Minecraft 1.5: Detecting occupied/unoccupied carts with detector rails

[D0ct0rAwesome]

How did you get your world that flat?

[Ferentix]

@D0ct0rAwesome I didn't flatten it myself (though I guess it wouldn't be too hard with, say, MCEdit), I downloaded a pre-made flat world to serve as an experiment/test world :) I believe the map was called "Ultimate Building World".

I did think about modding in a flat-terrain generator, don't think it'd be especially hard... but it'd be a pain when you wanted to play a regular world again.

[Ferentix]

@TheMarshmellowable It's Jolicraft. I'm afraid I don't know the artist's name, but his screen-name on minecraftforums is jolicoeur. Not familiar with John Smith's Texture pack, just John Smith's beer (foul, IMO).

[MoonlightZephyr]

how do you manage to make the cart move with the button? I thought that for boosters to boost, you need to give the carts a nudge first

[Ferentix]

@MoonlightZephyr I thought that too at first, but it turns out that you just need a block on one end of the terminal power rail, so there's only one way which the cart could go- then powered rail will act as a launcer :)

[TaviRider]

So it relies on the different velocity/acceleration, and timing?

The main situation I'm trying to deal with is when a rider bumps an unoccupied cart into the works of a station. The velocity of that bumped cart may vary depending upon how hard it was bumped. How resilient is your creation to that varying velocity?

[gneruinseruihnutshnu]

@TaviRider Then you should add part that stops the cart for a sec and then boost it.

[OkWhoTookMyKnife]

@gneruinseruihnutshnu That seems like it could rather easily be done with booster tracks because in their "off" state, they act as breaks. Maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about though, I only do redstone, not minecarts.

[Ferentix]

@TaviRider It depends. Basically this is for situations where you're OK with boosting carts to max speed so that they pass through at a fixed speed each time. I guess you COULD use it for your scenario, depending on how much space you could spare to have enough powered rail to ensure it goes up to max speed, but I imagine there's better solutions in that case.

[Ferentix]

@TaviRider oh, to be more concise: perhaps what you want is a one way track set up? You can do that in several ways, including "one way" powered tracks, having carts drop when they come through (rather than go down a slope), or a slope with a block on top (carts can roll down through that block, but not up) which is a little hard to describe in writing.