Hello, I'm actually working to create a pack centred about realism/educational aspect, tweaking around when necessary through minetweaker and other stuffs.
While I find cool the laser animation in buildcraft, normal industrial lasers operate at light frequencies not visible for the human eye.
My suggestion was: make it possible to have an item to craft (likely particular glasses) in order to be able to see the render animation generated by bc lasers.
This, naturally not necessarily as main feature, but maybe as something possible to enable as an option in the config file.
Edit; another thing that would have been interesting over this is to enable particles (light or smoke particles) when the lasers operate (for example on the assembly table), in this way you know it's operating even without the glasses, eventually.

the problem with changing the way the lasers work is that they have always worked in the current visible way, if suddenly BC lasers stop showing laser beams then that would cause alot of confusion

if this would be done it would need a config option to be dissabled, particle effects on the table itself is tricky as when people have graphics settings turned down they might not be visible

Make it disabled by default so it is only available with a config changed. With the config enabled, they are visible if they are wearing the robot goggles (not sure if they are still planned) and add this info to the guide and/or tooltip. Otherwise with this config disabled, they would work as they do now.

Adding particles to the tables would be cool anyway with or without this config option and would make it look cooler and a bit realistic

Please do keep the lasers on as a default, by the way.

7.1.x probably won't get this feature.

Please do keep the lasers on as a default, by the way.

Defiantly.

I'm not sure this will happen for the 7.1.x branch (its a simple-ish change, but its up to @asiekierka how it would work as I don't think 7.1.x wants any more items added), but this will happen for 8.0.x.

The robot goggles are still planned - they could be renamed "builders goggles" and be used for this though.

@lllMohandarlll can you rename this issue to something more descriptive than "Suggestion" please?

Meh..
I really hope this could be feasible for 1.7.x most of all... (at least through backporting eventually) my pack is based on that version (as many other packs out there), since there are still plenty of mods and contents and tools in 1.7.x and these allows a complete and viable customization.
Overall, terrafirmacraft (the base of the pack I'm working on) and galacticraft are still for 1.7.10 only, unluckly, so I really could not move on
There is a really bad mod fragmentation out there with the new Forge policies, this is probably the reason cause most of modpacks are still on 1.7.x, as it is a milestone of contents somehow..
You may could find the mod you need updated to 1.10, but then another mod you need for example is available only for 1.9.4, and so on... this is really infelicitous

The problem is that no developers are currently working on the 1.7.10 release.

Alex and I provide limited support for it as courtesy, but even that is ending as soon as BuildCraft for 1.11.2 finally gets an alpha release - the main reason I've been maintaining it, despite quitting the development team a year ago, was because the other developers were all working primarily/mostly on 1.11.2 BuildCraft and, as such, our fanbase was mostly stuck on 1.7.10 - 1.8.9 was a fairly rough version of Minecraft for modding.

In addition, backporting from 1.11.2 to 1.7.10 is likely to be infeasible - major chunks of the source code were completely rewritten.

Adding new features, in particular features I feel are likely to cause a negative effect to BuildCraft's overall feel and usability, even if opt-in and limited to a specific modpack, is not something I am likely to work on at this moment.

Sorry to disappoint.

@AlexIIL is this a better name? also you should be able to rename issues as well, there is an edit button next to the title

lol, nobody uses 1.8
why don't make it happens for 1.7 if you're aware that your fanbase is stuck on that version and who is asking for this feature is asking for that version too?
adding realism sometimes is not something bad, expecially when the feature is disabled by default...
only who is really interested would enable it and be happy with that

the decision to move away from 1.7 has been made long ago and an alpha release for 1.11 is aproaching

as such we passed the point of no return long ago, the BC codebase has been relicenced, rewritten and completely changed, we are not throwing away all that work to do it all again on 1.7

@lightning02

lol, nobody uses 1.8

I think we made that point fairly clear by focusing on bugfix maintenance for the 1.7 version over the 1.8 version. Besides, there is a (small) niche of people who use 1.8, even if as a secondary version - mods like Thaumcraft 5 and Intangible exist only on 1.8.

adding realism sometimes is not something bad

My stance has always been that realism should not harm gameplay. Lasers are a key part of a typical play of 1.7.10 BuildCraft, and removing/gating the primary way of debugging laser energy transmission is definitely harmful to gameplay.

Anyhow. Let me reiterate: no developers are currently working on the 1.7.10 release. BuildCraft is a hobby for us - we don't make direct profit from the mod in any way - and our priority, first and foremost, is to optimize our limited resources. At this point in time, BuildCraft has two developers - AlexIIL and afdw - who are very busy trying to get the 1.11.2 rewrite of BuildCraft to work correctly, as well as add new functionality to that upcoming version. There is still a lot of work left to do there. I, with occasional help from AlexIIL and other contributors, used to provide bugfix maintenance for BuildCraft 7.1 for 1.7.10 while BuildCraft 8.0 was being worked on - however, I am no longer working on BuildCraft and, as such, my bugfixes were fairly infrequent.

We do care about our core fanbase. That is why 1.7 BuildCraft has received bugfix releases to some degree for the last year. However, that is also why we're abandoning it - every hour spent fixing bugs in 1.7 BuildCraft is an hour not spent bringing new functionality, features and improvements to our users - and that work is happening in 1.11.2.

You might want to say something along the lines of "nobody plays 1.11.2! go back to 1.7!", however the community has always historically moved on from a version a majority of the community promised to stay on. Remember how people said they will never move past 1.4.7 because those versions lack RedPower 2? Remember when people were sticking to 1.6.4? As I type, 1.7.10's days are coming to an end due to 1.10.2's increasing adoption. While BuildCraft is targetting a version ahead, that's only because we want to optimize our resources - having to port from 1.10.2 to 1.11.2, which would be a fairly complex update for BuildCraft in particular, would slow us down in the future when the community moves on to 1.12 or 1.13 or 1.14 or whichever version catches on next. In addition, 1.11.2 is slowly catching on as well - I know 1.11.2 packs are slowly being worked on as I type.

In other words, while we might not be making decisions which benefit our fanbase in the short term, I believe our decisions will benefit the fanbase in the long term.

Lasers are a key part of a typical play of 1.7.10 BuildCraft, and removing/gating the primary way of debugging laser energy transmission is definitely harmful to gameplay<

It's right, it should not harm the gameplay, that is why the suggestion was also about to substitute the laser beam with particle effects directly on the table where the laser is working on making it recognizable while operating..
if it was totally invisible then I may had to agree to you on this point.
But honestly, in a themed modpack it's not difficult to explain the changes to the users through NEI lore or other methods, this would just happen as one of the various game changing mechanics already existent in the pack.

For what regarding the 1.7.x development, I can't say much about to this, it's you choose in the end, but since you said "1.7.x probably doesn't get this feature" instead of "1.7.x wont get this feature"
I'm still hoping that you would may dedicate some spare time one day to add this config-activable feature for this old and still widely used version of minecraft.

Best regards

why the suggestion was also about to substitute the laser beam with particle effects directly on the table where the laser is working on making it recognizable while operating..

The operation would then be recognizable, yes, but the direction and positions of the laser beams affecting the specific table would become more complicated to perceive by the user.

this would just happen as one of the various game changing mechanics already existent in the pack.

I fail to see how it makes gameplay more challenging. It makes it more annoying, sure. The only reason given so far is trying to show how lasers function in the real world for educational purposes, but I think self-aiming lasers aren't exactly perfect for that to begin with, especially if they seem to just magically bounce the beam in the right direction.

Here is a more technical reasoning of why I'm fine with adding this to 8.0.x and not 7.1.x.

• Goggles are already planned, so we don't have to add another item to 8.0.x (which would be useless in 7.1.x unless the config option is enabled, and that's even more annoying to deal with)
• Particle effects sound like a good idea by itself - ignoring invisible lasers, this is now likely to be added in some form or another anyway. This isn't a small amount of work, as they probably new particles, texturing, and a bit of playing around with to make sure they look good.
• The core suggestion is just adding a few if statements to the rendering (and a config option) - not a large amount of work, so I don't mind doing this for a mostly-unused option.

I'm ignoring whether or not this would fit buildcraft or not for this - other people have already covered that. (Although I'm kind-of intrigued by a more realistic version of BC - I've made a lot of derisions to cut realism and some complexity for gameplay's sake, and it would be nice to have a more complex set of requirements for building things - the new refining system is a good example).

7.1.x on the other hand would need the top two to be added, and neither is a small amount of work (the whole no-devs bit is a big issue here).

would become more complicated to perceive by the user.

This is where the glasses come into play eventually :)

Although it will be pretty impossible to make a perfect simulator 100% realistic there are still things that can be done to make it more accurate; I'm tryng my best to accomplish the best outcome I could get for this..
While by the way the self-aiming laser is hard to justify, it still could be done by the requirement of some more sensors and integrated circuit or pre-compiled Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) in the crafting recipe, (these can be made as customitems luckly).
But the concept of being able to see ultraviolet (for excimer lasers) or infrared for CO2 lasers "with naked eye" is wrong at the basis :l and I don't see any plausible workaround for this atm
Sure, it makes it more annoyng for someone, but more enjoyable for others, expecially for that educational aspect we was talking about, kinda like another mod called Electrical Age is already doing for example.
Not sayng buildcraft has to change is goal or something, but if it is not hard to implement and feasible, it could add a valuable role for the mod in the educational branch :)