AwesomeCraft

I've always enjoyed playing Minecraft, as well as trying out various mods from time to time. I never much cared for most modpacks, like Feed the Beast or Technic, I wanted something a little more suited to my interests so I threw my own modpack together, called AwesomeCraft! Since RedPower2 has not been updated in some time, the latest supported version of Minecraft is 1.4.7. The mods featured in the pack include:

Client & Server Side Mods
  1. RedPower 2 Pre-Release 6
  2. BuildCraft 3.4.3
  3. ComputerCraft 1.5

Client Side Only Mods
  1. Rei's Minimap 3.2.6
  2. CodeChickenCore 0.7.3
  3. NotEnoughItems 1.4.7.0
  4. NotEnoughItems Plugins 1.0.4.5
  5. NotEnoughItems RedPower 2 Plugin 1.4.3.1

I've also written a lot of awesome programs for my ComputerCraft Turtles, if you're interested you can download them here! They're provided as-is, I don't think I have any comments on the details of their functionality. Usually all you need to do is change the program's global variables near the top of each file to tweak it to your liking. I'll work on a more accessible version of these programs at some point!

However, if you wish to view a description of the details of each program and how it works / how to use it, click here!

Downloads
  1. AwesomeCraft 1.4.7 (Client & Server Files)
  2. My ComputerCraft Programs (Program Documentation)

Some screenshots of various creations on my AwesomeCraft server are featured below! Should give you a pretty good idea of some of the awesome stuff you can build with RedPower2 in survival mode (without cheating). Pretty much every complicated system was created from scratch by myself, all original designs (with the exception of the minecart dispenser).

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The castle on our server, built out of basalt microblocks from RedPower2! Has lots of rooms and a massive underground area.
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An overhead view of our castle, complete with a massive solar panel array on the roof for additional power generation.
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A horizontal windmill on our server, made out of RedPower2 microblocks by a friend. Works best when it's storming outside!
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A vertical variation of the windmill, made from RedPower2 microblocks made by the same friend.
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The destination selector for our automated minecart transit system. Push a button to choose a destination and the light should turn on!
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A glimpse at some of the wiring for our minecart destination selector. Uses a fairly simple system of RS Latches w/ delays to keep track of state & allow for easy resets.
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The minecart dispenser / storage system, hooked into our minecart station for automatic and simple storage / retrieval of minecarts!
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The view from the window of our ComputerCraft turtle-powered semi-auto tree farm! Holds a grid of 8x8 of any kind of tree, and uses water to automatically collect saplings!
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A view from the left of our auto-smelter-stacker system! Just put your gems, ores & other valuables in the chest and this system will automatically smelt & stack them into blocks!
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The right side of the auto-smelter-stacker system, this side uses bluelectric furnaces for unlimited free smelting!
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Similarly, there is another system that is used to automatically "cook" items like wood, sand, food, cactus, clay, etc. Also uses bluelectric furnaces for free smelting!
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This room is used for safely manufacturing gates for BuildCraft stuff. Fully automated & hands free, turns on if there is work queued / off if it overheats or completes all tasks.
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An overhead view of the main floor of the fully automated Flax plant farm. Uses block update detectors to detect plant maturity. Once a plant is fully grown, it will be auto harvested and replanted. The drops are automatically sorted too!
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A glimpse of part of the modular RedPower2 wiring in the basement of the Flax farm. Complete with circuits to handle harvesting / planting timing and plant growth state so that when the system is turned off, it will remember which plants are fully grown!
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This is our fully automated potato farm, with auto harvesting, re-planting & cooking!
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The RedPower2 wiring for logic and timing. Not nearly as complicated as other projects!

The next set of screenshots are a part of my over-engineered and extremely complicated fully automated oil refining facility complete with overheat failsafes, alternative power sources and auto-sorting and auto-selecting of liquids.

Quite a mouthfull, isn't it? It links components from RedPower2 and BuildCraft together, which can be a little awkward. There's a total of 8 identical modular refining systems where there are 4 placed on each side of the room. The system can be controlled using energy generated from BuildCraft combustion engines or RedPower2 bluelectric engines (although combustion is much faster and bluelectric usually drains the whole battery room). There are buttons on each side of the room to turn on / off individual refining systems, or to turn them all on / off at the same time. Combustion engines are hooked up to RedPower2 circuits that automatically monitor the engine to ensure that the coolant pumps are operating at optimal efficiency to avoid overheats, that there is oil to be processed and that the engine has not overheated. Oil is automatically pulled from the farthest row of tanks with oil in them and placed in the closest row of fuel tanks that still have room. All of the wiring is hidden on both the floor and cieling immediately below the main floor, with cables and wires twisted and tangled in every direction. It was quite a headache to keep track of which bundled cable I was dealing with as they all have the same coating (a mistake on my part), but I had a text file full of notes on how the system worked. Even then, I even had a hard time figuring it out while I was working on it!

Basically, all you have to do to make it work is have oil in the tanks on the left from your pumping stations, some fuel in the combustion engines (must refill engines manually, however) and then flip on the master switch! So long as the chunk is active, your oil will be safely processed very quickly without the risk of anything exploding or being damaged / wasted. Took me almost a week to design from scratch, and it was very challenging and a lot of fun. I was always growing tired of my old inefficient designs malfunctioning / exploding / wasting fuel so I finally took the time to build something nice!

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The left side of the main floor of refinery, with the oil storage in the background.
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Right side of the main floor, with fuel storage in the back.
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Overhead view from the back, left side of the main floor of the refinery.
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And an overhead view of the back, right side.
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The basement, with RedPower2 wires on the floor for signal forwarding to / from the master controls.
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The left side of the basement, with overheat / control circuits for combustion engines on the ceiling and liquid sorting logic on the floor.
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Right side of the basement with more overheat / control circuits on the cieling and liquid soring logic on the floor.
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A glimpse at some of the wiring for the combustion engine control panel for the refinery room.

Another really cool area we have is our record farm! In case you don't know, you can get records in Minecraft by getting a skeleton to shoot and kill a creeper. So my friend and I had previously designed a record farm in our other server where one person would bait creepers into a pit of water, so as to have them flow into a single holding area, where they await their death. A single skeleton would also be required in the holding area opposite the creepers, so it can line up a shot with them and have clear visibility to the player. There is also an option to dispose of unwanted mobs, like zombies.

Once you have a bounty of creepers and a skeleton ready to fire, you can push another button to activate a long delay crusher that leaves the creepers suffocating long enough so they have about one heart left by the time it finishes. This allows the skeleton to single shot all of the creepers! Now just line yourself up on the platform so that the skeleton can see you, and he will start producing records! Just be extra careful around the contraption because if you get too close to the creepers, they could still explode!

Records are also automatically collected and sorted using a combination of BuildCraft obsidian pipes and RedPower2 sorting machines!

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Front view of the record farm with all of the control buttons in the front.
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And a view from the back side of the record farm.
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The control and timing circuits for the record farm. Not too complicated!
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Record sorting / storage area.

So after a while, moving BuildCraft quarries from place to place and dealing with combustion engines and pipes can be a pain. I drew some inspiration from a friend and after familiarizing myself with the working of frame motors, I designed a mobile fully automated solar powered mining machine complete with automatic smelting and sorting of resources!

However, the mobile frame quarry is not finished and is still a work in progress (hence the ugly exterior view), but it is 99% functional! It features approximately 128 double chests for storage and 16 bluelectric furnaces for smelting. The frame quarry is controlled by a single ComputerCraft computer which runs a custom program to control the frame motors in its 6-directional (up / down / left / right / forward / backward) drive system. The computer also controls its independent, extendable mining drill platform, which moves up and down to collect resources, separate from the main frame itself. Frame pieces are placed / removed as it moves up and down to maintain connection in the RedPower2 pneumatic tubes so items can still flow through! There is a 17x17 grid of block breakers at the bottom of the drill platform to break and collect blocks at it descends. The computer can also be given commands remotely from another wirelessy connected ComputerCraft computer or turtle!

There is however, a hiccup somewhere in the design of the frame motor 6-directional drive that I haven't fixed yet as I haven't played in some time, but other than that and the lack of panels covering the outside to make it prettier, it's basically done! Some screenshots of the massive frame quarry are featured below.

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A view of the frame quarry from above.
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And from below.
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The control system for the extendable drill platform.
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The main deck, with central control computer and basic crafting / storage blocks.

So, spleef arenas can be a lot of fun in Minecraft. In case you aren't familiar with "spleefing", it is when people gather in a large area of snow blocks with shovels, and must dig out blocks from underneath one another until there is only one player left up top! There is usually lava or something to kill and punish players who lose, as well!

However no one ever wants to be tasked with replacing all of the snow blocks by hand! Fortunately, with RedPower2 and BuildCraft, we were able to make a system to automatically replace all of the snowblocks for us!

It utilizes a system to harvest snow from snow golems, then it is crafted into snow blocks, and stored in a buffer area of storage containers so there is always a surplus of snow blocks! When the snow supply starts to run out, more snow is generated automatically! The system is also self-powered using a separate thermal power system. Snow blocks are set in place using a system of RedPower2 circuits for timing, pistons and assemblers. The floor is actually square, but only the circular portion is visible to players!

Some more screenshots of our underwater automated spleef arena are featured below.

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The night time view from above the water of the spleef arena dome.
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The main floor of the battle area of the spleef arena.
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One of the modular snow generation rooms. There are two in total!
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A glimpse at some wiring from the timing circuits, connected to pistons & assemblers.
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The control and timing circuit for the spleef arena and snow generator system. Arguably the simplest part, by far!
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A little difficult to see, but this is a compacted system to handle overflow snow blocks and detect when the surplus snow storage is full.