To all the Cartographers, who are gamers!

[Steel General]

Sounds interesting...

[krasimir]

This game is an indie game success story. It's definitely the exception, not the rule though. Thousands copies sold even in alpha!?

[nanoleopard]

Yah, i play this game, its quite fun when their is nothing to do. the thing is, i have never thought of using this game for some of my maps!

[Wooraah]

Resurrecting a slightly old thread here, but it is Minecraft city design that has brought me to your lovely forums.

My plan find ideas for city layouts here and import plans into minecraft as a flat 2d image for the foundations, then build from there. This will be done using a neat little community java application called "Minecraft Structure Planner" (http://minecraftstructureplanner.com) which can convert 2d image files into minecraft pixel art, which, if you think about it, on a larger scale can be city plans.

[Wannabehero]

Absolutely wonderful idea Wooraah, I love minecraft and I have never even considered taking a map here and building it in-game. I also need to catch-up on all the 3rd party applications associated with minecraft, like the "structure planner". Great stuff!

Oh, and welcome to the Cartography Guild!

[Wooraah]

Thanks Wannabe, nice community you've got going here.

I was partly inspired by some of the amazing builds and cartography work that's been going on with some of the minecraft servers, the best I've seen so far being Voxelbox, I'm sure the majority of people on the forum would appreciate the effort that has gone into their map here: http://www.voxelwiki.com/minecraft/index.php/Pangea - and to top it off, after admiring that, you can go in and explore the world yourself as a guest.

In terms of what can be done on the grandest scale in the game with the correct tools and a lot of persistence I'd highly recommend viewing these videos:

Underwater City ~ Lumina Nocturnale ~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c83y...layer_embedded

Tsuchi-Iwa Minecraft City
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL_fgjzvwew


Anyone here also interested in 3D imagery, should check out both mcschematics.com and the Binvox tools detailed in http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewto...p?f=25&t=75844 that allow you to import certain 3d file types directly into the game with impressive results.

I've done some preliminary testing after wrangling a bit with tools and techie stuff, and sucessfully imported a couple of map plans using the structure planner and MCEDit with varying results.

Some initial conclusions:

1) The simpler the map image for the minecraft structure planner tool, the better. As attempting to use the tools auto convert tool to convert highly stylised or colored images result in a mixed bag image, with all types of wool, brick, obsidian and everything else thrown into the schematic. So simple, or at the least cleaning the image and recolouring it with a graphics program is highly recommended.
2) It is good and bad that the Structure planner is 2d. This is great for making plans on totally flat areas, but I had originally conceived to import plans for Himeji Castle in Japan for an Asian inspired city (http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildi...ji_Castle.html), and this is of course over main different levels, so I'd then have to also terraform around it. However, for something like the Forbidden City in Beijing, which is on flat land, with the correct plans, this could work extremely well.

[guyanonymous]

If you're building on a server, with the bukkit mod installed, you can install the worldbuilder plugin (hope I have those names right). It allows you to, in game, cut/copy/paste areas as well as build basic shapes (solids and 'walls') by defining two corners in 3d space, or center points and radius. If you're able to build the first row of blocks for your building frame, you can copy it up to increase the height of the walls wihtout having to relay every block by hand. It's a great time-saver for minecraft builders.

[Wooraah]

Yup, I'm building a map at the moment with MC Edit, which offers the same sort of import for single player as world builder. I wish I also had access to voxel sniper. Seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmjN40SMBz8

Great world editing and terraforming tool.