Preface
Hi there, I'm Mephisto Waltz. I shall be your guide for this extraordinary adventure in the world of Minecraft architecture. In this book, I'll teach you the fastest and the most effective methods of construction in Minecraft, and explain them through four exciting, practical, hands-on projects. To build these structures, I'll be using a couple of awesome mods—WorldEdit CUI and VoxelSniper GUI—both of which are available from the geniuses at the Voxel Box (http://thevoxelbox.com/). These two mods are contained in their mod pack, conveniently called "The VoxelModPack", which is available free of charge from http://www.voxelwiki.com/minecraft/The_VoxelModPack.
You can follow along with this book without using these mods, but let me assure you, they will be long and arduous tasks if you choose to take this path. If however you decide to take my advice and utilize the awesome power of WorldEdit CUI and VoxelSniper GUI, you will never look back. Time consuming tasks such as creating spheres, circles, and cylinders can be accomplished in an instant. If you have ever manually created these objects before in Minecraft, you will know just how painful it is to construct them; and I am here to help you avoid that world of pain forever, plus a whole lot more. I want you to have as much time up your sleeves as possible, so that you can really focus on getting creative rather than spending all that time on tedious tasks such as building foundations that no one will ever see.
You're going to learn some really cool construction methods that you can then go on to apply and modify to create almost anything. The only limit is your imagination!
Visit my website www.mephistowaltzminecraft.com for instructions on setting up your own Minecraft server and installing all of the mod files required to follow along with this book. I really hope you have a great time with this book. Good luck and most of all, have fun!
What this book covers
Tudor-style house (Simple) is a basic-level recipe where we will be building a Tudor style house. You will be introduced to some powerful WorldEdit functions, and we'll touch on some handy and practical uses of VoxelSniper.
Airship (Simple to Intermediate) uses WorldEdit and VoxelSniper to build an airship, and we will further explore the versatility of these amazing mods' geometric capabilities by creating this fun object.
Octagonal Chinese pagoda (Intermediate) is where we will be building a pagoda, which will really showcase how useful WorldEdit is as a timesaving tool. Essentially, we only build one quarter of this overall structure; but with the clever use of some of WorldEdit's most commonly-used features, we create a seemingly complex geometric structure in next to no time.
Futuristic city (Advanced) is a large and fairly complex build where you get the chance to apply your creative skills. We will be combining all of the skills we have learnt so far to create an awesome futuristic city. There is plenty of room to experiment and add whatever you like to make a truly out-of-this-world build.
What you need for this book
First of all, you will obviously need Minecraft—the latest version is preferable. While writing this book, the author used a number of versions starting from 1.3.1 up to 1.4.7.
You will also need to be running a Minecraft server. The author recommends installing a CraftBukkit server because of the added functionality, compatibility, and support that comes with it. Server-side mods such as WorldEdit and VoxelSniper will also need to be installed.
Additionally, you will need WorldEdit CUI and VoxelSniper GUI. The easiest way to get these mods is to install the VoxelBox Mod Pack as this package includes both of them, plus a bunch of extra handy mods are included.
Instructions for installing all of this can be found on the author's website at http://www.mephistowaltzminecraft.com.
Who this book is for
This book is really for anyone wishing to extend their Minecraft building capabilities. It is aimed to cater for beginners who are just starting out with building in Minecraft, right through to more experienced players who wish to incorporate the popular and very powerful WorldEdit and VoxelSniper into their arsenal of building tools.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "The stack command works in the direction you face."
Commands that you will execute via the Minecraft console (chat) are written as follows:
//copy //rotate 90 //paste
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "In the right-hand side, under the Ink panel scroll box, select the White Wool block."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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