Minecraft Forums

When snapshot 13w02a came out with the new texture pack system for minecraft 1.5, I was so excited. I could finally make Minecraft look how I wanted it to. The goal of this pack is to animate everything within reason (over 100 animations so far!), and add detail where the defaults didn't have enough pixels like the tools on the crafting bench and lines in glass (the textures with added detail are 32x). I know some other packs call themselves "hybrids" but I haven't seen this concept of mixing and matching resolutions done before. By changing the resolutions in accordance with the need of the animation, I was able to make the animations smoother while keeping the overall size of the pack down.
Here is a complete change log.

Changes

Many thanks to these people:

I'd love to get suggestions from everyone on what could be added or improved. Constructive criticism is always welcome. Here are some screenshots and a few gifs to give the general concept. Some of my favorites are the pufferfish, the jukebox/record player, and the ores.

Screenshots

Gifs

There are many other videos/showcases/reviews on youtube. I'd like to thank all of them. You can find most here.

Installation
1. Download the .zip file from the download link below, and follow these instructions.
2. (Semi-optional, but this step is required to enable some features) If available for your minecraft version, download MCPatcher and patch your minecraft (installation instructions are in the link). This will enable connected textures (CTM), random mobs, and animations on entities like blinking mobs and the enderchest. Optifine is a partial alternative, but it only has very basic support for connected textures and random mobs.

Thanks for reading this and hopefully trying it out! Enjoy.

Link Removed

• Ad free links and older versions available under "Version History/Alternate download links."

I also have a post here on PMC. If you don't have a minecraftforum account, feel free to comment there or on the YouTube video.

Version History/Alternate download links

How to remove or replace animations/textures

If you want to support this, leaving a comment really means a lot to me. If you really want to help this texture pack, you can set this code as your signature.

<a href="http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1778085-"><img src='http://i.imgur.com/IZV9lZq.gif' /></a>

It is the one you see as my signature below this post. If it doesn't work first try, click the "toggle editing mode" button on the top left of the signature editing screen and past the code again.
Also feel free to click that button. That always makes me happy.

If you use this for YouTube please provide a link to this thread. Thanks!

Alright, so there's this idea I've been working on for the past few weeks. You heard me, weeks. Basically, it's boats. Boats than you can make bigger, slap a name on, armor, choose what propulsion system it has, and carry stuff in.

Full idea in spoiler:

And the Reddit post is here:

http://www.reddit.co..._modular_boats/ (Archived)


*EDIT*

Due to popular demand, I give you this:


Add this to your signature if you like it!

<a href="../../../topic/699830-boats-evolved-bigger-modular-boats/"><img src="http://i569.photobucket.com/albums/ss136/elitemandalorian48/besig-1.jpg" alt=""></a>

Important Things to Know for the Unfortunate Few Without Common Sense (aka posts I've gotten a million and one times and wish to halt):

Download link to the original SketchUp models: http://www.mediafire...55l1cnm1npgkbgl

A while back notch said that water bodies would not all be located at y=65. And they arent. They are somewhere between 64 and 66. When I heard this I thought it would be some 30 block difference between water bodies, but nope. Sometimes we get a glitched pattern when the water level does down by one but thats it.

We need waterfalls that look something like this

Picture from inHaze's custom world
http://www.planetmin...nforest-valley/



Input Needed

Fill in the poll and a comment with what size you think waterfalls should be. Do you want to see waterfalls that are as humongous as the one above or do you think they should be somewhat smaller?

According to the current poll results, it looks like roughly 22% want waterfalls that are not quite as big as the one above and almost 100% support adding waterfalls.



Support the thread

Copy this into your signature box if you support waterfalls

<a href="http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/944112-waterfalls/"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/e2dvN.png"></a>

It looks like this



Thanks ObscuryT for the banner


Current Supporters

Supporters up to 8/20/13

[represent]

Fireworks Mod

Download it here!

(If for some reason mediafire seems inaccessible to you, send me an email and I will send the file to you.
[email protected])

The source is included in this mod. You can do anything you want with it, as long as you keep it open source and don't use it to make money. I would also appreciate it if you credited me somewhere. Any questions can be sent to [email protected]
- Mister Six



What it is:
This mod adds a fireworks-launcher-block to the game. Trigger it by redstone or rightclicking. It will pick a random skyrocket from the folder mod/Fireworks/Skyrockets and launch it up in the air!

Crafting recipe:


Video:

Other Videos:

Automatic Installation
Skydaz made an automatic installer, for those of you that find it either too hard or too much work. If you like it, thank him. This installer takes care of the installation of Modloader and Audiomod as well.
Visit his page here.

Manual Installation:
0. UNINSTALL PREVIOUS VERSIONS
1. Get modloader and audiomod and install them.
2. Delete the META-INF folder.
3. Download the Fireworks-mod!
4. Put all the files in this zip into your minecraft.jar, except the Source folder and the readme.
5. Run minecraft!
6. OPTIONAL: Change the BlockID (currently 175) by changing the number in .minecraft/mods/Fireworks/BlockID.txt
7. OPTIONAL: if you have a slow computer, you may want to remove the skyrockets folder. All light skyrockets will be reinstalled.

How to make your own fireworks:
1. Run the game with the mod installed at least once.
2. Go to .minecraft/mods/Fireworks/Skyrockets
3. There you will see all the different types of skyrockets the mod currently has, like this (currently there are more files):

4. Copy _Example.skyrocket, rename it and open it. They have the .skyrocket-extension, but just open them with notepad or any other .txt-editor.
5. Here you see all the variables that can be changed. Every variable has #comments which tell you what happens and what a reasonable range is.
6. Experiment!
7. Save!
8. OPTIONAL: remove the other files if you want your rocket to be the only rocket in game, usefull for testing.
9. Run the game!


DOWNLOAD THIS MOD


Problem Fixes:
HELP! THE GAME CRASHES WHEN I LAUNCH IT AFTER CREATING MY OWN ROCKET!
Sorry, I should have added proper mistake-detection.
You did something wrong, like giving red a value of "any_nonnumber_here"
Fix it by deleting the Skyrockets folder (see step 2).
Run the game, a new folder will be created.

Actually, for all your glitch/crash problems, just delete that folder. The mod will create a new folder.

THE GAME GIVES A BLACK SCREEN AND I'M SURE I DELETED THE META-INF FOLDER!
It probably uses the same BlockID as one of your other mods (175), you can change the BlockID in the txt file: .minecraft/mods/Fireworks/BlockID.txt.

SOMETIMES THE FIREWORKS WORK, BUT SOMETIMES I GET SAVING CHUNKS!
Try using the automatic installer. I think something went wrong when you installed it. Could be because of the archive manager that you use (you should use 7zip), your operating system, or maybe it's just you.

Credits:
Dark_destroyerxx for updating to 1.2.4
SanAndreasP for updating to 1.1.0
SanAndreasP for updating to 1.0.0
SanAndreasP for updating to 1.8.1
night_killer27 for updating to 1.7
Hydroo & SanAndreasP for updating to 1.6

Extrusion - for helping me with the renderdistance-problem.
_303 - for helping me with some other problems.
King Dedede - for the willow idea.
cybrbeast - for the crossette idea.
Andreas_H33 - for the crafting recipe.

Table of Content:

---

-Intro
-What is a tab/How to make a tab
-Uses for tabs
-Tab-ception
-Multi-Player
-Multi-Player folder
-Other.
-Supporters
-Mod
-Banner

Media:

-Multiplayer video
-Single player video

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Unorganized Multi-Player:

[/anchor]

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like to go on,but why have all of these fun servers when it is really hard to navigate through it? Trying to find a server in my list of junk is like trying to find a needle in the hay stack. There is one object you are searching for but many others around it, making it harder to find that one object you are looking for. For some time, my multi-player menu got more cluttered as i added a new server ever so often. Not to mention that the size that one server takes up in that menu is huge, and which it makes it even more difficult to find that one server you are looking for, but with what i am about to suggest, size doesn't matter. I just feel like navigating through it is very tedious. Constantly having to move up and down to find the right server i want to join is really tedious when were i could just be pressing a simple button to play on the server i want. Now, there is one small solution to this which click on a server, then do [shift] + [up] which moves the position of the server in the list. That is great and all but doesn't solve the problem of the actual length and the clutter of the list. It just moves things around. The length of the list doesn't change, the grouping of the list doesn't change when you just move the servers. You need to be able to virtually group them somehow. I propose a "tab system."

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[/anchor]


in them. With the new tab system for multi-player, the system is the file cabinet and the tabs are the folders that go into the file cabinet.
A tab is also a space for your servers to be held and be grouped as how you want them to be grouped. You can group anything with tabs. If you like organizing, then you will like tabs.

prefered, but if you like the other way, do as you please. So the first way is to press on the "create tab" button which is represented by the [+] button in the photo below. After you press on that, you are prompted for a tab name. Press create, and now you got your self a blank tab.

The second way can be more understandable if you refer to here.

folder. Please press the 'here' up above for this will make a ton more sense if you do so. So, going onto how to make one in the .minecraft. In the new servers folder, you create a new file and name that file what ever you want. Open the file you just created and add a text document to it called 'ips'. In that text document, list the server ips you would like to be added to the tab you just created. Break up each individual ip with a new line. This way is not as simple as the first way on creating a tab, but it is still a way to create a tab.

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Tabs:

[/anchor]



in, in which it make it easier to organize your servers in a grouping fashion. Tabs can do all sorts of stuff. You can group tabs in tabs, you can group different kinds of servers in tabs, and you can group them as you please. How ever you organize, that is what the tab does.

means unlimited organization possibilities.

There are multiple servers of super craft brothers in my menu. It's really hard to handle them and find the specific one i want to go on. With tabs, i can have a separate tab for super craft brothers and put all my super craft brothers servers in there. Then, I organize my other servers by putting my survival servers in a "survival server" tab. Now i have some of my servers separated from one an other, and now it's starting to look less like a jumbled mess. I can organize how ever i want because you can put what ever server(s) you want in these tabs. There is no limit on creating tabs or what you can do with them.

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Tab-ception:

[/anchor]



have gotten is being able to put tabs in tabs,Pretty straight forward.

Small example. [T]Describes tab and [W/Se] describes worlds or servers.

[T]Minigame servers:
-[T]Super craft brothers
--[Se]Super craft brothers 1
--[Se]Super craft brothers 2
--[Se]Super craft brothers ect.
-[T]ShotBow
--[Se]ShotBow US
--[Se]ShotBow EU
-[T]Minecade
--[Se]Ect.

seeing how tab-ception can help even more, i suggest that the tabs can now be made infinatly inside of each other for how ever you want to organize things.

[T]
-[T]
--[T]
---[T]
ect.

There is no limit in what you can do with tabs.

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Why exclusive to Multi-Player?

[/anchor]



suggestions for this to be a feature of single player and basically anything that can be listed. It would be cool to see this for organizing your multi-player, your single player worlds, and possibly resource packs. I guess it;s not just the multi-player world that is unorganized, but more of everything is unorganized. I never realized anything about the single player worlds until i was actually told that this feature would help a ton with organizing the single player worlds. I have never noticed it because i don't have a ton of worlds that i play on, but since i realize this now, i think mostly the multi-player and the single player menus should get an over haul. (maybe resource packs too).

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Organized Single Player:

[/anchor]



servers, it stores your single player worlds. Basically, you create a tab and now you can put single player worlds in these tabs, but i already see a flaw in this type of system.

"What if my single player world is accidentally in the wrong tab?"


in the wrong section and drag and drop it to the right section (This will also be a thing for anything that uses the tab system).


manage is really hard and can get quite annoying for having a huge list of worlds. I can already see what alot of people would make with these tabs. [T] describes tab and [W] describes world.


[T]Survival Worlds:
-[W]World A
-[W]World B
-[W]Ect.
[T]Red stone lab:
-[W]Lab A
-[W]Lab B
-[W]Ect.
[T]Vech's Adventure maps:
-[W]Vech map A
-[W]Vech map B
-[W]ect.
[T]Other adventure maps:
-[W]Map A
-[W]Map B
-[W]ect
[T]creative worlds:
-[W]Ect.
[T]Hardcore serise:
-[W]Ect.

And so on. What ever you want is what you can have.

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How it works in single player:


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Organized Resource Packs:

[/anchor]

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How it will work:

[/anchor]


Of course with a little bit of coding but what really matters is the placement of the folders in the .minecraft. i made this special video to get my point out.



Sorry if the commentary isn't the best. I tried my best because i really want this to be added. If you are tired of crappy looking, unorganized multiplayer menus, like this and post.

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IMPORTANT NOTE!

DO NOT SKIM THIS THREAD! YOU WILL LOSE INFORMATION!
Check Us Out On Reddit! V
Reddit Post Was terminated. Currently working on getting it back

Good Morning MineCrafters! Welcome to Day... 1625+ of the suggestion
(Name Changed From: OFFICIAL GOLD GOLEM THREAD)

Quote from Sacheverell

.Surprisingly solid idea you have there. Not sure how much work it would be for Mojang to program it, but definitely interesting.

--------------------START-HERE--------------------

When I found a pyramid it was just too easy to get my 11 gold, 2 emeralds, 3 diamonds, 12 iron, and 9 TNT. there needs to be something more to protect it. Such as "Desert Guardians" AKA "Gold Golems".

Health Points
200 (x100) (Debatable)

Armor 4 ()

-Includes Boss Health Bar

-They do not: Take fall damage, Drown in Water or Burn in fire/Lava
-Slow healing factor so that you can't attack then wait a long time then attack again

-High resistance to ranged attacks
Attack Strength
Melee Strike:

Easy 4 () Medium 6 () Hard 8 ()
Charge Attack:

Easy 7 () Medium 9 () Hard 11 ()
Laser Attack:

Easy 4 ()+ Medium 6 ()+ Hard 9 ()+

(see info below)
Spawn
-In Desert Temples
-Only ONE Gold Golem will spawn in the temple

-If a Gold Guardian generated as part of a Pyramid is killed, another will NOT spawn to take its place.
-The Golem WILL spawn in peaceful, but will stay inactive.
Drops
(5-10)(Why Gold? Because Ancient Egypt used Gold Plating on it's statues))
(3-6)(Why Lapis? EXCELLENT QUESTION! The golem has blue glyphs on it and i like Lapis)

( 1 )( Mob Head. Trophy/Used to create Inanimate Statues) (more info below)

( 1 )("Power Core". An Item Used To Revive The Fallen Boss) (more info below)

(Not so strange to think about now-a-days since the dragon can be re-summoned with a single purpose item)
Experience
50 EXP
(Iron Golems Drop 0)

(Wither Drops 50)

(Dragon Drops 1,200)

Movement
Rather slow unless charging

(more info below)
Does not need to jump to move up 1 block

Behavior
-The golem will stand dormant in the Pyramid like a statue until a player gets within it's line of sight

(10 Blocks), then it will "Wake Up" and attack the player.
(It will also awake if any chests within a 20 block radius are interacted with. Eyes are dark while Inactive)

Once awake, it's awareness of the player will extend 32? blocks.
If the player manages to escape, the Gold Golem will give up the chase and go back to its spawn point (or if target is killed).

It moves slowly, but when it gets close (5-8 blocks Ish?), it will begin its attack pattern:
-Attempting to Melee the player three times, raising it's arms for a moment then brings them down, giving about half a second to react and move away.

-After that, Its jaw will drop, the Eyes Glow Red and it will charge the player, making a low Roar as it attacks. This sprint can only be stopped by a wall (of at LEAST 2m tall) OR if the golem has charged for a distance of 10 blocks, causing a sort of bull fighter effect.
(Anything weaker than blast resistance 30 EXCEPT for sandstone/sandstone variants will be broken on impact. stones/sandstone will show damage cracks but never break from impact.)
-Finally, After it has come to a stop, It will look at the player, after a few seconds will shoot a beam from its mouth in a horizontal line with the player in the midpoint, causing a sort of sweep attack from left to right. (This laser will be able to break the same blockset as the charge attack, igniting any Mob/Player in its path as well as any blocks it comes in contact with. The point of this is to clear out possible barricades the player has built around it, or used to hide.)
-If the player cannot be reached for Melee attacks (Like, being stuck in a hole or a small doorway) The Golem will go strait to using its Charge (To break a wall that's possibly blocking it), Then continue with the Laser.

Gold Golems do not attack random monsters because random monsters don't want to steal treasure. A Gold Golem's primary purpose is to defend Pyramids from raiding players

(But using one as a guard in your prison/gladiatorial battle/boss for your dungeon, is also GREAT!)
(And Because they only target players they cant be used to make mob grinders to get items easier.)

WHY ATTACK PLAYERS?:
Gold Guardians are meant to protect Pyramids from THIEVES (Players) As Iron Golems protect Villagers from zombies.

(And YES, Players are thieving from the pyramid, there is no way to sugar coat it. You tomb raiding player you......)

Gold Guardians do not attack random monsters because random monsters don't want to steal treasure.A Gold Guardian's primary purpose is to defend Pyramids from raiding players (But using one as a guard in your prison/gladiatorial battle/boss for your dungeon, is also GREAT!)
And Because they target players they cant be used to make mob grinders to get items easier.
They do not; Take fall damage, Drown in Water or Burn in fire/Lava

The Guardian Can NOT Be Tamed!
(The Purpose of the Golem is to attack players. NOT RANDOM MONSTERS! If you want that then make IronGolems. Not Going To Debate It.)

Crafting A Statue/Reviving the Boss.

To craft An Inanimate statue place the dropped boss's head onto a T of gold blocks.

To revive, use the "Power Core" on the statue to bring it back to life with a mighty roar and a short "Boot up" time

Here is a Concept model done by

____________________Frequent Comments/Questions____________________________

If you have been to one of these temples. you will see THIS BLOCK all over. It is the reason for the creeper faces and the Lapis bands. There ya have it.

I will not make a poll. This thread has had a number of polls, each having up to a thousand "yes" votes, so I don't find much of a reason to make one.

____________________________!DISCLAIMER!:___________________________
THESE MODELS AND TEXTURES ARE JUST EXAMPLES, GIVEN BY THE COMMUNITY AND MAY NOT BE HOW IT ACTUALLY LOOKS IN VANILLA GAME!
________________________________________________________

Thank you for your time and patience!

This topic has grown a lot from the suggestions of the people. and i thank each criticism because it gives me a way to let the idea grow.
SHOW YOUR SUPPORT!

(Copy This Into Your Signature To Show Your Support!^)

POSSIBLE CHANGES?
-A Larger/Alternate Temple Just for the boss? Up To Mojang.
(Open to Suggestions)
Found an error? Something I forgot to change? Tell me! I'll fix the problem!

COMMENTS? QUESTIONS? CONCERNS? POST BELOW!

-Dingo_Winterwolf
(vvv I Did This First vvv)

CHECK OUT THE REDDIT POST!
Don't Forget To Come Back Later!

In Other News
Found A Modder!

Facebook:Dingo Winterwolf Skype:DingoWinterwolf Or HERE On The Forum

(video courtesy of qmagnet)

VILLAGE MECHANICS: A NOT-SO-BRIEF GUIDE
by IronMagus

...or "Everything you (n)ever wanted to know about NPC villages, but were afraid to ask." If you're trying to spawn golems for an iron ingot farm, or just want a few more noses to trade with in your local testificate township, then you've come to the right place. Much of what's in here comes from another forum thread originally posted by Marfagames. Among the many others who have helped me piece together this knowledge, special thanks must also go out to forum members trunkz and KyoShinda, both frequent posters in that same thread. Together the three of them made most of this information available in the first place -- all I did was digest what they wrote and re-word it into something that I, and I'm hoping you as well, could understand a little easier. And now, on to the good stuff!

SECTION ZERO: TERMINOLOGY

...or "What is this I don't even." A village is defined by several factors: the village center, radius or "size", number of houses, population (number of villagers), population cap (max. number of villagers, based on housing), number of golems, and golem cap (based on population).

You might be asking yourself, "what does it take to make a village?" In order to be recognized as a "village," two things are required: at least one villager, and at least one house. A "house" is defined simply as a wooden door with an "inside" and an "outside" (see the next section for details.) A village's population is capped at 35% of the number of "houses" (doors.) Under ideal conditions, villagers will breed up to this limit, and then stop. Iron golems can spawn in villages of sufficient size, and the golem cap is 10% of the village's current population.

The village center is the geometric center point, or "average coordinates" of all the doors. The village size or radius is the greater of either 32 blocks, or one plus the distance from this center point to the furthest door (measured in "straight line" or Euclidean distance). This means that the radius is always at least 32, no matter what, but it can be more than that if there are any houses further than 32 blocks from the center. If there are, then the radius is one block larger than the distance to the farthest one.

Both the center point and radius are rounded to whole numbers. The center point is rounded "towards zero" (down if the value is positive, up if the value is negative. Or in other words, it is not "rounded" at all but simply truncated at the decimal point). In preliminary testing, the radius appears to be the raw distance from the rounded center point to the furthest door, plus one, rounded up, although more testing or a look into the game code are required to confirm this.

SECTION 1: HOUSING

...or "You can't park here." How does the game recognize a "house"? A house is defined as a wooden door with an "inside" and an "outside." The inside is the side which has more spaces covered by "roof" blocks than the other, within five spaces horizontally of the door in the two directions it faces. A "roof" block is an opaque block, at any height not lower than the door, that blocks direct sunlight from reaching the spaces below it.

Another way to put it would be to say that an "outside" space has a direct view of the sky, and so has a "SL" (sky light) value of 15. An "inside" space does not have a direct view of the sky (not looking straight up, anyway) and a "SL" value of less than 15. The "inside" is the side which has more "inside spaces" than the "outside" (which, in turn, has more "outside spaces" than the "inside.")

A door is not counted as a house without a "roof," or with the same number of covered spaces on either side.

Example - The door is placed on the wooden planks. The game checks the spaces represented by the light blue wool, to see if they are covered by a "roof" block or not:

Fig. 1

The simplest house looks something like this. Just a wooden door, with a dirt block on the ground next to it:

Fig. 2

There is one "inside" space, covered by a roof block, on the right side of the image, and zero on the left. Since "one" is more than "zero," there are more covered spaces on one side of the door than there are on the other, and so the game counts this as a house. Here is a cutaway view of the same setup, with colored wool for a visual aid. The red wool is covered by a roof block and considered an "inside" space; the blue blocks are "outside":

Fig. 3

The following are all examples of houses as well:

Figs. 4-7:

It doesn't matter what you build, except for what's directly above the colored wool. Anything to the sides of this can be whatever you want, or nothing at all:

Fig. 8

A door is two blocks tall, and this check is performed twice per door, if necessary. If the initial "roof check" (see Fig. 1) fails, then the bottom-most layer is ignored and the check is performed a second time, starting one layer higher. This time, only the spaces above the lime-green wool (and not the first layer, here occupied by the wool itself) are checked for roof blocks:

Fig. 9

Example - For the door pictured below, the initial roof check finds there are two spaces covered by roof blocks on the left side, and two covered spaces on the right side as well. With the same number of covered spaces on each side, neither one can be designated the "inside" or the "outside," and so the door is not counted as a house (yet. But but we're not through yet, either.):

Fig. 10

Then since the initial check failed, the bottom layer is ignored, and we perform the test again, this time starting one block higher, checking for roof blocks only above (not level with) the green wool. This time, only the two spaces on the left-hand side of the image are covered. Since the "roof check" passed on this second try, the door counts as a house, and its "inside" is on the left where the more covered spaces are:

Fig. 11

In the next example, the door passes the test on the initial first check. It has one covered space on the left side and two on the right. This makes it a house with the "inside" to the right. The second check would pass as well (with the "inside" on the left this time), but since the first one already passed, we don't even bother testing again. This door counts as a house, with the "inside" on the right:

Fig. 12

The covered spaces don't have to be contiguous. The door below is a house, with the "inside" on the right, which has three covered spaces, versus only two on the left.:

Fig. 13

This next door has three covered spaces on each side, and is not a house:

Fig. 14

For a house to be a house, it has to be "seen" by a nearby villager. (I use the word "see" here loosely. This is actually based on proximity, not line-of-sight. A villager doesn't literally have to see the door to recognize it, it's enough just to be within range.) Without a villager nearby to "see" the house and recognize it as such, it is not considered a "house" but just some blocks and a door. The following image utilizes Trunkz' "Village Info" mod which adds info about the nearest village to the F3 display. Note the phrase "No Village Found" in the bottom-left:

Fig. 15

But as soon as a villager shows up, it becomes a proper village, with a house and everything:

Fig. 16

Villagers will recognize a house within sixteen blocks along both horizontal axes, and up to three blocks above or five blocks below the level of the ground the villager is standing on:

Fig. 17

--------------------

Combining villages:

When two villages' boundaries overlap, they will merge into a single, larger village. A new house that's within (radius + 32) of an existing village would, were it considered a village in its own right, overlap with the existing village and so just becomes a part of that village. This causes a recalculation of the village's radius and center point, which can sometimes cause it to overlap with another already-existing village. When this happens, the game doesn't always handle it correctly right away. It is possible to end up with a situation where two (or more) villages overlap and are still treated as separate villages. Villages can also overlap if the removal of a door shifts the center point closer to the other village. Tango Tek took advantage of this behavior to design several "overpowered" iron farms that tricked the game into overlapping several villages in a small space so they each could spawn golems individually.

The same thing can happen in reverse: if houses are removed from the center of a large village, the remaining ones may constitute two separate, smaller villages whose radii do not overlap, but the game may still treat them as a single, large village. Or, likewise, additional houses may shift the center point away from the furthest houses so they should not be included in the village yet still are.

When the placing or removal of blocks causes what-was-once-a-house to become no-longer-a-house, the game can fail to update this as well and still treat the door as if it should count as a house. Relogging used to fix this issue, reevaluating the village from scratch when you came back, but now, since 1.4 and later, the village is saved to the world file and so simply relogging does not cause a reevaluation. You will actually have to bust out and replace the door itself (or use the fix below) for it to stop being counted as a "house."

In all three circumstances, the fix is rather simple. Just walk, ride, fly, or boat far enough away that the chunks are unloaded from memory (a bit past your render distance, and then wait for a bit), and this will cause a reevaluation upon your return, correctly identifying only whatever houses remain. If the village(s) are within your world's always-loaded spawn chunks, they will never get unloaded from memory while the overworld is loaded, and so the village never gets reevaluated no matter how far you run. In this case, you can hop into the nether or the end for a minute; after sixty seconds even the spawn chunks will be unloaded (unless another player or entity travels through the portal in that time, which is how Tango Tek kept his creations from breakin every time you left the overworld.)

--------------------

A word on "roof" blocks:

It seems there are two kinds of transparent blocks. There are fully transparent blocks such as glass, torches, and fences, and then there are what I call "partially transparent" blocks such as slabs, stairs, and leaves, which are treated as transparent by the rendering engine (since they don't fill up the entire block space -- you can see through to what's behind them, so the game has to know to draw that part of the world anyway, even though there's a block between you and it. It knows to do this because the block that's in the way is flagged as a "transparent" block), yet they still block light from passing through (at least partially, as is the case with leaves or water), so they're still somehow considered opaque to the lighting engine, which appears to be where it counts. These partially transparent blocks will block the sunlight, and so will count as roof blocks. Fully transparent blocks still do not count. Water and lava (both flowing and source blocks) are partially transparent, and will count as roof blocks. Leaves count as roof blocks. Slabs and stairs count as roof blocks (and they don't even have to be upside-down.) I haven't tested every single block type so I don't have a full list of what does and does not count, but I know that torches don't count, fences don't count, chests don't count. The list goes on...

--------------------

The infamous "facing doors" myth:

There is a rumor going around, that two doors facing within a certain distance of each other will somehow cancel each other out, and neither one of them (or sometimes only one, depending on who you hear it from) will count as "houses." This is not a thing! It is nothing more than a misconception, a rumor, brought about by a misinterpretation of the significance of a particular image posted by Marfagames, who did much of the initial testing on villager houses, and the meaning of his caption:

Quote from Marfagames

And here left are 0 houses and the right 2 are 2 houses. The doors on the left get not negated through the other door, but through the one "roof" tile only in the range of 5 left and right from it.
[The original image is no longer available, but it looked something like this]:[INSERT IMAGE HERE -- coming soon!]

Let's take another look at what he wrote there: And here left are 0 houses and the right 2 are 2 houses. That's true, the two doors on the left do not count as houses, and the two on the right, do. But then look at what he says immediately after that: The doors on the left get not negated through the other door, but through the one "roof" tile only in the range of 5 left and right from it.

Marfagames' english is a little rusty, but what he is saying is basically this: The reason the doors on the left do not count as houses is NOT because they are facing each other, but rather it is because each one has exactly one space covered by a roof block on either side. So as you can see, even he said from the very beginning that it has nothing to do with the fact that they are facing each other! However, somewhere along the line, someone misinterpreted this to mean that facing doors somehow cancel each other out, and then everyone else took that rumor and ran off with it. If anyone ever tells you that facing doors will cancel each other out, you can send them here to get set straight.

Here is an image that demonstrates the overlap between the areas checked for roof blocks by each of the two doors. The door on the left checks above the pink blocks, and the door on the right checks above the blue ones (but only in the center row that's inline with the doors, of course -- additional wool to the near and far sides is just for clarity of demonstration.) Purple blocks represent the area where the two zones overlap, and these spaces are checked by both doors. Doors themselves are transparent and do not count as "roof blocks" for the other door:

Fig. 18

So looking at the blue door only, it has one covered space on the left side, and one also on the right:

Fig. 19

And likewise with the pink door:

Fig. 20

Since these doors both have the same number of covered spaces on either side, they don't have an "inside" or an "outside," and therefore can't be called "houses." However If you put additional blocks behind these (or just move the existing blocks back by one space, that would have the same net effect) then these additional blocks will be six blocks away from the far door, too far to be counted, but are still within range of the nearer door, creating the imbalance necessary to call them "houses":

Fig. 21

With these additional blocks in place, the doors now are valid houses. This is my understanding, and the Village Info mod agrees!:

Fig. 22

--------------------



SECTION 2: BREEDING AND POPULATION CAP

...or "How is babby formed?" A village's population is capped at a certain amount, based on available housing. Villagers will breed, provided there are at least two to begin with, until the number of villagers reaches but does not exceed 0.35 times the number of "houses" (defined above.) Previously, all that was needed to get villagers to breed was to provide them with enough houses. Since version 1.8, however, in addition to having enough housing to support the population cap, villagers must also be made "willing" to breed. Willing members of a village which has not yet reached its population cap will occasionally go in and out of "breeding mode" (indicated by animated heart particles above their head) at irregular intervals until two of them come together and produce an offspring in the same block space as one of the parents. This new villager will be assigned a random profession (indicated by the style and color of its clothing,) not necessarily the same as either parent. Like farm animals, the new baby will grow into an adult after exactly twenty minutes, and also like animals, villager parents have a five-minute "cooldown" period before they can enter breeding mode again (although I believe they can still be made willing again immediately, it just won't do anything until the five-minute cooldown has elapsed.)

**The wiki used to state that "once the cap is reached, any remaining baby villagers will grow to adulthood, but no new babies will be born, bringing the total population to somewhere slightly above the actual population cap," indicating that only adult villagers are counted towards the cap. I have not seen any evidence of this, and all my testing indicates that baby villagers are counted just the same as adults are. As soon as that last baby is born, all "love mode" animations cease to occur; killing either a baby or adult villager at that point will cause them to start up again.

--------------------

Killing villagers:

If a villager from a village dies to a non-player, non-mob source (i.e., environmental damage like fire, lava, drowning, cactus, suffocation, or fall damage) within sixteen blocks of a player, or if a monster kills a villager at any distance from the player, no villager in that village will be able to breed for the next three minutes. Further deaths within this time will reset the clock, not add to it. Breeding may resume three minutes after the last villager has died this way.

If a player attacks or kills a villager directly, it will affect their reputation in the village (see Iron Golem section, below), but it will not affect breeding.

--------------------

Curing zombie villagers:

Breeding requires at least two villagers to begin with. If you are starting a village from scratch, or if yours was wiped out by zombies and there are no villagers left (or only one), then the only ways to acquire more are hauling them in from another village (such as by boat, minecart, or nether tunnels), curing infected zombie villagers, or to cheat them in using creative mode spawn eggs.

To cure an infected zombie villager, you need a splash potion of weakness, and a golden apple. When you find a zombie villager, toss the potion of weakness at it, and then right-click it with the golden apple. The zombie will make a loud sizzling sound, emit orange particles, and begin to shake violently. It takes a couple of minutes for them to convert, so go ahead and trap him somewhere, and make sure he won't burn in the sunlight. After a few minutes, he will turn into a regular villager, at which point you can let him out to roam the village or do whatever.

Finding zombie villagers in the first place shouldn't be all that difficult. Each zombie has a 5% (1/20) chance to be a villager zombie instead, so it shouldn't take you too long (only about forty zombies, total) to find two of them you can cure back into villagers and get the population booming by more..."natural" means. Additionally, when a villager is attacked by a zombie (any zombie) there is a chance (based on difficulty: 0% on Easy, 50% on Normal, 100% on Hard) that they will turn into a villager zombie instead of just being killed.

--------------------

Infinite Breeding:

There is also a bug or glitch where sometimes the villagers will continue to breed indefinitely without regard to the population cap. Here's a quote from trunkz explaining how this works:

Quote from trunkz

[V]illagers need to be inside a sphere (radius = village radius) around the village center in order to breed. But the village counts only villagers that are inside a box (width, length = 2x village radius, height: 9 [always!]) around the village center. So with a sphere that can grow to any size, and a box that's always only 9 high, it should be apparent that there are some zones only covered by the sphere (above and below the village center).

You can simply reproduce/abuse this behavior by building 6 houses on the ground level (enough to set the villager limit to 2), drop 2 (or more) villagers into a 6 blocks deep hole, and leave one villager at the top to keep the houses "alive". The villagers in the hole will breed indefinitely, because they're not counted against the cap.

[images coming soon]

This nine blocks high is the same height as the range in which a villager can identify a house. I have not confirmed this, but perhaps these two are related -- that is to say that maybe a villager would be counted towards the cap if they are up to three blocks below or five blocks above (or exactly on) the level of the village center point.

--------------------

SECTION 3: TRADING

[coming soon]

--------------------


SECTION 4: IRON GOLEMS

...or "It's okay, he's with me." An iron golem's main purpose, "in-world," is to protect villagers from zombie sieges. In practice, they actually do a rather poor job at this, but it is also possible to "farm" them for the iron ingots they drop on death. Golems will roam the village and attack any hostile or neutral mobs they see except for creepers, wolves, polar bears, and llamas. They have extremely high health (100 points, or 50 hearts) and do not suffer fall or drowning damage. Their long arms can reach an enemy through a solid wall one block thick with a long-range melee attack that does not require line-of-sight and deals anywhere from 3.5 to 10.5 hearts of damage, or 7 to 21 half-heart "points" (on normal difficulty; 4-11 points on easy and 10-31 points on hard) as well as tossing enemies into the air, likely causing fall damage in addition to this.

When provoked by attacking them or a nearby villager, naturally-spawned golems will become hostile towards the player, moving toward the player whenever they are in sight and attacking whenever they are in range. They can sense an attack on a villager even without direct line-of-sight, they don't actually have to "see" it take place. Attacking one golem will not cause any other golems to become hostile, but attacking a single villager will bring the wrath of every golem within range (~12 blocks.) Running far enough away from a hostile golem will cause it to become neutral towards you again. Additionally, contact with water momentarily renders them passive -- they will not attack any players or mobs while standing in water and their neutrality towards players will be reset.

Iron golems will spawn naturally in a village of sufficient size, but can also be constructed in-world by the player, by placing four iron blocks in a T-shape (physically build it, not on a crafting table) and then placing a pumpkin or jack-o-lantern on top (the pumpkin/jack-o-lantern must be placed last, or else it won't work.) Player-created golems will never attack the player who made them, even when directly provoked.

--------------------

Reputation

Since 1.4, villages now track the "popularity" of players. Popularity is unique to each village/player pair, so one player can have different reputations in different villages, and different players can have different reputations in the same village. Popularity starts at zero for each player and is affected by their actions inside a village. Popularity is a numerical value that ranges from +10 to -30. If a player has a popularity of -15 or lower in a village, iron golems from that village will become hostile to the player without provocation. The following table shows what actions affect popularity, and by how much:

*(Note: this is an old image, when only trading a villager "for the last offer on their list" would update their trades, and was guaranteed to do so every time. Mechanics have changed since then so that now any trade has a chance to update their trades but is not usually guaranteed to do so. I find it likely, but have yet to confirm, that increasing reputation works the same way, so that a particular trade will always increase popularity [and update the villager's trades] the first time, and then have a 20% chance each time you perform that particular trade thereafter.)

--------------------

Golem farming:

Upon death, golems will drop 3-5 iron ingots and 0-2 poppies (formerly roses), which makes farming them a viable alternative or addition to caving or mining for your iron.

Golems will spawn near the center of a village if it has at least ten villagers (previously sixteen, before 1.4) and 21 houses. Additional houses beyond the 21st will make no difference as far as golem spawning is concerned, however, having additional villagers beyond the tenth will allow more golems to spawn, in increments of one golem for every ten villagers (so 0-9 villagers allows no golems to spawn, the cap is set at zero; 10-19 raises that cap to one, 20-29 raises it to two, etc.) This cap only limits the number of golems in a village at any one time; as soon as one is killed or leaves the village boundaries, a new one can spawn in its place immediately.

The golem spawning zone is a 6-high, 16x16-block area centered upon the village center point. As long as all the conditions are met (10 villagers, 21 houses, golem cap not reached,) then each game tick (1/20 of a second) there is a 1/7000 chance the game will try to spawn a golem. Basically it picks a random number between 0 and 6999, and if it picks 0, then up to ten attempts are made to spawn a golem. A random spot is chosen inside the spawning zone, and if that spot contains a solid block with at least 2x2 x4-high space above it (liquids are okay here -- golems can spawn in water, which is key to the iron farm designs linked below), then a golem is spawned there. [NOTE: For a long time, I had "3-high" written here. But it looks like that was incorrect, and while the golems themselves are only 3 blocks high, they actually need a four-high space to spawn in.]

This is repeated up to ten times or until a golem is spawned, whichever comes first. Then, the check is repeated each game tick, until enough golems have been spawned to reach the cap, at which point spawning is put on hold until either a golem is eliminated or the cap is raised. This means that, as long as the cap isn't reached, you can expect one golem spawn about every six minutes, on average, or roughly ten golems (30-50 ingots) per hour. Remember, though, that this is just an average, and the actual interval between spawns will necessarily vary to some degree. If you watch vigilantly, you will likely see spawns spaced much closer or farther apart than this six-minute average, but in the long run, it should all even out.

--------------------

Golem farming:

An iron farm is an artificial village in which golems are spawned and then funneled into a killing chamber where their drops can be collected. You can either hold the golems (outside of the village boundary, so more can continue to spawn in their place) until you come and kill them manually, or you can force them into cactus or lava to kill them immediately and use hoppers to collect the drops.

There are several ways to build an iron farm, but the most effective versions seem to be the ones that utilize two floors in the central golem-spawning zone, and keep all doors and villagers outside the zone, either above and below the center or in an outer "ring" on the same level. This is in order to maximize the number of available spaces for the golems to spawn in, which in turn will reduce the number of failed attempts, and keep the spawning rate as high as possible. This is much more effective than simply increasing the villager count to raise the golem cap, which only matters for the few seconds between the time when a golem spawns and when it is flushed out or killed, anyway. To further increase your output rate, you can build several separate "modules" and bring the golems or their drops to a central collection area. Since golems are immune to falling or drowning damage, the available killing methods are lava, cactus, or suffocation.

I have linked several iron farm tutorials at the end of this guide. Many of these creations were designed in earlier game versions so some of the details might be different (specifically, they often say you need sixteen villagers when now only ten are required, and they often have you start with minimal villagers and let them breed up to the required numbers based on the doors included in the farm, which now does not work unless you feed/trade with the villagers once they are in place.) Prior to version 1.8, MAGUS-APPROVED™ designs included those presented by trunkz, docm77, and MegaTrain. In my world I use a variation on the one from docm77's video but with only two pods of five villagers each instead of four pods of four (since you only need ten now instead of sixteen) and only 24 doors (since I bring them in from elsewhere, I don't need all the extra doors which were just there to facilitate breeding. Technically only 21 doors are needed but with 24 I still get the 4-way symmetry that puts the village center right smack in the middle of the structure.) I used to use one based on MegaTrain's MegaVillage concept, but since 1.8 that requires significant reworking to account for the new farming/willingness mechanic.

CSPerspective's videos detail earlier incarnations of the idea that do work, but fall short on efficiency in some of the areas I mentioned above. He also has a fourth iron farm video which does remedy these shortcomings, but I did not put a link to it as it's basically just a rehash of JL2579's design (from docm77's video, which I feel has a better presentation.) If you're going to follow the designs exactly, stick with docm77's or trunkz' video. If you want to design a farm yourself from the ground up, go ahead and watch them all to get some ideas.

--------------------


SECTION 5: ZOMBIE SIEGES

"...braaains!" At night, there is a chance that a zombie siege might occur. This is when a large number of zombies spawn in or near a village, attacking what villagers they can reach, crowding around and pounding on the doors of those they can't. On hard or hardcore mode, they can actually break down the wooden doors of the villagers' homes (this is true of all zombies, not just during sieges.) A zombie siege requires a village of at least 10 houses and at least 20 villagers. At midnight each night (18000 in Minecraft time), there is a 10% chance that a siege will be attempted that night. If a siege is to occur, attempts will be made each game tick until a siege is successfully initiated or the sun rises (technically, the attempt is abandoned when the sky light reaches level 12. Typically, this occurs at dawn although rain or thunderstorms can delay this brigtening since they reduce the light level significantly.)

For each player, the village with its center closest to the player is considered as a candidate village for a siege to occur if the player is within (radius + 1) of the village center; essentially, the player must be "inside" the village for a siege to occur. If the player is not within range of any village, the next player's village is considered. If the village has fewer than ten doors, fewer than twenty villagers, or has not been stable (no doors added or removed) for at least one second (20 game ticks), then the next player's village is considered.

Ten attempts are made to choose a starting point, on the y-height of the village center, at a random point on a circle with radius 0.9 times that of the village, that is not within the boundaries of any other village. If a valid starting point is found, a location is chosen as if to spawn a zombie there. If that check succeeds in finding a valid zombie spawning location, a siege is initiated at the siege starting point. Otherwise, the next player's village is considered.

Once a siege is initiated, up to twenty zombies may be spawned over the course of 2 seconds. For each zombie, up to ten attempts are made to randomly choose a spawning point within a 6-high, 16x16 zone centered on the siege starting point. If a valid spawning point is found, a zombie is spawned. During a siege, zombie spawns ignore player proximity, light levels, and other mobs, meaning even a well-lit and fortified village may suffer a siege. The best way to prevent them is to either keep your village small enough that they can't occur, or stay outside them at night.

SECTION 6: SOURCES AND ADDITIONAL INFO

I don't look at the game code myself, or anything. My info comes from in-game observations and the word of others. This is how it works, according to my understanding. I haven't included anything on trading in here yet, but for the time being, the wiki covers it pretty well. We also have a discussion going on over here about all the math and stuff behind how a villager's trade offers are generated.

We're all human (or most of us are, anyway) so there's always the chance that I have made a typo, or even that I am just plain wrong about something in here. If you see anything that you feel needs attention, please post it in this thread or shoot me a PM.

Sources: the wiki; trunkz' Village Info mod; various posts on these forums; and personal experience from building several different types of iron farm, from fixing up and expanding two NPC villages in my main survival world, creating my own villages from scratch, and from my own testing in creative mode.

Additional links:
- Marfagames' original post on village mechanics - Much of this information came from there initially, but it's a little hard to follow since everything is mixed in with discussion and scattered across over 500 posts on more than 20 pages, plus I think English is not his first language: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1071744-
- Village Info mod by trunkz: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1077712-
- Imgur gallery by Derrick - A briefer, more compact visualization of what makes a "house," and a bonus "villager breeding unit" that can support up to 35 villagers in an 11 x 10 or so space (the unit takes up that much space, the villagers themselves wander around outside of it, gettin' freaky in the daylight): http://imgur.com/a/xGhDP
- [Tutorial] Guide to Breeding Villagers in Minecraft - A video crash-course in villager breeding and housing presented by qmagnet:

- trunkz' iron golem farm tutorial video: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1078108-
- Another iron golem farm design by JL2579 (tutorial video by docm77):

- MegaVillage: Manage 100+ villager trades + iron golem farm - A trading village with built-in iron farm (or vice versa) presented by MegaTrain: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1762291-
- CSPerspective's iron farm:

- Minecraft Wiki page on NPC Villagers: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Villager
- Minecraft WIki page on Villager Trading: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Trading
- Minecraft Wiki page on Iron Golems: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Iron_golem
- Minecraft WIki page on Zombie Sieges: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Zombie_siege

**IF YOU LIKE REDSTONE CIRCUITS, YOU NEED TO KEEP READING.**

I posted a suggestion a while back involving bluestone dust. Now, it seems as though a few other people are using the word bluestone in their suggestions. I just want to be clear that this is based on the FIRST topic to involve bluestone in the manner that I suggested. I wanted to summarize the entire idea so far into a single, well-written (to the best of my ability) and clear post. This idea needs attention from Notch.

Here's a few points I'd like to make very clear right now.
- This is NOT one of the 5,000+ daily attempts at turning redstone circuits into real electricity. If you start shouting out electricity jargon and ridiculously complex ideas, I am going to yell at you.
- The purpose of this idea is to make minecraft circuits smaller and more manageable in ways that a redstone 'computer chip' CAN NOT accomplish.
- This idea is very easy to understand. I don't expect everyone to have a degree in electrical engineering. If you understand redstone circuits, you'll understand this.
- I'm no computer programmer, and I may be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure this would be easy as hell to implement.

I : The Essential Idea
Redstone is one of the most fun and stimulating aspects of Minecraft, in my opinion, but so often, you run into problems like the following:
= redstone dust
= bluestone dust
= A fusion of redstone in bluestone, that will interact with both. aka 'purple dust'
EDIT: This has caused a lot of confusion, so will now be used to represent a redstone wire crossing over a bluestone wire. THERE IS NO BLACKSTONE DUST. A black tile in my diagrams represents either diagram 6 or diagram 7 (scroll down to see these), and I hope that this update isn't too late to stop confusion.

[] [] [] []


[] [] [] [] (diagram 1)

You only want the top left to communicate to the top right, and you only want the bottom left to communicate to the bottom right. With the above configuration, you now have a jumbled mess that won't work that way, because the top half of the diagram (circuit 1, let's say) and the bottom half (circuit 2) are interacting. So what do you have to do? You have do change it to this:

[] [] [] []

[] [] [] [] [] []

[] [] [] [] (diagram 2)

To keep your wiring from interacting, you separate each circuit with empty tiles. The tiles in between these two circuits are now what I'll call 'dead space'. You can't put any dust on the dead tiles. It's just taking up space. That's why I propose bluestone dust. Bluestone dust is a simple and easy way to eliminate this problem. Bluestone has the exact same properties as redstone, but doesn't interact with redstone in any way. With bluestone dust, you can turn that cumbersome diagram above into this:
[] [] [] []


[] [] [] [] (diagram 3)

or even this:

[] [] [] []

[] [] [] [] (diagram 4)

Notice how tiny diagram 4 is compared to 2? Think about it. It's the exact same function as diagram 2, but uses nearly half as many tiles. Here's another example of bluestone's ability to tighten circuits.
[] [] [] []
[] [] [] []

[] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] (diagram 5)

Instead of having to make an unsightly bridge to carry the circuit over the top of the perpendicular circuit, you can make it work in 2 dimensions. Bluestone dust and redstone dust would be laid next to and across each other without screwing up circuits.

II : Concerns / Potential Questions addressed!

There's enough ore underground already, adding a new block that's essentially just like redstone is a waste of space.
That's why there doesn't necessarily have to be a new ore added just to add bluestone dust. In fact, I'd rather there not be a new ore updated, because then we'd all need to start new maps. My idea for this would be to have some sort of device (similar to a crafting bench or a furnace) that works to turn redstone dust into bluestone dust and vice versa. Would it be instant, like the crafting bench? Would it take fuel and time like a furnace? Any of them sound good to me.
Randomman159 contributed this idea: all redstone blocks are turned into red/bluestone ore that drops some redstone dust and some bluestone dust when destroyed. The texture would be changed to red and blue spots, instead of just red spots.

Let's say I have 5 redstone dust and 5 bluestone dust, but I need to make a circuit that's ten dust long. What could solve this?
I have two solutions for this. One is the pretty much described in the first question; you'd just turn redstone dust into bluestone dust and you'd have ten of the same kind. My second solution would be to have a redstone and bluestone fusion kind of thing that you'd create. It would probably be purple or something, and would be hard-ish to make (like requiring coal or something to fuse the red dust and blue dust). This would be the only way to connect a redstone and bluestone circuit.

All of this red and blue lying on the floor, won't it be hard to recognize your circuits when it's all on the ground?
Not at all! In diagrams 4 and 5, the purple color is only meant to represent red dust and blue dust on the same tile. It would hopefully look something like this:
diagram 6 is a representation of a single tile.
[] [] []
[] [] []
[] [] []
[] [] []
[] [] [] (diagram 6)

or,

also, a representation of a single tile.
[] [] [] []
[] [] [] []

[] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] (diagram 7)
The redstone dust and bluestone dust, while on the same tile, are next to each other. All of the tile textures would show clearly where redstone dust and bluestone dust are.

This is a great idea! You know what else they should add? Yellowstone dust! And greenstone dust!
No. At a certain point (as in, 2 different kinds of dust) it just gets stupid and annoying to look at. Your circuits will look like puke, and just try to imagine what diagram 6 would look like with 5 parallel colors instead of just 2. Two kinds of dust are enough.

What about redstone and bluestone torches?
As you probably figured, bluestone torches would work in the same way as bluestone dust; exactly the same functionality as redstone, but not interacting. Redstone torches could be converted to bluestone torches, or they could be permenant. That detail isn't very important.

Doesn't the redstone 'computer chip' idea solve this problem?
Yes and no. The computer chip idea will help with making circuits smaller, but you would still have a lot of dead space.

III : Closing
Thanks for reading all the way through, or at least scrolling all the way to the bottom! If you support this thread at all, PLEASE post in it, even if it's just the word "support". The more replies this topic gets, the more noticed it will get. If you don't support, please reply with a reason to not support it.

Any questions that a lot of people are asking, I'll put in section II with my best solution.

-Starfrish

---

Table of Contents:

Overview
Changes in how things work
Frequently Asked Questions
[WIP] The Cubic Chunks Mod!
Gallery
Supporting this suggestion
Special thanks

[spoiler=Tl:dr]Q: Won't this increase lag?
A: Absolutely not. The title of this suggestion and big red letters at the top of this post aren't lying. If you want to know how, then I suggest you actually read this post.

Q: Will this change terrain? Will this break existing worlds?
A: No. Terrain change is not necessary. Existing worlds can be converted fairly easily with a process described later in this post.

Q: How can sunlight or rain work with infinite vertical space?
A: I suggest you read Coping with sunlight, because it's too complex for a tl;dr.

Q: I have a different question but still don't feel like reading this post. What do I do?
A: Too bad, read the FAQ. I put way too much work into this for the entirety of it to be ignored.[/spoiler]

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Overview:

In Minecraft, the sky is the limit - literally. It doesn't matter how many thousands of blocks a player has traveled, or what dimension they're in, or even if they're playing in creative or survival, the highest they can ever build is up to a height of 256. Why is that? If Minecraft can have a world that's infinite in the north, in the south, in the east, and in the west, why can't that world be infinite up and down too?

In Minecraft's earliest days, in Classic and Indev, the world was not infinite in any direction. This was because the entire world needed to be generated at the same time, and the entire world needed to be simulated at the same time as well. This led to a conundrum - the bigger the world, the more it lagged.
Notch didn't like this. He knew his players liked to explore and build large creations, so he found a way to make the world truly infinite. When the Minecraft '' class='bbc'>Infdev came out, it brought with it truly infinite worlds. Suddenly, players could travel hundreds of thousands of blocks in any direction, and never encounter a barrier, or become too laggy.
The Infdev update brought about a very large change to Minecraft worlds to accomplish this feat. For the first time, instead every world being just a single huge piece, they were broken up into a two-dimensional grid of pieces, called chunks. Through breaking the world up into pieces, this 'chunk system' enabled infinite worlds by letting Minecraft create new pieces and simulate them only when it needs to.

Why does that not apply to the vertical axis? Because the type of 'chunk system' Minecraft uses right now is a linear one, which, by using only a two-dimensional grid to map out chunks, means that it is impossible for chunks to stack on top of one another, and by extension, meaning that a single chunk must cover the entire vertical space. This brings back the problem that the Infdev update was supposed to eradicate, now only with chunks, instead of an entire world; the bigger a chunk is, the more laggy it is. You can't just increase the height limit and make chunks taller, because it will become laggier, and laggier, and laggier to do it.
That's why, to fix this, Minecraft must change over to a cubic chunk system. Under this system, 16³ block chunks are aligned on a three-dimensional grid, completely eliminating maximum height as an aspect of lag.

The immediate benefits:
•Minecraft worlds become as virtually infinite vertically as they are horizontally: The absolute limit being Y = ±30,000,000.
•A large FPS increase: Alpha testers report an FPS increase of 100~200%.
•Increase in running capability: Computers running Minecraft on Tiny render distance will handle only 30% the blocks they do now.

The possible features:
•Spherical render/load distance: Reduce handled blocks by up to 30% by cutting corners made of unneeded chunks.
•Server chunk occlusion/exclusion: Reduce bandwidth usage and defeat hackers by only sending data for visible chunks.
•Three-dimensional biomes: Save biome data per chunk rather than per block column, create volcanoes with magma chambers, underground rivers, tropical skylands floating over icy taigas, and more.

The disadvantages:
•Unloaded gravity-pause: Falling non-player entities and fluids will be forced to pause their fall if they reach unloaded chunks, but will resume falling when those chunks are loaded.
•Slow falling-pause: Players with slower computers and smaller render distances will have falling occasionally paused as they fall into unloaded chunks, until new chunks can be loaded.

The problems:
•Current sunlight and rain calculation methods cannot work with infinite vertical space: The solution to this is described here.
•Current BiomeDecorator cannot work with multiple vertical chunks simultaneously: The BiomeDecorator code must be altered to function correctly with this, or removed.
•Current cave generation method is executed an extra time for each vertical chunk created simultaneously, leading to lag spikes on world generation: Cave generation's method must be altered to suit this system more.
•Current grass/dirt generation algorithm forces additional chunk requests when chunks are loaded, causing chunks to load slower than they should: This algorithm must be replaced with something else.

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Changes in how things work:

Obviously, the implementation of this new chunk system will change quite a few things. These changes are mostly either necessary or in the interest of increased efficiency. Such changes are categorized and explained below.

How worlds will be stored:
[spoiler]How the current storage works, and what changes:
Interestingly enough, the current method of storage, the Anvil format, is derived from the storage method that the original Cubic Chunks mod used. The Anvil format stores individual chunk as a series of 16³ quasi-cubic chunks. These 'fake' cubic chunks allow for easier reference of specific data, but they still can't be separated from each other, meaning that it fails to reap the full benefits of this system. Even so, the change allowed Mojang to double the maximum height with no performance hit. Chunks are stored in groups of 32², inside 'MCRegion' files, for a total of 1024 chunks.
By nature, cubic chunks does away with the 'quasi-cubic' nonsense. In terms of chunk grouping, instead of using groups of 32³ chunks, new "3DRegion" files would contain groups of 16³. This means each 3DRegion file contains 4096 chunks, four times as many as MCRegion files. However, each 3DRegion contains only one fourth the amount of blocks. For per-chunk positional metadata, 3DRegion files would use the same number of bits as MCRegion files, after compression. Calculations show that the same area encompassed by a single MCRegion file would consume 64 kilobytes of extra space with 4 3DRegion files, which is nothing.

Converting existing worlds:
Most people are probably wondering something like "But won't this totally destroy all existing worlds?". Absolutely not; conversion could not be simpler. When a non-cubic world is loaded after the implementation of this system, a conversion process will begin and convert the entire world at once(To avoid making chunk loading take longer during play). First, all existing MCRegion files will be divided into quarters to create 3DRegion files. Then, all existing chunks are divided into sixteenths using the quasi-cubic properties to identify boundaries. After that, conversion is done.

The "isEmpty" flag optimization:
A 1-bit flag is added to each chunk, named "isEmpty". If the chunk consists of 100% air blocks, this bit is 1, any other case makes it 0. When the bit is 1, all data for the chunk besides the isEmpty flag is deleted and ignored, which reduces filesize. Empty chunks are never loaded, and locations where they occur are merely simulated as entities reside in them. The chunk will only load when something requires saving inside it.[/spoiler]

Changes to terrain, ores, etcetera:
[spoiler]Terrain:
By default, nothing will change. Small bits of terrain generation code need to be reconfigured to work properly with Cubic Chunks.

Biomes:
By default, nothing will change.

Ore generation:
By default, nothing will change.

Structures:
By default, nothing will change.

The Void:
After conversion to Cubic Chunks, the void and bedrock layer will still exist and generate as they always have. However, the void(Not the bedrock layer!) will not exist as a hard limit and is able to be moved, but not removed, by editing an associated NBT data tag inside a world's level.dat. This feature, that allows for increasing the maximum depth, is intentionally disabled without external programs, to prevent terrain change of any sort. It is intended to be used by experienced mapmakers and world generation mods only.

Superflat settings:
Existing superflat worlds will not change. However, new superflat worlds will gain a new decoration parameter, 'void'. Inclusion of this parameter will cause the void to form below the lowest defined layer. Exclusion of it will cause all layers below the lowest defined layer to copy the settings of that layer.[/spoiler]

Coping with sunlight:
[spoiler]There used to be a solution here, but it wasn't deemed good enough by Jeb. Suggest solutions in this thread.[/spoiler]

Changes to servers:
[spoiler]Settings:
There's a setting inside the Server.properties file called 'max-build-height'. The setting makes it impossible for any player to place or remove blocks above that height.
With the implementation of Cubic Chunks, a new setting named "maximum-generation-depth" would be added. The void, bedrock layers, and magma layers will generate normally at and above the Y level designated by the value of this setting.

Chunk occlusion/exclusion:
Using the raytracing methods already available in the code and used for explosion calculations, servers can identify which chunks are visible to a player, within safe assumptions, and only send the data for those chunks. This both reduces bandwidth usage, and cripples the usefulness of X-Ray cheats.[/spoiler]

Render/Load distance alterations:
[spoiler]After the implementation of Cubic Chunks, view distances' radii will apply to the vertical axis too. This reduces handled blocks in the cases of tiny and short render distances, and increases them in the cases of normal and far render distances. This can be optimized by utilizing a spherical render distance instead of a cubic one, which would reduce handled blocks in all distances except Far.[/spoiler]

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Frequently Asked Questions:

[spoiler=FAQ]Q: This is impossible.
A: No it's not. See below.

Q: Is this available as a mod?
A: Not yet! But it will be!

Q: I like X-ray! What if I don't want it to be broken?
A: First of all, breaking X-ray hacks will only be possible to do in multiplayer. That said, the system that would break X-ray would be possible to disable by the server owner. If the owner doesn't disable the system, then they don't want you using X-ray, and you should not be doing what the server owner doesn't want in the first place.

Q: I play on a PvP/Anarchy/Raid/Faction server. Won't this system let people pillar up into the sky and create a base thousands of blocks in the air and never be found?
A: No.

Q: I like Minecraft's current height limits. What if I don't want to have an infinite sky or infinite underground?
A: If this system is added, all worlds will not automatically gain an infinite underground. As stated below, the Void will remain in all worlds, even after the conversion to Cubic Chunks. The ability to remove the Void will simply be there. As for infinite space in the sky, the current build limit is over one hundred blocks above any terrain that vanilla Minecraft can possibly generate. It is ENTIRELY your decision on whether or not you take advantage of this height. If you play on a server, like stated above, the server owner can set a maximum build height. If s/he doesn't, then don't play on their server - you don't play on servers where the server owners allow things you don't like. Why would you play on an anarchy server if you hate being stolen from and killed?

Q: Will this affect Redstone at all?
A: No. This system will simply make it possible to make larger redstone circuitry than before.

Q: Won't this break existing worlds?
A: No. Existing worlds can be easily converted by dividing each MCRegion file into 4 pieces, then slicing the existing 256 block-high chunks inside them into 16 individual chunks.

Q: Won't this affect mods? Won't mod authors have a hard time updating their mods?
A: The answer to this question depends solely on the answer to the following two questions: Do parts of the modification code rely on chunk data/metadata? Does the mod author want to take advantage of the features of the new chunk system? If the answers to the first and second question are both "No", then updating a mod to this system should be very easy and quick. If the answer to the first question is "Yes", then those parts of the code will need to be rewritten somewhat, but in most cases, the changes should be fairly quick and easy. The only time that it should be hard to update a mod to this system, is if the answer to the second question is "Yes".

Q: Won't this require a total rewrite of the mod API if that's released first?
A: No. Whether or not even a small part of the mod API needs to be rewritten depends on the way that it is implemented and whether or not there are API inclusions for chunk handling and other chunk-related behavior.

Q: Could a player fall into unloaded chunks if chunks aren't loaded fast enough?
A: No, they could not, and for several reasons. Minecraft has a terminal velocity, though it might not seem like it. This velocity is slower than it should take to load new chunks below the player. In cases with exceptionally slow computers, even if the player did manage to reach an unloaded chunk, their fall would be paused until that chunk can be loaded.

Q: What would happen when water, sand, or a mob falls into an unloaded chunk?
A: Nothing. The water/sand/mob would freeze in place until the chunk is loaded and it can continue moving. You can already see this same thing happening on the horizontal axis.

Q: What will happen to the Void?
A: It will still exist, along with all its effects. The only difference is that the Void is no longer a hard limit and it can be moved. After the conversion to Cubic Chunks, the Void's location will be stored in a world's ' class='bbc'>level.dat, and this location can be changed with NBT editing tools. When and where the Void exists, chunks will cease to generate.

Q: Will this affect terrain?
A: No. However, terrain generators will gain the ability to use infinite height.

Q: Will this affect ore generation?
A: No. Ore is a part of terrain generation. As stated above, terrain will not be changed.

Q: Won't all current terrain generators be incompatible with this system and need to be rewritten?
A: No. Terrain generators work independently of chunks. When a chunk is generated for the first time, it calls the terrain generator and receives a specific section of the resultant terrain to save inside itself. Because of this, some custom terrain generators can generate steep terrain all the way to Y256, where you can experience a large, flat cut-off. Since there are no chunks above Y256 to call the terrain generator for terrain, no terrain exists there.

Q: What would happen if there's a huge solid ceiling so far above you that it is unloaded? Wouldn't you just see the sky, just with everything being completely dark?
A: Yes. This already happens on the horizontal axis, and it is an issue with sky rendering, not this chunk system. As such, this has nothing to do with this suggestion. Please do not post about this.

Q: If you go deep underground, will your plants grow/ores smelt/animals grow?
A: No, because those chunks would be unloaded, just as if you had walked far away. This is a flaw with any chunk system, regardless of shape. It is a necessary evil that allows Minecraft to have infinite worlds. The only way to fix this would be to introduce a separate new system that works with chunks as they are loaded and unloaded. This suggestion deals with the chunk system itself, and not sister processes. Because of that, that is outside of the scope of this suggestion. Please do not post about this.[/spoiler]

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[WIP] The Cubic Chunks Mod! (Tall Worlds Mod):

Cuchaz has taken it upon himself to bring us the glorious Cubic Chunks, since Mojang refuses to do so.

Cuchaz is using a API of his own creation to help assist in the making of this mod, and he's quite far along, as seen in these two tech demo videos:
[spoiler=T-Demo 1: Vertical chunk loading][/spoiler]
[spoiler=T-Demo 2: Broken height cap and no lag!][/spoiler]
With the basic functionality in place - a complete overhaul of the basic chunk system, and height limit removed - this whole concept can already be considered proven. What remains is making sure everything else functions correctly under the new chunk system. In any case, stay tuned for future updates if it interests you(If it doesn't, then you are the weakest link - goodbye!).

You can follow the mod's development in much more depth in its very own topic!

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Gallery:

[spoiler=A mountainside with an experimental engine using Cubic Chunks designed by Nocte. 960 block view radius, and 30 FPS.][/spoiler]
[spoiler=A different view of the mountainside with the same engine by Nocte. This time, with 1600 block view radius and 15 FPS.][/spoiler]
[spoiler="A video demonstrating Nocte's engine."]

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Support & Submission to Mojang:

If you support this, hit the rep button in the bottom-left corner of this post. It is the only good way of accurately measuring support here.

If you wish, you can put the following banner, courtesy of laz2727, into your signature. It helps to attract support from all parts of the forum!

 [url=http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1707097-cubic-chunks-infinite-height-elimination-of-x-ray-and-more-60-supporters/page__st__0][img]http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/443/hov.png[/img][/url]

Please help us get word out of this suggestion! Share this with your friends, with Minecraft celebrities if you're familiar with them, or even with Mojangsters like Jeb or Dinnerbone! (Do not share this with Notch. Notch doesn't work with Minecraft anymore.)

The purpose of this suggestion is to have Cubic Chunks implemented in Vanilla. Being available as a modification does not fulfill that purpose. The modification featured in this suggestion is to act as a proof-of-concept only(Note: Its being featured here is to act as a proof-of-concept. The modification itself is on its way to becoming a fully fledged modification).

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Special thanks:
Cuchaz, for taking Barteks' proof and running with it, to give us a truly functional Cubic Chunks mod.
Barteks2x, for updating the Cubic Chunks mod to 1.6.2, proving that it is possible.
Azraile, for posting the original suggestion and allowing me to take ownership of it.
Nocte, for helping resolve flaws and designing Hexahedra.
MineCrak, for a large amount of valuable insight and enthusiasm into the topic of Cubic Chunks.
aaronfranke, for helping resolve flaws.
PanJouda, for creating the original banner.
Flexico, for creating the predecessor to the current banner.
laz2727, for creating the current banner.
Robinton, for creating the original Cubic Chunks mod.
The_Watchman13, for answering all those stupid questions so I don't have to.

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Note: Many calculations and information can be found among the many posts of this topic. There are too many for me to cite here, but if you wish, you can search for them yourself.