[1.8] Natural vs. Manufactured block detection

[tool_user]

I am working on some things where I want to identify if a block is natural (stone, log, sand, dirt, gravel, etc.) or manufactured (cobblestone, plank, stone brick, brick, etc.).  Is there any function somewhere (world gen, ore dict, materials, etc.) that would help with this? I have a basic function now in my mod where I have all the "natural" blocks, but I'd like to have something that would be compatible with other mods without having to resort to a manual config file.  I've looked through world gen a little, crafting manager (doesn't work because of things like sandstone), and the ore dict.

 

I'm looking for direct answers such there is on in XYZ place, or places to look that I might be able to tap into would be great.

 

Thanks.

[Draco18s]

You will not be able to tell that the player has placed a block vs. the same block placed during worldgen.  It is not possible because that data is not stored anywhere in the chunk data.

 

You could in theory use metadata to do this, but only for blocks that had a bitflag to spare, but with the new BlockState mechanism that 1.8 has, I am not sure you can do that any more.

[Elix_x]

Another very hacky idea:

Whenever manufactured block is placed, add to chunk saved data it's position.

Now, when you want to check if block is manufactured or not, just check list of manufactured blocks in this chunk.

 

Although there are 2 not sure things here:

-I don't know if there's chunk saved data, but i know for sure that there are Chunk.Save and Chunk.Load events that you can use to save list of manufactired blocks.

-Depending on what you call manufactured block, it can be easy or even nearly impossible. If it's player placed block, there are events you can use. For everything else, there's no proper way of detecting source of placement. (Well, you can ASM chunk class and read stack traces to find placement source, but is it worth it?).

[tool_user]

Thanks for the feedback!

 

Sorry!  I don't actually want to tell if the player placed the block, but if it is a naturally occurring block. Basically trying to separate mostly natural terrain from something someone probably made.  Obviously, if they make something out of dirt or sandstone, I can't detect those blocks.

 

Right now in my "is natural" routine I am just doing this:

    public static boolean isNatural(IBlockState state)
    {
        Block block = state.getBlock();
        return (block == Blocks.stone ||
                block == Blocks.gravel ||
                block == Blocks.log ||
                block == Blocks.log2 ||
                block == Blocks.leaves ||
                block == Blocks.leaves2 ||
                block == Blocks.sand ||
                block == Blocks.sandstone ||
                block == Blocks.dirt ||
                block == Blocks.grass);
    }

 

This seems to work ok as things like "Block.stone" covers diorite, andesite, etc. I was just hoping for some clever way to use the crafting manager or ore dict.

 

[jabelar]

The important question I have is do you mean to detect something that is manufacturable, or do you want to detect things that were specifically manufactured by a player? Because some manufacturable blocks will spawn naturally in structures and villages.

 

If you just want to check if a block can be manufactured, I think you can do it by just looking to see if there is a crafting recipe that creates it.

[Earthcomputer]

It is impossible to do this fail-safe either way, because:

• If you're trying to tell whether an item can be manufactured, you have to know all the ways in which an item can be manufactured (crafted, smelted, etc.). If mods add their own ways of manufacturing (e.g. pulverizers), you may not always know if an item can be manufactured in that way.
  
• If you're trying to tell whether a block is naturally generated, you've basically got no chance. The best chance you've got is searching through ASM data, but even a best-effort algorithm to test if a block is naturally generated would still fail about 50% of the time. You've got a bit more chance with items generated in chests, as Forge has hooks for chest generation, and even more chance with mob drops, provided you have an instance of World.
  

 

Even after all that, there still might be a way to be about 90% sure that an item can be manufactured: use NEI. Most mods which add extra machines will register their crafting recipes to NEI, so you have less chance of missing any manufacturing methods.

 

You can also find a list of blocks and whether they are naturally generated on the Minecraft Wiki.

 

Hope this helps

[Draco18s]

Once you have other mods and things like the IC2 Macerator, almost everything can be crafted.  There's a few more mods that add even more ways of crafting things.  Such as seeds + dirt = grass.

[jabelar]

Well compatibility with other mods would take work, but wouldn't necessarily be impossible. For mods that modify or add to the existing recipe systems, you can still just search the recipes. For mods that use their own recipe system, it would be "impossible" to make a general solution, but if you wanted to cover the major mods that people are using you can handle each one -- basically just detect whether the mod is loaded, and if it is proceed accordingly. Things like uncrafting tables, grinders, etc. usually reduce things to natural ingredients so those might not be an issue. But certainly any custom crafting / smelting that uses a separate recipe system would need you to code for it.

 

But really it wouldn't be that much work. If a certain mod is loaded, you can just add to your list of "manufactured" blocks based on what you know about the mod's functionality.

[tool_user]

Thanks everyone for the input, it seems to share what I found during my research.

 

To answer a few of the questions that came up.  I just want a way to easily separate "natural" things from man-made things.  I am working on yet another set of creative mod tools (structure builders, tunnelers, etc.) for fun and some of the features I'd like to add would like to be able to discriminate between "ground" (natural) and something built.  For example a road builder wants to walk the terrain and not go "over" structures or even remove them.  I also want to make a "cleanup" that removes all non-natural blocks so I can remove unwanted structures easily.

 

I think my approach (for now) is basically going to detect "natural" based on block type (by name) then just support a config file.  Since I have a robust undo (in transient memory), if it doesn't detect right the person can undo the work, or manually fix it.  I'll probably add a tool (wand) so they user can right-click to add the block to the config file easily, so they won't need to leave the game.

 

Again, thanks all for the quick feedback and insight!