
Redstone Word Processor in Minecraft [video] - ivank
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_ULtNYRCbg
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tlrobinson
People use some sort of automation to do these kind of things, right?

It reminds me of the Game of Life image generator I made awhile back:
[https://vimeo.com/3124876](https://vimeo.com/3124876) That was just a matter
of writing a script to place a bunch of "guns" with the right patterns in the
right places.

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iancarroll
Sometimes WorldEdit is used to duplicate strips (create the first one manually
and copy twenty times). Almost certainly used for the screen.

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Joona
Yep, that's as far as you can go. Obviously you can fly around the world and
place things from any distance, but it's a bit of work still.

Would love to see someone build a program that automates this, though!

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alyandon
These types of creations always make me feel embarrassed about the things I've
built in Minecraft.

Then again, I don't really have the free time outside of family and work to
dedicated to building things on that scale.

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barisser
This is spectacular.

Redstone circuitry is an excellent exercise in the operation of digital
circuits. I learned a ton about digital logic by trying to recreate stuff like
this (albeit much more modest incarnations).

Building sophistication yourself out of base elements is the ultimate
educational experience.

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aidos
What about unicode support?!

This is absolutely amazing. When people build things like this in minecraft
(I've never played), do they have to place each individual block or are there
scripts and things to let you repeat patterns etc?

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ferrari8608
There are many mods and tools available to assist with building large
projects. However, there are many players that build things like this
completely by hand. It's a pride thing I think.

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Kiro
How does redstone work in Minecraft? Is this the kind of stuff you're
"supposed" to use it for?

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jameshart
Redstone is basically a cellular automaton. Every 'tick', the state of
redstone cells changes based on their previous state, and their neighbors.
Some redstone cells just forward 'activeness'; others invert it, or delay it.
Obviously by connecting these elements together you can create simple logic
circuits. redstone is "supposed" to be used for simple things like traps,
automatic doors, and machinery to move things around. Obviously by connecting
simple logic circuits together, you can create complex logic circuits.
Minecraft's block grid places interesting constraints on how redstone circuits
can be constructed (areas need to be separated to prevent their state leaking,
messages take time to travel long distances). Making a truly complex,
sophisticated system which operates rapidly and correctly takes considerable
logic and minecraft engineering. This, for example, is hugely impressive.
Redstone was not built with this sort of thing in mind, but was made
sophisticated enough that this is possible. I guess that's turing-completeness
for you.

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jacquesm
> Obviously by connecting simple logic circuits together, you can create
> complex logic circuits. Minecraft's block grid places interesting
> constraints on how redstone circuits can be constructed (areas need to be
> separated to prevent their state leaking, messages take time to travel long
> distances).

The exact same thing happens in the real world, hence isolation and things
like the speed of light.

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jameshart
Right, building things out of redstone more closely analagous to building
things out of doped silicon, rather than out of discrete components or ICs.
Building logic using pistons vs torches always struck me as being a bit like
the difference between RTL and TTL, but maybe that's stretching an analogy too
far. The point is engineering a digital device out of redstone requires
tradeoffs in space and speed and complexity that I think make it qualify as a
real form of engineering. Made all the more impressive for how impractical and
pointless it really is.

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IvyMike
"Your minecrafters were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that
they didn't stop to think if they should."

P.S. Really, I'm just wowed beyond belief. This is amazing.

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Jupe
Reminds me of this: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/21/3032765/minecraft-
emulated...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/21/3032765/minecraft-
emulated-6502-cpu-redpower-2)

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arjn
Wow! ... very impressed. By the effort, ingenuity and by minecraft too.

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jhgg
Was something like this built by hand, or was the map programmatically
generated by some kind of tool? Or a mix of both?

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guipsp
A mix. MCEdit was used to copy-paste segments around.

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bduerst
I'm wondering when someone will build a python interpreter and allow you to
run simple scripts within minecraft.

