Request/Suggestion: Visibly indicate when working etc

[katubug]

Hi there! Firstly, thank you for this mod, as it's a great addition to pother! Secondly, something that would make this mod even better would be a way to troubleshoot when it's not noticeably working. Obviously, when it IS working you can guess that, because pollutants start appearing. However, if you're not familiar with the mod, it's difficult to figure out what's going wrong when it's not working.

My initial thought would be to make the fan texture on the block animated (spinning) when it's actively collecting pollutants. Another potential option would be to have it emit a redstone signal when it's active, so players can test for it that way.

My other request would be the ability to tell why the machine isn't working. You can tell when it's being provided with power, of course (assuming you have ToP or Hwyla installed), but 1) if it's set to not use power, it has the same overlay as when it is, and 2), it doesn't have any way of checking how many more pipes you need in order to reach the pollution.

The ideal solution to that, imo, would be to give the machine a right-click GUI with the following information:

If it's configured to use energy -

• How much energy the pump contains vs max capacity.
• How much energy it consumes per tick when active.

And regardless of energy-usage config -

• Whether or not the machine is currently running.
• What the range from the top block is configured to.
• How far away from accessing the pollutant-concentration-level the top block is. So, if the pollutant concentration level is set to 127, and the range of the pump is 20, and the top of the pipe is at y-level 100, it would show the number 7. This would help players determine how many more pipes they need to craft, which would eliminate a lot of guesswork
• How much of each pollutant the pump can access (so players know whether they should move the pump).

Hopefully that all made sense, haha. Oh, and I also have a question about the range of the pipe - is that number a spherical radius from the top pipe? Or is it a vertical-only range, and the horizontal radius is set to something specific?

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this! <3

[thebrightspark]

Hey, sorry it took so long to get back to you, thanks a lot for the feedback and suggestions 😄
My initial thought about showing the power would be that it can probably be viewed by some tech mods or a client mod like WAILA (or whatever they are these days)?

I feel like with some of this information you're suggesting for what the pump tells you is pretty hand-holdy. I don't want to make the mod feel like it's making it too easy to use, otherwise you lose the feel of the mod. After all, it's just a pump, not some highly technical machine 😛 But let me know what you think about that.

However I've got new textures I still need to release for the mod which include an animated fan, so I could make it to the fan only animates when the pump is active.

[fnar]

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