This mod is still heavily in developement, and in fact, doesn't do anything, and was uploaded only for #ModOff, so please, until it reaches 0.1.x versions, download at your own risk!
Outdated info ahead!
Well, anyway, here's some things about my mod:
- Basic Pipes and Speed Pipes aren't tile entities, and don't tick
- Modular Pipes don't handle item transportation, they only store and tick modules
- Item transportation (and later, fluid, too) is handled in special class outside any tile entity, and doesn't depend on blocks directly. This also means, transporting items outside loaded chunks shouldn't be a problem, but I will likely disable that (that will be configurable)
- Pipe links and nodes are cached, and joined by this kind of crazy diagram, so they aren't recalculated for every item that gets sent trough
Basically, what I'm saying is, I'm trying really hard for this to be easy on servers, but also pretty enough for clients (items will render in pipes of course, when that's finished)
What each item does:
- Basic Pipe (Gray) - Node linking pipe, doesn't do anything, can't have intersections
- Basic Pipe (Golden) - Same as gray one, but items travel 2x faster than they would normally
- Modular Pipe, Tier 0 - Node pipe, you have to place it in pipe intersections
- Modular Pipe, Tier 1-6 - Same as Tier 0, but for each tier x they have x module slots available
- Modular Pipe, Tier 7 - Same as Tier 6, but items get permanent 10x speed boost
- Extract Module - Every 20 ticks, it extracts one item from attached inventory and sends it into network. Network
- Block Items Module - Simply doesn't allow the item go trough that pipe from direction its attached to (config option in module to change mode between Block Incoming, Block Outgoing, Block All)
- More modules to come!
Video showing how pipes look: [Video]