»Reduce lag: Stop redstone torches from emmitting light

Currently, when redstone torches are toggled off an on they cause lighting updates by lighting up nearby blocks. This causes a lot of lag when massive farms are used that focus on using redstone torches, hence a plugin that stops torches from emitting light would give the servers a significant speed up on servers like Skyblock.

Torches should still be usable in redstone contraptions, but their lighting updates AND ONLY THEIR LIGHTING UPDATES (http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Light for reference) should be disabled.

So a simple line like:
minecraft.block.BlockRedstoneTorch.setLightLevel(1);
Would do the trick I think

 

Another way people themselves can help solve lag is by lighting up areas around redstone repeaters and torches, encasing redstone circuits in Glowstone stops light updates reducing lag significant

- Bluepyth

 

The plugin doesn't just "stops redstone dust from emitting light". It disallows/deactivates that dust from activating altogether if it activates more than a limit/period. On a side note, redstone dusts, although emitting no light (they used to, not any more) as compared to redstone torch, issues many many more block updates and redstone updates (due to inefficiency in redstone dust's signal strength update algorithm) and thus are the main cause of lag in vanilla redstone contraptions.

 

bump

 

Disabling torches as well would completely destroy any redstone contraption, as almost all redstone creations use either dust or torches. And especially in multiplayer, the most popular ones, include builds with clocks.

-Shadoe

 

I never said remove torches. I just said disable their lighting updates.

Place down a redstone torch and you will see it lights up nearby blocks, similarly to glowstone. This lighting change causes an insane amount of lag if you have lots of alternating torches in a large red stone machine. Therefore it shouldn't emit light if we want a less laggy server.

 

This redstone stuff is so confusing

 

It should be an island option coz when a person starts building a auto farm for the first time he probably will need it

 

Edit: removed stupid rant. Drunk me is a moron.

 

I agree with u
I'm just saying if a person makes an auto farm for his first time he should be allowed switch it on and off
This should be in the island settings GUI

To be exact

 

Oh you are talking about suppressing the light emitted from the torch. +1 nice idea, could help reduce 1-5% lag I think.
I was confused because you mentioned about a plugin disabling redstone dust's light. No, redstone dusts don't emit light in vanilla. You were probably thinking about repeaters emitting light. Repeaters stopped doing that "sometime around 14w06", though.

 

http://indiesquish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=250
if that source is right, then lighting updates can contribute to something like 95% of redstone lag :/

Oh damn, you're right XD
I just made a big ass-hat of myself.

--- Double Post Merged, Mar 1, 2017, Original Post Date: Feb 28, 2017 ---

bump

 

I've been saying for months that responsible builders of these massive lag farms should encase the whole farm in solid blocks and light up the insides. That still wouldn't address the issue with light updates from the pistons themselves (it doesn't seem to matter how well you light the area around those), but could substantially reduce lag overall.

Now that we're moving quickly to 1.11, BUDs could be replaced with observers in most cases. Skygrid just updated a few days ago and I'm going to start testing soon.

 

This is the equivalent of saying hackers should just stop hacking so we don't need an auto-ban system. A nice sentiment, but it's never going to happen because it takes too much time, effort and investment to do that. It's more rewarding to spend those things building other stuff, so people don't bother.

Instead of relying on everyone to put in effort which won't give them much noticeable gain, why not just install a plugin? It's not like it'll harm anyone.

 

I know you're not new to Guildcraft, so you remember what a disaster some other "simple plugins" have been. Case in point: Redstone Clock Preventer.

Stopping the light updates of torches would be helpful, but the fact is that the current popular melon farm design is extremely resource intensive, and (in my opinion) irresponsible as it is designed. The completely needless behavior of the BUDs to fire multiple times every time a melon grows is ridiculous. Some are designed only to behave this way in small sections at a time, while others fire entire rows repeatedly, causing dozens of light updates from piston and torch per second, second after second. hour after hour. We even have an unspoken rule on Skygrid to not go to any of those farms (including yours) because they literally tick lag the entire server.

While I appreciate your attempt at a compromise solution, I don't think it will solve the problem. Again, in my opinion (which counts for exactly nothing in this case), these farms shouldn't be allowed at all as currently designed.

The entire reason for the introduction of the observer block was to eliminate this kind of farm design (and most need for hacked style BUDs in the game).

 

I agree that the preventer plugin is a farce. I never said otherwise. But you are trying to state facts that are not integral to the argument and pretending they are. That is a functional, gameplay-changing plugin with a lot of coding and complexities that will obviously have flaws / bugs or changes that will anger people.

However, it would be extremely difficult screw up modifying the torches light emission value from "7" to "0" in a way that causes grief to the server. It is literally 1 integer value that we're changing here. No gameplay mechanics or anything else. No pages of coding that can **** up or bypasses that will render the plugin useless. If I am wrong and it could go badly, I would like to know why.

As far as I'm concerned you're scaring yourself into thinking the world will end because you don't know how something is being changed and have convinced yourself that means it's dangerous.


Now, let's look at this from a problem -> solution basis:

Problem: Lighting updates on redstone torches cause lag.

Solutions:
A) disable lighting updates on torches
B) blanket ban on auto-farms, as you are implying
C) do nothing

I wonder what change GC players would prefer...
B would be better than A which is better than C; what we currently have. B would result in less lag, but not only would it be way harder to impliment, it would cause a massive shitstorm to hit the fan from players . It would be yet another reason why people go to other servers instead of guildcraft.

Make your counter arguments, but we should let @aXed / @Rabascm / whoever can make these changes to decide.

 

I'm not proposing a ban on auto farms; Guildcraft has them, allows them, and it's part of the culture here. Banning them wouldn't be a workable solution for the reasons you mention.

I do, however, propose a ban on this type of auto farm, because it is the worst offender, and your solution, while helpful, doesn't go far enough in my opinion. There are workable alternatives and there is no apparent reason to use this type of bud farm now.

That should simplify my argument, as the extraneous stuff was just distracting from the real issue.

 

bump

 

Suggestion rejected. Too messy to do.