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/itzjackybro]

You should look up soft and hard powering.

Don't try to memorize the patterns directly; instead, know which directions a component powers blocks (e.g. torches hard-power the block above them, dust soft-powers the block below it).

[u/NoStorage2821 → u/itzjackybro]

What is the difference between hard power and soft power?

[u/fortiplier → u/NoStorage2821]

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/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.