Mesecons lab
Mesecons laboratory and tutorials
This game serves as a tutorial and showcase for the following mods:
- mesecons
- digilines
- digistuff
- digibuilder
- technic
It can be used as an educational tool in singleplayer or multiplayer.
Current state
There are various builds provided by So.Po.Coder, pampogokiraly and some basic excercises to complete.
The game isn't yet finished but playable in the current state, contributions are always welcome.
Recommended for people with experience in digital logic, but not beginners
While still obviously a work in progress, this game suffices as a demonstration of how to apply digital logic principles with mesecons and a demonstration of several digistuff components. It does not introduce digital logic principles to someone without that background, but is good as a kind of recipe book for people with some experience already. Perhaps in future it can also introduce the basics.
The text is sparse, or sometimes missing, and you will only get out as much as you put into interacting with each exhibit. I was able to understand the interface to some of the latches, for example, without understanding their internals, but further study and interaction would lead to a better understanding.
Better care should be taken to guide the flow and mark prerequisites in some places. I did not understand the I/O expander when I visited the magnetic swipe card exhibit, so marking a prerequisite of I/O expanders for the swipe card, or removing the use of I/O expanders from the swipe card exhibit would be more helpful.
In terms of performance, the exhibits are mostly tolerant to quick switch flipping and the use of clocks that are off by default helps performance too. I was able to get the I/O expander direct connect exhibit stuck with one pin on though.
I was a bit confused to see the use of 1's complement representation in the display decoders. Perhaps it is easier to build than 2's complement for a display decoder, but 2's complement is vastly superior for arithmetic. Also the sign bit would usually go on the left of all the place value bits in my mind.
The exercises are still also definitely a work in progress, with the second one having several 'wrong' ways to solve it. A good series of exercises can be hard to put together but a well-put-together one would certainly add a lot of value.
Awesome if you know what's up, but confusing for beginners
The mesecons lab is a great place when you want to see how to build something when you're not completely sure how. On exmple, I could learn what signals to send to technic devices to query information, or how to even create such a technic circuit in the first place.
However, right now the game can also be confusing. On example, it sometimes can say "This is (something)" without actually explaining what it does. On example, you can see a demonstration of using the IO expander from the digistuff mod, but it can't teach you what it is at all, since it just says that it is an IO expander. I'm not even sure what it does!
Really, it often expects you to look at and understand the actual build, including looking at the luacontroller if it's used, so really, it is made for people that already have experience in mesecons and luacontroller. I recommend focusing on expanding the exercises section, so it can also teach beginners the basics so they can also start learning from those builds.
Awesome, can't wait
This is really cool, I can't wait for it to be finished. I have some projects that I can share with you if you would like to. My Gmail.
I recommend it for learning the basic mechanics of the Mesecons and it's addons
Given that the project is in the development phase, it doesn't make sense to judge strictly. I would like more exercises, especially on building logic circuits, programming Lua controllers and interacting with Digilines and Digistuff, without indirect hints as to where to place the objects to solve the problem) . Also, examples of using Technic, using the rest of the machines and mechanisms and combining with Digilines could be expanded.
All in all, the Mesecons Lab project is worth more attention, and I sincerely hope that it will not be abandoned.
Noble attempt but too confusing
I really wanted to understand how Mesecons work, so I've given this game a shot. I think that the tutorial part, if expanded, could be amazing, but the rest was just confusing to me. Basically, I don't get how a museum can help people understand how things work without explaining them anything (but saying: "this is X"). I mean, yes, it's a slideshow, but I was expecting something more educational and interactive.
I appreciated the custom sky and the chains though, giving that God of War III vibe.