GT-New-Horizons-Modpack Give Multis Better Error Messages

Your GTNH Discord Username

thecaffiend#2253

Your Pack Version

2.1.2.3qf (Some config changes, no recipe changes)

Your Proposal

Spending time in the help channel on the discord, one of the most frequent, and difficult to troubleshoot, issues that comes up is: Why isn't this multiblock forming?

Each block has logic to form, and each will be different, and documentation (Especially cross-version) can vary wildly.

I'd love to see any solution to this: A scanner on the multiblock including a line about which check failed? Using the schematic or a new schematic somehow shows which check failed? The multiblock gui showing which check failed? Something, anything, to find out: Oh this multiblock doesn't accept those hatches, or you whiffed the (undocumented) minimum number of casings, or there is no mufflers at -4, -6, 7 or whatever.

Your Goal

This is an incredibly frequent question, not just from new players; I've been playing gregtech since it was mostly a lightning rod addon to IC2 and I still swear at my monitor for some multis.

Your Vision

Making multiblock formation so much less annoying, especially for rapidly-changing lategame systems.

Final Checklist

[X] I have searched this issue tracker and there is nothing similar already. Posting on a closed issue saying I like this change please reconsider adding it will prompt us to investigate and reopen it once we confirm your report.
[X] I understand this change request may not attract enough attention and thus not be implemented.
[X] I understand this change request may be rejected due to other community members think it's inappropriate.
[X] I believe this feature would make the pack better.

Jul 02 '22 17:07 realthecaffiend

This would indeed be very nice, but incredible hard to implement. It would need to be implemented for every multi seperately, and the structure check code is a real mess most of the time... In the past i sometimes had a hard time to see the intended structure even when reading the code, and i do know java quite well... But maybe it could be demonstrated for some multis and then over time patched into the old ones...

Jul 07 '22 09:07 Savallator

This type of issue is solved by providing a common API for the structure check where the structure check itself can report the cause of the fail. This can be achieved by having a structure object with not only with a check method but can report the state of the structure in a human readable form.

Doing this incrementally, means older legacy structures will not be able to report the human readable. This can be handled in a wrapper/decorator class to report the already known generic message. Then progressively, structure checks can be upgraded to the new API and have themselves mean to report the structure state in a meaningful description.

One can even imagine the structure object can also report the exact location of what it is expecting, so it can be rendered as an overlay client-side.