So, the future of RedPower:

I’ve decided to turn RedPower into a standalone game, based on a custom engine.

It’s going to have a feel rather similar to the mod, but quite different from Minecraft. I’m going back to a lot of my old Minia ideas, and my original inspirations.

I’m holding back on revealing the signature content at the moment - I have mobs, player characters, and other things, but I’m not ready to start the hype just yet.

What does this mean for the Minecraft mod? I’m still not sure. I’d like to continue it, but I don’t currently have the resources to. During the main development period of the mod, I was unemployed. It was a full-time job to develop and maintain it. Since I started working, I tried updating it several times, including a major redesign, but constant code churn between MC, MCP names, and Forge kept erasing the progress I made.

With my own engine, there are no issues with code churn. The base game can’t change and invalidate my game design. I’m not stuck in Java, nor in ancient versions of OpenGL. My engine takes full advantage of multi-core CPUs and modern GPUs. It should run well on next-generation console hardware also.

The other big advantage is that I can get my game on Steam, and other major distribution channels. More people see it, and I have a chance at making enough to pay the bills. I don’t like that I have to think like that, but working all week leaves me only a little time on the evenings and weekends to do game dev. This applies even more now that I have a full-time artist working on the game. Those aren’t free.

Anyway, assuming this post actually uploads correctly, I’ll try to keep this site a little more up to date.

RedPower 2 Prerelease 6 for Minecraft 1.4.6 is now out! Get it at the download link above.

Unofficial Recipe List

Thanks to direwolf20 for the timely spotlights, which should get you up and running in the new version:

New Features

• Kinetic Generators and Wind Power
• Canvas Bags
• Seed Bags
• Blulectric Engines
• 10kV wires and Transformers
• Frame Tubes
• Managers and Sortrons
• Inverted and Decorative Lamps
• Project Table Plans
• Decorative basalt blocks
• Battery boxes retain charge when broken
• Liquid API support
• Charging Bench
• Sorting Machine improvements
• Sickle breaks leaves
• Brick block uncrafting recipe

And a video on how to use the Sortron:

My web team and I just finished removing WordPress and installing Octopress.

WordPress was an okay system, but it required too much maintenance, accepted far too much spam, and used so much RAM that it would crash the database.

Octopress generates static pages, so the site should be much more reliable in the future.

In the meantime, here’s a small teaser of PR7:

What could it mean?

Okay, here’s the next patch of RedPower 2.

Unofficial Recipe List

New Features

• Added some achievements.

• Support for Buildcraft oil.

• Support for Railcraft/MCL minecarts.

• Moss spreads.

• Recycle fine wire, armor, tools.

• Igniters can extinguish portals.

• Independent output buffers for the Sorting Machine.

• Added iron, tin, copper, silver nuggets.

General Bug Fixes

• IConnectRedstone is now respected by redwire (fix for Railcraft connection).

• Make use of the new MCL getItemsDropped() for minecarts.

• Fixed bottom of thermopile texture.

• Fixed jitter when near bedrock.

• Deployers using screwdrivers

• Fixed bad linksize computation.

• Fixed frame sky excursion.

• Fixed frames leaving loaded chunks.

• SSP volcanos now generate properly.

• Carts crashing into transposers now have a draining delay.

• Sorting machine no longer loses the column.

• Items bumping the input of the sorting machine are correctly sorted.

• Fixed HD texture animations on Frame Motors.

• Fortune on gems.

• Fixed bug in Assembler filling water buckets, etc.

• Boot disks now spawn in dungeon chests.

• Battery boxes drop contents when broken.

• Rubber tree leaves had the wrong light opacity.

• Placed rubber leaves no longer decay.

• Change the FORTH boot disk rarity.

• Nugget merge recipes in alloy furnace.

• Added jungle wood microblocks.

• Made diamond blocks harder to cut.

• Added a workaround for people who insist on setting the world time backwards.

• Fixed issues with Redbus IDs over 127

Control Changes

• Fixed KEY?

• New Words: 0SP 2SWAP ( \ ” AT-XY

• New words: >NAME NAME> DOES>

• New words: U. / MOD U< U>

• New words: PROBE TOP FREE

• New words: IMMEDIATE LITERAL POSTPONE RECURSE

• New Words: BLOCK FLUSH REVERT UPDATE LIST WIPE PP LOAD

• WORDS no longer clobbers the TOS.

• TIB no longer overwrites SCRATCH.

• CPU: Fixed interpretation of the E flag.

• CPU: Add unsigned divide support (C=0), fix divide bugs.

• CPU: C and Z flags are no longer swapped.

• CPU: Added unsigned multiply support (C=0)

• CPU: Fixed the carry flag for SBC.

• ERASE is now called FORGET

• TIBFIND is now called ’

• CPU loader no longer crashes when loading from a disk >64k

• TIMES can now be used as a compiling word.

• Make ALLOT smarter

• Attempt at fixing mac enter keys in Control.

I’ve quickly patched a bunch of the most serious bugs in RP2pr5, especially the crash bugs. There are still bugs remaining, but they’re less serious/less likely to happen/less likely to crash your game or server. This is why this version is 5b1. There will be a 5b2 sometime in the next week or so that cleans up more of the bugs, but some of the ones I’ve already fixed are pretty critical.

Fixes

• Cleaned up Control. Now uses the translation table, fixed the disk being treated as a block instead of an item, etc.

• Drives drop disks when broken.

• Fixed SMP rendering bugs in Control.

• The Assembler no longer crashes when multiple bundle-mode Assemblers are adjacent.

• Screwdrivering pumps no longer crashes.

• Frames are much less likely to crash with other mods, and will drop far fewer block types when moving.

• Fixed the << word in MineOS.

• Frame Motors no longer lose power on chunk reload.

Some of you want to write your own OS for the computer, and aren’t afraid of 6502 assembly. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s in RP Control, internally. First, the memory map:

Memory structure:

1
2
3
4
5
6

0x0000 Zero page
0x0100 P-stack
0x0200 R-stack
0x0300 bus output
0x0400 bus input (also Bootloader space)
0x0500 Ram (the bootloader loads the disk image here)

The MMU instruction, which is not documented in the instruction tables, takes a single byte parameter. The currently defined MMU commands:

MMU OpCode:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22

0x00 Map device in Reg A to redbus window.
0x80 Get mapped device to A.

0x01 Redbus Window offset to A
0x81 Get RB window offset to A.

0x02 Enable redbus
0x82 Disable redbus

0x03 Set external memory mapped window to A.
0x83 Get memory mapped window to A.

0x04 Enable external memory mapped window.
0x84 Disable external memory mapped window.

0x05 Set BRK address to A
0x85 Get BRK address to A

0x06 Set POR address to A
0x86 Get POR address to A

0xFF Output A register to MC logfile.

The Display registers:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19

0x00 Memory access row.

0x01 cursor x
0x02 cursor y
0x03 cursor mode (0: hidden, 1: solid, 2: blink)

0x04 key buffer start (16 byte buffer)
0x05 key buffer position
0x06 key value at buffer start

0x07 blit mode (1: fill, 2: invert; 3: shift)
0x08 blit x start / fill value
0x09 blit y start
0x0A blit x offset
0x0B blit y offset
0x0C blit width
0x0D blit height

0x10 -> 0x60 display memory window

IO Expander:

1
2

0x00-0x01: Read buffer (little endian)
0x02-0x03: Output latch

Disk Drive:

1
2
3

0x00-0x7F: Disk sector buffer
0x80-0x81: Sector number
0x82: Disk command:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

0: Idle/success
1: Read Disk Name
2: Write Disk Name
3: Read Disk Serial
4: Read Disk Sector
5: Write Disk Sector
0xFF: Command failure

The day has finally arrived! RedPower 2 PR5 is now available, complete with Frames and a preview of RedPower Control!

Unofficial Recipe List

New Features

• Added Frames and Frame Motors.

• Logic rewrite with lots of new logic gates and new “mirror” modes.

• Added RedPower Control computers.

• Added Pumps, Fluid Pipes, and Grates.

• Added the Ejector, Relay, and Assembler.

• Basalt is now creeper-resistant and microblocks are explosion-resistant.

• Added the Wool Card.

• Removed the Array package.

• Added the Athame.

Known Issues

• Frames currently have some trouble moving things that need support. Levers are especially effected by this, as is anything with an active redstone state. This is caused by vanilla behavior, and while I have a planned solution, it isn’t ready yet. Expect this to improve in the future.

• The OS for Control is currently very basic, and nearly undocumented. I hope to fix that in the future.

• There may be certain small refresh glitches in SMP on chunk boundaries.

• The Logic rewrite isn’t very compatible with the pr4 series. Logic tiles in inventories are going to get corrupted, and the current state, including rotation, will be lost on load, although they should convert tiles in world. This was unfortunately unavoidable.

While I’m still busy working away on pr5, I backported a bunch of the new content to 1.2.3 and present it here as RedPower 2 Prerelease 4e. Download button up top, like usual.

Unofficial Recipe List

In addition to 1.2.3, there are a bunch of new blocks, and more bugfixes than I can count.

New Features

• Added Magtubes, Accelerators.

• Added Restriction Tubes.

• Added Igniter.

• Added Regulator.

• Added Blulectric Alloy Furnace.

Changes

• Tubes no longer eject items, use a Transposer for deliberate ejection now.

• Battery boxes can be powered with redstone to prevent discharge.

• Retrievers now have sliding window.

Fixes

• Fixed the scheduler bugs.

• Fixed the recipe for the Thermopile.

• Fixed Deployer glitches.

• Lots of other bugfixes backported from the pr5 branch.

For those who want RedPower on 1.1.0, I present RedPower 2 Prerelease 4d. Download button up top, like usual.

Unofficial Recipe List

The biggest change in this version is simply that it runs on Minecraft 1.1.0, but there are a few new features too.

New Features

• Added the Project Table, an improved manual crafting table. This is not an automatic crafting table, please don’t ask me to make it into one.

• Added the Thermopile, which generates power from a temperature differential across it. Now you can run your sorting setup in inconvenient locations.

• Filters now have color tagging support.

Fixes

• Fixed the Deployer interacting with animals.

• New recipe handling, which removes microblocks from the default recipe list and eliminates crafting lag.

• No more glass jacketed wires.

So, I updated again, RedPower 2 Prerelease 4c, for Minecraft 1.0.0. Download button up top, like usual.

Unofficial Recipe List

This is an incremental bugfix release, with only a few changes. One bug has been causing a fair amount of trouble, and there was previously no way of getting Blutricity in the Nether. Moving batteries around is less than ideal, but since Sorting Machines and Retrievers use so little power, at least now you will be able to sort things in a nether base.

Fixes

• Improved damaged item comparisons.

• Fixed counting bug in Filters, etc.

• Fixed default coloring in empty Sorting Machines.

• Back-ported the new Battery Box.