Hey everyone,

 

I've made a new power supplying block. When I began, I made it behave like a button by overriding onBlockActivated and managing the power duration with a combination of the block metadata and an overridden updateTick.

 

It worked perfectly. I placed the new block, added some redstone wires next to it, right clicked, and the redstone wire lit up for the proper number of ticks.

 

So, I was happy with that. Now I needed to change the trigger from a right click to a chat event. The idea is to have a power supply that activates when a keyword is said within a specific range of it.

 

This sounds like a job for a tile entity. I try to develop incrementally (as I'm learning to mod as I go, and don't want to commit to some code until I know it works)

 

Eventually, I want a gui like the sign to set the password when the block is placed, but for now, I'm just hardcoding the password to see if I can get it to work. Here is my tile entity:

 

public class TileEntityPasswordBlock extends TileEntity
{
public String password = "Testing";

public void writeToNBT(NBTTagCompound par1NBTTagCompound)
{
	super.writeToNBT(par1NBTTagCompound);
	par1NBTTagCompound.setString("Password", this.password);
}

public void readFromNBT(NBTTagCompound par1NBTTagCompound)
{
	super.readFromNBT(par1NBTTagCompound);

	this.password = par1NBTTagCompound.getString("Password");

	if (this.password.length() > 15)
	{
		this.password = this.password.substring(0, 15);
        	}
}

public Packet getDescriptionPacket()
{
	NBTTagCompound  nbtTag = new NBTTagCompound();
	this.writeToNBT(nbtTag);
	return new Packet132TileEntityData(this.xCoord, this.yCoord, this.zCoord, 1, nbtTag);
}

public void onDataPacket(INetworkManager net, Packet132TileEntityData packet)
{
	readFromNBT(packet.customParam1);
}

public void checkChatForPassword(String chat)
{
	if (this.worldObj != null)
	{
		this.blockType = this.getBlockType();

		if (this.blockType != null && this.blockType instanceof PasswordBlock)
		{
			((PasswordBlock)this.blockType).passwordDetected(this.worldObj, this.xCoord, this.yCoord, this.zCoord);
		}
	}			
}	
}

 

Note that I'm not bothering to check that chat message for the password yet. For now, I just want it to light up when anything is said in chat.

 

My password block extends BlockContainer and overrides createNewTileEntity, and I've added a method to trigger the redstone that is called by the tile entity:

 

@Override
public TileEntity createNewTileEntity(World world) 
{
return new TileEntityPasswordBlock();
}

@SideOnly(Side.CLIENT)
public void passwordDetected(World world, int x, int y, int z)
{
int i = world.getBlockMetadata(x, y, z);

world.setBlockMetadataWithNotify(x, y, z, 10, 0);

if (i == 0)
{
	world.notifyBlocksOfNeighborChange(x, y, z, this.blockID);			
}		

world.scheduleBlockUpdate(x, y, z, this.blockID, 0);
}

 

Now I just need to call checkChatForPassword on every TileEntityPasswordBlock and pass in the chat.

 

I've already created a ServerChatEvent handler that intercepts chat, loops through players and delivers the chat to only those players within a given distance of the sender. I thought that this would be the ideal place to loop through my tile entities and and pass the current chat to their checkChatForPassword.

 

Unfortunately, 1) I could not find how to list the tile entites, and 2) the PasswordBlocks' passwordDetected is ClientOnly, and the ServerChatEvent works on the server thread. Even if I did hook it up, it wouldn't work because it need to be on the client thread.

 

How can I achieve this? I'm running low on ideas here, and would appreciate anything you guys could offer. Thanks!

 

- Scott

 

(This is my second try at posting this... the first doesn't look to have worked. If I notice two copies of this thread, I'll be sure to delete one.)

After some more thinking, I realize that when going from client to server (or vise versa) you need to work in packets. That being said, I still have no idea as to how to go about this. Any suggestions?

You need a packet handler; the Forge tutorials have one such tutorial. Basically, from the "source" you need to send a 132TileEntityData packet, and your packetHandler needs to act accordingly. Here is how I do it (this is a GUI controlling a TE variable, but the principle is the same). Also note you need to make your mod "listen" to a channel at the top of your main mod class, like this:

channels={"RotaryCraftData"}, packetHandler = PacketHandler.class)

 

GUI:

    public void sendPacket(int a) {
        ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream(20); // 5 ints
        DataOutputStream outputStream = new DataOutputStream(bos);
        try {
        	//ModLoader.getMinecraftInstance().thePlayer.addChatMessage(String.valueOf(drops));
        	outputStream.writeInt(a);
        	if (a == 19)
        		outputStream.writeInt(omega);
        	if (a == 20)
        		outputStream.writeInt(torque);
        	outputStream.writeInt(coil.xCoord);
        	outputStream.writeInt(coil.yCoord);
        	outputStream.writeInt(coil.zCoord);

        }
        catch (Exception ex) {
                ex.printStackTrace();
        }

        Packet250CustomPayload packet = new Packet250CustomPayload();
        packet.channel = "RotaryCraftData";
        packet.data = bos.toByteArray();
        packet.length = bos.size();

        Side side = FMLCommonHandler.instance().getEffectiveSide();
        if (side == Side.SERVER) {
                // We are on the server side.
                EntityPlayerMP player2 = (EntityPlayerMP) player;
        } else if (side == Side.CLIENT) {
                // We are on the client side.
                EntityClientPlayerMP player2 = (EntityClientPlayerMP) player;
                PacketDispatcher.sendPacketToServer(packet);
        } else {
                // We are on the Bukkit server.
        }
    }

 

Corresponding sections of the packetHandler:

        [...]
private TileEntityAdvancedGear adv;
private TileEntityAdvancedGear clientadv;

@Override
public void onPacketData(INetworkManager manager, Packet250CustomPayload packet, Player player) {
	ep = (EntityPlayer) player;

	if (packet.channel.equals("RotaryCraftData")) {
		this.handleData(packet);
	}
}

private void handleData(Packet250CustomPayload packet) {
	DataInputStream inputStream = new DataInputStream(new ByteArrayInputStream(packet.data));
	int control;
	boolean drops;
	int len;
	int[] data;
	long longdata = 0;
	int x,y,z;
	boolean readinglong = false;
	//System.out.print(packet.length);
	try {
		control = inputStream.readInt();
		pack = EnumPackets.getEnum(control);
		len = pack.getNumberDataInts();
		data = new int[len];
		readinglong = pack.isLongPacket();
		if (!readinglong) {
			for (int i = 0; i < len; i++)
				data[i] = inputStream.readInt();
		}
		else
			longdata = inputStream.readLong();
		x = inputStream.readInt();
		y = inputStream.readInt();
		z = inputStream.readInt();
	} catch (IOException e) {
		e.printStackTrace();
		return;
	}

	World world = ModLoader.getMinecraftInstance().theWorld;
	Minecraft m = Minecraft.getMinecraft();
	WorldServer ws = m.getIntegratedServer().worldServerForDimension(m.thePlayer.dimension);
	switch (pack) {
                [...]
	case COIL:
		adv = (TileEntityAdvancedGear)ws.getBlockTileEntity(x, y, z);
		clientadv = (TileEntityAdvancedGear)world.getBlockTileEntity(x, y, z);
		if (control == 19) {
			adv.releaseOmega = data[0];
			clientadv.releaseOmega = data[0];
		}
		if (control == 20) {
			adv.releaseTorque = data[0];
			clientadv.releaseTorque = data[0];
		}
	break;
                [...]
           }
}

Hey Reika,

 

Thanks for your help. Between your post and a tutorial I found about packets, I was able to create and send the packet I need. Everything is flowing properly now, but I still can't get the chat to trigger the redstone power.

 

I've managed to track it down to my packet not referencing the world that has my block's metadata. right now, I have two ways of triggering my block's power. I can right click it, or I can type a chat message. Right clicking it works, chatting doesn't. I printed the world.toString() for both, and on the one that works has a worldserver id, while the one that doesn't (from my chat) uses a world id.

 

So I need my packet to get a reference to the current world server that the tile is in... regardless of whether I'm playing in SSP or SMP. I've tried a ton of stuff, but nothing seems to work.

 

Any ideas?

Did you try the method I use in the packetHandler (where I get both world and ws)?