Minecraft 1.5: Detecting occupied/unoccupied carts with detector rails

EDIT: Infinitrivial discovered a 2x1x1 detector, check the video responses.

Note that in the video I talk about carts "with players in", I think it may work ok for other types of entities as riders, but I don't know if different rider entities would have different max speeds.

This has been pretty reliable so far, but I'm afraid that stuff like number of powered tracks at the start and the distance between the two detector plates is mostly just trial and error right now. In practise of course your cart probably feeds in from another length of track, so it would probably need tweaking.

I originally had a version where a cart travelled a tight loop, and which needed a smaller number of powered rails and only one detector rail (but more redstone) so might be cheaper and more useful for some situations... but it was kind of unreliable. I'm currently trying to come up with a more reliable version of that, and if I come up with one will post a video.

Original build screencaps in this post: http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/gtvxh/detecting_riders_with_detect...

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Minecraft
• 1.5
• minecart
• cart
• rails
• detector
• detecter
• powered
• redstone
• rider
• riderless
• occupied
• unoccupied

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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).

[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.

[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.

[gneruinseruihnutshnu]

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