New Plugin Testing on pve-dev

[Guest]

We would like to invite everyone who wishes to, to join us in testing a new plugin on pve-dev called TrainCarts. TrainCarts offers speed variations for minecarts as well as improvements to rails, some of which are very not vanilla, others are more reasonable features.

You can find a warp sign to blocktesting in spawn as shown in this image where you can start testing out the features of this plugin. We are looking for commentary on any of the features itself here in this topic.

Our plan is to test this plugin up to and including Friday 8th September, we will then open up a public discussion on the plugin based on our testing to get a feel for what the community would like to see, running up until September 15th. We would very much value your feedback in the public topic just as much as this internal testing.

If we proceeded with this plugin, we would be looking to replace HyperCarts with TrainCarts. We would not look to include all of the features of TrainCarts as some are very out of place for P though this would be a public discussion that we'll have from 8th/9th.

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Testing so far has resulted in us learning:

• Rail intersections are possible.
• Minecarts can travel up ladders with connected sloping rails at the ends of the ladders.
• Minecarts can be connected together to form trains with multiple passengers.
• Pressing W while in a Minecart does not work (bugged).
  • Relogging while riding a cart will allow you to move with W once more.
• Signs can be used to run a lot of the redstone functions of a typical rail station (examples in the blocktesting area).
• Pressure plates of any type can be treated as rails, allowing people a cheap way to make rails (with wood).
  • With some fiddling, this can be disabled for the cheaper pressure plates.

[Silversunset01]

My thoughts so far
* Skyrails: You can't see down so it has no visual benefit as a skyrail in that sense (other than looking cool).
* Skyrails: Dismounting from the cart in mid-air drops you to the ground (unlike normal rails that drop you on the 1-wide landmass). That would cause many many accidental deaths and salty players. 
* the Sign switching: Is fun... and it works pretty well. But i dont like it at all for pve, it takes every bit of effort out of making rail and stations.  
* Also you can't push carts either from inside them or outside (no pushing villagers around etc or walking yourself if you run out of powered rail). That seems like it would be a problem. 

[bermudalocket]

I agree with Silver re: signs. It's a neat feature but ultimately they replace redstone circuits that are easily created by players with a little effort.

Regarding skyrail drop deaths, that's definitely a tricky situation. If players are on a skyrail, they should know better than to exit the cart. I think emphasizing the fact that you will die if you exit the cart while in the air could subvert issues, though. It puts the onus on the player, rather than the plugin itself (or by extension, padmins). You forgot? Oh well. Your cat jumped onto your keyboard and exited the cart for you? Oh well.

The vertical rails by way of ladders are really, really neat. I'd like to see that feature make it through.

I did a bit of investigating regarding the "w" bug. Unfortunately it seems it has been a persistent bug since mid-2015. Poking around in the source led me to tc/actions/MovementAction.java, where it seems like player-induced changes to position and velocity are escaped. I can do a bit of testing without said escaping either later tonight or tomorrow.

[buzzie71]

I've not been significantly invested in rail laying; the last time I laid rail was in rev 19.  Some of my testing has been done on my own server rather than on P-dev (more just so I can push carts around; I think in modmode that's disabled).

I've tended to be wary of anything not vanilla being introduced to P - but regardless of what features are allowed in the end, one thing I like about the plugin is that it preserves the underlying vanilla minecraft mechanics and expands upon it, instead of rewriting it.  Players who are used to the old minecart mechanics (and the speed boost from HyperCarts) will find it (largely) familiar, and then can explore the newer features at their leisure.  Certainly everything allows for new possibilities of rail building, and it would be fun to see what players come up with after adding new tools to their disposal.  (Sort of wish they were better documented though; it feels like either some of the information is missing or unclear or I'm having to search for it across multiple sources - it might be worth putting together a more consolidated version for players to peruse.)

There are some first thoughts I want to point out:

• I'm worried about 'w' not being able to push a cart - if dismounting a cart on a skyrail is as deadly as mentioned in previous comments, I feel they would quickly become (unreasonable?) player traps if a cart stops in the middle of a skyrail and players can't move the cart while inside.  There are ways to encourage prevention of this situation (eg. encourage best-practice building of wider skyrails so they are not just one-wide for the rail), but the advice will be a bit too late if players actually do find themselves stuck on it.  Certainly, circulating news that relogging will fix the issue will help allay that, but that is more an administration task than technical - an actual fix I think would be preferable if it can be done.
• I haven't been able to put mobs in carts - on my test server I couldn't put a villager in a cart (the cart just shoved the villager aside); on P-dev I went to the mobtest area to try to put a sheep in a cart and also failed, even with sheep trapped on the rail and launching a cart at it.  I'm not sure how much of an obstacle this would be for players - arguably, for livestock, leads or food are both sufficient for leading mobs.  It would be more of a negative impact for players moving villagers, since they won't have another way of doing so (probably would make maintaining a villager market more difficult).  Could that be altered?
• I haven't tried my hand at signs yet other than check out documentation.  I'd like to check those out later if I have time, but until then I'll defer to the judgment of others (especially other staff or non-staff who have laid rail before).  
• Personally, I think the vertical carts on ladders is a stretch in terms of Minecraft realism - in my mind it would take a lot of realism bending to have carts roll vertically up ladders for most applications (though admittedly it could make a drop down to bedrock much less lethal if someone tries to drop down without a cart).  One place where I think those vertical carts would be really useful without being too realism-breaking would be roller coasters - at the very least, if we ever attempt a fundraiser-style carnival world again, we could have it there.
• I'm curious to see how NCP reacts to the faster top speed and hilly(?) rails on P - personally, part of the reason I've been less willing to lay rails in 19 was because I found the cart to move somewhat unpredictably whenever it is moving fast and switching between flat and sloped rails (eg. with the launch ramp I built, but also with one half of the rail I laid to Haven - there was a dip in the rail where the cart would bounce back and forth for a bit).  Judicious placing of powered rails was able to solve the issue (so the cart is not moving too fast) and artificially lowering the cart's max speed would also prevent the unpredictable cart movements, but both of those in my mind defeat the purpose of raising the maximum cart speed if it is impossible to attain it with the hilly-ish rails I went for.  Does the same thing happen with TrainCarts?  (Most rails seem to be of the flat variety and I presume the issue doesn't come up for those kinds of rails, so I figure my background is probably not representative of most rail layers.)
• I really like how the cart still moves forward quite a bit after flying off a precipice.
• Does the plugin use NMS coding?  Part of the reason I ask is to wonder if we might be likely to wait a while for the plugin to update to the next version, which would slow version updating (would it?).  The other reason is more out of personal curiosity.

Edited September 8, 2017 by buzzie71

[Guest Former Staff]

This topic is being made public (due to the other posters granting permission to do so), to tie in with the public discussion on TrainCarts here.