Minecraft Redstone For Dummies

Jacob Cordeiro

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781118968321
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming Games
• Index: Computer Science

The indispensable primer for achieving redstone greatness

Minecraft Redstone For Dummies is the complete guide to finding, using, and maximizing the power of redstone in the Minecraft world. This key element is essential for crafting and brewing, and can be placed on the ground as redstone dust – a flat, transparent block that can transmit redstone power, the major component of most redstone circuits. Written by a recognized Minecraft expert, this useful guide walks you through mining, smelting, and other methods of obtaining redstone, and teaches you how to make the most of your redstone stores. Craft a compass, piston, lamp, or torch, brew a potion that reverts to Level 1, or turn it to dust to help find nearby power components. Whether you're in Creative or Survival mode, redstone mastery is crucial for successful gameplay.

Minecraft is a worldwide phenomenon, boasting over 100 million players from around the world. While gameplay varies according to player preference, redstone remains a central element that allows players to build, brew and create as they advance through the biomes. Minecraft Redstone For Dummies teaches you everything you need to know about redstone, including how to get it and how best to use it.

• Learn which methods result in more redstone per attempt
• Discover how redstone is used in crafting and brewing
• Use redstone dust to build circuits and power mechanical components
• Understand redstone power, including source, levels, and configuration

Don't be content to acquire what you stumble across. Redstone's versatility makes it an indispensable resource in the Minecraft world, and knowing where to find it and how to use it efficiently can make all the difference in your gameplay. If you're ready to level up, Minecraft Redstone For Dummies will make you a redstone guru in no time.

Chapter 1

Introducing Redstone

In This Chapter

Understanding what redstone is and what you use it for

Exploring the essential concepts of redstone

Understanding the value and applicability of redstone

The world of the game Minecraft is appealing in its infiniteness. In a game where every piece of the world can be destroyed, modified, and rearranged, the possibilities are limitless for how you can work, construct, and venture to make the world your own. This feature is particularly visible in the study of a few choice blocks and items that can function together to form machines of enormous size and scale. The tools, and the science behind these machines, are referred to as redstone.

This chapter introduces you to the basic structure and possibilities of redstone machines.

Exploring Redstone Basics

Redstone is a dust that you can find underground and use like wiring. Redstone can connect power suppliers (such as levers and buttons) to devices (such as doors and pistons), using the power suppliers to activate the devices from any distance.

You can use redstone to build an automatic door, a light switch, or a trap for the monsters that haunt your Minecraft world. For example, Figure 1-1 shows how a Minecraft player added a redstone circuit to his house so that he can turn on all the lights on the walls with the flip of a lever. Though these tricks are useful for improving your Minecraft experience, the full extent of redstone’s possibilities is much more expansive.

Figure 1-1: Designing a simple redstone light switch.

Redstone technology is often used to build functions — machines that convert input (such as flipping a lever or tripping a tripwire) into output (such as activating TNT or moving blocks around). Simply connecting the input to the output with redstone dust is sufficient to design a function. However, you can create more complex functions with the tools I introduce in Chapter 2. For example, you may want your output to activate only if two buttons are pressed at the same time.

Essentially, redstone gives you the tools to turn any input into any output. This subject is extremely powerful — after all, the computer on which you play Minecraft is simply a collection of many, many functions. And people have built computers in Minecraft, designed for various features and functions. Chapter 5 describes the study of combining functions into interesting creations.

Understanding How Redstone Works

Redstone functions on the same principles as logic and computer science. The difference is that, rather than have lines of code or wires and resistors, you have physical blocks arranged in a virtual world. The idea behind redstone devices is that they can be either on or off — powered or unpowered — depending on what is happening to them.

Most redstone components, including the ever-present redstone dust, are unpowered until they’re charged by other redstone components or inputs such as levers. Throughout this book, the presence of power within a redstone circuit is referred to as a redstone charge or redstone current. (In real-life circuits, these terms mean different things, but redstone power could pass for either.) Though the basic redstone dust can be used in many ways to link components, other blocks — such as redstone torches, redstone repeaters, and redstone comparators, all described in Chapter 2 — can invert, delay, and modify the current. That’s where the real fun happens.

Figure 1-2 shows a redstone circuit (an arrangement that produces a specific effect), consisting of many different components. Depending on the position of the levers at the bottom of the figure, the redstone current is passed among the various sections of the machine, working together to perform the function designed by the builder.

Many of the figures throughout this book look like Figure 1-2, with the components of the machine spread out clearly. Others are compact and concise. This book therefore tries to show you designs that are easier to break apart and understand, in addition to the efficient and elegant creations that you may see in your future constructive journeys.

Figure 1-2: A redstone machine in multiple parts.

Discovering the Applications of Redstone

Using redstone allows for plenty of possibilities, but can it do anything other than use items to activate other items? Fortunately, Minecraft provides a wealth of challenges and opportunities to which you can apply the concepts from this book:

• Combination locks: This is a popular first project for redstone engineers who are transitioning from the basics of design to the theory of it. A combination lock activates the output only when a collection of levers is set to a particular arrangement.
• Automatic machines: By using pistons, dispensers, and other devices, you can build machines that harvest crops, brew potions, manage minecarts, or perform basic tasks for you. By having machines do some of your work, you can design a more efficient Minecraft world, gathering more resources faster.
• Dynamic structures: Use pistons to raise bridges, move walls, or push arrangements together. Create waterfalls that can be controlled with floodgates, automatic doors, or elaborate lighting systems — anything in your world can be manipulated with redstone. Take advantage of it!
• Traps and choreographed events: Many players enjoy first building adventure-style worlds run by redstone and then sending the worlds to other players for them to try out. Whether you’re building a challenge for another player or you want a brilliant, new way to punish trespassers, you can use redstone to guide the people in your world.
• World management: Redstone can control the form and function of the world, especially with the cheats-only command block. You can set the rules of the world, manage a scoreboard, fill huge areas with blocks, copy buildings, or summon giant slimes riding bats across the sky, for example. See Chapter 7 for more on the command block.
• Minigames: Games follow input-output structures as well — Minecraft players have designed many excellent redstone-powered games for other players to try. See Chapter 10 for more on this topic.
• Theoretical machines: Sometimes a machine doesn’t have a purpose — an interesting algorithm or component can have value in itself. Many players use Creative mode just to build elegant, innovative, and aesthetic machines.

You can apply redstone in many more ways in either Survival mode or Creative mode. You can find some of them by reading further in this book or by innovating on your own.

Chapter 2

Getting Started with Redstone Programming

In This Chapter

Obtaining redstone dust

Arranging redstone dust to create circuits

Crafting special redstone items: torches, repeaters, and comparators

Powering blocks

Understanding how redstone works can be difficult because few games allow you to program whatever you want from raw ingredients. This chapter helps you program your first basic machines (from linking levers and doors to building simple locks) with the power of redstone dust. I also describe the fundamentals of using redstone throughout Chapters 3 and 4, but th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Introducing Redstone
• Chapter 2: Getting Started with Redstone Programming
• Chapter 3: Using Redstone to Power Mechanisms
• Chapter 4: Understanding the Laws of Redstone
• Chapter 5: Designing Logic Gates, Loops, and Other Devices
• Chapter 6: Using Physical Machines in Redstone Devices
• Chapter 7: Introducing the Command Block
• Chapter 8: Using Data Tags to Customize Objects
• Chapter 9: Combining Commands
• Chapter 10: Building a Custom World with Redstone
• Chapter 11: Ten Redstone Tricks for Survival Mode
• About the Author
• More Dummies Products
• End User License Agreement