Thank you all for the encouraging feedback, I really was not expecting such a response for what is, for now, only a couple of clever 3d models :)
I would not normally make such an early state of development public, however, I thought that the more creative players might enjoy them in their worlds as pure decoration, for the time being.
Hume2 wrote:GreenDimond wrote:Cool concept but..
your gears are turning the wrong directions relative to each other and it hurts
Good point here.
The cube made of gears is impossible. There can be gears on four sides but not on all six.
I can understand what you are getting at, if you had six opposing bevel gears all meshed together then nothing is going to move, correct! However, I’d like to imagine that the internals of the gear-box look something more like this:
With this model, the current animations are almost technically correct, except for the vertical shaft. The switching variety would have a second larger downward pointing gear that will reverse its direction when engaged. Naturally, you will be able to rotate these boxes to suit your requirements.
Note to the budding engineers, I know that the horizontal shafts would turn faster than the vertical, however, this is a voxel world and there needs to be some creative licence here. I do not wish to create a 'lag machine'.
FaceDeer wrote:Oh, nice! This looks like it'd fit well with my long-term goal of recreating Dwarf Fortress in Minetest. :) In addition to rotating shafts, perhaps you could use chains or belts for long-distance energy transmission?
Thanks, I really like the idea of chains, I can probably make that work using the same technique! I am also a very big fan of your work, btw.
ShadMOrdre wrote:Is it possible to add an on_place callback to "stop" the gearboxes, and thus, also, any attached axles or fans? I see you have already mentioned mesecons support, so I assume on/off switch is already planned?
Sure, It will have all of those things and some but don’t expect it all to happen soon, I am mostly just looking for ideas at the moment :)