User blog:Scooter8pie/Inventory Bugs

Anyone who has played Mooncraft for a while has probably noticed a few odd things that happen with your inventory and the Assembler. Things that the programmers probably didn’t intend to happen. Things that will probably be fixed in a future update. Until then, here is a list of some of the bugs that I’ve noticed (these bugs are most noticeable in explore mode, but you will sometimes recognize them in creative mode as well):

Non-Consuming Assembler Bug
This is a bug that most players notice not long after they start playing the game. With many Devices the components are not used up when the device is created. This is really useful in the creation of legions of Turrets, but it’s also nice to hold onto Energy Orbs and Refined Notchium after you’ve made your v3 Jetpack or Drill.

Unlimited Assembly Bug
This is a slightly less obvious bug, but one that I find far more useful. In explore mode, you can get as many as you want of any product that comes out of the Assembler. After placing components in the Assembler, instead of dragging the product into your inventory, simply drag it to the side of your inventory and drop it. Make the next one by tapping any block in your inventory or the Assembler, the product will appear again, drag, drop and repeat. Then simply walk over and pick your stuff up. No resources are used up. This works when refining Materials or assembling devices. But, if you want a lot of a refined material you will need to stop and do a pick up before the blocks vanish. Devices will hover there forever. You can even collect your blocks or devices without closing your inventory since movements aren't disabled despite the lack of touch control icons.

I personally exploit this bug all the time for creating Mini Lights. Some purists would consider this cheating, and normally I would too, but currently my interests are in investigating various bugs rather than “playing” the game. I burn through a whole stack of Mini Lights very quickly and it’s faster for me to drag, drop and tap 64 times than it would be to collect all the Materials.

Inventory Stacking Glitch
This bug has already been described in detail on Christian Wilson’s blog and the comments on that page. In short, if you have more than 255 blocks of any material or stackable device you can repeatedly combine those stacks which will grow exponentially until you have stacks of up to 4 billion in your inventory.

Using the 256 mini lights I created, with the unlimited assembly bug described above, in only a few seconds I had two mind bogglingly huge stacks of mini lights (shown in the first photo). In the other photo I combine stacks of Leaf blocks and then demonstrate what happens when you ‘split’ those stacks using multi touch. The inventory shown in the top of the photo is prior to stacking, the middle strip shows just the stacks of Leaf blocks as their growth progresses each time I stack them and the bottom inventory shows the result of splitting the stacks using multi touch. Sometimes when you save and reopen the game the larger stack sizes will revert to 255.

Item Replacement Bug
This bug occurs when you drag a product from the Assembler into a full slot in your inventory or on your space suit. The product will replace the original material or device. This can be useful if you wish to get rid of starter devices as described in Mrob27’s cursed items blog. But, it can be a nightmare if you are trying to stack a newly refined rare material with an older stack of the refined material. For example, let’s say you've found enough Notchium to make 2 blocks of Refined Notchium. You’ve made a Drill v3 and, thanks to the non-consuming assembler bug, you still have your 2 blocks of Refined Notchium and you make a Slugpistol v3 as well. Later you find some more Notchium and decide you want a Jetpack v3 and some v3 Turrets as well. You have just enough to make 3 more blocks of Refined Notchium, so you refine your first block and drag it to stack it with the 2 blocks already in your inventory. When you drop it, you discover that now you only have 1 block of Refined Notchium. The strange thing is you can drag and stack the next 2 blocks with the 1 that replaced your other blocks, but you still only end up with 3 blocks of Refined Notchium. Not enough for your Jetpack or Turrets. :-(

One way to avoid this is to use the unlimited assembly bug, when you pick up your refined material or devices from the ground they will usually automatically stack with those that you already have in your inventory. You could also drag the new product to an empty slot and stack them later.

Will Not Stack Bug
Sometimes when you have a new stack and an old stack of a material or a device, and you try to combine those stacks they will simply swap places in your inventory. This swapping of slots will occur correctly if you try to stack two different materials. It seems like for some reason new and old stacks of the same material aren’t recognized as the same type. An easy fix for this is to save and reopen your game and combine the stacks right after the game loads. Another method is to drag and drop the two stacks on the ground, when you pick them up they should combine into a single stack.

Inventory Full Bug
When all the slots in your inventory have items in them, you will sometimes find that you will no longer pick up some of the blocks that you mine, even if you are below the stack limit for that material. To avoid this bug throw out useless inventory hogging disks or common materials that you don’t need. As long as you have one free inventory slot this bug won’t occur.

You will sometimes see this bug in creative mode, even though the stacks are “infinite”. Probably a more accurate description would be that the stacks are inexhaustible. If you do a lot of mining you will notice that empty inventory slots will gradually fill up with the common materials. I’m not sure, but it seems like each stack is only allowed to accumulate 255 blocks before starting another stack. I’m also not sure why, for example, you will stop picking up Gravel blocks, but you are able to continue to pick up an unlimited amount of Rock blocks. This may also be related to the 'will not stack' bug where one material is not being recognized as being the same as the material already in your inventory.

Scanner, Helmet and Assembler as Inventory Space
If for some reason you find that all your inventory space is full, and you can’t bear to part with any items to free up space, you can use the scanner, helmet and assembler slots to carry your extra junk around. Assuming you are not using the inventory stacking glitch, you could potentially be lugging another 2,805 blocks along with you, in addition to whatever you have piled up in your 50 inventory slots. You could make a solid 14x14x14 cube with those blocks and have some left over for the trimmings (that’s a decent sized Brown Mob test cube, eh Fastolph Cottar?). This extra inventory space is convenient, in a game that does not yet provide an easy stationary or mobile storage option, but I’m pretty sure the developers don’t intend to leave it that way. After all, in Minecraft you can’t use your crafting table as a chest or your 2x2 crafting grid as a day pack.

Broken Drill Bug
I’ve only been noticing this bug recently and it seems to occur if I am frequently saving and reopening a moon. Sometimes when I start the game again my drill just won’t work. I find that I can get it to work again if I close that moon, open one of my other moons, use the drill there and then reopen the moon with the broken drill. I’m not sure if this can occur with all versions of drill, since I only ever use a v3, but it has happened to me enough times that I thought I might as well throw it out there in case it happens to anyone else.

Well, that about does it for now. If anyone has noticed any inventory or assembly bugs that I’ve missed, let me know in a comment and I’ll add it to the list.