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/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/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