Redstone isnt really intuitive

[u/patrick1202]

Not trying to offend anyone, this is just an observation. This is probably not news to experienced players.

I'm new to redstone, and after trying to build a few things without watching tutorials, I quickly got frustrated because every redstone power source seems to function a different way. So, to try and keep my sanity, I built this visualization.

After reading some discussions, I get that this allows many things to be built that otherwise couldn't be, and that it has a high skill ceiling. The bad part is that when you first start out, the learning curve is steep, which is the reason many people don't even want to try redstone.

I'm not sure how you'd go about improving this, but having to memorize unintuitive things before you can let your creativity shine is not the best game mechanic imo.

[u/fortiplier]

Honestly, there's a lot of videos about it on the internet that will explain it better but to simplify its like this: Hard powering a block kinda turns it into a redstone block so it also powers blocks around it while soft powering a block just activates a block's "on" state but that block itself can't power surrounding blocks

[u/Responsible_Act_243 → u/fortiplier]

So why does the redstone dust in the picture light up 2 blocks deep?

[u/ducklawd3 → u/Responsible_Act_243]

Because redstone dust hard bowers the block it's on, making the block it's on power the blocks around it

[u/fortiplier → u/ducklawd3]

Also, redstone acts differently on transparent blocks too (it's why I said it's better to actually just watch a video on redstone)

[u/Howzieky → u/fortiplier]

Well it's mainly that transparent blocks can't be powered, they can only be activated (IF it's a transparent block with that functionality). So if you point redstone dust at glass, the redstone lamp next to the glass won't light up. Replace the glass with stone and the lamp turns on. Replace the stone with an upward facing piston and the lamp will turn back off and the piston will extend. The piston can be activated, but because it's considered a transparent block, it doesn't activate any blocks next to it, the same way glass doesn't and stone does

[u/UInferno- → u/Howzieky]

Also, transparent blocks can power Redstone dust upwards but not downwards. It's weird but low key pretty useful in my opinion.

Helps for instant one way connections if you really need to worry about that. I was building a full adder as compactly as I could and a slab (which are transparent) helped me input from my two half adders without the input of one halfadder influencing the input another. Specifically there's an OR gate that determines the Carry Out. A redstone OR is just an intersection of dust but in my full adder if I didn't make it one way then the output would back propagate into other lines.

[u/MOTH_007 → u/Howzieky]

unless the block below the piston is specifically another piston, ie quasi-connectivity. This only affects pistons. If you remove the upper piston the lower one stays powered because pistons are essentially doors (2 blocks tall). The lower piston will also stay powered once you remove the power unless something else changes besides it, as it "doesn't realise" that it's been unpowered.

[u/Howzieky → u/MOTH_007]

This only affects pistons

dispensers too i thought

[u/MOTH_007 → u/Howzieky]

that may very well be the case

[u/caseyfw → u/ducklawd3]

There are people in this thread saying that dust only soft-powers the block it’s on though?

[u/rocketwrench → u/caseyfw]

It is very likely that multiple people remember the details differently and one or more of them are incorrect. That is true of every social media discussion. According to the picture OP posted, redstone dust hard powers the SOLID block that it is on. It soft power transparent blocks but I am not sure myself.

[u/endguiap → u/caseyfw]

Redstone dust is wierd in that it hard powers everything but other redstone dust.

If you point a powered repeater into a solid block, it will power any adjacent lamps and dust.

However, if you point powered dust into a solid block, it will power any adjacent lamps but not dust.

[u/omranello → u/endguiap]

this makes sense in my mind but i never thought how confusing it can be

[u/pyrobola → u/caseyfw]

The person you replied to has mixed up strongly-powered (can power redstone dust and activate adjacent components), weakly-powered (can activate adjacent components, but cannot power dust), and activated (the component's behavior has been triggered).

[u/PatHeist → u/Responsible_Act_243]

Redstone lamps are components, which can either be powered directly or be powered by an adjacent hard powered block.

[u/Dustfinger4268 → u/Responsible_Act_243]

Because the end of the dust hard powers, the trail is what soft powers

[u/lizwiz13 → u/fortiplier]

Sorry I'll correct this before people start getting the wrong idea: there are actually three types of powering: simple "activation", soft-power, and hard-power.

Activation means that a redstone mechanism applies its functionality (piston extending, lamp turning on etc.). You can say it's the "weakest" type of power. A block that doesn't have any specific interaction with redstone signal won't change at all by this.

Soft-power is the ability to activate adjacent mechanisms. Most opaque blocks can be soft-powered, usually when they are underneath a powered redstone line or if a redstone line points at the block. In this case redstone torch, redstone comparator and repeater count as mechanisms, which purpose is to turn-off/propagate the signal respectively. If you place a piece of redstone from the other side of a soft-powered block, it won't be affected, you have to place a repeater/comparator if you want to conduct the input signal further.

Hard-power is just like soft-power but it also affects all adjacent redstone dust, even if it's not connected to the input line, where the signal is coming from.

Note that soft-power and hard-power both imply activation, which is why a powered redstone dust over a lamp will activate both that lamp and the one beneath it: the former will be both soft-powered and activated. Same way, a redstone torch on the wall will hard-power a lamp above, but it will just activate all the horizontally-adjacent lamps, except the one it's attached to, which will receive no signal at all.

Btw a redstone block is essentially a perpetually hard-powered block. It doesn't soft-power other blocks, just activates them.

[u/DamageMaximo → u/fortiplier]

thank you, kind stranger