[Prodigy9]

The purpose of this thread is to share ideas about how to adapt automatic wheat farms (or automated farms in general) to the new entity despawning code, which causes the loss of items when over 100 items exist within a realm. I'll begin with some of my own ideas; if you have any feedback on my suggestions, or any new suggestions of your own, please jump in and keep this discussion going!

Farm.JPG (297.55 KiB) Viewed 3059 times

I just harvested this "automated" wheat farm. By hand, due to the fact that it produces far more items than allowed by the new despawning code. It worked all right, but was kind of a pain in the neck--surely, there must be a better way, right?

One solution that occurred to me was to set up a series of different levers, each one controlling a single "section" of the field (sections being strips of land separated by the stone brick slabs, in my case, and divided into parts at different Y levels such that water can flow from one part onto another). By auto-harvesting only one such section at a time, I could reduce the number of items produced and thus minimize the risk of item despawning. Although there are limits on how wide these sections can be (water can only irrigate fields within four blocks), they can be quite long if arranged in a way that allows water to flow from one Y level down to another. Thus, even one section will typically produce too many items to be safe from the despawning code.

It seems that it would be possible to "surf" down the field as the water collects the items in one section, picking up many items before they have a chance to accumulate too much; the downside is that once the water starts to flow, it cannot be stopped very quickly--if you fall behind, the water will continue on ahead, harvesting more and more crops until they accumulate to the point that they begin despawning. An alternative approach would be to extend the parts on each Y level by one block in length (so that the water does not quite reach the edge of that Y level and drop to the next part); a series of sticky pistons could be used to lower the last block in each column to allow the water to continue flowing downhill. This would dramatically reduce the amount of crops harvested before additional manual intervention is needed, but would require a substantial investment of sticky pistons in addition to making the harvest take longer to complete.




tl;dr Autofarms don't work as well as they used to on MR, so let's talk about fixing them.

[Pemnan]

Wait what? I created a huge wheat harvester that was 95x48 and ran 13 columns with 7 rows. It took a week to build with my cousins help, but was awesome and always stayed fertile everywhere. When operational it would produce 3330 Wheat and took 27 minutes to replant. You mean there is some kind of update that prevents this? This is terrible, I mad. I would upload a better pic but MineRealm's amazing file limit size is doing its job again.

[Prodigy9]

As described here, the recent (last Friday) update made it so that only 100 dropped items can exist at a time within a single realm. On the positive side, mobs are now allowed to be more highly-concentrated (up to 100 in a realm), which makes livestock farms and mob grinders much easier to use. It does, however, wreak havoc with automated crop farms.

Hopefully, this thread will yield some good ideas for making automatic farms work well in spite of this change, so that farms like mine and yours will still be usable.

[BlockMan]

You could spread the wheat farms across the corners of 4 realms like the states of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, And Colorado, this would give a harvest of 400 items per harvest. Other than that, it's useless. Give up.

[Pemnan]

I was just thinking that perhaps in my case I could create a single lane harvest, which if my math is correct should produce around 90 Wheat/Carrots/or Potatoes (Not sure if Carrots or Potatoes have the same harvesting properties as wheat yet.) The only pain is having to run 24 individual levers that each would control one lane. Also I highly suggest to build the walls like in my picture, it is high enough so the crops don't jump the fence and get stuck, making it truly automatic. I also suggest to start at the bottom and work your way up while replanting as jumping up seems to never disturb the dirt while falling however does. I would have a lot less profit made in the same amount of time, but would be able to have more control over what happens. I also do very much like to hear about the new mob stacking limit, it's nice to hear about something good with this update. Now is this a MineRealm specific update or a universal? If it's MineRealm specific I have a feeling it was because of the lagg I caused the server while harvesting such a contraption. I'm not even sure if there is another larger automatic farm to compete against to be honest. If there is let me know so I can beat the record.

[mr. roach]

This needs to be fixed, or changed, as I was fixing to make a 2 realm wide automatic wheat farm.

[eah]

The other option is using light to auto harvest. When you flick a lever, the lights shut off and, when the chunks update, the crops pop up.

Let's say your farm is 90x90 with an empty 18x18 center area and rows of water efficiently spaced (possibly covered with blocks for ease).

O O O O X O O O O
O O O O X O O O O
O O O O X O O O O
O O O O X O O O O
O O O O X O O O O
O O O O X O O O O
O O O O X O O O O
O O O O X O O O O
O O O O X O O O O

O = crop
X = water

This "block" of farm tessellates 10x10 leaving out the 2x2 center

Have redstone lamp ceiling lights spread evenly to avoid mob spawning and keep crops from uprooting. When a lever is flicked (or button pushed), redstone deactivates the redstone lamps in an order, delaying the lamps farther away. You run like your life depends on it, catching the uprooted goodness as the lamps in front of you shut off. The lamps turn off slower than you can run to be sure the item count remains below 100.

[Prodigy9]

You could spread the wheat farms across the corners of 4 realms like the states of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, And Colorado, this would give a harvest of 400 items per harvest. Other than that, it's useless. Give up.

I was thinking of doing something of that sort with the drop area of my mob grinder It should also work with farms, I guess. I don't think this is entirely useless--with this change, automated farms will never be as effective as they used to be, but perhaps we can come up with ways to make them at least decent again.

I was just thinking that perhaps in my case I could create a single lane harvest, which if my math is correct should produce around 90 Wheat/Carrots/or Potatoes (Not sure if Carrots or Potatoes have the same harvesting properties as wheat yet.) The only pain is having to run 24 individual levers that each would control one lane.

I'm not sure if you could make it work with a single lane without having alternating walls and crop lanes (and if a farm is 50% walls, it's not very efficient). You'd have to be careful about manipulating the water movement, which can be inconsistent in some cases--in some situations, water bizarrely moves only towards the point where it can most quickly flow downhill, but in other cases it behaves as expected by flowing in all directions from its source block (even if there's only a single path that lets it drop a Y level).

Water Flow.JPG (184.49 KiB) Viewed 3017 times

Also I highly suggest to build the walls like in my picture, it is high enough so the crops don't jump the fence and get stuck, making it truly automatic. I also suggest to start at the bottom and work your way up while replanting as jumping up seems to never disturb the dirt while falling however does.

That's something I thought about in designing my farm. I separated them by just slabs so that I could run across them while replanting (and replant one entire Y level, then move down to the next one); the lanes between crop sections allow me to jump down without disrupting the fields. I do like your idea of starting from the bottom though... I may change my style if I have to rebuild my farm to make it work better with the update.

The other option is using light to auto harvest. When you flick a lever, the lights shut off and, when the chunks update, the crops pop up.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! I hadn't ever thought of using light levels as a harvesting technique. This seems like an incredibly effective way of adapting to the despawning code, since the rate of lamp changes can be controlled so much better than the rate of water flow.

[Intelli]

100 item stacks is up to 6,400 items in ideal conditions (the server automatically combines touching items)

[cdisme]

OMG AN INTELLI POST THAT DOESNT REVEAL ANYTHING NEW, LETS SMACK THAT LIKE BUTTON!!! CAPS!

Best solution I found was the first by Prodigy. I have my levers near the top with the water. Each lever controls one row. I hit the lever and jump (not really, you kill soil) into the row to allow the water to just push me along. Rough estimates have shown no noticeable loss if any. Ride the wave!

One problem I am having is obviously the 'one button press, piston powered, wall-o-stuffs' farms (like the melon one at spawn). But like it was stated before, this patch, update, whatever was ment to tackle those very farms in question. And the purpose behind the farms in the first place is minimal effort anyways. I am fine that I am losing 1/3 of the walls bootie considering I do nothing but let time pass in order to get more. I just wish I didn't make my 4 walls so TALL! @_@

Either way, I enjoy the goodies I get from animals/mobs/villagers more anyhow, long live the update.

TL,DR,YAFR?: SIMPLE. Make smaller sections that can be auto harvested one at a time. 100% effective farm walls were fun while they lasted, but if you don't over do it, everything is cool beans.

Step 3:Profit