Automation in Game Design

The new crafter is cool, but... it's not the best.

If you would like to learn to code, I recommend these great online courses! (It's what I'm using.)

Contact and Social Media:

Footage from trailers and updates of each game mentioned respectively, used under fair use rights while discussing each game:

Minecraft live:
Factorio:
Satisfactory:
The Create Mod:
Create: Above and Beyond modpack:

Ilmangos video showcasing a slime farm in peaceful mode:

Music:
"Sunny" By RA
License code: XB8EJCFIEJEESVOT

"No Pain No Gain" By Qube
License code: 6DYE1VFSMPPDA8CI

"Complications" By AK
License code: IDPEUL8EH2TYVVFV

"Endless Journey" By Nick Petrov
License code: OAXDSJQIPNTEWGHV

"Sweden" By C418
Music from Minecraft used under fair use rights while discussing Minecraft.

[Artindi]

I mostly just wanted to make a video talking about how great the Create Mod is, but then it just so happened the new update was announced and the subject just fit in perfectly, so for once I've made a video that's sorta relevant instead of 5 years too late. lol

[EBhero]

I understand why after coming from Create you'd think that the Crafter block is very meh. But I believe that it fits very well in Minecraft because of one reason: Accessibility. If they implemented something Create-style for autocrafting, the skill floor would probably be too high for anyone to use and the system would be used by an even smaller amount of players.

Even understanding redstone is a tall task for some players. And if those players who are interested in autocrafting are met with a complex system they need to learn, they would give up.

[wrenlow.mp]

the create mod is by far my favorite mod for minecraft; it's just amazing in every aspect lol

[bluefake_or_smt]

A potential 6th automation category exists: Recombination, where instead of getting a single type of output, the process returns multiple types of items, requiring you to handle each of them to prevent the system clogging with whatever means the game gives to you

[yetanotherperson]

Now I get why create was such a revolutionnary mod compared to the more "classical" automation and technology mods. Instead of having a dedicated block, with a dedicated function, for a dedicated action, it allows you to play a lot more freely with contraptions. Instead of having a simple a + b = c, you have to be mindful of a lot of elements, yet have a lot of ways to use a single item/block
Don't get me wrong, I love the old mods such as thermal, ender IO, mekanism, etc, but I feel like they are a completely different kind of mod compared to create and I finally get why
Also it could be noted that these mods have different kind of complexity. While create is complex because you have to be very mindful of your contraptions, which become real rube goldberg machine sometime, The less vanilla centered mods get complex because of their various quirks, gigantic numbers of setting, and the occasional need for workaround when you try to automate unusual things (mainly when trying to do cross-mod automations and/or interconnected storage/crafting systems)

[filmamundo]

i think the biggest problem of Create is the expenditure category, unless you are in a expert modpack there isnt much incentive to use all the mechanics and its uses in the best way.
I think the best mod in this regard is gregtech, every material, machine and alloy seems like a huge progression and unlocks new ways to make past production lines more efficient and deal with the problems that emerge with each energy tier

[a_soulspark]

thank you. this video perfectly describes why I love the Create mod so much.

definitely my favorite Minecraft mod, and this is now one of my favorite videos on it too!

[nesraspongx]

i'm a dude who avoids minecraft news until i finish exploring the update so i haven't really seen anything about minecraft for what feels like more than a year now
safe to say that idk how the autocrafter works but the sprites honestly looks like some sort of edit i or any mod would create for an autocrafter block
with the one in create you showed looking a bit too complex and polished to be in vanilla but still looking far cooler at least

[jingopolitan]

It's funny that you skipped the "expenditure" part when talking about create because that's the main problem with it. There is no point in automating almost anything.
In factorio and (I at least assume, haven't played it) satisfactory all the automation you build serves some purpose, such as to automate things that would be a hassle and/or a complete drag to do by hand because in those games you need a constant supply of a massive amount of resources.
When I played create the main issues I encountered again and again were that every single thing I've built took way more time to set up than any time it saved by automating it, and almost every thing I did automate lost it's purpose a few hours later because I had no use for the sheer amount of resources it produced.
Looks awesome in videos, completely impractical and a bit pointless in the game itself. Designing your own approach to automation is fun but it'd be more fun if there was an actual reason to do it.

[Captain.Mystic]

I think a big part of what made create so special is specifically its background. Minecraft modding has been a tradition as long as the game itself, and automation/kitchen sink modpacks have been pretty notorious of implementing 4 or more mods that do practically the same thing at varying levels of usefulness. One of the biggest issues with this is that a good 80% of mods really had little to no real redstone compatability, which makes an interesting mod like computercraft turn into an overly complicated method to do the same thing as a super smelter or electric furnace.

Create came into 1.18 after 10 years of your choice being "insert automation modpack where your options are essentially thermal expansion, this hyper expensive and overpowered other mod, some useless magic mod for fluff, and the literal clickbait 20x20 crafting grids you saw in youtube thumbnails requiring every item in the game" and then "gregtech" which is pretty well designed for what it is but you only have to play the first hour of Nomifactory(known as one of the easiest gregtech packs) to realize that its not for everyone. Create basically said "what if we took the aesthetics of immersive engineering, known for its very steampunk style and detailed models, and integrated it further into the vanilla game" and came out with a masterpiece that became the backbone of its entire own genre of modpack based purely off its specific identity.

Another thing about create that makes it pretty unique from the other two games is that minecraft is built for modularity. And multiblock support has been in forge and fabric for so long its basically a formality, so instead of having to create an entire inventory system from the ground up, they had an entire framework to build off of thats easy to communicate because... well... its minecraft, everyone knows what a faster furnace means and so making a hypersmelter a fair bit more complicated is a lot less of a huge loss compared to if you had to make smelting in factorio a 10 step process(play factorio angels mod and you will know exactly what i mean).

The crafter on its own isnt really that bad of an addition however. because its working in the context of a system that mojang has a clear love hate relationship with. If anything the only reason the crafter was added to the game is that enough redstone youtubers basically created their own version of the same implementation 5 separate times and all agreed it was balanced.

[acorngnome]

Did I just watch an 8 minute long ad for the Create mod?

[brickie]

What I dont like in create mod Is that it trivialise some problems. For example instead of designing a vanilla smelter where you need to care about a lot of stuff like fuel supply, timings, distribution of fuel and resource etc. and in create you can just drop arbitrary amount of items in front of a fan powered by an infinite power source. Sequenced gearshift is another example of a component that replaces thinking. I would also argue that vanilla acquisition is much more creative too.

I still agree with the points that create is better than some games because it gives you components, not whole machines but for the same reason I prefer vanilla redstone and farming more than create. I honestly believe that the crafter has a really good implementation being viable for both experienced and inexperienced, since it's intuitive but allows is powerful. You can even have a contraption that can craft anything inside 1 crafter.

[grecus]

reason why autocrafter is so simple is probably that that skill floor of base game needs to be low enough that even kids can figure it out. Create mod has similar style as base minecraft but minimal skill level to make use of its features is that of a redstone user not a complate noob. In community which half cant figure out how comparator works more complicated features would go unused by large portion of players. I too was surprised by how easy was autocrafter but at the same time I was kinda surprised that it wasnt even easier because I know that there are people who wont be able to figure out how to autocraft anything more complicated than iron block. Thats why I thought that autocrafting will never be a thing in vanilla minecraft, because difficulty that I think would be appropriate for so usefull thing is much higher than what devs would be willing to add to game that is supposed to be suitable for children

[petersmythe]

Part of the be problem here is Mojang is kind of afraid to automate but yet designs around broken emergent mechanics rather than fixing or balancing them. Iron farms are probably the worst possible feature for Minecraft in their current form. Braindead, very annoying, easy to make, and so incredibly optimal for what they do that it's stupid to do anything else. Matching the output of a stupidly simple iron farm using other methods basically requires multiple people constantly manually mining, a gold and piglin trading farm, or a PhD in slimestone quarry design and probably multiple perimeters to bedrock. Golems aren't even good at their actual job, and the only way they make sense is if you are farming golems for iron to make enough of them.

[impliqued]

Pretty good video, i agree with a lot of points, but at the same time i feel like both of the styles of automation should be regarded as unique, Their own goals within the game and settings are so different, in minecraft, you automate things that are already in the world with create, they have their own purpose in themselves without any ties to the factory normally, its by installing the mod that you make those resources part of it, and thats really fun. On the other hand, factorio and satisfactory are two games where items and resources are entirely about the factory, Uranium and steel in name alone will let you know that they are made for machine interaction from their very creation into the game. And this is not bad, but it's really two different types of the same Automation Genre, and its possible that one can be more pleasant for some than others.

In my personal opinion, i also enjoy create more, mods for games that add automation has always been my kind of jam, the idea that "this task is tedious and grindy, imagine if i could automate it" is often on my mind when playing new games, because i just love that kind of content so much, even if its just a bit.

(i hope this comment didn't sound too mean, i don't mean to say "hey you should think of it this way!" but more "i like to think of it like that, i hope you get what i mean")

[smarty]

I dont think its fair to compare the three games since even with the automation in Create its still a very different game then Satisfactory or Factorio. In Create there is nothing restricting you on how much or where you get your items since you decide the entire acquisition process. The customizability of Minecraft would not work for Factorio and Satisfactory since they are more about the logistics of transporting items to different individual factories across the world which you are incentivised to build because the resources are seperated in your world. Create is still more of a sandbox then a straight up automation game since everything is up to the player if, how or where they want to build something using the large amount of mechanics and items available in Minecraft.

[AJProbably]

I am trying to make an automation game like the minecraft mod Create called Blossom, but honestly for me the hard part is the early game. Its very hard to not stick to the very basic "machine takes in item and then you get it out" for the start of the game because you lack the tools or technology to do the basic crafting. And if the basic crafting is too difficult, how is anyone going to learn your game? The only reason Minecraft can get away with this is its base gameplay of mining/crafting is fun and full of features. So an automation layer on top of it can be as complex as you want as the player can always just mine and craft longer or skip it entirely.

I am eventually going to try to make a 3d automation voxel game using Creates design philosophies. But I don't expect to have the skills to do it for years and I have other projects I'm working on now with others. I fundamentally dislike how awful minecraft is as an engine for automation and hate how laggy the game is. Otherwise I would just make a mod. Every single mod pack I've played in Minecraft has not hit like Factorio has, its all vertical progression without mass spamming of machines to get more because the game can't handle it. I've played Gregtech based mod packs and played mod packs where Create is a large focus and neither hits the same feeling as "time to place 96 furnaces for my smelter array." Usually all on demand crafting due to the games limitations.

[milandavid]

There's one thing I very much miss when it comes to Create that I would call 'Sustainability'. Having played the old school tech mods, or even Factorio, I really like the idea of these machines being codependent on each other in a tight loop of acquisition, alteration and power generation, with the latter missing from Create. To me it feels like an odd choice to have free energy in such a mechanical context.

[admiralcasperr]

Honestly, I personally don't like Create. It simplifies power control and sequencing too much for my taste. The best example is that items on belts stop when something is done upon them. It would be much more interesting if you had to properly control your belts and stop them yourself.
On another note, I personally think that the crafter is a bit too simplified too. I'd rathrr have it so that you have to insert a spacer into a slot you want to keep free of items for recipes. Much more interesting.

[passthedonuts]

i appreciate your clear explainations and your logic TY