Inactive [MECH] PorteCoulissante - Easy and realistic portcullises

Discussion in 'Inactive/Unsupported Plugins' started by Captain Chaos, Mar 6, 2011.

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  1. Offline

    Captain Chaos

    ****************************************************************************************
    PorteCoulissante moved to BukkitDev!

    PorteCoulissante has moved to BukkitDev! I will no longer be updating this thread, please use the BukkitDev page to keep track of developments, download the plugin and source code, read how to configure it and other details, etc.
    ****************************************************************************************

    PorteCoulissante - The easy and realistic portcullis plugin:

    Build redstone powered portcullises, without using commands! This is my first ever Minecraft plugin, so please be gentle! I needed a project for my first plugin, and I've always wanted a working portcullis in my town gate, so I decided to write this. I subsequently discovered that there already is a portcullis plugin (which is why I named mine after the French word that the word portcullis was derived from), but I think mine has enough distinguishing features to be useful.

    Download the latest release from the BukkitDev page.

    Also check out the new sister plugin, RetractableBridge, which does basically the same thing, only horizontally.

    Features:
    • It doesn't use commands. Just build the portcullis and it will work.
    • Stateless, i.e. it does not have to save anything on the server.
    • It's redstone powered, giving you flexibility in controlling it.
    • It is realistic. The portcullis does not disappear, but moves up and down just like a real one would.
    Usage:
    • Build the portcullis itself by stacking rows of fences (wood or iron), at least two wide and two high.
    • Build the wall around it to contain it. Leave enough empty space above the portcullis to allow it to go as high as you want it to go.
    • Power the portcullis by powering one of the blocks adjacent to it on either side, by attaching a lever or redstone dust. For now, the power has to come from the side.
    • The result should look something like this:
    [​IMG]
    • When the block is powered, the portcullis will start moving upwards, and will keep going until it hits something and can't go any further. It moves slowly, since a portcullis is heavy!
    • Important: make sure that when it is in the up position, it is still in contact with a powered block (the same one, or a different one).
    • When the power goes off, the portcullis will drop down (a lot faster than it went up).
    • Decorate the gate by building walls in front of and behind the portcullis to cover the empty space and to make it appear the portcullis is moving in a groove. Of course you can make it look any way you want! Here is an example:
    [​IMG]

    Hints and tips:
    • The portcullis can be any size you want, as long as it is at least two blocks wide and two blocks high. It must be rectangular though, and have no holes. If the portcullis breaks, it won't move any more until you repair it.
    • Try to make the empty space above the portcullis one block less high than the portcullis itself (like in the first picture above). That way, you only need to power one block (the one in the middle on either side), since that block will always be in contact with the portcullis.
    • Of course the empty space can be even smaller, if you want. The portcullis only has to go up two blocks to let people through, or three if you want the passage to be a little less claustrophobic.
    • The portcullis will go through (and hold back) water and lava, so you can make water gates and water or lava traps with them.
    More information:

    For download links, source code, configuration information and change logs, please see the BukkitDev page:

    http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/portecoulissante/
     
  2. Offline

    Captain Chaos

    I'm not sure you're receiving my emails, so for completeness sake I'll reply here as well (it's also a useful reminder for others):

    It turns out that you are wiring your portcullises wrong. You're running redstone directly to the portcullis itself. You're supposed to power one of the blocks surrounding the portcullis. Look at the picture in the top post as an example, you'll see that the portcullis has a completely intact frame, and the redstone goes to the side of one of the frame blocks.

    The reason that some of your portcullises do work is because while you have the redstone running directly to the portcullis, some other part of the wiring actually touches the frame from the side. It's those bits of accidental wiring which are raising the portcullis. This just doesn't happen to be the case for that one non-working portcullis.

    By the way, that portcullis also is missing a redstone connection when it is raised, so it will never come down. You have to make sure that the portcullis is in contact (through a frame block) with redstone both when it is lowered and when it is raised, otherwise it will not detect the redstone power going off in order to drop down again. The easiest way to do that is to limit the travel of the portcullis so that there is at least one frame block that is always in contact with the portcullis, up or down, so you can power that block.

    New release!

    I just released a new bug fix release of the plugin. The new version is 1.2.5 and it fixes a bug that caused lava and water to remain stationary when released by a portcullis being hoisted or dropped, instead of starting to flow. Thanks to pcgames3112 for reporting the bug!

    EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 11, 2016
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    Goldfire

    Just wanted to say I'm loving the plugin. I use it in conjunction with MobArena as a holding area for the players. When the players spawn in the arena, they land on pressure plates which raises the portcullis, once they leave the pressure plates and enter the fighting floor, the portcullis closes behind them so they can't retreat.

    Haven't had any problems yet, I'll have to get the retractable bridge plugin as well and get started on making a castle ^_^
     
    Captain Chaos likes this.
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    DarkSageVXII

    Hey um uhh great plugin but does this clash with the falsebook plugin because it doesnt seem to work after i installed false book
     
  5. Offline

    Captain Chaos

    It would be the first I've heard of it. Would you mind testing it by temporarily disabling Falsebook (while not changing anything else) and seeing if PorteCoulissante starts working again?
     
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    Sneaky420

    Any chance at getting the ability to make a angle gate, rather then just a flat gate?

    ex:

    ###
    #|#
    #||#

    #||#
    #||#
    ###

    # = stone
    | = fence

    I manage to mess around and put a lot of redstone around the layout i made, and it will open once... but then random stacks will not move with the rest or get stuck. Just and idea to put a gate on the corner of a keeps wall.
     
  7. Offline

    Captain Chaos

    I'm not sure what you mean, could you elaborate a bit? Is that diagram from the side or from the top? Is the gap in the middle supposed to be there?

    In which direction do you want to gate to be angled? Of course it's hard to make anything at an angle in Minecraft... ;)
     
  8. Offline

    Sneaky420

    K so was messing around with ideas and this is what I came up with, it all works, expect for a single stack of fence... but the rest moves, here are pics:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    So some showing the wiring and about how wide I kinda want it, but... that single one just will not move with the rest.

    Come join on the server if you wanna see it without rebuilding it to test or something:

    Froghouse.se
     
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    Captain Chaos

    Wow, that's very impressive. I never thought of that. I think it should work, I don't know why that one bit of fence won't come down. I'll come take a look on your server.
     
  10. You should try to make rotating drop bridges too, I know it's alot to calculate and stuff but they'll be awesome !

    A graphical example:
    [​IMG]
     
  11. Offline

    Captain Chaos

    That's actually how I wanted my RetractableBridge to work at first. The problem is that Minecraft blocks are just too coarse. I think it would look terrible if I were to try drawing the bridge deck at various "angles". Thanks for the idea though, and who knows, perhaps some day I will think of an elegant way to do it!
     
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    DarkSageVXII

    Ok i ve tried it without false book and it works perfectly but is there an way to make it compatible?
     
  13. Offline

    Captain Chaos

    Is it Falsebook that doesn't work, or PorteCoulissante? Are there any error messages in the server.log, and if so, can you copy them here?

    It's very strange. I don't know why they should conflict. My plugin is very small and simple, it's hard to see how Falsebook could interfere with it.

    Can anyone else confirm that PorteCoulissante and Falsebook don't work together?
     
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    DarkSageVXII

    Its portecoulissante that wont work and falsebook works and no errors are showing up and it says that all plugins are loaded without errors.
     
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    Captain Chaos

    Do you also use the RetractableBridge plugin? If so, does that work together with Falsebook?
     
  16. If you have a problem hiding the redstone, try downloading the Wireless Redstone plug in. Would imagine it works nicely with this plug in :)
     
  17. Is it possible to make the portcullis move sideways as well as up and down? If so how? Oh and is it possible to add the use of wood blocks?
     
  18. Offline

    Captain Chaos

    No, the portcullis can only go up or down. And yes, you can enable the use of wood blocks if you want to, check out the section on "configuration" in the top post.
     
  19. ok - thanks. Next question - is it possible to use 2 types of material at same time? ie a wooden portcullis with an iron grating in the middle as a window? Again if so how as it only seems to work on a single material
     
  20. Offline

    Captain Chaos

    No, that's not possible, the entire portcullis has been made of the same material.
     
  21. Offline

    Pantheis

    Gates made of the iron fence blocks don't seem to work consistently. My server already had a number of ones made from the wood fence blocks and those work fine. I replaced the fence posts with the iron gates and they just stop working outright. No idea why. If I replace the iron gate blocks back with wood fence blocks, they start working again.

    The configuration file has both item ID's listed as valid blocks.
     
  22. Offline

    Captain Chaos

    I don't know why that would be. I'm not aware of any bugs in the plugin. I was going to ask if you were sure the construction of the portcullis and the redstone connection were correct, but they must be if it starts working again if you replace the iron bars with wooden fences again (assuming you didn't change anything else of course).

    Is it only one gate which won't work with iron fences, or do iron fence gates not work at all on your server?

    If they don't work at all, the only thing I can think of is that you're using an old version of the plugin. It doesn't seem very likely, but could you double check in the server log that it is loading version 1.2.5 of the plugin? And that it is loading the configuration file, while you're at it (it will complain in server.log about any non-standard settings ;))?
     
  23. Offline

    Pantheis

    It's random. I can sometimes get them to work and other times they won't. I haven't yet figured out why. Using worldedit to replace a working wood fence based one with the iron bar one results in it never working as Iron, but replacing the iron bars back with wood fence pieces it starts working again. If I build one from scratch by laying the blocks out one by one, it works sometimes, but not always. It always works (and always has, I've been using this and the bridge one for a long time) out of wood Fence blocks. I haven't been using a configuration file until recently but it didn't work consistently even without it. I am using a couple of custom settings in the configuration file for increasing the speed that it raises gates, but it was having the same issues before making those changes.

    I'm positive that this is probably some sort of plugin conflict, but there are no errors being generated in the server log so I don't have a clue what could be causing problems. And, as I said, it's ONLY the iron bars that are having issues. Any gate made out of the wood fence blocks works, 100% of the time. Even the huge one I have across a bay inlet underwater. :) (it's about 30 wide and 50 deep)
     
  24. Offline

    Captain Chaos

    Yeah, that really sounds like a plugin conflict or some other server issue. Are you willing to try and find out which plugin might be the conflicting one by a process of elimination? You might start by running with no plugins except mine and seeing if the iron bar portcullises work reliably then. At least that would tell us that a plugin conflict is the likely cause. Then you could re-enable the plugins one by one (or you could do a binary search, which involves a little more administration but fewer server restarts) until you find the one that triggers the problem.

    I'm afraid that there's not much I can do to help. I'm not aware of any current bugs in the plugin, and without a message in the server.log and without being able to reproduce it myself I wouldn't even know where to start...
     
  25. Offline

    Pantheis

    Since I'd very much like the iron bar version to work every time, I'm already planning on the exact steps you listed above over the weekend. I won't have time until then to play with the server much. I'll let you know what I find out.
     
  26. Offline

    Captain Chaos

    I just thought of another thing you could try to help me figure out what's going on: enable debug logging. By adding the following line to config.yml:

    debugLogging: true

    ...the plugin will dump a huge amount of debug output to server.log. If you want to try this, here are the steps you should take:
    • Make sure you have a non-functional iron bar portcullis available.
    • Deactivate any active redstone circuitry (pulsers, etc.). All redstone activity is logged, so if there is unrelated redstone acticity I won't know which of it is related to the portcullis.
    • Add the debugLogging=true line to config.yml and reload the plugin (or restart the server, I'm not sure if reloading the plugin is enough. The plugin will report that it activated debug logging in the server.log file if it worked).
    • Try to raise the portcullis once.
    • Send me the server.log file, everything from the point where you reloaded the plugin or restarted the server.
    • Don't forget to remove the debugLogging line again.
     
  27. Offline

    Pantheis

    Thanks for the directions. I'll see if I can find time to do this later tonight. If not, I'll make sure to try these steps first as soon as I get time to work on the issue. Thanks!
     
  28. Offline

    Pantheis

    So, I've found something very interesting!

    Creating a new gate from scratch with either type of block (wood fence or iron bars) works fine, every time. However, if I then change that type of block to the other type, even if I completely remove it first, it won't work in that same physical location until the server is restarted.

    I found that this happens if I use worldedit to //replace or //set the block to the other type, even if I set it to something else first, including air. It also happens if I build a gate, power it, remove the power, and manually remove the ironbars or wood fence blocks and put in the other type manually. Changing the type of block the gate is made from while the server is running in the same physical location on the server results it it not working. Based on the server log with the debug logging enabled, PorteCoulissante thinks the gate is no longer intact and won't move it. It works fine after a server restart, until I try to change the type of block it is made from again and then bam, it stops working.

    Here's a pastebin of my server log, with some notes inside the log from chat lines I did in-game.
    http://pastebin.com/S7K16P0T

    I hope this helps and is detailed enough!
     
  29. Offline

    Captain Chaos

    It does indeed help! I now know exactly what's going on, and it is indeed a bug in the plugin. I'll release a fix as soon as possible.

    Thank you very much for putting in the time and effort to help debug this problem!

    Edit: I just noticed I gave you the wrong line to add to config.yml. It should be "debugLogging: true". Apparently you figured that out by yourself, but I corrected my post anyway just in case anyone else wants to use it.

    New release!

    I just released version 1.2.6 of the plugin, in which a bug is fixed which would create problems if you tried to change the block type of an existing portcullis. It would not work until you restarted the server, now that problem should no longer exist.

    Can you confirm that the new version solves the problem?

    EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 11, 2016
  30. Offline

    Greylocke

    Thank you for continuing to support this great plugin!
     
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    Pantheis

    I can confirm that the bug is squashed! Changing the block type of an existing portcullis works perfectly now. Thanks for such a quick update! :)
     
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