You guys are talking about all these problems with using it, yet I don't see why we cant just say "If you want to use it, do so at your own risk. If not, use the normal console commands."
In my own personal opinion, I believe this would be a great idea. People could experiment with it, get ideas from it, and in some ways it may even help with what they are doing.
The way I see it is that the way it is described is that it is just a semi-automated console command that is activated by the game. You could a basic circuit running, and everytime it passes the command particle, it would turn a small block of diamond into molten diamond. Then when it gets to the other side of the circuit, another command particle is activated, turning the molten diamond back to normal!
My second-to-last argument is that this would SERIOUSLY help with people who have no idea what a console command is. Sure, they could look it up in the wiki, or they could do it the way the save author meant for it to go. Instead of having someone who doesnt know console commands put !set life deut 999999999999999, and instead having a command particle that puts !set life deut 9999, if that is what the save author intended for the save.
My final argument is that this could make for much better saves. In a way, adding a command particle would make this games depth level DROP. New ways of making saves. New artwork styles. New, well, EVERYTHING.
Thank you for reading my argument for the creation of the command particle. I hope the Developers and Administrators at least take this argument into consideration.
The difference between a particle running a command and the user running a command is that when the user does it, they should hopefully do it in the knowledge that "here be sea-monsters, if you do this things may break". If a particle does it, the user doesn't necessarily know anything about it. They might even think that any strange behaviour induced is how the game normally operates or is supposed to operate.
Also, possibly the most sensible thing I've seen anyone say for a long time is that "this is Powder Toy, not learn-how-to-use-Lua-and-console Toy". For example, instead of getting the user to set the life of DEUT, make a machine that enriches DEUT, or set the life before saving. And I'm not sure why you would want to melt DMND...
UC17:
I would like to see this idea implemented and would be more than useful in many great saves, hope it gets added!
I do belive that you are right about the console command being bad in that case, but if you are the one putting that block and you are the one that sets what it will do, I dont see any problem with it as long as you know what you are making it do.
Also if I assume correctly that you guys as developers want more people to play, then how do you expect them to play if they dont know what to do and all they get is a few words that pop up and vanish after 10 seconds when you start it. Therefore, if you want more people to play, then you should at least give them more of a basis.
I know there is a wiki, but sadly, people don't even bother to look to know what an element does, so they're stuck with the elements that they do know about and they read in the descriptions when you hover the mouse over an element.
Also, possibly the most sensible thing I've seen anyone say for a long time is that "this is Powder Toy, not learn-how-to-use-Lua-and-console Toy". For example, instead of getting the user to set the life of DEUT, make a machine that enriches DEUT, or set the life before saving.
You're right. Although it would be a great addition, I am sure saves would break. That would be vey annoying.
Learning PSTN was a lot for even me to learn. It sucks that you can't add things that are too complicated like this...