Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
2.
Move into the hole in front of you, and repeat.
As you go, don't forget to place torches every 9 steps or so, and if you hit any problems,
either take a 90-degree turn to the left or right and continue, or make a bit of space for a
landing and do a 180-turn.
You can see a typical straight staircase in
Figure 4.4
.
FIGURE 4.4
The straight staircase descent is easy to go down and fast to move back up.
You can improve it by crafting cobblestone stairs so that no jumping is required on the re-
turn journey.
The Spiral Staircase
A spiral staircase takes a little more care to build, and you might get a bit dizzy going up
anddownwith all the frequent turns,butit hasacouple ofadvantages overthe other meth-
ods:
The staircase descends vertically, which makes for more methodical exploration.
It's also easy to build if you don't have the wood needed for a vertical access shaft.
A staircase winds down around itself or a central core, exposing more surface area
and therefore providing greater opportunity to discover seams of ore on the way
down.
There are several different versions. The tightest staircase possible is the 2×2. You can
build this following the same steps as for a straight staircase. However, each time you drop
