ItemStack colours

[luisc99]

Hey there!

 

I am working on a part of my mod that lets you colour blocks any hex value you like. I have got this working well. At the moment the way to pick the colour of the block is to name it the hex colour you like in an anvil, and when placed it uses it. One thing I tried to do was to make the in-inventory item show up as the same colour as what will be placed, however when I get the item name and transfer it to an integer to pass in to the colour multiplier, it fails because the name is still a string due to still being inside the anvil. I was wondering if these was a way to stop this from happening, preferably by checking if the name is an integer or by waiting to show its colour until after it has been named.

 

I have provided my ItemBlock file here, although I don't think it will be much use.

http://paste.minecraftforge.net/view/8787c58a

 

Also, would it also be possible to make the item not placeable if it has got letters in its name, as this also causes a crash.

 

Sorry if this has already been answered, or I am just missing something small and simple.

Luis

[hydroflame]

do you mean like in game the dirt can look red/blue/green ? 

 

if yes .. how are you savign that information ? tile entity ? side data strcuture ?

[luisc99]

do you mean like in game the dirt can look red/blue/green ? 

 

if yes .. how are you savign that information ? tile entity ? side data strcuture ?

 

Yes, but not all blocks. I add a custom block with a grey version of the texture and stone it in tile entity NBT, where the colour multiplier reads from.

[hydroflame]

but not all blocks

oooooh, fiouf

 

ok but do you NEED a tile entity, because if its just the color cant you just use the meta ? ( i know its only 16 colour but it will be less cpu consuming :\ as well as require less network traffic)

[luisc99]

but not all blocks

oooooh, fiouf

 

ok but do you NEED a tile entity, because if its just the color cant you just use the meta ? ( i know its only 16 colour but it will be less cpu consuming :\ as well as require less network traffic)

 

I use the meta to store the block type, and the TE to store the hex value

[hydroflame]

ok, the thing is tile entity are expensive and what you are doign is nto very different from another aesthetic block (gosh this is probably not how you spell that)

 

your idea is nice, but probably expensive as peoepl wil be placing hundred of those all around meaning the load time will be huge, specially on a remote server :\

[luisc99]

Do you know of any other way it could be achieved?

[hydroflame]

~ meta + more block id, its a better solution

[luisc99]

But there are millions of different possibilities for hex values that can be created...

[hydroflame]

yeah, youll have to bring it down to only 16 values per block...

[luisc99]

Hm, ok. Thanks though!

[hydroflame]

its not a question of its not codable, its a question of the algorythm isn't made for that.

 

whenever you have a tile entity the server will send an extra packet containing the information.

so if you have a mansion made of those and someone logs in ... well you have to send him .. 500-600 packets , at once !

 

so yeah lag will and can happen

as well as many wasted cycle "updating" those tile entity (even theres nothign happening inside the update method, its still a lot of method call)

 

[Mazetar]

Isn't it possible to make a tileEntity which doesn't update? by calling false on the should update method?

Wouldn't that save some/"a lot" computations?

[larsgerrits]

Do you mean like how XyCraft does it with it's blocks? The way he does it is really complicated and difficult.

[hydroflame]

doesnt matter

 

case 1:
shouldUpdate(){ return false;}
update(){}

case 2:
update(){}



if we run:
for case 1
if(te.shouldUpdate()){
    update();
}
is the exact same as doing
for cas 2
te.update();

you're still calling a method and doign nothing

actually case 1 would be even slower becuase it return a value that needs to be compared

 

plus even if magicly we wern't calling update, we would still be screwed with the massive traffic jam caused by this

[luisc99]

Just a quick question, am I right in thinking that simple tile entities do not need a custom packet handler to function? Also if I set up a custom handler, would using NBT to store hex values be any less resource heavy?

[larsgerrits]

The only time NBT is executed is on loading and exiting from the world, so it's not resource heavy.