Gravity is the power

In Tumbleworks, every item you process rides inside a marble. Marbles roll on track with real speed, friction and momentum. A marble that falls gets faster, and its speed is its energy. Stations in the track spend that energy to grind, smelt, press and alloy the cargo while the marble rolls through.

So a factory is a run of track from high to low: drop the marbles, let them work on the way down, harvest what is left with impact wheels, and lift them up again. At the top, the Grand Orrery sends marbles through portals to any place, in any dimension.

Tumbleworks is new. There could still be bugs that have to be fixed.

How marbles work

Load, drop, work, harvest, lift, repeat.

• A Marble Loader fills each marble with cargo (items, or fluid for glass marbles) and launches it onto the track.
• A drop of one block gives a marble 10 Tension per unit of mass. Heavy marbles carry more energy, and more cargo.
• Stations (Millstone, Friction Kiln, Stamping Press, Alloy Crucible) work on the cargo item by item, while the marble has enough energy. The marble leaves slower.
• Impact Wheels take part of a fast marble's energy and wind their mainspring. Springs share Tension with the machines next to them.
• Marble Lifts raise marbles again. A lift costs a little more than the fall gives back, so every factory needs a real power source: a hand crank, a waterwheel, a fumarole, or FE from other mods.
• A Marble Unloader takes the cargo out. Hoppers and pipes work with loaders and unloaders.

Four tiers

Tier 1: Workshop

Clay marbles, oak track, chutes and the first stations. A drop from a tower pays the Millstone, then the Friction Kiln smelts the grit with no fuel at all. An Impact Wheel winds its spring from the marbles that rush past, and a Hand Crank gets the first lift going.

Tier 2: Brass Age

Find calamine ore and alloy brass in the Alloy Crucible. Brass track is faster. Tumbler Switches send marbles left and right in turn, Sorting Switches sort them by colour or cargo, Track Gates hold them on a redstone signal and Chime Tracks play notes. Waterwheels and driveshafts carry Tension; the Dynamo turns it into FE, and the Electric Winder turns FE back into Tension.

Tier 3: Deep Heat

Fumaroles steam on deep cave floors. A Marble Lift on top of one runs for free. Mine them for Geyserite: it makes obsidian marbles, the Gyroscope and Booster Coils, which push a marble past the speed limit of the track. Chain the coils into the Skyward Launcher: a marble with 900 Tension and a Comet Core fires the core into the sky.

Tier 4: Starfall

The comet comes down 24 to 48 blocks away and leaves a crater of meteorite rock with starsteel inside. Starsteel track is the fastest. Build the Grand Orrery on a brass floor with starsteel corners and feed it Tension: its planets turn, and Orrery Portals near it send marbles to the portal you linked with a Star Chart, in any dimension. That is the end goal: Clockwork Heavens.

Features

• Physics: marbles have mass, speed, friction and momentum. They queue, they skid when they go too fast, and nothing is lost or copied: a broken track drops its marbles with their cargo.
• Power: one energy unit, Tension, stored in mainsprings. Sources: hand crank, waterwheel, fumarole, impact wheels and the Electric Winder (10 FE to 1 T). The Dynamo gives FE (1 T to 8 FE) to other mods.
• Logistics: loaders and unloaders with item and fluid capabilities, side configuration, redstone control and upgrade slots. Hoppers and pipes work.
• Logic: tumbler switches, sorting switches with ghost filters, gates and chimes, all with redstone.
• Gear: the Tumbler's Wrench, the Marble Sling (it fires your marbles, cargo and all), Momentum Boots that store your falls, a Marble Bandolier (Curios belt) and a Gyroscope (Curios charm). Three enchantments: Ricochet, Recall and Inertia.
• Worldgen: calamine ore and deep fumaroles. Starsteel comes only from the meteors you launch.
• Guides: a tooltip on every block, JEI info pages, and an FTB Quests chapter with 29 quests from the first marble to Clockwork Heavens.
• Integrations (all optional): JEI recipe categories and info pages, Jade tooltips, Curios slots, FTB Quests chapter.
• Multiplayer: the server runs the physics; clients predict the motion between updates. Tested at 360 moving marbles and 840 track blocks: 20 TPS, about 5 ms per tick.

Getting started

1. Smelt clay balls into Clay Marbles.
2. Build a tower: a Marble Loader at the top, a Marble Chute down, a Chute Elbow at the bottom.
3. Put a Millstone, a Friction Kiln and a Marble Unloader in the track after the elbow.
4. Put raw iron and marbles in the loader, and collect iron ingots at the unloader.

Hold any Tumbleworks block for a short guide in its tooltip, or open JEI for the info pages.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.11 with NeoForge 21.11.48 or newer.
• No required libraries.
• Optional: JEI, Jade, Curios, FTB Quests.

All textures, models, sounds and code of Tumbleworks are original work.