crane design

For the crane the idea is to create a simple undefined platform for the player to create a crane or query between the buildcraft quarry and the redpower frames. The crane needs to be simple enough for buildcraft player to pickup but complex enough to get some level of creativity that the redpower frames allow. Which the plan is later too allow our frames to be used for different things than just the crane/drill. For the moment the focus is to create a crane for factory management, crate movement, elevator, and mining.

Crane will be limited to a 'H' shape design for the time being but later versions will allow for single rail cranes, elevators, cart system, or anything that can be imagined while maintaining the single rail movement design.

The crane will be broken into several parts Each part will be a block but can become an entity or render obj when it moves.

1) The frame - this is what the player will build the crane with and be used as the rails for the crane's slides to move across.

2) The controller - can be programmed like the arm, inserted with predefined disks, or controlled by computer craft blocks. To make working with CC easier every function of the crane should have its own method that we can just call from the api or CC methods.

Commands:

• Move rail +-#
• Move slide +-#
• Raise #
• Lower #
• Grab
• Release
• GetSize
• MoveTo xyz
• Move x y z
• Reset

3) Frame motor - slides along the frames and moves the center crane rail. Will be an actual block but when moved will vanish becoming a render object or entity

4) Crane mount point - this is what the crane or drill attaches too. Acts just like a frame motor

5) Crane arm - connected too the mount point and can be raised or lowered. Can pickup anything except for unbreakable or unmovable blocks. For tileEntities this means we need to save, load, reset, the tileEntities' data and fake render it.

6) Drill - the crane can only have one attachment. If its the drill it will be a laser drill that destroys the blocks and then sucks them up threw a gravity tractor beam based on the Eve-online mining lasers.