug vpn [delete]
  Validate all electric networks for the world
• /vedebug validate id [delete]
  Validate a single electric network ID with optional delete
  
  Debug commands to validate pipe networks
• /vedebug validatepipenetworks [delete]
• /vedebug vpipes [delete]
  Validate all pipe networks
• /vedebug validatepipes id [delete]
  Validate a single give pipe network ID
  
  Debug commands to debug Catenary Wire data

• /vedebug validatewires [delete]
• /vedebug vw [delete]
  Validates all Wire Connection objects in Catenary Data, ensures all wire endpoints block types are WiredBlock. Optionally Delete invalid nodes, will not drop wire or fire event.
• /vedebug numwires
  Prints total number of Wire Connections in the data set.
• /vedebug printwires
  Prints to the VerboseDebug log every WireConnection in the world as stored by the CatenaryMod. Validate first. Use to track down and report odd wires in your world.
  
  

A network is only reported as invalid if ALL nodes are invalid, if one node (aka position) comes back as valid it will report as having valid nodes.
To ensure a full game-save cleanup, break down the entire factory: pipes, machines, wires, and relays before running the validate command for each type of network.
That way, any full network that is truly invalid can be deleted using the optional flag.

Is goes without saying... USE WITH CAUTION

 

Limiting weekly build access for channel members and patrons. Sorry. This is an enormous mod, in development 3 years. 

Supporters (patrons and channel members) will get weekly updated builds and I will look to them for feedback on ideas and features I'm working on.

A lot of the planning and early mod development was covered in streams:

Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkA9Q5ltQPCIZs88AuqxjgipaX2KPeXQl

If you wish to support the project please consider:

• Donating at https://streamlabs.com/flexiblegames
• Becoming a Patron using the Donate link above
• Become a member of my Youtube channel.

By following this project that will also let me know who out there might be excited for it.

If you wish to help, hit me up on Discord. I primarily need those gifted in modeling and textures. Anything I can just drop in and use without a lot of issues. 

Modders:
Please check MakeYourOwnMachine.txt file in mod zip for some early help adding new machines using my API. I'm still adding new machines every week. I'm sure there's someone out there itching to tackle some idea that uses power. 

For the Electrical and wiring system, I've built systems other modders can easily plug into and use. I've submitted the IElectricalBlockEntity interface to Tyron to integrate into the base game so we have universal support. I hope he accepts it. My wiring system, for example, supports multiple types of wire (AND it's extendable by modders). This is one reason this has taken so long to get to this point.

---------------================= Please don't steal my code. ====================------------------

Mad respect to Tyron for his work on the API and game!

Thank you for your interest!

Special Thanks:

BlueLightning32 for his impressive coding skills and help with everything.
Quentin (QPTech) for permission to use shapes and textures and his work blazing this trail.
Mr. Andy Dandy for some new polished shapes and textures. 
HumbleBolt for the logo.
Rinly for the inevitable addon mod I know he's cooking up.
DeathxxRenegade for help with shapes.
VonZeeple for showing me how to properly do wiring, without being able to see how to do it I'd never have figured it out.
Zolkenn for coding help and debugging.
DallinTG for work on shapes and textures.
Automatic_Yoba_Machine for the phenominal Charger model and whatever else the future has in store!
Len Kagamine for getting the Mechanical interface blocks started.
Robert for being patient in finding and helping track down insidious bugs.