Crypto Construction Instructions

Hi guys and a late welcome to 2015.
Today I take a break from various activities beyond the blog to outline a basic build process I use when compiling builds in Minecraft.

Note: Post has just the one picture, but it is heavy on words. :)

While the below steps are not definitive (do or die), I find they are for me the most efficient in that it is a logical process that can be followed for those that like to use a series of steps or stages to follow when building something inside Minecraft.

The more free flowing artists who build by feel (or are a highly visionary sort) don't have a need of these steps, however you are welcome to read and comment on them regardless for the rest of us that like to use a bit of structure in the design process.

Note also this took me a little longer to compile due to many other things taking up more of my time recently; plus I actually had to compile and build the cabin, so no I didn't abandon the blog. :)

Crypto Construction Instructions
Step 1 - Build ideas
Step 2 - Rough Sketches
Step 3 - Should I build it?
Step 4 - Source Materials
Step 5 - Making it simpler
Step 6 - Blueprints
Step 7 - Proof Reading/Editing
Step 8 - Material selection
Step 9 - Build
Step 10 - Detailing
Step 11 - Finished (or convinced yourself you are)


Step 1 - Build ideas

Many arguments exists as to how people come into ideas; however I think we can all agree that just having an initial idea of what you would like to build is a firm starting point for any build (be it a rough concept of wanting to build a house, boat, houseboat, bridge, tunnel, statue, anything useful or decorative). How you choose what to build is up to you, however what I do is play around with other media (other games *gasp*, movies and TV shows or just a random browse with all sorts of search terms in Google Image Search).

As an example for this process, I will make a simple wood cabin with a verandah.


Step 2 - Rough Sketches

Doesn't need to be anything of good quality (unless you do that by default for a living), just rough diagrams of the idea you stumble across as thinking initially of being a good idea for a build. From a few basic lines for a bridge, a few block-y designs for skyscrapers or whatever it is you think will be of interest to build. Super basic primitive shapes is what we want, pure outlines with as little detail/shading as you can get away with.

These sketches could be a simple 2D plane view (like a photo sort of image, though not as detailed of course) or basic 3D cube shapes with even a tiny bit of shading to create an effect of being a solid object on paper. Think of the quality of those doodles you drew while on the phone or pretending to be interested in a classroom lecture or activity as examples.

The aim here is to have a general overview shape and not an instant art piece.

Note: My drawing skills are kinda dull so I won't share my sketches.


Step 3 - Should I build it?

Usually you would already have decided on the answer to this question sub-consciously, however I have detailed it here to highlight it's importance.

'Should I build it?' is a question you should ask yourself now, to determine if you would feel motivated enough to see the project completed or it would turn into a grinding exercise that would put you off playing the game for a while.

If it is something that you seem excited to build, that you would be proud to say 'I did it' when you finish it then by all means
scroll on down to step 4.

If your feeling a little unsure, head on down anyway and work your way through to the end of step 9. You could develop later some enthusiasm for the project and find that it grows on you. However if further down you think 'nope, not for me' then by all means stop; nothing wrong with you dropping out and saving time for other build ideas that you may come up with during the below steps.

If it is a firm 'no this build is not for me' then please stop right here, put the stuff from step 2 away and head over to Google Image Search (or similar search engine of your choice but for ease of reading this blog I will just refer to Google). Thinking about why the idea you thought up sucks would also be helpful in finding opposing build ideas that you would enjoy better turning into projects of your own.

Maybe you prefer tunnels instead of skyscrapers (or towers over tunnels), or maybe you think modern buildings are dull compared to older buildings (maybe the art style in Assassins Creed games interests you more) or any number of things that are the opposite of another. No matter, learn from it then look for something that passes the 'Should I build it?' test and move on down to step 4 when you are ready.

For the log cabin; it is a small and simple build I think you readers will find value in me building, for sharing the process of building rather than for the finished building itself, so I will build it for you. :)


Step 4 - Source Materials

Gather materials for more detailed drawings, for builds to be a replica of something I hunt down as many images as I can find of the item with various amounts of angles and levels of detail and work my way down from here. Returning to step 4 whenever I get stuck on something (hmm didn't think about this angle, whats under here? rapid clicks through the net to figure it out).

Stuff from movies and TV shows is a little harder depending on how much footage is provided in the show itself, or also from making of/behind the scenes footage and concept art. Ships in space movies usually show all angles however it takes a little tinkering to find a scale of the item to work with.

Video games I think are the easiest option depending on the game and amount of detail provided for an item of interest (castles or distant hills from backdrops don't provide much compared to rendered 3D objects like ships and stations in the X game series by Egosoft).

Screenshots are usually plentiful for games not owned (various Wiki entries or players showing off things in the game for other players of the game or people beyond it to share) or generate a set of your own from within the game, using either provided screenshot controls (inside the game, Steam overlay supported titles, programs like FRAPs or even inside the operating system), photos from game play (the old fashioned screen capture via photos of images on a screen with a camera/phone/tablet) and a conveniently located save file for reloading as needed for even more angles inside the game environment (or to just recapture the feel/experience of the game to see if scale is similar

On computers, it is even use mod tools to extract files within the game for easier reference while also gaining some experience in how game designers make things in games (being able to visualise how game components are compiled will make future projects quicker to design, compile and build as well. I do recommend you copy game files to another directory on your computer so you can still play the game itself later and not get any nasty surprises :) ).

If it is something of your own design though (congratulations :) ) then sketch up as many rough designs as you can until you come up with enough design ideas that you want to mesh together into a final product to share in Minecraft.


Step 5 - Making it simpler

Regardless if it is a tiny simple 3D cube (for me an uninspiring build but we all started somewhere, I did the dirt house too) and onwards to a mausoleum/kaleidoscope build that outside of Minecraft would be difficult to build, they are all made up of small pieces and sections that when combined form an object.

Hammers for example are made up of an handle (usually wood with a rubber hand grip on it) and hammer head (mostly metalic [if it's wood it is a mallet and not a hammer] a flat end for hitting nails and on most a claw end for removing nails that don't go in straight or for disassembling stuff).

Construction of builds in Minecraft are for me similar to the construction of a hammer. The metal is heated, forged then shaped to form the business end of the tool while wood is carved and shaped for the hammer, a join is made (glue or other methods depending on manufacture, I didn't research this part :) ) and rubber is made into shape and assembled onto the handle for making it easy to use.

Enough rambling, how do we do that for our builds?
Divide your build project into 2D sections [top, bottom, sides] of each piece of the item. If it is a larger project like a town, you would design a different house/building for the various things you find inside a town, each house/building being a different piece of the town. Then you would break down each house further to floors, walls (internal and external if using different blocks on each side of a building), roof, ceiling, other external features.

In short: Build project (example: town) -> pieces (individual buildings) -> section (parts of each building).

As an example build for these steps, I will make a small and (hopefully) simple 1 room log cabin with a bed, furnace, construction table, 1 door (maybe single or dual width), one or two windows and a small verandah.

Sections of the cabin would include:
External: 4 sections for walls, the roof.
Internal: 4 sections for walls, ceiling (with a rough guide for redstone circuitry) and a top down of the interior (showing where items will be placed in the cabin).

A separate piece would be the verandah which would get added onto the cabin. Since the verandah can be added onto the cabin, and doesn't need to be built first to set the size of the cabin itself, we can do this piece to fit with the cabin after that is done.

Verandah sections needed would be
Front, 2 sides, roof and floor to show location of stairs onto verandah with space left for the window and door on the cabin.

Matching up sections is covered in more detail in section 7 (where we proof read the design)

Optionally you could make a rough 2D sketch of these sections that has a rough guide of where things are (example, locations of doors and windows) to ensure you have all parts of the build divided up (didn't forget a section I hope) and also for reference in step 6 when we make more detailed images.


Step 6 - Blueprints

After dividing the base project idea into pieces (major components) and sections (view of each piece from above, below, etc), we now work on detailing and then fitting them all together into a format that is compatible with Minecraft.

Start with finding a section with either the most detail (more details to fit in or compromise on makes scaling other sections to fit easier) or with a specific feature of importance to the entire build (the main feature that will make or break the end result).

Using the section chosen, start working on a detailed 2D sketch with focus of getting as much details down as you can come up with and at the same time fitting it to a grid (each square in the grid being a block in size in Minecraft).

Having a reference object from inside Minecraft to work with will make choosing a scale much easier, so if you can find early in the sketch stage such an object then start with that and work your way out and around it to suit your build.

An project idea that has a pre-made object inside Minecraft (such as a door or game object like the furnace) means you can build around the object with your design, ensuring they match the door (single or double, both are 2 blocks high) and in turn the players view of the project once blocks have been placed in step 10 (if you choose to build it after design, I hope so as it should turn out awesome if you get to this step).

After this first detailed sketch (or blueprint) is complete, make more for each of the sections identified on each piece of the project.

For my cabin, I would first make the interior with the floor (a top down with furnishings in place and ensuring it isn't too cluttered for player movement), then additional sketches for interior walls with a door entryway chosen to suit the interior.
Windows would be placed to suit furnishings and the theme (not too many windows, not too big either as verandah later will be a good viewing platform).
Exterior would then be added to cover the interior, lining up with the door and windows on the interior before finally putting a lid on it with the roof.

At last, verandah would be added with the floor of it to match the height of the cabin floor, then corner posts for a roof (flat or a slooping roof with angle depending on how big verandah is in proportion to the cabin itself) and stairs to allow entry to the verandah and then into the cabin.

About that cabin
For a cabin, this would be an top down interior view for: arrangements for doors/windows, objects inside the cabin arranged to suit the build and accessible for use in-game (furnace placed where it can be accessed for example), spaced so you can move around them inside the game.

Image 2 of wall appearance would also be sketched out if interior walls are to use different materials to those viewed from outside the cabin (remember my 2 block thick wall tip has to allow space for both block types).

The scale chosen to make the image compatible with the MC environment should be used on this and all following diagrams in this step. Example, in the log cabin build I have matched the height of the walls on each diagram by repeating that height across the remaining walls to ensure they all match, with the core sketch of the top down floor image used to set the bottom of the walls as a reference point on each subsequent image.

What should I use to draw on?
Some people use Excel and color codes for each cell to represent build materials, some do it by hand on graph paper, others draft it first then draw grid lines on top to make rough sketches, some people use Voxel imaging programs or image programs (MS Paint, Adobe Photoshop, GIMP or similar programs).

Minecraft itself can be good for it also, just need to be disciplined in that you fire up a creative map with the sole aim of making up sketches/blueprints for your build.

Miss any good ones? Let me know in comments :)

In short, entirely up to you what you want to use just so long as you can interpret your images later when you start placing blocks inside Minecraft.

What do I use?
A mix of GIMP for testing out scale ideas, notepad and calculator to tackle the math and a single player Minecraft session, modded client with World Edit installed (VoxelMapMod Pack though still not 1.8 updated) and loaded in a flat creative map to generate final blueprints (using World Edit to do cut/copy/paste and fill operations speeds things up a bit :) ).

You can head over to -1330, +791 on the wood save file (link below) to see all the pieces of my wood cabin.

I arranged them in an exploded arrangement so you can see each individual section and where they line up. Note that there may have been some modifications in the final build since these blueprints were done, however they are adequate to demonstrate their usefulness in the build design process.


Step 7 - Proof Reading/Editing

Arrange each sketch into relative positions where they would appear in the build, then compare each image and try to visualise if the sections would all blend together and fit into the shape of the intended build.

Each section should be like the piece of a paper craft project, where when all are combined they fit together to make a final shape similar to that of the item you choose to build in Minecraft before drafting up these images.

Repeat steps 6 and 7 if some sections are not the right size of the build until they all fit together at their relative position (each wall joins up right, the interior fits inside the space created by the walls, the roof sits just right for the log cabin example). If so, you are ready for step 8.

If you find doing that difficult, then you could build an exploded version of the project inside Minecraft and build each drafted section separately but close enough to see if they would fit together were you to build it properly.

Failing all that, provided you have enough margin for error (like I did, see below when I built the cabin), you could build it and then do a little improvisation to fit in parts that don't seem to look right while at the same time adding a little bit of character to your build.


Step 8 - Material selection

Having the blueprints in place, you can now look at choosing block types that will fit the build. Wood would be an obvious choice for a log cabin, while skyscrapers can have various amounts of glass with different colours and a range of block types to match them (classic MC look of quartz block types and unstained glass blocks through to lime green glass and green clay types like the towers in my second cacti farm design for example).

Themed builds are easier to work with by having a set color scheme; easier still if making a replica of an existing build design where an architect, structural engineer or a team of game designers have made those decisions for you.

Having a colour scheme in mind (or none at all and just want to experiment); what I do here is fire up single player MC and load up (or create) a flat creative map. Then I go through available block types (a good thing to do when starting a new build after a new update of MC) and make up some mockup walls/features sketched out with various block types.

Rinse and repeat, breaking and replacing block types until I have a block palette  that I am happy with and will work for the final build of the project and aligns with the overall design goals.

For the wood cabin I already settled on using Dark Oak as I like this wood the best for themed wood builds that don't need to have light colored materials.

Why 8 steps?
Sketching up designs then re-doing them as needed saves on time gathering materials and trying to keep a final build design visualised (especially with large scale builds that will take days or weeks to build due to time constraints beyond game play).

More time is also saved where you discover that an initial interior design is just not going to work (maybe I need to make it 2 blocks wider so I can have this double chest/construction table/furnace/chair... here not blocking the doorway :S ) and size of objects didn't line up properly (the extra detailing on one wall making it taller than the others, means patching up other walls and then moving windows and interior floors to fit the new wall heights... ).

And that concludes the preparation steps before actually getting onto making a build. If I missed a step that you do and find helpful for your builds, be sure to share it with me and other readers in the comments section below :)


Step 9 - Build

Just a matter of paint by numbers at this point :)

Choose a section that is central to as many of the sections in the entire build as possible then work on that one first. Alternatively if you remember which images you worked with first and drafted up last in step 6 you could follow that also. Either way, just ensure you are able to take the design and build it inside Minecraft while also able to use it as an in-game reference for adding on other sections for each piece of your project.

Repeat this process, building outwards from the central most section. Then adding more pieces of your project onto each completed piece, section by section until you have placed the final block.

If you did well in the drafting steps above, you should have little trouble making them all fit together inside the game. Be prepared however to discover errors missed while doing the design work (to err is human) and have an open mind to doing a little improvisation to get it all in place.

Note: Vanilla/survival players don't get too caught up in your builds to forget about the games core mechanics (tool maintenance, death, etc). Not an issue in creative modes or on various custom maps that don't have fall damage, hunger and various causes of death in Minecraft (like the build and resource modes on this server, though do remember resource maps are temporary ones).

The error list
What happens when you rush sketches and/or proof I too am human.

1. I didn't make the outer walls on the short sides of the cabin wide enough.
Solution: given the basic design it was a simple fix by extending the length of the walls to clad the interior walls properly, doing so while ensuring the the wall with the small window was put in as intended.

2. Void space, corner between inner and outer walls with the verandah (near the door), void space of top of inner wall
Cause was that I did not add an extra block on the top of the inner walls to fill in this gap.
Solution: Creative use of this void space enabled adding a small redstone signal elevator (redstone torches), moving the lever also made a more natural light switch location for the redstone lamps in the ceiling. The remaining void space filled with Dark oak planks.

3. Roof wasn't made big enough and void space wasn't properly assigned for redstone circuitry  (space not previously assigned during design steps).
Solution: make the roof from scratch, using the base design as a reference. Not quite the same as I intended but it works.

Head over to -1325, +765 on the wood save file (link below) to see this variant of my hut, with the errors fixed.


Step 10 - Detailing

At this point you should have a final build in place, from here you can either leave it as is or add bits of decor to the build that doesn't dramatically change the main properties (size) of the build.

Example: Changing door types (VoxelModPack have not updated to 1.8, otherwise Spruce door would be used), adding detailing around windows, more useful tools (enchantment table, anvil and/or a cauldron), carpets inside a building, adding some lighting via torches or even redstone circuitry to enhance the build. etc.

Keep adding, subtracting and changing block types and placement until you are satisfied it is finished. If not, go for the "that will do" approach if you find yourself suffering analysis paralysis (keep on changing the result with a feeling you can do better).

Sometimes you can improve a build through experimentation; but it comes at a tradeoff on time and frustration where I found moving on to other builds and return to a current one much later feeling refreshed to have been a better end result.

A problem with the extra detailing is that I turned my log cabin into more of a 1 room house based on exterior appearance, spending more time on the roof to make a better angled roof then fitting the verandah to this would have been better but overall I am happy with the result for the purposes of this blog entry. :)

Head over to -1354, +765 on the wood save file (link below) to see the final detailed version of the hut.


Step 11 - Finished (or convinced yourself you are)

Sit back, relax and show off your builds to other players or head back to step 1 and find more build ideas. Be open to constructive comments that are genuinely written to help you improve your builds. Be wary of some folks on the net that like to heckle people though as they are out and about looking to play Minecraft with the aim of causing mischief rather than play the game in a fashion closer to that achieved by the developers.

Congratulations, you made it and are now a Minecraft Build Designer :)

Wood Cabin - You can grab the save file for that over here: Crypto's Cabin.7z

How you progress from here is entirely up to you; be it a few (or many) more simple builds or onwards to some complex detailed mazes of builds that I would um and ahh at wondering how that was built. Do it at your own pace and don't burn out along the way, Rome wasn't built in a day.

If your build is dull and ordinary, learn from it and go observe more art and digital media before returning to it or move on to making better builds that people will enjoy almost as much as you did building them. Practice makes perfect.

Again, comments are welcome but be patient as I moderate them manually before submission.

That aside; go forth, explore and have fun.

Happy Minin'
Crypto (crypto4coin)