Feature request: Add a machine that generates power from cobblestone

[Darin755]

I have been playing around with the jumpdrive mod and how to build the most energy dense ship. In minetest it is possible to build cobblestone generators that generate a significant amount of cobblestone. This is unfortunately not terribly useful unless there is a machine that uses it.

My though was you could make a cobblestone machine that would take huge amounts of cobblestone (maybe 10 a sec) and generate HV power. This wouldn't make sense in the real world but it would be a cool machine that would inspire innovation.

[SmallJoker]

With the chainsaw tool and LV/MV fuel-powered generators, I think that obtaining energy sources is not much of a concern. I do see that the cobblestone needs some more uses, but converting it to power does not fit to the rather reality-focused technic mod. You might still create a separate mod that registers such machine using the technic API.

[Darin755]

Just out of curiously, could you elaborate on what you mean by chain saw and HV generators? I've always powered them from coal

[auouymous]

I believe the generator can produce power from lava buckets. But I can't find any mods similar to minecraft's magma crucible from thermal expansion that create lava from cobblestone. My https://github.com/auouymous/cobble_generator is a partial clone of thermal expansion's igneous extruder and could densely produce the cobble if you found or made a mod to convert it to lava.

It wouldn't be too hard to make a magma crucible, it simply consumes N cobble with a ~1 minute timer and produces some lava internally. The crucible could be similar to my liquid storage barrel mod, but change the lava texture height based on level of internal storage. An empty bucket in one slot could be consumed, if internal storage has lava, and a lava bucket added to another slot.

It should be a slow process, taking several minutes to produce a full bucket, and require multiple crucibles to quickly get a useful amount of lava. It could also have faster variants like my cobble generator mod, to reduce space needed. This would be better than a single block that consumes cobble and produces power.

chain saw and HV generators

An automated tree farm, using a chainsaw in a node breaker, to get infinite wood.

[Darin755]

I like your idea but I have a modified approach. I think the lava generator is the right idea but it kind of loses its real world value to have it be powered by cobblestone. We should try to follow entropy so that we aren't generating energy by doing work.

I think it would be really cool to have a lava generator that takes in lava and generates cobblestone as a waste product. It should require water in via a pipeworks pipe in order to keep the unit cool.

This wouldn't create a use for cobblestone but I'm sure there are other uses for it. I'm going to do a little research into energy in the real world to see if I can find something that would make sense to use cobblestone for.

One idea for the cobblestone would be a melter that runs on LV. This could be powered by one of the many LV power sources and would allow for a closed loop

[Darin755]

On second thought I think it would be better to have cobblestone as a waste product.

[Darin755]

We could have a cobblestone smelter that would take a bunch of energy and space to create lava. This lava then could be used aboard a portable craft powered by jumpdrive.

Honestly it may not be that hard to adapt a furnace to work as a smelter. That would keep us from having to create two new blocks

[Darin755]

This mod might be simular https://content.minetest.net/packages/MikeRedwood/craftable_lava/

[Darin755]

Using the mod above I was able to make a lava bucket generator. The only problem now is the bucket always gets in the way of the incoming fuel

[auouymous]

Does the generator support a control logic unit upgrade to eject the bucket? If not, try using a pipeworks injector to remove the empty bucket.

[Darin755]

I tried the pipeworks injector and it didn't work. I'm going to look onto creating a crafting recipe for raw lava blocks for craftable lava (linked above)

The other option would be to make the generator eject non burnable blocks such as buckets

[Darin755]

Does anyone know where the source code is for the generators? I just see the basic code in generator.lua

[Darin755]

I think I found the part of the code that needs to be updated to eject the bucket. I should have a PR at the end of today

[Darin755]

I know that Line 67 is reached in generator.lua when the generator encounters a node that isn't fuel. However I can't figure out the code to decrease the stack by one and to eject it out the bottom.

Any help would be appreciated.